Like a Bat Out of Hell

''A passionate, pacey tome you should do anything for a copy of'' - Kerrang! "I never wanted to be a big star. I just wanted to be the biggest at what I do! Powerful, unstoppable, heavy - when that word still meant something good!" - Meat Loaf, as told to Mick Wall Everything in the story of Meat Loaf is big. From the place he was born (Texas); to the family he was born into (his father weighed 22 stone, his uncle weighed over 40 stone, while Meat Loaf himself weighed 17 stone before he was even in his teens); to the sound he made (a colossal collision between Richard Wagner, Phil Spector and Bruce Springsteen); and of course the records he sold - nearly 50 million in Britain and America alone. From a tumultuous childhood with an alcoholic father to the relentless abusive bullying he endured, nobody could have predicted Meat Loaf''s meteoric rise to fame. But when the messianic rock opera Bat Out of Hell was