HE flew into the music charts like a Bat Out Of Hell and spent the rest of his career beguiling fans and journalists with a mixture of fact and fiction.
But today, it was revealed Meat Loaf has passed away at the age of 74 – a year after he retired from music.
Few musicians can claim they managed to irritate the Queen, Prince Andrew and half of the entertainment industry over their career.
Yet the singer, whose real name is Michael Lee Aday, lived life to the full after overcoming a childhood of abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father, who allegedly tried to attack him with a knife after his mum’s tragic death.
In his school days, Meat Loaf claimed he experienced his first threesome and got his incredible voice due to a freak accident – the first in a long line of eyebrow-raising tales.
After conquering the music world with his iconic record Bat Out of Hell, the rock legend went on to cheat death, row with Donald Trump and even appear in the Spice World movie.
He married his first love, Leslie, within just a month of meeting, but passed away this week with his second wife, Deborah, by his side.
‘I fought for my life as dad plunged knife’
Meat Loaf’s mother, Wilma, spent her days teaching and her nights going from bar to bar in a bid to find her missing husband around their hometown of Dallas, Texas.
But in 1966 she died from cancer, devastating the teenager, then 19, who claimed he grabbed her dead body at the funeral and screamed at undertakers “you can’t have her”.
Shortly after the funeral his father, Orvis, allegedly attempted to attack him with a knife and Meat Loaf had to fight him off, breaking his father’s nose and ribs in the process.
“I rolled off the bed just as he put that knife right in the mattress,” he said.
“I fought for my life. Apparently I broke three ribs and his nose, and left the house barefoot in a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt.”
Meat Loaf never went home. Instead, he moved to LA in 1967 and began singing in bands and acting – getting an understudy role for John Belushi in National Lampoon Show.
He has since forgiven his father, explaining in a 2016 interview: “He tried to kill me with a butcher knife but all of that is just life. Alcoholism is a disease. You deal with it, you go on, you don’t hold grudges.”
Cat with ’48 lives’
Meat Loaf’s baffling number of injuries and near death experiences led him to describe himself as a “cat with 48 lives”.
In 2013, he told Ultimate Classic Rock he suffered 18 concussions, survived eight car crashes, and had close calls on planes.
He also claimed he had “fallen three storeys” and had so many near misses and collisions that he “should have died” – but the truth of these accidents has never been verified.
Meat Loaf even claims his singing voice came as the result of a 12-pound shot put being thrown at his head from 62-feet away during school.
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