Meat Loaf: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
Classic Rock|December 2024
It was the power ballad to end all power ballads, and 30 years later people still ponder what the it’ is that the singer wouldn't do.
Dave Everley
Meat Loaf: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)

There's a special circle in hell reserved for people who ask the question: "What is it that Meat Loaf wouldn't do for love?" The man himself spent 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). 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.

That song, too knowing to take itself seriously yet too OTT to be a joke, restored Meat and songwriter/musical soulmate/ sometime antagonist Jim Steinman to their rightful place at rock'n'roll's top table in the process.

The story goes that Meat Loaf was on the ropes for most of the 80s, reduced to threatening to push members of the British royal family into moats on cheesy TV gameshows and having to dodge flying wheelchairs at gigs in the backwaters of Ireland. And it's true, the glory days of Bat Out Of Hell were a speck in the rearview mirror. But whatever Meat Loaf was, he wasn't a quitter. "I didn't go anywhere," he said a few years later. "I've never stopped playing, I've never stopped performing, I've always been here. You guys are just now recognising that." Jim Steinman wasn't a quitter either.

Esta historia es de la edición December 2024 de Classic Rock.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición December 2024 de Classic Rock.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE CLASSIC ROCKVer todo
Joan Armatrading
Classic Rock

Joan Armatrading

The singer-songwriter on her new album, inspirations, being a 'band', what her key was about, meeting Nelson Mandela...

time-read
4 minutos  |
December 2024
Meat Loaf: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
Classic Rock

Meat Loaf: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)

It was the power ballad to end all power ballads, and 30 years later people still ponder what the it’ is that the singer wouldn't do.

time-read
5 minutos  |
December 2024
Kris Kristofferson: June 22, 1936 - September 28, 2024
Classic Rock

Kris Kristofferson: June 22, 1936 - September 28, 2024

Kris Kristofferson, the iconic, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and actor who played a key role in advancing a strand of country music into a more raw and confessional direction now recognised as outlaw country, has died peacefully at his home in Maui, surrounded by family. He was 88 years old.

time-read
3 minutos  |
December 2024
"I have come a very long way in the last two-and-a-bit years"
Classic Rock

"I have come a very long way in the last two-and-a-bit years"

Back from the brink: the Thunder vocalist who survived major medical trauma returns.

time-read
4 minutos  |
December 2024
EVER MEET LEMMY?
Classic Rock

EVER MEET LEMMY?

He's heard Lemmy's unreleased solo album, had dinner with Chris Holmes, told Paul McCartney to get a round in, been told gangster Reggie Kray wanted to have a word with him... He is Dogs D'Amour frontman Tyla 7 Pallas, and these are some of his stories.

time-read
7 minutos  |
December 2024
"LET'S NOT FORGET ABOUT HAVING FUN"
Classic Rock

"LET'S NOT FORGET ABOUT HAVING FUN"

With their ninth studio album In Murmuration, Finnish rockers Von Hertzen Brothers have replaced their erstwhile prog epics for a more honest approach to songwriting reflecting their personal lives.

time-read
10 minutos  |
December 2024
IN THE BEGINNING
Classic Rock

IN THE BEGINNING

With previously unseen photographs from their early days as featured in the new Queen | Collector's Edition, Sir Brian May talks us through sights of the band in the early seventies.

time-read
8 minutos  |
December 2024
BASS-IC INSTINCT
Classic Rock

BASS-IC INSTINCT

Plucked from obscurity in 1975 to be in David Bowie's band, then unceremoniously out of the picture five years later, bassist George Murray looks back on his time with the Thin White Duke.

time-read
10+ minutos  |
December 2024
High Rollers
Classic Rock

High Rollers

When Ronnie Wood, the Stones and some A-list mates holed up at his house to help with his solo album, it sparked a days-long party, a Rolling Stones hit and the last album by arguably their finest line-up.

time-read
10+ minutos  |
December 2024
THE NAME OF THE GAM
Classic Rock

THE NAME OF THE GAM

When ABBA-mad Opeth leader Mikael Akerfeldt met one of their singers, he lost it”. She didn’t sing on their new concept album, but some other, perhaps unlikely, big names did.

time-read
8 minutos  |
December 2024