There’s a special circle of hell reserved for people who ask the question: “What is it that Meat Loaf wouldn’t do for love?” The man himself spent the last 30 years politely and impolitely dealing with the query every time some smirking journalist threw it his way in an interview, like no-one had ever thought to ask him before. Following the singer’s death on January 20, 2022, a new generation of numbskulls took to Twitter to trot it out all over again: “So, what was it that Meat Loaf wouldn’t do for love?”
As anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature could tell you, the answer is right there within the song in question, I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That). Meat Loaf himself explained it with the help of a chalkboard on an episode of VH1’s Storytellers. Yet this enduring non-mystery is integral to the mythos of the singer’s gargantuan 1993 mega-hit, a 12-minute rock opera that barrelled through grunge’s pity party like a juggernaut in a frilly shirt as it yelled out a prayer to the god of sex and drums and rock’n’roll.
