Rock icon Meat Loaf dies at 74
Former Redding resident remembered as girls softball coach at Barlow; for love of fantasy football, role in ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’
In the depths of an ESPN Leaderboard fantasy football league, he went by Michael Aday. But when he offered tickets and backstage passes to upcoming tour stops to those in the league, Christopher Roush had to look up just who his fellow league member was. Turns out, it was rock icon Meat Loaf.
“Honestly, I did not know who he was,” said Roush, member of the league and Quinnipiac University School of Communications dean. “I had to look up who Michael Aday was ... This was a guy that I’d been talking fantasy sports with for a couple years and didn’t know who he was.”
Michael, Meat Loaf, Coach Meat, Mr. Loaf (as The New York Times once jokingly called him) died Thursday at 74. No cause or other details were given, but Aday had numerous health scares over the years.
His family released a statement provided by his longtime agent Michael Greene.
“Our hearts are broken to announce that the incomparable Meat Loaf passed away tonight,” the statement said. “We know how much he meant to so many of you and we truly appreciate all of the love and support as we move through this time of grief
in losing such an inspiring artist and beautiful man… From his heart to your souls. don’t ever stop rocking!”
Gov. Ned Lamont tweeted on the rocker’s death, calling him a “massive rocker with deep Connecticut roots.”
The voice behind the iconic “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” “Paradise By the Dashboard Light,” “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” and “Bat Out of Hell” had a lot of names — and played a lot of roles. He was a rock star on concert stages across the globe and an actor on stage and screen in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Known by his stage name Meat Loaf, Michael Lee Aday (born Marvin Lee Aday), had a career that spanned decades. He performed numerous shows across the state from large arenas to small venues like the Pinecrest Country Club in Shelton and Toad’s Place in New Haven.
He also had a presence in Connecticut that went far beyond his rock star persona.
Meat Loaf was a Connecticut resident for a time, living in Redding for nearly 10 years. He later had other Fairfield County residences, including Beach Road in Fairfield and Eagle Drive in Stamford.
But he was more than just a Nutmegger. For some, he was a baseball coach. According to a Sports Illustrated article, his coaching career began in Stamford in 1981, when he coached one team and sponsored another in the same Little League division. “The latter team went by the sponsor’s legal name, Meat Loaf, which was also the name of his band,” according to the article.
A native of Dallas, he was the son of a school teacher who raised him on her own after divorcing his alcoholic father, a police officer. He was singing and acting in high school (Mick Jagger was an early favorite, so was Ethel Merman) and attended Lubbock Christian College and what is now the University of North Texas.
He was still a teenager when his mother died and when he acquired the nickname Meat Loaf, the alleged origins of which range from his weight to a favorite recipe of his mother’s.
He left for Los Angeles after college and was soon fronting the band Meat Loaf Soul. For years, he alternated between music and the stage, recording briefly for Motown, opening for such acts as the Who and the Grateful Dead and appearing in the Broadway production of “Hair.”
Senior TV editor for Variety Brian Steinberg wrote in a tweet that he participated on the Stamford Little League baseball team the rocker sponsored. Meat Loaf was living in the city at the time, and Steinberg noted that his hometown team’s uniforms were maroon with Meat Loaf’s logo emblazoned on them.
Meat Loaf’s coaching stint didn’t end there, Sports Illustrated reported: He went on to coach Pony League softball in Westport, and after his family moved to Redding in 1990, he volunteered to be a firstbase coach for daughter Pearl’s freshman team at Joel Barlow High School.
In 1991, Sports Illustrated said he became the team’s head coach. Jen Carlson, an editor with Gothamist, took to Twitter to remember “the kindest guy around,” the man who volunteered to become her high school softball coach.
At the time he coached her team, Carlson said in her Twitter thread that Meat Loaf — who was referred to as “Coach Meat”
— was working on “Bat Out of Hell II,” and he declined a stipend and rearranged his schedule to do so. The softball team was even “one of the first to hear ‘I’d Do Anything for Love’ (which he sang during a bus ride home from a game),” Carlson wrote. Meat Loaf had worked with the late songwriter and producer James “Jim” Steinman, a Ridgefield native who died in April at 73, on the album the hit song would later appear on, “Bat Out of Hell II.”
Meat Loaf even played in a charity baseball game in Westport for Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in 1987 ahead of the camp’s opening the following year. Meat Loaf was involved with The Painted Turtle, a camp for children with serious or life-threatening illnesses, that is part of Newman’s SeriousFun Children’s Network.
His passion for sports veered virtual, as well. Just ask Roush, who came to know Meat Loaf through that ESPN Leaderboard fantasy sports group that started more than 20 years ago.
Roush took Meat Loaf up on his offer for tickets and backstage passes and attended a concert with his youngest son. When they visited the singer backstage, Roush said they spent an hour talking about the fantasy sports over which they had connected.
“He’s just a regular guy — he’s just like everybody else,” he said. “I don’t recall us even talking about rock ‘n roll. We may have talked about ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ because it’s one of my favorite movies, but we spent most of the time, I think, talking fantasy football.”
His strongest memory of the meeting: Meat Loaf’s sports recommendation to his son.
“What I distinctly remember is him telling my son who is a big [New England] Patriots fan to stop drafting Tom Brady in the first round in his fantasy league,” Roush said.
Roush recalled that Meat Loaf was in “20 to 30 leagues every fantasy football year,” noting that it was how the rocker spent his down time while on tour. Meat Loaf’s attraction to the fantasy football leagues, Roush speculated, stemmed from the singer’s time playing football at the University of North Texas.
According to Roush, the combination of Meat Loaf ’s commitment to fantasy leagues and his football background worked in his favor when it came to winning the online league.
“He was really good,” he said. “I didn’t win a whole lot ... He was very aggressive in terms of managing his roster and in knowing the latest news if a player was injured. He was at the top of his game playing it.”
After meeting him and getting to know him through fantasy sports, Roush said Meat Loaf is more than his music.
“He was just like everybody else,” he said. “When you met him in person, he was not a rock star prima donna.”
He is survived by Deborah Gillespie, his wife since 2007, and by daughters Pearl and Amanda Aday.