According to TMZ, Meat Loaf is dead from COVID. I have to say up front that Meat Loaf does NOT qualify for SorryAntiVaxxer. He just doesn't. I know I'm going against the grain of most SAV commenters, but he's just not the definition of anti-vaxxer to me. It's not even clear to me that he was as conservative as people are saying. In fact, I invite you to go to his Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MeatLoaf and find any post you consider conservative or anti-vaxx and post it in the comments. Maybe I'll change my mind. But even if he was a conservative, just being conservative and unvaxxed, by themselves, doesn't meet the qualifications for an entry on SAV. He wasn't always the most pleasant man (see The Apprentice for instance, which may have been staged anyway), but he did piss Trump off and they had a falling out when he suggested that Trump wouldn't make a good president (see this). So despite what has been said, he wasn't a "Trumper", but he had a relationship with Trump till 2012 before he pissed him off. After Trump confronted him, Meat Loaf said, "I'm not afraid of Trump!" Meat didn't spew anti-vaxx propaganda, as far as I can tell. The only thing I could find was his sharing of that ignorant Clapton and Van Morrison song. He also did say, recently, in an interview: "If I die, I die," which in hindsight was really, really stupid. He should've cared and he should've gotten vaccinated. He probably did believe the BS misinformation about vaccines. Still, that's not enough to land you a spot on good old SAV. HOWEVER, Meat Loaf himself did say that "2 out of 3 Ain't Bad", so I'm going to post him. Also, It's Friday afternoon, and a good time to do some reminiscing and be self-indulgent. I am simply going to remember Meat Loaf by his music, and man, the memories of that music came flooding back today! I'm going to age myself now by saying that the Bat Out of Hell album was a HUGE part of my high school experience. These memories of Meat Loaf songs that I carry are all great. It's funny, when someone makes mistakes or exposes their horrible hidden side in real life, how much it can color their art. But sometimes, if your good memories are strong enough, then those memories can override the bad impressions. For instance, I still really like the movie Braveheart even though Mel Gibson turned out to be an extremely racist fuck-head. In case you didn't know, Bat out of Hell is one of the best selling albums of all time. Everyone in my age group had this album in their collection. The songs were all written by Jim Steinman, who fit them perfectly to Meat Loaf's style and strengths. Truth be known, Meat Loaf was really more like a hired performer of Jim's songs, but he was absolutely perfect for them. The songs are like listening to the soundtrack of a great Broadway musical, like something Andrew Lloyd Weber would write and produce. Meat Loaf's voice was powerful, driving, and theatrical. However, shortly after becoming a huge star in 1977, he went on tour, and during that tour he suffered some kind of psychotic break that came through physically as a loss of his voice. You can read a bit about it here. Doctors said it was psychosomatic and not physical. His personality, mental state, and confidence never completely recovered, and you could see it later in his life every time he was on TV or tried to perform. He did make a bit of a comeback with an album some 16 years later in 1993, "Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell" , which had the hit "I Would do Anything for Love". Still, that album doesn't come close to being as good as Bat out of Hell. Anyway, I'm changing it up a little today, and posting Meat Loaf because 1) I've gotten hundreds of requests in my inbox to do so and, 2) I want to. I want to share and remember these songs on this Friday afternoon with my vaxxed, healthy, and living friends of SAV! Enjoy. This is fun music that can make your day a little less serious if you just allow yourself to let go of who Meat Loaf became, and remember him as the great performer of these songs. (For what it's worth, I'll forgive Meat Loaf and his tragic flaws and enjoy his music, but I can't do the same thing for Ted Nugent - fuck that guy - he's so obnoxious that I can't enjoy his old music, but I suppose I never really did anyway.)
I think Meat predicted that the Coronavirus would come from a bat and take him out one day:
Also, I always wondered what it was that he wouldn't do for love, and now we know: he wouldn't get vaccinated. (This was from his comeback album):
This song was always the last song at every high school dance I attended. It got me laid more than any single song in my life:
Of course, after getting laid, a lot of my classmates ended up like this:
How many of you felt this way on a Saturday night during the pandemic? I know I sure did!!!
RIP Meat Loaf.