21.1.22 It's All Coming Back To Me Now

 Obviously not what I intended to write today and I couldn't claim to be a devotee of the artist but the loss of Meat Loaf is such a sad moment that I've got to talk about it.

I don't own much by him - Bat Out Of Hell, Bat Out Of Hell II, the Greatest Hits album from around the turn of the century. That basically gave me all I needed, the two obvious albums, the big hit single from Dead Ringer and the oddly wonderful tune from Lloyd Webber's Whistle Down The Wind that Westlife (or Boyzone, one of the two, they're fairly interchangeable in my mind) had a hit with a vastly inferior version of.

Same song but Meat put his personality all over it. And his was always a music that lived on personality.

(J on a call in the living room at the moment, I'm playing Bat extremely quietly, which is very very wrong and might actually be a criminal offence. I'm also on cat duty and me and the kitten have just had a conversation about how we definitely don't claw records. At the moment it's a toss up which gets destroyed first - my banjo or my copy of Remain In Light.)

Not the point.

This is the way I remember the moments where the music of Meat Loaf interacted with my life:

Chris had the album. Early on. So, about '78? He played it to us in his. And I didn't get it. Somewhere between 78 and 80 he played it and I didn't get it. The title track, of course, with Todd Rundgren turning his guitar into the sound of a motorbike revving to start the tune; you couldn't not like that, it was on Whistle Test every five minutes, its accompanying live clip being so over the top that it endeared itself to you even if it wasn't the music you thought you liked.

I was listening to punk, post-punk, electronic music, the early new romantic singles, the acts breaking out of Liverpool. And Chris was playing me Paradise By The Dashboard Light, which seemed all over the place.

"You need to listen to this." And he moved the needle to this song that started with "On a hot summer night would you offer up your throat to the wolf with a red rose?"

I didn't get it. It just seemed daft.

It took me years to realise that was probably the point. That I was far too bloody serious and that, "I bet you say that to all the boys" was a bloody great punchline. I was taking myself seriously, this record wasn't. And it crept up on me over the years. Being in a record shop where you could just throw it on mid afternoon if it felt right probably helped but the reality is, there's just so much melody in this record. So much melody so much self awareness of how overblown it was.

And if we wanted overblown then the long delayed sequel ladled it on. My copy's in the loft so I'm doing this, again, by recall and instinct but I'm fairly sure that 'Objects In The Rear View Mirror (May Appear Closer Than They Are)' is not only the grandest title you could give a song but also a wonderfully sad metaphor for memory. The single, I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), was everywhere. To a Bryan Adams extent, to the point where you could hate it through repetition. I enjoyed it more each time I heard it. It took the first album and mashed it into one nine minute song and topped the charts. You can't argue with the madness of the success of that song, it did everything it was built to do.

And in between was the prime 50s party doo-wop rock'n'roll mash up of Dead Ringer (For Love). (I'm beginning to wonder if this music gave me my over-reliance on brackets.) It's the song that soundtracked drunken teenage nights in The Chaser in Fazakerley for me, and possibly my generation. Again, over the top, a bit daft and utterly glorious.

And it wouldn't have worked as well with any other vocalist. Jim Steinman lent his tunes and production to others; Bonnie Tyler and The Sisters Of Mercy don't appear together on many people's CVs. But it was Meat Loaf that made the difference, the personality he brought to the songs - a big lad who was clearly a lot softer than you'd possibly imagine - gave them meaning. And he seemed such a genuinely good bloke very time you saw him interviewed. 

So the news this morning was deeply sad. 74 years old, a history of health issues across at least the last two decades, and it's still too soon. He felt like he'd always been there, that he always would be.

None of this was a guilty pleasure, just an absolute pleasure.

RIP