Meat Loaf fixes me with his steely blue eyes, leans towards my chair and says quietly: “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” It’s no wonder I look a little pale.
Just 40 minutes earlier, we’d barely exchanged pleasantries before he started lecturing me on the wildly exaggerated reports of his demise.
One American paper even declared him dead after he collapsed on stage in June at Edmonton, Canada.
But he declares: “Listen, I am not dying. After three months of therapy I will be fine. I am sick of talking about it. I don’t want to talk about it from now on.
"And anyone else who asks me the question, I’m not going to respond to it.”
I decline to mention I hadn’t actually asked about his health (not yet, anyway) – but Meat is just getting started.
For good, dramatic measure, the singer accentuates each point with a defiant prod of the floor with his silver dragon-headed cane. He says his predicament earlier this year was due to a double whammy of dehydration and flu.
Meat Loaf adds: “The next day I had someone from Singapore wanting to talk to me. And I said: ‘About what?’ They said because you fell on stage. I didn’t have far to fall, I didn’t break anything. What has it got to do with the price of eggs?”
His mood is doubtless exacerbated by the not insignificant pain he appears to be in.
At 68, he is a far cry from the imposing, long-haired frontman behind epic anthems such as Bat Out of Hell, Two out of Three Ain’t Bad and Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
Just four weeks ago he had spinal surgery and his discomfort is etched across his face, as he walks with a limp and has to be helped to his seat by his assistant.
The rock veteran says: “I had MRIs and the doctors said I had a little cyst but that it had grown and was pushing against the nerves.
“But when the doctor opened up my back to remove it… it was almost like emergency surgery. There are now little nuts and bolts in there.”
But behind the battered – and slightly grumpy – exterior, Meat Loaf is fascinating company: Intelligent, funny and, in a world of PR-trained automatons, refreshingly honest. He is also, however, wonderfully bonkers.
After telling me – matter-of-factly – I have seen a ghost, he suggests a stroll outside to prove his point. You see, Meat Loaf sees dead people.
He explains: “I think if we walked together down a busy street in London, somebody that looked like a normal person would no doubt pass us.
“But you might feel a temperature change and a heavy feeling. It would be a like a weight was on your chest and you’d got tired all of a sudden. If we turned around at that moment and followed the person who just passed us, he would disappear.”
I make a mental note to keep an eye on my fellow commuters.
He rather excitedly also recalls seeing a ghost at his London hotel at 6am who “came through the wall” and stood staring at him at the end of his bed.
Did they talk to each other? He replies: “I turned and shouted HEY HEY HEY. He never turned and never looked at me.” The singer, who is said to have a contraption called a K2 Meter to communicate with the dead, insists this was a “residual haunting”.
He explains: “It wasn’t merely his spirit, it was an energy that was left. He wasn’t ready to die. He was probably just repeating the same thing over and over again. If it was an intelligent haunting, he would have turned and stopped.”
At his peak in the 1980s, Meat Loaf weighed 22 stone. Sitting in front of me now in his publicist’s Central London office, he looks remarkably leaner.
He says: “I am losing more weight… I just stopped eating.”
He’s true to his word – lunch, for instance, is an apple, washed down with a protein shake.
Dinner might be a steak, although it would always be split with his second wife Deborah, while he may also have a “cup of rice and some green beans”.
Such frugality is clearly working as he says: “I have lost almost 50lbs now. It’s not as much wear and tear on my legs, knees and back.”
But the fitter(ish), leaner Meat Loaf, whose real name is Marvin Lee Aday, is still a long way from going back on the road. He says: “I don’t know if I will tour. I have to do a lot of therapy on my back first.”
Aside from ghost-hunting and eating boring food, Meat is in Britain to promote a new musical of his 1977 rock epic LP Bat out of Hell, which has sold 50 million copies worldwide.
Meat once more collaborates with songwriter Jim Steinman, who he first teamed up with on that album before reuniting in 1993 for Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell.
The latter spawned the single I Would Do Anything for Love (but I Won’t Do That) which stayed at No1 in the UK for seven weeks, selling nearly a million copies.
But he grumbles: “I hate playing that song now. When you get a song that is such a big hit, the audience wants it to be perfect and exactly like the record. Well to me if you want to listen to the record, hear the record.”
You would imagine it would be slightly awkward for Meat Loaf working with Steinman again given their legal battles. Just 10 years ago the two were at the centre of a £30million lawsuit over the Bat out of Hell trademark and settled out of court.
“Jimmy and I have never had an argument,” he insists, looking slightly exasperated. “People see about these lawsuits and assume we had a falling out. But we’ve not. Our lawyers may go we can’t talk to each other. But 15 minutes later, we are on the phone.”
And for all his gruff, Meat is really a big softie at heart.
He says: “We are meant to be together. He knows I will go through thick and thin for him. Jim is the same way.”
Steinman originally conceived Bat out of Hell as a musical. And it now opens in Manchester next year before transferring to London.
Meat adds: “He has been working on it for over 50 years. It makes me sad… I almost cry that it’s taken so long for someone’s dream to come true and it’s finally happening for him.”
Meat Loaf’s complex character goes beyond his unusual relationship with song partner Steinman.
Even to this day he refuses to allow his advertising or promotional literature to describe him as a “legend” or a “star” – after the pressure of fame in his heyday triggered a nervous breakdown.
He says: “I worked day and night on Bat out of Hell. I was barely sleeping. It literally almost killed me. I saw a psychologist five days a week for about six months.
“It was all about being called a star. I won’t allow them to this day in any advertising to be called those things. I just want to be normal.”
It’s a bit late for that.
- Jim Steinman’s Bat Out Of Hell – The Musical previews at Manchester Opera House from February 17 to April 8, 2017 and premieres at the Coliseum in London’s West End in June 2017. Tickets from batoutofhellmusical.com.
