From Cher to Boy George, music’s top names mourn Meat Loaf’s death

Los Angeles, Jan 21 (IANS) Tributes have been flooding in from both sides of the Atlantic for Meat Loaf, real name Marvin Lee Aday, the prolific singer and actor who has died aged 74.

Many of those who worked alongside him as both singer and actor were first to take to Twitter, reports ‘Deadline’. Cher was the earliest: “Had So Much Fun With Meatloaf When We Did ‘Dead Ringer’. Am Very Sorry For His Family, Friends & Fans. Am I Imagining It, or Are Amazing Ppl In The Arts Dying Every Other Day!?”

Cher was recalling her 1981 single with Meat Loaf — ‘Dead Ringer for Love’.

The standard bearer of Britain’s New Romantic Movement, and ‘Karma Chameleon’ singer, Boy George remembered how Meat Loaf had “once turned me upside down in a Chinese Restaurant in St John’s Wood”. He was referring to the artsy London neighbourhood famous for the Abbey Road recording studios of The Beatles and the Lord’s Cricket Ground.

One of Britain’s best known comic actors, Stephen Fry, tweeted: “I hope paradise is as you remember it from the dashboard light, Meat Loaf. Had a fun time performing a sketch with him on Saturday Live way back in the last century.”

‘Saturday Live’ was a British comedy and music show aired on Channel 4 from 1985 to 1988. Fry shared a recording from the sketch where Meat Loaf and he appeared together.

In a reply to one of the comments on his tweet, Fry added that Meat Loaf “had the quality of being simultaneously frightening and cuddly, which is rare and rather wonderful.

Andrew Lloyd Weber said it all when he tweeted: “The vaults of heaven will be ringing with rock. RIP Meatloaf.”

Former WBC heavyweight boxing champion-turned-motivational speaker Frank Bruno remembered how the late rock icon and he had met “a few times in USA & UK”. They were on a few chat shows together.

Meat Loaf, Bruno recalled, “would joke with me comparing Boxing & Entertainment, saying in Boxing Boxers R told ‘knock ’em out”; in Entertainment performers are told ‘knock ’em dead’.” And he would add: “U must not get confused.”

British singer Rebecca Ferguson, who won ‘The X Factor’ in 2011, said she had “spent many days in my youth attempting to belt out [Meat Loaf single] ‘I’d Do Anything For Love’ and always failing miserably to get to the top notes.” Well, it was not for nothing that Meat Loaf is considered one of rock’s immortal icons.

–IANS

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