2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF

Subject: Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 06:57 AM

R.I.P.
BBC Obit here

Subject: RE: Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 07:20 AM

Very sad. RIP, Big Man.

Subject: RE: Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: GUEST,JoeG
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 09:55 AM

Very sad news indeed

Subject: RE: Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 10:29 AM

Isn't it odd when someone dies whose name you're incredibly familiar with, yet you know nothing about them whatsoever. They played what my missus said was his most famous song of all on the wireless this morning (don't ask me what it's called...) and I could honestly say that I've never heard it, or at least that nary a scintilla of it has ever lodged in my cranium. I concluded that he must be folk... :-)

However, it seems that he was a good egg who gave joy to millions and that's he's died too young. So my condolences to his nearest and dearest and to his fans.

Subject: RE: Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Jeri
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 10:45 AM

"Paradise by the Dashboard Light" on the album "Bat Out of Hell".
I remember he was in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and was married to Cher for a while. And was on Celebrity Apprentice. (Trump's "reality" show) He was 74, and had been sick with covid.

Subject: RE: Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 11:48 AM

In 1978 a friend of mine decided I needed to know just how talented Meatloaf was, and after dinner he put the album on and described all of the roles in this particular song, including who Phil Rizzuto was. The song wasn't written by Aday, it was written by Jim Steinman, but it was a helluva performance and made the album a huge bestseller. (Our dinner was not akin to the dashboard lights part, my friend was a gay man who was my roommate for two years.)

Paradise by the Dashboard Light

Whether their relationship was collaboration or partnership or just sublime good luck, Steinman was the writer of a lot of hit songs and Meatloaf was the perfect kind of performer for his compositions. Take a look at Steinman's obit from last spring:

Steinman fully embraced the epic, operatic-style rock of the 1970s, and once stated, "If you don't go over the top, you can't see what's on the other side." A bio on his website calls him "The Lord of Excess," and notes that the L.A. Times once referred to him as "the Richard Wagner of rock." In addition to Bat Out of Hell and further projects with Meat Loaf, Steinman's credits include Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" and Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back To Me Now."

Jim Steinman, Writer Of Operatic Rock Hits For Meat Loaf And Celine Dion, Dies At 73

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 11:51 AM

None of the sites I looked at disclosed his cause of death, COVID or anything else.

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 11:57 AM

More about the Meatloaf - Steinman relationship (from The Guardian):

Nevertheless, their partnership was far from one-way traffic. Steinman’s songs were nothing if not unique: wilfully preposterous exercises in more-is-more campy grandiloquence, influenced in equal part by the teenage melodramas of 60s girl groups, Bruce Springsteen at his most chest-beating and – as Steinman never tired of pointing out – Richard Wagner. They were so over the top that it took a very particular kind of vocalist to perform them: “Obviously playing a role, but obviously genuine,” as Steinman put it – a tough trick to pull off. Certainly Steinman himself couldn’t do it, as evidenced by his only solo album, Bad for Good. Nor could many others: Steinman tried to put together bands to perform his material, but there were few takers for Pandora’s Box or the Dream Engine. Meat Loaf, though, could apparently do it with ease.

He had a background in musical theatre and comedy, and a powerhouse voice that worked with histrionic hard rock; before Bat Out of Hell, he had sung lead vocals on a Ted Nugent album. It was a cocktail that gave him the peculiar ability to sing the most absurd Steinman lyrics with absolute commitment and sincerity, while the contrast between his exaggerated stage persona – eyes bulging, red handkerchief clutched in his fist – and the everyman he appeared to be off stage let you know he was in on the joke. That fitted Steinman to a tee.

Whatever ridiculous extremes his music went to, there was something realistic and relatable about the emotions at the centre of his songs: millions of people didn’t go out and buy Bat Out of Hell in order to snigger at it; they bought it because the saga of the teenage romancers turned warring couple on Paradise By the Dashboard Light or All Revved Up With No Place to Go’s depiction of adolescent self-aggrandising and yearning for escape rang true. You could believe it even when what you were listening to beggared belief, and that was down to Meat Loaf. With the greatest respect to Bonnie Tyler – whose versions of Total Eclipse of the Heart and Holding Out for a Hero are masterpieces of take-no-prisoners emoting – and indeed Cher, whose bravura performance on Dead Ringer for Love is a thing of wonder, absolutely no one could sell a Steinman song the way Meat Loaf did.

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: GUEST,JoeG
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 04:29 PM

Steve Shaw I find it incredible that you have never heard Bat Out Of Hell! Where have you been all these years ;-)

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 06:15 PM

I was a sixties pop freak, then in the early seventies I completely turned my back on it and embraced classical music almost exclusively. In the early 80s I discovered Irish via Planxty, the Bothies and De Dannan. Then Patrick Street and all that. And I've always loved Carly. That, along with the classical, as well as playing in pubs and for weddings, sorted me until the 2010s, when, via editing pop music for our local dance teacher, I discovered that much popular music was really good after all, with brilliant production standards. So I've gradually picked up on much that I missed, Bowie, Queen, that sort of stuff.

I've got Simple Minds on BBC4 as I type. Jim Kerr founded and owns my very favourite hotel in the world, in Sicily with a superb view of Mount Etna. I want to go there again and give him a big hug. I hope he reads this.

A great musical journey. It's just that I forgot to get off at one or two stops...

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 06:45 PM

I suspect there will be some conversation about his politics along the way. He was apparently an anti-vaxxer and died of COVID - but the only source material for this so far are all of the yellow rag sources, none of the reputable news sites. The only concrete clue to that I see is that he started out singing with Ted Nugent, a wingnut if there ever was one.

It seems he's one of those people whose body of work is much larger than the man himself, if that makes sense.

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 06:53 PM

Oh dear. It also seems that he was a climate change denier who wasn't very nice about Greta.   I feel exonerated in having ignored him...

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 06:59 PM

That's all recent stuff. His oeuvre goes back over 40 years.

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 07:49 PM

I'm not judgemental in that way. But it puts me off him a bit.

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Malcolm Storey
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 08:34 PM

In probably 1981 I made my first visit to Sidmouth FF in my capacity as a member of the National Executive of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
My son and some of his friends were to attend a pop festival in the south west at the same time and he persuaded me to give them a lift.
During our journey south I was treated to a recording they had of a character called Meatloaf.
Not normally my choice of music the raw talent (once the volume was at a mutually agreed level) the man effused impressed me.
Over the years he has been one of the few pop influences I have enjoyed in the relaxing times.
Desperado by the Eagles is the one that really used to sooth after the odd trying day - played twice on the earphones at full blast.
We all have our achilles heels!

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 08:38 PM

The usual Environmental, Social and Governance virtue audits where the eulogy belongs.

He had the quality of being simultaneously frightening and cuddly. [Stephen Fry]

Saw him live a couple of times in his prime. Always rocked the house. RIP big man.

Subject: RE: 2022 Obit: Marvin Lee Aday: MEATLOAF
From: Bugsy
Date: 21 Jan 22 - 09:42 PM

Sad to hear of his passing, though I never was a fan of his music.
listening to his melodies I often felt like he was making it up as he went along. Especially "2 Out of 3"

Cheers

Bugsy