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Meat Loaf suing tribute act for 100k

Jul 19, 2012, 10:02 GMT

Meat Loaf

Meat Loaf is suing a tribute act for $100,000.

The 64-year-old star has sent a writ via Los Angeles law firm Lavely & Singer to Dean Torkington - who goes by the stage name To Hell and Back, the same title of Meat Loaf's autobiography - claiming he is an 'online imposter'.

Dean - who has been a Meat Loaf tribute act since 1996 and performs at pubs and clubs around the UK - claims to have had the domain name, www.MeatLoaf.org, for 12 years, but the 'Bat Out of Hell' hitmaker says the website is capitalising on his 'celebrity'.

In the writ, Meat Loaf claims the 50-year-old performer 'commercially exploited the internet top-level domain name MeatLoaf.org to capitalise on the artist's celebrity' and is now 'liable for substantial damages, including statutory damages of up to $100,000 for your cybersquatting'.

Dean states on his website: 'You simply won't find a more accurate portrayal of the Rock God Meat Loaf anywhere else.'

The British tribute act says Meat Loaf has 'never made it easy' for him to impersonate the singer and claims his manager once demanded him to remove 'Bat out of Hell' artwork from his van.

He is quoted by the MailOnline as saying: 'I'm seeing my barrister because there's a legal term that states if he knew about me and has done nothing before he cannot complain later on.

'We have not got on for a long time. He said that he wanted my website www.Meatloaf.org. He's never made it easy for me.

'Once I paid £400 on VIP tickets to see Meat Loaf at Liverpool Docks. I went back stage and I had him and his manager having a go at me. He said that he wanted to get all the pictures off the side of my van and also he wanted my website address.

'I told him that he was not having my website but shortly after that his YouTube channel complained about my YouTube videos of my show and I had to take mine down.

'My webpage has always said that I am a tribute act. I have never tried to say that I am Meat Loaf himself.'

Dean is now going back to being a Sir Elton John tribute act, a career he previously left to be a Meat Loaf impersonator after putting on weight.