At Home with Meat Loaf

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I don't want people to walk in this house and know that someone in the rock-and-roll business lives here," Meat Loaf (né Michael Lee Aday) says of his nevertheless cool, seven-bedroom spread in Calabasas, California. "Rock 'n' roll is what I do, but I don't live the lifestyle. The only giveaway might be the Grammy sitting in the movie theater and the cover ofBat Out of Hellhanging over the fireplace. My office has a couple pictures of me with Dennis Quaid and Antonio [Banderas], who are real friends. But I'm not surrounded by gold records on the walls. When I come home, I leave rock and roll on the road."

But then, refreshingly, Meat Loaf clearly isn't your average rocker. In New York in the 1970s, when his professional peers were chasing down beers in Max's Kansas City, the singer was chasing down antiques. "I bought my first Biedermeier in the late 1980s at Greene Street Antiques," he recalls, pointing out several Biedermeier tables sprinkled throughout his current home. "And in those days you got great deals. But I've always gone to antiques stores, first in New York, where I lived a long time, then in Connecticut. I'm a collector . . . actually started with shawls. I just liked them, so I'd find one with knots that the owner didn't want to undo and buy it for five, six, seven bucks. There are boxes of them around here somewhere."

Ditto for spoons. "I bought them all over the world, even Tehran, and, of course, there are antique spoons from things like the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In fact, my spoon collection ended up on display in a New York museum."

In addition to a significant collection of pulp art, his current obsession, sports memorabilia, is readily visible—pictures of the singer with Roger Clemens and Reggie Jackson. "Most things come from baseball or football players I know or meet," he explains. "I'll throw out the first ball at a baseball stadium or sing the national anthem and wind up leaving with a bat signed by a player. Cal Ripken gave me the shirt off his back. He was looking for something to sign, so he just took off the shirt he wore during the game and signed it."

Meat Loaf and his fiancée, Deborah Gillespie, bought their current property newly built, adding a pool, a barbecue and a more sophisticated kitchen. When it came to décor (including the large, outdoor living area with its impressive 60-by-20-foot awning), they enlisted the help of Los Angeles interior designer David Dalton. The key word wascomfort, says Meat Loaf. "The dining room, theater and family room are all very homey—the main thing we were after. And since we don't have little kids, we didn't have to worry about those considerations. You want your home to look nice, but, at the same time, you want a place to feel inviting—you want people to come in, sit down and stay. If you furnish a place beautifully but don't feel you an actually sit on the stuff, what's the point? I didn't want it to look like a showroom."

对于the screening room, "I didn't want those stereotypical chairs with drink holders," Meat Loaf says. "So David came up with the idea of combining library and theater. He said, You have lots of books and no place to put them.' The room allocated for a theater, meanwhile, was a blank canvas; so we put in shelves and a 110-inch screen. The bolsters on the two sofas—one of them seats seven—separate into individual seats."

A room, in short, fit for a movie buff. "I'm a very diligent member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, so during Oscar season I'm in there a lot watching movies for possible nominations. And I watch every one; they send 60, I watch 60."

In the master bedroom, the couple opted for sheer simplicity. "All the houses we looked at had massive bedrooms," he says, "but I've always been keener on something smaller. This room is big, but there's just the fireplace in the corner, the bed with its railroaded headboard and one chair. That's it. It's very cozy; it makes you want to go right to sleep when you get into bed."

As for the color, "you'd be asking the wrong man," he laughs, "because I'm color blind. I see colors but don't know they're wrong. Greens and grays get mixed up, and I can't see pink at all—though if there are two pinkish colors, I know they go together because they resonate. But if somebody asked, Do you like this color?' I'd have to say, I don't know.' "

However, it's hardly held him back. Perhaps not surprisingly, Meat Loaf has also collected a few houses along the way. "I love buying and doing houses," the singer admits, "trouble is, once I finish one, I want to do another. But we've lived here four years—a record. Maybe this time, this one's the keeper."