| That's what all the rappers and billionaires and millionaires do. They get old and they're able to sell their catalog, because they ain't doing nothing with it no more. | |  |  | | Exchanging vows: Karla DeVito and Meat Loaf in an undated photo. | | (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | "That's what all the rappers and billionaires and millionaires do. They get old and they're able to sell their catalog, because they ain't doing nothing with it no more." | | - Gunna | |
| | rantnrave:// | Bat Into Heaven
The album BAT OUT OF HELL, a gloriously over-the-top celebration of teenage lust and comic-book machismo, was the product of a ramshackle boardroom's worth of brains, hearts and bravado. JIM STEINMAN, godfather of the operatic power ballad, wrote it. TODD RUNDGREN, an unapologetically meticulous and intrusive producer, oversaw its recording. Record exec STEVE POPOVICH willed it into radio blockbusterdom. And in the middle of the boardroom table, or more likely on top of the table, was a singing actor with an oversized tenor, fully prepared to overemote every word of every song, no matter how small. MEAT LOAF's voice was a good technical instrument and an even better emotional one. It's the voice, to quote New Yorker writer AMANDA PETRUSICH's loving remembrance, of "a rented tuxedo with a sequined cummerbund and pockets filled with splits of rum... [The album] is overblown, histrionic, and awesome, per the formal definition of the word." (Meat Loaf had a fantastic accomplice, it should be noted, in his female vocal foil, ELLEN FOLEY, who didn't want to tour behind the album and was replaced onstage by KARLA DEVITO—who lip-syncs to Foley's performances in all the videos made for the album. Foley would go on to work closely with the Clash, among others.)
Rented tuxedoes have limited shelf lives and following up "Bat Out of Hell" proved particularly difficult to follow up for the title performer. It would be another decade and a half before Meat Loaf would have his next pop hit, the memorably strange power ballad "I'D DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE (BUT I WON'T DO THAT)," and things quickly tapered off again after that. But he was a famously generous live performer and his passion for the stage never wavered. Outside of music and film studios—he had a respectable film career, with a particularly notable appearance in FIGHT CLUB—he spent much of his life doing anything, including that, onstage, sometimes to the detriment of his own well being.
The cause of his death at age 74 hasn't been made public and there's been no reliable reporting on what happened. But a TMZ report claiming the cause was Covid went viral over the weekend. It isn't publicly known if Meat Loaf was vaccinated or not, but he was open about his anti-mask views and his general unwillingness to follow Covid safety protocols. He enthusiastically shared ERIC CLAPTON and VAN MORRISON's Covid denial song "STAND AND DELIVER" on his Facebook page and he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last summer, "If I die, I die, but I'm not going to be controlled" (paywall). It's an egregious position for any public figure to espouse, especially a public figure who made his living in live music, a business that's been decimated by Covid. Masks and vaccinations have been crucial to live music's survival over the past two years, and far too many of Meat Loaf's musician colleagues have died of the virus. This month alone, the victims have included jazz tabla player BADAL ROY, Motown singer-songwriter R. DEAN TAYLOR and JAY WEAVER of the popular contemporary Christian band BIG DADDY WEAVE, who was only 42. And now, possibly, Meat Loaf himself.
Editorial Addendum
The New York Times did not in fact call him Mr. Loaf.
Meanwhile in America
How to interview a promising up-and-coming Los Angeles rapper a month after his friend DRAKEO THE RULER was assassinated: "REMBLE's handlers never gave the exact address over the phone or email," AUGUST BROWN writes, "instead asking a Times reporter to park around the block and walk up to the unit." The unit is somewhere in Southern California ("very suburban," is all the reporter is allowed to write) and the rapper won't say if he lives there or who it belongs to.
This is a significant artist in a major American city living as if he's in a war zone. I don't have a pithy comment or solution to offer. But I do have a feeling that if his name was CLAYTON KERSHAW or MATTHEW STAFFORD or JENNIFER LAWRENCE instead of Remble, the above paragraph, which was published in the Los Angeles Times, would have every public official in Los Angeles completely freaked out and every law enforcement official in the county on alert.
Rest in Peace
"We were the musical artists, but he was the one who lived like a rock star, running up hotel and restaurant tabs, riding in limos, getting in trouble, and sharing everything he had," says Luna's Dean Wareham of TERRY TOLKIN, a key figure in '80s and '90s rock who did A&R for Touch and Go (where he signed the Butthole Surfers) and Elektra and ran his own label, No. 6 Records. He also worked in retail at New York's 99 Records and wrote for the trade mag Rockpool, where he may or may not have coined the unfortunate term "alternative rock"... DON WILSON, who co-founded and played rhythm guitar for instrumental rock greats the Ventures... SIDNEY MILLER, a Capitol Records promo exec who sold his house and car in the 1970s to create Black Music Exclusive (BRE), one of the first Black music trade magazines... Nashville lounge and session pianist BEEGIE ADAIR.
(Also for what it's worth: bassist BIG MERV SHIELDS of racist British rock band Skrewdriver has died of Covid. He "still firmly believed in a whites-only country up until his death," Ireland's Sunday World reports.)
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
| |  | | Complex |
| | Gunna Saw It Coming | | By Jessica McKinney | | Gunna surprised the music industry by outselling a pop superstar to earn another No. 1 album, but he says everything is simply going as planned. | | |  | | Trapital |
| | Troy Carter on the Future of Music Streaming | | By Dan Runcie and Troy Carter | | Troy Carter is co-founder and CEO of Q&A, a technology and media company focused on powering the business of music via distribution, services, and data analytics. In today's show, we talk about trends in the industry and how things need to change moving forward. We also discuss the role that record labels serve and Web3. | | | | |  | | The New Yorker |
| | Meat Loaf Ascends to Rock Heaven | | By Amanda Petrusich | | The songwriter made records that were loud, infectious, theatrical, rebellious, dorky, sex-crazed, and beloved. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | Tidal |
| | Inside Bowie's 'Blackstar' | | By Michael J. West | | In the midst of a valiant battle with cancer, David Bowie teamed up with a state-of-the-art jazz unit to craft his parting masterwork. Here, keyboardist Jason Lindner recounts the sessions for that final LP — now available alongside Bowie's other 21st-century albums in 360 Reality Audio. | | | | |  | | Tape Op |
| | Esperanza Spalding: Leaning Into It | | By Larry Crane | | With her eighth album, "Songwrights Apothecary Lab," vocalist, bassist, and fearless explorer Esperanza Spalding blends input from various disciplines and asks the question, "What do we need a song for?" | | | | | what we're into | | | Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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