Meat Loaf was born Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas, Texas. His father, Orvis Aday, was a police officer, and his mother, Wilma (nee Artie), a schoolteacher and gospel singer with the Vo-di-o-do Girls quartet. Orvis was a notorious drunk, and Wilma would sometimes leave Marvin with her mother for safety when her husband had been drinking.
After Thomas Jefferson high school and a stint at Lubbock Christian college, Marvin enrolled at North Texas State University. A keen football player, he acquired his nickname after an impatient football coach yelled “hey, meatloaf!” at him.
When he was 20, a violent confrontation with his father prompted him to leave Dallas. “He came home drunk and tried to kill me with a butcher’s knife,” Meat Loaf told a BBC documentary in 2015. He caught a flight to Los Angeles, where he aimed to make a career in show business. He put a band together, called Meat Loaf Soul, who played their first gig in Huntington Beach as opening act to Van Morrison’s band Them.
The band went through several different lineups and names – they became Popcorn Blizzard and then Floating Circus – and in the process of building a local following opened shows for numerous big names including The Who, Iggy and the Stooges, Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. When Popcorn Blizzard recorded a single called Once Upon a Time, Meat Loaf’s voice was so loud that the microphone had to be placed on the opposite side of the studio from the singer.