Meat Loaf has been a rock heavyweight for almost forty years. It’s time now to share his life experiences.
PLEASE YOURSELF
You have to make yourself happy. That hasn’t always held true for me, because there’s always been somebody involved that’s wanted me to do something. There’s only been three records where I’ve done exactly what we wanted to do, and I lost Atlantic Records in America because I didn’t want to record what the A&R guy wanted. With this album, nobody really knew we were doing it, because it was all being done when we were touring. All of a sudden, management were going, ‘Can we hear some of it?’ And then they’re going, ‘This is unbelievable.’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s like nothing I’ve ever done before.’
OWN YOUR AUDIENCE
When I walk into a room, I own that fucker. When I walk into an arena, I don’t just own the stage, the arena belongs to me. You own that building. You own the clothes that those people are wearing, you own their heart, you own their brain, you own their soul. If you’ve ever been to a play, when you first sit down it takes you a minute to get the vibe and see where you’re going, and if it’s a really great play with great actors, you will almost feel like you are floating. You are kind of out of your seat and you’ve gone inside the play. That means that actor has not only taken the stage, he owns you. And that’s a great actor.
HAVE TOTAL COMMITMENT
There’s a guy that I’ve known since he was a kid who’s in a comedy group in Belfast. He wrote to me and he said, ‘They’re not getting it.’ I wrote him back saying, ‘Don’t worry about what they’re doing. Don’t worry about them not getting it. You go do what you do. If you sit around and you’re hesitant and you don’t commit, then they’re never gonna get it. But ignore them completely and commit to exactly what you’re doing, and they’ll get it.’ He wrote me back and he goes, ‘You were right. I did it and they got it!’ Whatever you do, you have to have total commitment to it. And it’s not always gonna be easy. When everything bad is happening to you, you feel like it’s not happening to anybody else in the world, even though it is. It’s gonna hurt, it’s gonna be painful, you’re gonna get some glory sometimes, but there’s more pain than there is glory, so be prepared for that.
KNOW WHO YOU ARE
Don’t sit around waiting for everybody else to do it for you. You gotta make sure it’s happening yourself. If you sit around waiting for somebody to call you, nobody’s gonna ever call you. You gotta make it happen. I don’t care who you got as a manger, you come up with ideas, call him up and go, ‘What about this?’ ‘I don’t think we should do that.’ ‘Okay, fine.’ Call him up the next day, ‘What about this? I got three ideas...’ You just keep thinking for yourself. You gotta know who you are. And that’s the problem with the X Factors and the Idols and those things: those kids don’t know who they are when they walk on there. I know who I am. I know what fits me and what I want to do and when I want to do it.
‘Hell In A Handbasket’, the new album, is out now.