With the possible exception of Tiny Tim, Marvin Lee Aday, the man who became Meat Loaf, was probably the most unlikely rock star ever to grace the world’s stages. An overweight, stringy-haired eccentric with a flair for the theatrical, and with a leather-lunged bellow that could topple bricks, he spent the first few years of his musical career scraping the bottom of the charts as part of underrated soul-rock duo Stoney And Meatloaf. He then made a minor but memorable inroad into pop culture history with his turn as motorcycle maniac Eddie in both the 1974 Broadway production and the subsequent ’75 film of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Then two years later he suddenly and shockingly went supernova. Meat Loaf is 50 per cent responsible for 1977’s Bat Out Of Hell, one of the biggest-selling rock albums of all time – to date it has stacked up sales in excess of 50 million copies – and truly one of the greatest. Meat and his half-mad, black-gloved songwriting partner Jim Steinman were an unlikely but unforgettable act. Bat Out Of Hell was the pinnacle of bizarre but majestic 70s rock’n’roll excess, and will probably never be matched. Which doesn’t mean Meat didn’t try. The ensuing decades found him delving into everything from acting (let us never forget his star turn as a big-tittied revolutionary in Fight Club, or the ever-suffering bus driver in Spice World), to short-fused reality TV star (the Trump-starring The Apprentice) and best-selling author. He also continued making music, sometimes with Steinman back in the fold, including a surprise early-90s comeback with the ear-worming, lyrically confusing pop-goth power ballad I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That). It was a hell of a ride. Meat has had many highs and lows in his six-decade career, but he will certainly be most remembered as the gutter-operatic, sopping-wet, horny man-mountain who carved his own bombastic scarf-rock niche into the culture and made rock’n’roll even bigger and weirder in the process. Here we take a look at the wild world of Meat Loaf albums. And while we may wince here and there, let’s also give the guy who sang Bat Out Of Hell his due.