When Anthrax’s Scott Ian First Dated Meat Loaf’s Daughter
Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian recalled the nervous experience of his first encounter with Meat Loaf as he took the singer’s daughter on their first date.
Ian, who married Pearl Aday in 2011, will never forget the moment he met his future father-in-law – real name Marvin Lee Aday – who died in January at 74.
“I saw him when I was 14 on the Bat Out of Hell tour, at a place called the Calderone Concert Hall in Long Island,” Ian told Metal Hammer in a new interview. “I was a fan of his for my whole life, and then suddenly I’m walking into the house to take his daughter on a date and I’m practically shitting myself.”
He added, "I understood the pecking order. Who is the biggest rock star in the room? It’s Meat! But you know what? He was a great, great guy. Having someone like that as a touchstone and as family? Everything about it was fantastic. He was an incredible human being."
In the same interview, Ian looked back at his ‘80s side project Stormtroopers of Death, which ridiculed certain socially incorrect attitudes in songs such as “Speak English or Die” and “Kill Yourself.” "If it had never existed in 1985 and we tried to put that out today, no matter how hard we tried to explain the joke or the humor, yes, certain sections of people would cancel it," he said. "It would have a much harder time now. We didn’t have internet back then."
Ian admitted he wrote his SOD songs from the perspective of his character Sergeant D because he wasn’t able to write a comic book, although he wanted to. “He’s unliving, and therefore he hates anything alive,” he said. “We explained it a few times in interviews back then, but either people want to hear it or they don’t.”