The performer Meat Loaf was born on this date in 1947. 10 facts about him:
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He was born Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas, Texas. His mother, Wilma, was a teacher and gospel singer, and his father, Orvis, was a police officer who eventually started a business selling cough medicines. In 1984, Meat Loaf legally changed his first name from Marvin to Michael because of a Levi Strauss & Co. commercial which allegedly contained the line "Poor fat Marvin can't wear Levi's."
There are at least two stories about how he came to be known as Meat Loaf. One was that after he was born he was bright red for several days and his father commented that he looked like a slab of meat. Another is that a football coach called him that when he accidentally stood on the man’s foot.
The first band he belonged to was called Meat Loaf Soul and subsequent bands were Popcorn Blizzard and Floating Circus, who opened for The Who and Grateful Dead.
He was an actor, too and appeared in over 30 films, his first being State Fair in 1962, uncredited as a boy in the stands. Discounting documentaries where he appeared in concert footage performing as himself, he only sang in two of them: The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. He wanted to be taken seriously as an actor and didn’t want to be typecast, always playing singing roles. He also acted in TV shows including an episode of House, in which he played a husband determined to die so he could donate his liver to his wife. His appearance as a bus driver in the Spice Girls movie started out as a joke. When told by Paul Conroy, the head of Virgin, at a breakfast meeting that there was to be a Spice Girls film, Meat Loaf joked with fake indignation, ‘They’re doing Spice World and you didn’t put me in it?!’ Conroy called his bluff and got him a part, at which point Meat Loaf admitted he’d been kidding and tried to wriggle out of it by saying he had a commitment in Germany. Conroy wasn’t having it, and Meat Loaf ended up playing the Spice Girls’ tour bus driver Dennis. One of his lines was a nod to one of his hits: when asked to fix the Toilets, Dennis says that he’d do anything for the girls, “but I won’t do that!”
As a teenager, he was present at Parkland Memorial Hospital on the day of the Assassination of John F Kennedy. Having seen the President when he arrived at Dallas Love Field, he and his friends heard of the assassination on the radio and drove to the hospital in time to see Jacqueline Kennedy arrive. In his autobiography, Meat Loaf claimed his car was hijacked by a secret service agent who was anxious to get to the hospital. He also claimed that he once picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be Charles Manson.
He was married twice. He met his first wife, Leslie G. Edmonds, in 1978 when she was working as Jim Steinman’s secretary. They married in 1979 and divorced in 2001. Meat Loaf married Deborah Gillespie in 2007.
He attended church with his mother as a child and studied The Bible. Although as an adult he didn’t belong to a church, he did pray every day and some of his songs have religious themes, examples being 40 Days and Fall from Grace.
He was a vegetarian from 1981 to 1992. He was also, around that time, a fan of the singer k.d. lang, but she refused to meet him because his name included the word “meat”! He went off her after that. He was up for trying Veganuary in 2020 and announced that he was going to enter into a partnership with Frankie & Benny's to promote its vegan options.
He was offered lead vocalist position in the rock band Foreigner, but turned it down because he wanted to stay with Jim Steinman. He also turned down the lead role in Phantom Of The Opera.
He died in 2022, aged 74. No official cause of death was released. There was speculation, since he’d spoken out against covid vaccination mandates, that he’d died from covid complications.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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