By Stephanie R. Myers
With a career whose roots reach back to Broadway—he performed in the original Broadway cast of Hair and, of course, immortalized the role of biker Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show—it makes sense that rocker and pop culture icon Meat Loaf has a highly attuned sense for the theatrical when it comes to his music. And his fan base, which goes back to 1977’s Bat out of Hell and before, wouldn’t have it any other way. For Meat—as he’s colloquially known—perfectionist recording sessions and intensely physical live shows are par for the course (the 2007 documentary Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise showed firsthand how self-flagellating he can be of his live performances).
For his latest foray into the studio, Hang Cool Teddy Bear, Meat has joined forces with veteran producer Rob Cavallo (who produced Green Day’s American Idiot album, which is currently enjoying another incarnation as a successful Broadway musical). The pairing is a seemingly idyllic one—Meat, who approaches his songs with an actor’s intensity of a character study, has Cavallo in his corner for this go-round, who himself is no stranger to character-focused concept albums. Hang Cool Teddy Bear, whose title is taken from a line in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, is the musical story of a soldier (“Patrick”) who is dying on the battlefield. Instead of watching his life flash backward, the album tells the story of his experience watching his life flash forward into his imagined future. Meat also brings on a few guest pals on board for the ride, including Jack Black, Hugh Laurie, and The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins.
Meat took time out to speak with Dunce Cap Quarterly about how his musical influences range from Kings of Leon to John Phillip Sousa, why good albums are akin to circuses, and how this record may be his last studio album (you heard it from DCQ first).
DCQ: Congratulations on the new album—it’s great. I hear you’re really happy with the way it turned out.
ML: I’m beyond happy. What is it, ecstatic? Let’s go above ecstatic. It’s spiritual. [laughs]
Can’t beat that. I heard that in working with Rob Cavallo, he’d come to you and said “I’m here to do a Meat Loaf record, not a Rob Cavallo record.”
That’s the complete opposite of any other producer I’ve ever worked with, where they would say, “well you know, my name is on this too and this is my career too.” And Rob Cavallo – he just doesn’t go on that. He’s secure with who he is, obviously.
Right. So was the recording process just completely miles away from anything you’ve ever done, studio-wise?
Completely. Yeah, any other time I’ve ever done a record, people would go, “don’t we have to the studio?” And I would go, “Yeah, yeah.” “Well, aren’t you gonna go?” “Yeah, I’m gonna go down there, yeah yeah.” “Well, shouldn’t you go?” “Yeah, I’ll go in a minute, yeah.” And with this one, I would wake up in the morning just dying to go. I’d get up in the morning and go warm up, and I’m gone. “Okay, I gotta go. Bye.” I’d wanna be there. But then, I get tired around 11 o’clock and I have to leave. And Rob kind of moseys around in the afternoon. It’s very funny, the energy level. My energy level is like 112 in the afternoon and his is running about 80. And around about 8 o’clock, mine starts to drop and his picks up about 11 o’clock, he’s running at 140 and I’m like, falling down. So I go, and they’ll stay about another three hours and do all kinds of stuff, and the next day I’ll come in and hear what they did, and he’ll go, “you like it?” and I’ll say “yeah!” or “no, I don’t like that.” And he’ll go, “okay, well, don’t use that, erase that.” And it’s great—he could spend three hours doing something and I could walk in and go “I don’t like that.” “Okay, cool, no problem, get rid of it.” And that’s the beauty of Rob. It’s like “okay, nope, who cares. If you don’t like it, we won’t use it.”
That’s probably why there’s such a range of styles on this album, too.
Yes, there’s a range of styles. I’ve always tried to do that. I always considered it being like going to a circus. And a circus would be really boring if you walk into a circus and there was two-and-a-half hours of an elephant. I mean, you’d be going “what is this?” But when you’ve got camels and giraffes and – maybe I’m using the wrong thing here because sometimes circuses can be cruel to their critters, but you know what I mean. They’ve got trapezes, they’ve got clowns, they’ve got all kinds of things going on. And it makes it a really interesting fun, visual kind of thing. So when I make records, I want them to be fun and visual. And this record would have been the perfect record in 1972 for [Lee] Strasberg to give to his actors studio image Method class.
Ha, absolutely.
It would have been absolutely perfect for that. I would have loved to have seen the visual. This is actually to me even more visual than [Bat out of Hell]. Bat is incredibly visual. But I think this is a more –it’s an easier road to walk down in the visuals.
I was really struck by your vocal range on this album. Did you have to do vocal rehabilitation after being diagnosed with a vocal cord cyst on your European tour in 2007?
Yeah, we did with the cyst. They put me on the road when they shouldn’t have—oh God, you have no idea what misery it was from 2006 until the end of 2007. It was just—I was in hell. I mean I literally was in hell. And they just wouldn’t stop beating me. It was like, you know, basically they were saying, “well, he’s not ever going to do anything else, so let’s get everything we can get out of him while he’s still standing.” And I had the cyst on my vocal cord, and once the cyst popped, they were trying to put me out on the road in February and the doctor yelled at them and said, “he can’t sing for a good six or seven months. He needs three to four months of doing nothing, and then we’ve got to rehab him for three or four months.” And they booked shows in June that I didn’t even know about and put them on sale, the old managers. And I’d just gone through this whole thing in Newcastle where I had to walk off the stage and I was at my lowest point ever. And all of the sudden they put me back on the road in the summer of what, 2008? And I’d have a show that was okay and I’d have a show that wasn’t good at all. My vocal cords just wouldn’t hold up. So I was just quitting. I was going to quit, and then I said “I can’t go out with that record.” The [Bat Out of Hell III] record. ‘Cause visually it was wrong, the character studies were all wrong, there was no polish to the characters. That’s what I kept trying to tell people, and they’d just look at me like I’m crazy. And I’d keep going, “show me where your character is here.” “Oh, he’s right here.” And I’m going, “yes, but where’s the development of him? How did you develop the character from this?” “Well, it’s right there.” I’m going, “there’s nothing there.” And they were going to record companies behind my back—and it was just mind-boggling what was going on. And so then I changed management, and I got Rob Cavallo, and you know what? If I end now, it’s great. I’ve had the greatest experience ever in my life going into the studio with Rob Cavallo, and if it ends, I’ve delivered a record that I think is spectacular and I don’t care what anybody says. I know that these characters and these songs are so well-written. True screenwriters, true playwrights—if I got anybody to review my record, that’s who I’d want to review it, because they can see these songs for what they are and understand what we did to develop these characters and understand the line of the development of the story. And they would love it. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful piece and so well-written. And the songs—because I’m so emotional about this record and I do wear my heart on my sleeve—that if anybody says anything about the songs, I’m incredibly upset. Because those people are ignorant and know nothing about songs. Nobody wants to work for anything, it just all has to be hand-delivered to them constantly, and these songs are so well-written and so well-crafted, that they’re brilliant songs. But I didn’t write them, I helped with pieces of them. The reason I can say that they’re brilliant and I’m not being pretentious or bragging is because they’re really not mine. You know, “Love is Not Real,” I wrote some pieces on that, and “Song of Madness”—there’s bits and pieces of me in there. There’s bits and pieces of me in every none of them, but I’m not the guy who started the song, I’m the guy who finished it.
I love the narrative of the album with the flash-forward and then the flash-backward at the end.
Oh yeah! [The character] is in California pretty much the whole time. The first song—see how well-crafted it is—the first song sets up the situation and tells you his position in life. The first line of the song says “goodbye my friends, it was good to know you, I hope you understand.” And how he’s done nothing with his life. It’s really kind of a bit of a wallow in self-pity from time to time, but if you’re dying, I suppose you’re allowed to do that. He talks about how he loves his mama. It’s really well-done. And the second song [“Living on the Outside”] really tells you who he is. “I’ve got a nickel in my boot, I’ve got losers for friends, and I’ve got my mama’s gun”—they’re outlaws. He’s a total outlaw. He’s everything that is not what is supposed to be. He would be looked down upon as like a bum, a loser. So what happens to him is that immediately, his life flashes forward, and he immediately goes to who he is. And he lives in hell with that woman in “Los Angeloser,” having to follow her around and be her puppy dog and be the guy who walks behind her two steps. And then the speech in that song, an option was “I wanna thank all you women, especially the ones who have shown a little love for someone like myself,”—this pitiful character. But I had to maintain some credibility with him, so he had something to move on with, so I chose it that way. So when I’m doing vocals, while every other singer goes in and does notes and meter, I’m saying to Rob and them, “now listen, I’m trying to make these words come across like this.” And they’re looking at me like I’m insane. When I do that and we’ve got the vocal, and they go “well, what about the notes?” I go, “well, I don’t care about the notes.” And Rob Cavallo then coined a phrase about me—that I’m an actor who acts like I can sing. Because I always try to twist the meaning of everything. I pointed out all kinds of stuff to Rob. I move too fast. Once I’ve locked my character in, and I know where I want to twist him and move him, I can’t sit around and explain him. I don’t have time, we gotta move while we can. But when the recording was over, I showed Rob some pieces in there, like in “Love is Not Real,” where I sing the line “love and hate.” And I sing “love” like I hate you, and I sing “hate” like I love you. And I’m constantly doing that with lyrics all the time, through every song. I give it the other side of the meaning.
I think it totally works on here. Because of that characterization too, I wasn’t surprised to hear that there’s talk of possibly making Hang Cool into a screenplay.
Oh yeah, I would love to do that. Or even a stage play. A stage play, it would work really well because not only would it be very dramatic in places, but it also has a real sense of humor in the sense of the movie M*A*S*H. It had a lot of drama, but at the same time it had all of those comedic characters. They tried to make light of these bad situations and that’s kind of what this is about. I never wanted the tracks to get heavy-handed. I took “Peace on Earth”—which is a very dramatic song—and took the strings and told [conductor] Dave Campbell, “I don’t want these European melodramatic strings, I want the John Phillip Sousa kind of instrumental going on behind it. An upbeat kind of thing, instead of dark. And I told Rob, “we want to make all the songs upbeat, because what we’re going to talk about a lot of time is very dark. But I’m going to twist it so it becomes a National Lampoon kind of humor that’s dark but it’s funny.”
Right—it’s got that twist.
Yeah. I’m always twisting everything. I only know how to twist. [laughs]
I heard that with this upcoming tour, you’re not only going to be singing songs from Hang Cool, but that you’re looking to incorporate material from every album, back to [1971’s] Stoney and Meat Loaf.
Yup, yup—well, even before then. I’m actually going to play the first song I’ve ever wrote, and then people will know I don’t write songs. [laughs]
Are you looking forward to the tour then?
Yeah, I am looking forward to it—you know what I look forward to is putting it together. I have it in my head. It’s like I had this album in my head, but Rob Cavallo came in and exceeded every expectation I possibly could have had. So now it’s my job to make what’s going on in my head happen with other people, like Bill Sheldon and some of the people who are doing the graphic stuff with me for the stage show, like some of my inflatables and things that we use to make it all come to life. And exceed my vision.
In going along with the touring, for the In Search of Paradise documentary—
Oh yeah, I’d learned one thing from that. If anyone asks me after the show “how was it?” I’m going to say “it was fine, thank you.” [laughs] I didn’t even know I did that. It’s like every time they asked me how it was, I’d say “no, it wasn’t right. No, it wasn’t good.” But I do that with everything. I beat myself up every night. Every day.
Did seeing that documentary change the way you perform live or the way you approach performing live?
I don’t know. It may have, subconsciously, in a sense. See, what’s funny is that what I do—it’s just not normal. [laughs] If you go see a Bon Jovi show, you go and you see Jon. You go see Bruce, you see Bruce. I mean, yeah, they have a persona and they take the persona on stage and that’s what they are—I’m different in that I create a different character for Meat Loaf for every tour. So every tour has some different persona going on. I’m working off a different back story. Basically, I get a different back story for every character and I take him out there. So now, for this album, I obviously can’t go out and play a 24-year-old, so what I have to do is create a back story that brings me forward so basically what you’re going to get from me is the persona of [Hang Cool’s main character] Patrick, who did live and is now up on stage. But he’s now 62 as opposed to 24. [laughs] So we have to deal with that. But I bring these different personas up every time. Like I see these videos from Bat out of Hell, and that guy should be committed.
From the original Bat—it’s just too much, huh?
I work things completely different. I’m an actor who acts like he can sing. I bring different characters to every movie, so why wouldn’t I bring a different character to every tour?
What are you listening to right now?
The one band I really, really love is Kings of Leon and mostly because I like who they are. And I love the Foo Fighters too, I love Dave Grohl. I mean, those guys—anytime you meet somebody and they’re really nice and they’re genuine and they’re great, then I tend to really love ‘em. When I meet ‘em and they’re pretentious pricks, I really could care less. But those guys, Kings of Leon, are really good kids and really got their feet down on the earth and I really admire them for their attitude. And the Foo Fighters are not only a great band but really a bunch of really good guys.
What advice would you give to struggling musicians trying to get awareness for their music, seeing as record labels aren’t necessarily the way to go these days?
You know what—I have no idea. You gotta figure it out. Someone’s going to come along with something and figure something out. If you’re really serious about it, you do whatever you can do to get it done. You go out and play for people. It’s always the people who matter in the end. The audience is out there and the audience is starved. But we’ve gone into this other world when it’s all about celebrity and it’s not about artists anymore. And it’s completely different from anything I’ve ever seen.
It’s definitely taken a change.
But the audience is there. They’re starved for good stuff. You just need to present it to them, but the problem is they’ve lost their trust. And even though somebody might tell you, “this is a really good record,” they’ve lost their trust. It’s not different in the movie business either. There’s very few of the movie stars they can use to open a movie anymore. They’ve lost their trust and it’s all about something else. Give ‘em a remake of Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street and you know what, they go, “well, we know what that is, so we’re gonna go there, ‘cause we know what we’re getting.” The business on all sides—from the book business to the music business to the film business to politicians—everybody’s lost their trust in everything and it’s all splintered. And no one side trusts anybody and it’s a shame.
Do you see that there’s the pressure in the music business to retread the same path?
Yeah, they’ve been doing that to me for 30-something years now and finally I just go, “no, I’m not going to do that anymore, if we’re going to do something, I’m going to do it this way.” And we got Rob Cavallo and basically I did it my way, with the help of Rob. I did it Rob’s and my way.
And do you think for future projects and albums, are you planning to enlist Rob?
I have no idea, but I wouldn’t do another record without Rob Cavallo. So either I never do another record, or I do it with Rob Cavallo.
So is there a chance this could be the very last studio album?
Yup, there’s a good chance. Yup. Pretty good chance.
Would you consider continuing to tour even if you weren’t recording in the studio?
Nah. [laughs] You heard it first here!
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Meat Loaf’s latest album, Hang Cool Teddy Bear, drops nationwide in stores and is available on iTunes nationwide on May 11.
