Towering rocker Meat Loaf died last week at the age of 74. His death was reportedly due to complications arising from COVID-19.

That’s why radio host and the late ‘Bat Out of Hell’ singer’s friend Howard Stern now wants Meat Loaf’s family to speak out about the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines.

Meat Loaf had been vehemently against wearing face masks and vaccine mandates before his death. “They don’t do anything,” he insisted last year. “They don’t stop you from getting COVID. They’re just a nuisance and make your nose itch and make it so you can’t breathe.”

“If I die, I die, but I’m not going to be controlled,” he added back then. As reported by Uproxx, though, Stern had sympathy for the singer. “Poor Meat Loaf got sucked into some weird f-king cult,” he said. “And somehow really believed that – he made a statement, ‘I’d rather die a free man than take that vaccine’. And now he’s dead!”

That’s when Stern asked that the late artist’s family speak up. “I wish the family would come forward and say, ‘Ya know, when Meat Loaf was laying there in the hospital and he couldn’t breathe, he said, ‘I made a mistake. I should have taken the vaccine.” Like all these anti-vaxxers, they all say, ‘I made a mistake.'”

Stern has been vert outspoken against other anti-vaxxers in the past. Earlier this month, he blasted Novak Djokovic after he was deported from Australia while trying to participate in the Australian Open. “That f–k-nut… Djokovic. The Joker, I call him the Joker,” the shock jock said. “What a f–king a–hole. The first I’ve heard of this guy is that he doesn’t want to get his vaccine and he’s running around… they should throw him right the f–k out of tennis.”

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