Amanda Aday, Meat Loaf‘s daughter, remembers the Grammy-winning rocker as a passionate musician and father in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE.
Meat Loaf died on Thursday while surrounded by his daughters Amanda and Pearl, his wife Deborah, and several close friends. He was 74.
Aday, 41, tells PEOPLE her late father was a “complex man with a lot of passion, who wore his heart on his sleeve” throughout his life. “So, he would tell you, ‘F—k you, I love you,'” she adds.
Aday and Pearl “lived a very dichotomous life” as daughters of the rockstar, who rose to fame with his 1977 hit record Bat Out of Hell. Aday recalls touring arenas, growing up on tour buses, “and having all of these amazing experiences” as they traveled with their father around the globe.
When they would return home, however, “it was home and he was just dad,” she says. “He wasn’t Meat Loaf anymore.”
When Meat Loaf wasn’t working, he was actively involved in his children’s lives — from directing school plays to coaching their softball teams. He was very much a typical dad outside of his public persona, according to Aday.
“If we didn’t get good grades, we were grounded, and all of that stuff,” she says. “So, it was very much, when we weren’t out on tour living this crazy life, it was very important to him that we were grounded in our home.”
Meat Loaf initially avoided fitting the mold in life, Aday adds. “Growing up, when we were little, he always said he never wanted to be hip,” she explains.
“Pearl and I would want a new pair of shoes or something, whatever was in trend, fashion-wise or whatever, and he’d always say, ‘Don’t be trendy. Don’t be hip. Be cool, because cool is always.’ And that was him.”
One year, when Aday was 6, Meat Loaf got his daughter every Playmobil toy imaginable. “He stayed up literally all night and erected an entire Playmobil city and circus underneath the Christmas tree, because that’s what he did. He was dad,” she shares.
In 1993, Meat Loaf released his sixth studio album called Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell. Aday, who was 13 years old at the time, and her family were in Australia when her mother was informed that both his album and single “Anything For Love” had hit No. 1 on the charts.
