"One loud wreck 'n' roller"

[Chris]

Below is an article form the Sunday Times (8/6/03) Driving Supplement

Interview: Me and my motors: Meat Loaf: One loud wreck 'n' roller
Mark Anstead

Meat Loaf isn't as fat as he used to be but he's still larger than life. Everything he says he shouts at a decibel level just above comfortable.
"I've had so many people complain to me about Bat Out of Hell," he bellows, talking about his 1977 debut album. It is one of the bestselling records of all time and stayed in the UK charts for almost eight years. "David Letterman, the American talk show host, told me he's been pulled over 19 times while listening to it."

Reeling from the aural assault, my mind is stuck on one train of thought: why is that, because he had the volume up too loud? "No, stupid, because it makes him drive too fast!" Loaf probably speaks loudly because he's going slightly deaf (a result of years of performing in front of high-power amplifiers) but first impressions aside, I soon realise I am talking to one of the warmest, funniest people in rock. Maybe that's why his latest album jumped straight into the charts at No 5; it seems we all have a soft spot for Meat Loaf.

But, given the lyrics and the cover art of Bat Out of Hell, it certainly comes as a big surprise to learn that he's never ridden a motorcycle.

I'm stunned when he tells me this. Long-held fantasies are shattered. What! Have you never been, as the song says, "torn and twisted at the foot of a burning bike"? Never been tempted to tear up the road "faster than any other boy has ever gone"? "They took my picture on every motorcycle known to man for 10 years after Bat Out of Hell, but then I stopped them," he says. "Nobody's ever seen me actually riding a motorcycle, only in pictures sitting astride them. But everybody assumes my garage is filled with them and that I use motorcycle pistons as lamps.

"You've got to realise you're talking to a guy who's had 18 concussions, can't eat without getting food all over my front, been through innumerable car wrecks, fell off a balcony three storeys high . . . Would I want to risk getting on two wheels and riding through heavy traffic? I'd rather be put in an insane asylum."

Just listening to the catalogue of knocks his skull has suffered is enough to make you wince. He was once in a Chevrolet Corvette that went out of control and rolled five times, a '55 Chevy that was hit by a truck running through a stop sign and a '57 Chevy that got wrapped around a telephone pole - and he wasn't driving any of these. Then there was the shot put ball to the forehead, the baseball bat between the eyes, the flight of stairs he fell down and the kitchen cabinet doors on which he knocked himself out (twice).

So what the man drives is a nice safe Mercedes-Benz S 430, because they make him feel secure.

"They're built really solidly," he says. "I first bought a Mercedes in 1978, a 450 SEL, and eventually when my older daughter became old enough to drive we gave it to her. She had one of the worst crashes in it - because teenagers just crash cars, period - and in any other car she'd have been terribly hurt. But she walked, there was nothing wrong with her.

"Years later I had to be cut out of a Mercedes when a guy fell asleep at his wheel and crossed the road straight into me. But there was nothing wrong with me and it was because of the Mercedes."

He likes Volvos for the same reason. And Saturns. He's bought a Saturn for his younger daughter because they have round steel poles in the doors. He tells me it's a dangerous thing to motor around Los Angeles, where he lives, because there are people on the road who don't know how to drive. And he strongly dislikes driving stupidity, stupid being defined as people who should know better.

"What irritates me more than anything is when people are at a red light turned green and they won't go," he says. "Especially on the West Coast of America where they just sit and look at it and carry on thinking. Or at a right-hand turn over here, when you're in the right-hand turn lane and they don't go on an arrow. I just want to throttle them.

"That's the only time I have real road rage. I wish I had little buttons to push that would broadcast through a loudspeaker on the roof: 'What? Are you an idiot?' or 'What? You can't turn your indicator on?'" Fortunately, he doesn't drive enough of the time to have his stress levels running continuously high from those frustrations. In four years his previous car, a Mercedes S 420, clocked only 13,000 miles because he's away on tour so much.

However, he does remember driving around England when he was recording here in the mid-1980s. "We'd take these little outings to Dover, Blackpool and Land's End playing tourist.

"So one day I'm leaving Stonehenge and driving down the road and all of a sudden I look up and there's a car coming straight towards me in my lane. I'm thinking, 'Is this guy a moron or what?' But he stayed in my lane and I was thinking, 'Well I'm not moving, this guy's moving'. All of a sudden I realise, 'Wait a second, the moron is me! I'm on the wrong side of the road!'" Easily done in a foreign land, Meat, easily done.

The album Couldn't Have Said It Better is out now and Meat Loaf will be touring in the UK in November

On his CD changer
In Los Angeles, if you have any sense at all, you listen to Talk Radio because they give you the traffic all the time.

It's essential for avoiding freeway jams. But other than that...M!ssundaztood by Pink - she's got a great voice and terrific attitude

Boz Scaggs's Silk Degrees and Dig - it's not just heavy rock I listen to, you know!

I am disgusted. How can anyone choose Mercs over Smarts!!!

[The Flying Mouse]

Thanks for the article Chris .

Carol was going the shop so I asked her to pick up the sunday Times for me.Jesus Christ they must have cut down a rain forest to print the thing .
(off topic-it says on the front page that the mummy of Queen Nefertiti has been found.How did they lose it in the first place .It wasn't in your lost and found department was it Chris? )

[sherrie87]

He likes Volvos for the same reason. And Saturns. He's bought a Saturn for his younger daughter because they have round steel poles in the doors. He tells me it's a dangerous thing to motor around Los Angeles, where he lives, because there are people on the road who don't know how to drive.

Somehow I will now feel better about making my Saturn payment each month, knowing it has the ML stamp of approval! This is actually my third Saturn in 10 years, for the same reason ML seems to like them. I had a horrible wreck (after making 1 car payment!!) in my first one- $8000 damage, hitting at 40 MPH a car that foolishly stopped on green because he though he was in the turn lane for McDonalds. We had not a scratch, but the car was nearly totalled- had it not been so new I'm sure it would have been totalled out my my insurance company. It's very cool to have a little something in common with ML!

Sherrie

[Testify]

i like mercs, i think there well cool!!! i wanna a merc!!! im gonna get a merc!! i MUST have a merc at some point in my life!!

[Bren]

Enjoyed the article ,Chris,thanks for posting it.

[Chris]

If I can ever figure out how to work the scanner (hey, I've only got 1 degree in it!!!!) I will post the accompanying picture!!

In which meat olooks a lot thinner than ever!!

[original sin]

Thanks for sharing the article Chris would have missed it as don't get the Times

[Terri]

Good article - thanks for sharing it with us Chris

[MBrevard]

Oh, Chris! Reading that article made me feel really happy. Just what I needed today!

Thank you SO much for sharing it with all of us!!

Love,
MB
xxx