Meat Loaf: The late musician’s life in pictures

Meat Loaf and his friend and collaborator Jim Steinman backstage at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia on April 6, 1978.

Meat Loaf’s 1977 debut album Bat Out of Hell took more than two years to find a taker as numerous record executives turned it down, including RCA’s Clive Davis, who disparaged Steinman’s songs and later acknowledged that he had misjudged the singer: “The songs were coming over as very theatrical, and Meat Loaf, despite a powerful voice, just didn’t look like a star,” Davis wrote in his memoir, ‘The Soundtrack of My Life.’