Like a bat out of hell: the larger than life story of Meat Loaf. Mick Wall. 2017.

Everything about Meat Loaf is big. The place he was born (Texas): the family he was born into ( Meat Loaf weighed nearly 250 lbs before he was even in his teens); the sound he made and, of course, the records he soldm(60:million combined sales of Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II).

But big doesn’t always mean better. There was the alcoholic father who tried to stab him with a hunting knife; the musical mother, who died too young; the school bullies who taunted the young Marvin Lee Aday mercilessly.

So how did an overweight, bullied, near-orphan come to be one of the biggest artists in the world? Cue the entrance of Jim Steinman, the reclusive New York songwriter and composer of Bat Out of Hell. Together they cut an odd couple but made an unstoppable force.

However, the globe-trotting success of Bat was only the start of a dream that soon turned into a nightmare. Refusing to become the puppet to Steinman’s musical master, years of acrimony followed. Until 1993 when Meat and Jim- the monster and his creator - reunited form Bat Out of Hell II and its attendant mega-hit, ‘I’d Do Anything For Love But (I Won’t Do That)’. Suddenly it was like 1977 - only bigger.