Meat Loaf is gone!

Roberto71

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Ah no....such a shame, what a fantastic singer and character. He was 74.

RIP Meaty!! Get on the Harley and go like a Bat out of Hell!

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I saw him somewhere around 1989. It was a few years before Bat out of Hell 2, and he was playing colleges. So I saw him in a college auditorium in Worcester that only sat a few hundred.

It was an excellent show. The man had serious pipes and didn't hold back with them. He was a rare kind of singer.

Often when people think of songwriting teams they think of Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

But Meatloaf and Jim Steinman were a fantastic combination.

 
I saw him somewhere around 1989. It was a few years before Bat out of Hell 2, and he was playing colleges. So I saw him in a college auditorium in Worcester that only sat a few hundred.

It was an excellent show. The man had serious pipes and didn't hold back with them. He was a rare kind of singer.

Often when people think of songwriting teams they think of Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

But Meatloaf and Jim Steinman were a fantastic combination.

He could have been an opera singer, he was that good. But as he said he was too rebellious and too crazy. And thank god he didn't, his voice and personality deserved a wider audience.

There really was nobody else remotely like him.
 
He could have been an opera singer, he was that good. But as he said he was too rebellious and too crazy. And thank god he didn't, his voice and personality deserved a wider audience.

There really was nobody else remotely like him.
He was a rare type of singer in that he was what is called a 'heldentenor' and he was a natural at it, often with poor technique, but pure power to see him through.

Here is a little background... The first from a singing teacher.

... one of the rarer voice types called a heldentenor, which literally translates to “heroic tenor.” I think I’ve met two in my entire life. Meat Loaf was a heldentenor. They tend to have very dark, full voices with a range that goes all over the map. They’re like powerful baritones with a top: capable of singing low notes without losing their power and richness as well as singing their high notes with a power that makes every lyric tenor jealous.

They almost always develop later than other voices. So where a male can generally start performing in chorus work professionally (this is opera we’re talking about) at age 30, a heldentenor may need to hold off until 35 or so. While their voices are huge, they can have problems with control when they’re young. What’s more, you don’t want to ruin the voice at a young age by singing the type of repertoire demanded of heldentenors when the voice is too young to handle it – even if their technique is good.

This is a more general description for opera...

Heldentenor​

The Heldentenor is the most powerful, darkest, loudest, and brilliant type of tenor. Their voice is hardest to train and they tend to reach their highest potential a bit later in life than lyric or spinto tenors. Once they do, good Heldentenors are well paid and highly sought after. “Helden” means hero in German, which is appropriate as most of the roles played by Heldentenors are heroes of Richard Wagner’s operas. These tenors find power, glory, often riches, and always get the girl. The role of “Siegfried” from Richard Wagner’s “The Ring Cycle,” is the greatest and most demanding Heldentenor role.


  • Range – B2 to C5
  • Roles – The title role in Otello by Verdi, the title role in Tristan und Isolde by Wagner, Walther von Stolzing in Die Meistersinger by Wagner
  • Heldentenors – Ben Heppner, Ian Storey
  • Listen to clips of Ben Heppner singing arias by Wagner
 
Rocky Horror became the cult classic when I was in high school and Paradise by the Dashboard Light was the anthem of my senior year. It seems that all the characters of my youth are leaving us.
 
RIP .....you will be missed.

Such memories.

~Dee~
 
Listen to him sing our athem brought chills. He has always been a favorite in our home and many homes across the world. He will truly and utterly be missed.

R.I. P.
 
I never much cared for his voice or his music, but he was an entertaining character and a likeable guy who had an interesting career.

I couldn't find the details, but I remember him doing an interview on MNF or somewhere where he revealed that he was a huge sports and NFL fan and was
a Nose Tackle of some renown back in High School and got scholarship offers and so forth. I believe there were some clips of him terrorizing people that
were shown and he did look like a rowdy beast on the field. However, he took a different road to fame and fortune, etc. He was a musician who dreamed of being an athlete
while many athletes dream of being a musician.

RIP, Mr. Loaf. You helped many people get laid in their cars while listening to "Paradise by the dashboard lights" and that's a respectable legacy.

Heldentenor, huh? The shit you pick up poking around these pages.
 
Listen to him sing our athem brought chills. He has always been a favorite in our home and many homes across the world. He will truly and utterly be missed.

R.I. P.
I especially liked the way he sang it without dragging out the tail end of each line. Singers today can't sing that song without adding their own "flavor" to it.
 
People automatically think of the guitar as being the inevitable instrument of note in BOOH, but really, when you listen to it, it's the piano.
 
He apparently was an awesome fantasy football player. Heard one the guys from Alice In Chains talk about how they invited Meatloaf to play in their league. Meat told them “you don’t want me in your league” they let him in anyway and he crushed everyone lol.
 
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