Meat Loaf has begun a diet and started a fitness regime in the wake of his onstage collapse during a gig in Canada last month. Meat Loaf fell to the floor while singing I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), during a show in Edmonton on 16 June.
He has now told Classic Rock magazine: “I’m OK. Weak. I’ve gotta go to physical therapy. I had back surgery and knee surgery within the last two years, and the knee surgery failed, so I haven’t been able to work out on tour. So I’m going to acupuncture, physical therapy, and a trainer, starting Monday for four days a week.”
He added that he had been on a diet and lost nearly 20lbs and intended to lose another 15 before coming to the UK to undertake promotional duties on 28 August.
Meat Loaf has had health-related gig problems before. In 2003, he had to abandon a show at Wembley after collapsing on stage, and had heart surgery the following week. In 2007, he stopped a show in Newcastle, later saying he had been using steroids and had been unable to continue. He told the crowd he was going to retire.
Meat Loaf had previously retired in 2003, and in 2013, when he told the Guardian: “This time they’re not going to rope me back in.” At that time, he told the Guardian of his health problems: “I’ve had 18 concussions,” he says. “My balance is off. I’ve had a knee replacement. I’ve got to have the other one replaced. Two weeks before the knee surgery, I literally couldn’t walk from the bedroom to the kitchen. They took me to the hospital in an ambulance to get my knee replaced. And when they did, it was so damaged and torn up it’s going to take a year to come back.”
