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Formative Celebrity Encounters
Meat Loaf Made Me a Sandwich
Rock & Roll Legend serves wayward child a meal
Strange encounters with celebrities, minor and major, have colored my world since childhood, with the first occurring at the tender age of eleven.
To say my first celebrity encounter was with a big star would be an understatement.
In 1980, Michael Lee Ada — better known as Meat Loaf — epitomized rock stardom, doing sold-out arena tours complete with spectacle, pageantry, and deafeningly loud music pumped through Marshall Stacks 2–3 stories high.
What circumstances led my nineteen-year-old brother to drag me, his dangerously hyperactive pre-pubescent sibling, to a Meatloaf concert are long lost amidst hundreds of highly questionable parental choices.
I remember the crowd, and I remember the smoke, both from dry ice machines and cannabis. And I remember ditching my brother and his friends moments after finding our seats in the nosebleed section, making a beeline directly for the stage.
But most of all, I remember the sandwich served to me by Meat Loaf himself.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves — that was after the show.
