Like a Sinner Before The Gates of Heaven: A Fat Kid’s Eulogy for Meat Loaf
Before Body Positivity had a name, chubby dorks had the world’s most large and in-charge rock star to look up to
Fat kids need heroes.
We tend not to come by them often. In movies and TV, the chunky kid typically falls into one of two tropes, either the butt of the joke or the cool kid’s sidekick who at best has one amazing, albeit improbable night at an epic high school party or something akin that serves more as literary device somewhere between comic relief and heart-string-pulling distraction from the primary plot.
We’re all well aware of how media misconstrues our social constructs and while there are plenty of proud, talented, and otherwise-known large people in the world, it is the demographic that routinely charts as the most discriminated against in America, and more interestingly, the most widely (pun!) and socially acceptable group to discriminate against. This remains true, despite America having the densest population of medically-defined obese people in the history of humanity.
Even in the case of unabashed big people, they tend to have to wear their size in a larger-than-life fashion to rise above it. Celebrities like Jack Black and Lizzo are comfortable in their bodies, but part of their image and celebrity itself is about just that exactly and is inseparable from their multiple other talents.
Yet, every now and again, you come across the rarity of talent that just happens to be fat without it being central to their notoriety. This is what made Meat Loaf so singular and unique to me and manifested him as a bizarre kind of hero and even comfort in my life. So, I was sad to learn of his passing on January 21st, 2022, which also happened to be the 12 year anniversary of my big sister’s death. Perhaps I was just in a place where it struck a different chord, but I’m thankful for the prompt to put some meat on the bone of these thoughts that have been with me but never really made their way out of my head.
Rock ‘n’ roll has long been best served cool.
While that’s largely been true of the genre since its inception it also always had an undercurrent of honesty that let what legendary rock writer Lester Bangs (almost) famously described as the “uncool” to sneak through the cracks. In the ‘70s, the hangover of the Beatles and the ruins of the heyday of the Summer of Love still reigned supreme. You had the coolest duos in the history of rock ‘n’ roll in ready abundance (wrapped in even more abandon). There was Lennon and McCartney, Page and Plant, and the epitome of cool itself, Jagger and Richards. Right when this was all peaking and knock-offs were multiplying like a handful of quaaludes, along came … Meat Loaf and Steinman?
What the fuck?
With a soundtrack of weepy quasi-satanic motorcycle-ridden opera ballads? These guys weren’t cool at all, they were nerds!
Lester Bangs (fabulously portrayed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, another pudgy hero, in Almost Famous) was noted for his celebration of the uncool. For him, uncoolness was the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll. “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool,” Hoffman quotes in his portrayal. His anecdotes on the matter are the heart and moral center of the aforementioned film. I don’t know if Bangs would agree, but to me, Meat Loaf was this idea embodied. But there was something interesting about it, these guys were nerds, sure, but they were pissed-off nerds with incredible lyrics and a tremendous sense of musicality.
You can picture it now from any of those legendary clips you’ve seen. Meat Loaf was fat, dripping sweat, long thin hair stuck all over his face, lips spewing spittle out over the microphone, somehow donning an impossibly oversized and frumpy cheesy as hell ruffled tuxedo shirt, completely soaked and strapped to his large body by a pair of suspenders clinging on for life. Admittedly, it’s so absurd and almost ridiculous that there is something funny about it, something endearing, something bordering on farcical. But then you turn the music up. And then you turn it up louder, and then a little louder and then … holy shit, it clicks — this motherfucker means this shit and he is absolutely killing it.
He’s serenading, sure, but he’s furious. It feels like the stage is going to burst into flames at any moment. But, you still find yourself conflicted. Is it kinda corny? Sure. Is it rock ‘n’ roll? I mean, yeah, sure. Is it opera? Um, kinda. Is it musical theatre? Yeah, kinda that too. But there’s something richer than that clinging to the attitude.
It’s an infectious bellowing that has you clenching your fist, pumping it in the air, lyrics leaping almost involuntary out of your chest in a rage that’s filled with equal breaths of love and pain. This dude is up there kicking over mic stands, crashing into the piano, wrecking the stage, enraptured with the female singer playing counterpart in the tension and it feels like they’re going to go at it right then and there and the whole scene is bizarrely … sexy?
It’s so all-consuming, raw, and honest that you forget about what this guy looks like, it’s about how the music makes you feel. Slowly you come to realize: Son … of … a … bitch … this is fucking punk rock?! Not the bullshit scene sound that “Punk Rock” devolved into, but the actual spirit of punk itself — make it yours and to hell with everyone else and their self-righteous opinions.
“Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing’s ever worth the cost.”
I don’t really know what that means but I know exactly how it feels. That’s the beauty of Jim Steinman’s lyricism and Meat Loaf’s delivery. It sinks into your skin like fangs.
Meat Loaf and Steinman didn’t give a single fuck about what other people thought. They knew absolutely what they were doing was right for them and they were incredible at it. So good, in fact, that they were selling records not one single person was asking for nor knew they wanted by the tens of millions across four decades. Like it or not, you have to be impressed. Steinman has a great quote somewhere, where he said something to the effect of, ‘If you don’t go over the top, how do you know what’s on the other side?’
What’s amazing to me about this and about Meat Loaf
is that while his size was unconventional, he was so incredibly talented and there was so much other weird shit going on, that became the least interesting thing about him. This guy, this big sweaty, silky-voiced man managed to become a sex symbol in some bizarre way by simply being his full self. His career was a mess in a lot of ways, but he preserved and produced an impressive canon of work, not just musically but in film too. His roles in Fight Club, Crazy in Alabama, as the bouncer Tiny in Wayne’s World, and his infamous stint as Eddie in Rocky Horror Picture Show are iconic performances. He had genuine chops that transcended the potential buffoonery of it all to become good art.
With an unprecedented three-octave operatic rock range, he channeled the spitfire of the Sex Pistols covering Liberace ballads in a Broadway musical and got super famous with the moniker Meat Loaf. This is the definition of “uncool” and perfectly encapsulates the end of the freedom of rock ‘n’ roll before it settled into being a business with a good soundtrack. In that way, Bat Out of Hell becomes more than just a killer album title with all its flames and raucous motorcycles, it is itself Rock ‘n’ Roll the entity being definitively murdered, buried, and coming back to haunt us.
It sounds exactly like I want Death to sound when he comes wielding his scythe and ringing his harrowing bells. To boot, it’s just really fun to sing along to while blasting it in your car.
If you were like me, a chubby, awkward middle schooler in the early ‘90s
who was most definitely uncool, back-to-school shopping was a bittersweet affair. It was the one time of year you got new clothes, so it was rife with excitement, but also inevitably a tiny lesson in humility. To paint the picture, it looked something like your mom pointing past the expensive trendy clothes section at the department store where all the other kids at school seemed to shop and instead toward the big sign hanging at the far end of the aisle that simply read HUSKY. Underneath was a sea of brown corduroy pants and tent-shaped shirts with tight necks adorned with images of Fat Albert or Homer Simpson.
If you were really lucky, it would be one of the times your grandma came along and a cute girl from school would be headed into the fitting room with a pile of ESPRIT sweatshirts just as you were coming out and she would get to hear them argue about where your waistline should be:
“Pull those pants up! You look like a hobo!”
“Leave him alone, Mom. He’s low-waisted like his dad!”
All before swishing back in to put it all on layaway. Do you want to pick out a pair of shoes? Reebok Pumps? How about this pair of Spaldings from PayLess with a foam ball in the tongue that does nothing when you squeeze it? Those can go on layaway too.
So, you might imagine how it felt when Meat Loaf made his re-emergence, and there I was in my brand new corduroys sitting in the living room watching VH1 after school. This guy looked like a maniac, but there was a motorcycle and some kind of evil decrepit castle, a long-lost love, and a big sound oozing passion, sadness, and anger. It hit.
The next thing I knew, each time the video came on the TV the volume got cranked while I belted the lyrics into a cereal spoon and jumped off the couch doing air kicks, making my own tiny rock concert unaware that Meat Loaf was exactly the hero I needed, even if I didn’t quite understand then why I felt so good. Or why that music would feel so meaningful, wreckless, and fun throughout the course of my life.
In fact, I never really thought about it all, because for a moment — or about the length of each eight-minute-long song at a time — I didn’t think about how I looked or what people thought of me. I just felt like me, and I liked that feeling a lot.
Rest in Peace you completely original hero. Thanks for the tunes.
Note: My mom is amazing and those memories are some of my favorites. Thanks, Mom! I’m also very glad that the “husky section” is a thing of the past.
