Anything for Love

Marvin saw President Kennedy that fateful day at Love Field in Dallas, November 22, 1963; he was 16 then. After hearing about the president being shot, he drove to Parkland Hospital, where he witnessed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, covered in her husband's blood, getting out of the car that brought her to the hospital.

Marvin’s early life was not easy; his father was a drunk, and many times, he and his mother would drive about from bar to bar in Dallas looking for him. He found solace in playing high school football, being some 240 pounds at only 5’ 2”. Then, his mother died when he was 19, and his father that same year lunged at him with a knife, falsely accusing him of having two girls in his bedroom.

It was time to get out; he took the money his mother had left him, renting an apartment in Dallas, where he just isolated himself for some three and half months until a friend finally caught up with him and rooted him out of his self-imposed isolation, and he soon caught a flight to Los Angeles, looking for fame, as a singer.

He did find some fame, going from group to group, moving to Motown, and even to New York City to do some off-broadway stage work, for Marvin wasn’t just a talented singer but also proved his acting chops, eventually even playing a part in the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show. At this time, he met up with Jim Steinman, composer, lyricist, and record producer, who liked Marvin’s voice. This fortunate meeting and confluence of events makes this a Terrific Tale. In interviews in later years, he said he considered himself more an actor than singer, starring in over 60 movies and television parts.

They then began working on an album in 1975, the album of Marvin’s career, selling some 43 million copies, 14x platinum. And wouldn’t you know, initially, they couldn’t find anyone to pick up the album at first because it didn’t fit into any musical genres of the time? Marvin’s manager joked that new record companies were being created just so the album could be rejected. On passing on the project, CBS Records’ Clive Davis even remarked that “Actors don’t make records,” almost driving Marving to a mental breakdown, having poured out so much time and energy into the album that would later prove them all wrong. Moreover, in total, he’d go on to sell over 100 million records in total over his career.

The album was finally picked up by Cleveland International Records, an independent label, and released in 1977. The rocket rose up fast, spending 522 weeks on the UK charts.

Maybe you thought the Marvin I was alluding to was to be revealed as Marvin Gaye; but you’d be wrong.

That’s because Marvin - who would later legally change his name to Micheal years later, went by the nickname he had ever since his high school days, when, while playing football in high school, he had stepped on his coach’s foot, and the angy coach yelled, “Get off my foot, you hunk of meatloaf!”

That’s right, this story was all about Marvin Lee Aday, known to you as Meat Loaf,  and the album? That was Bat out of Hell.