Company Town : His Meat Loaf Diet Serves MCA Well : Music: Al Teller brought back ‘70s rocker to lead record label to solid growth in sales.

In his latest hit, Meat Loaf sings “I’d Do Anything for Love.” To hear the singer talk, he’d probably do anything for Al Teller too.

It was Teller, the chairman of MCA’s music entertainment group, who gambled on Meat Loaf’s comeback some 15 years after he first hit pay dirt with the album “Bat Out of Hell.” The gamble paid off handsomely for MCA when “Bat Out of Hell II” became its biggest hit of the year, selling 3.5 million copies in three months.

“He really believed in this and put his money where his mouth is,” Meat Loaf says. “He paid no attention to the doubting Thomases.”

Thanks to “Bat Out of Hell II” and other successes, MCA Records is expected to match or better its performance last year, when it saw revenue top $300 million for the first time.

That’s not to say that Teller, 49, doesn’t have some holes to fill. MCA has historically been the weakest internationally among the six major music companies. Changing that is at the top of Teller’s agenda under a two-year plan aimed at boosting foreign sales as much as 50%.

Earlier this year, Teller renewed a worldwide licensing and distribution agreement with German-owned BMG that will run through 1999. In the meantime, he has launched MCA on its own international expansion so it can eventually go it alone overseas, moving in a big way into major European markets under MCA Music Entertainment International President Jorgen Larsen. The first of MCA’s foreign units is expected to open next spring.

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Another area where MCA could improve is in the rock field. Although MCA’s autonomous Geffen unit boasts hit albums from acts such as Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana (as well as the novelty “Beavis and Butt-head Experience”), MCA itself is perceived to be thin in that area.

Tom Petty, whose recent greatest-hits album has been a big seller for MCA, is defecting to another label (as is longtime MCA superstar Elton John). Observers say the company needs to quickly develop fresh rock acts along the lines of Sony’s Pearl Jam, Atlantic Records’ Stone Temple Pilots and Capitol’s Blind Melon.

One possibility on the rock front is for MCA to take another bite out of Meat Loaf. Teller hints that an album of the singer’s frenetic live performances may be released next year.

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“It’s his time again, and we’re thrilled,” Teller says.

MCA’s real strength is in the booming country music area, where it arguably has the heaviest roster. The company boasts such stars as George Strait, Reba McEntire, Vince Gill, Trisha Yearwood and Wynonna Judd.

Teller has a reputation as an intelligent, demanding boss with a quick temper. Teller joined MCA in 1988 after nearly 20 years at CBS Records. An engineer by training, the bearded Bronx native got into the business when he joined CBS in 1969 after working there for consultant McKinsey & Co. during a summer break from Harvard Business School.

Teller ended up leaving CBS after a strained relationship with the company’s then-music chief, Walter Yetnikoff. Teller got the top job at MCA’s music unit in 1989 with the departure of Irving Azoff. The colorful and controversial Azoff is credited with energizing the company, but his critics said the company was marginally profitable and plagued by highly publicized scandals involving ties between the company and some unsavory characters.

Under Teller, MCA has been growing, although one major setback came when its 1988 joint acquisition of Motown Records with an investment group unraveled. Polygram now owns the venerable icon of black music.

MCA’s Uni Distribution Corp. is now clustered in market share with distribution arms of Polygram, EMI and BMG. Still, all four of those companies trail the industry’s two biggest giants, Warner Music and Sony Music.

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Teller, a technology junkie who has six computers at home, is especially intrigued by the possibilities of meshing music creativity with emerging technologies such as CD-ROM units that read compact-disc-like software in computers. To that end, he has formed a special group to develop technology ventures. He says the group has been given broad guidelines and is being left alone in the hope that its creativity will flourish.

“The core vision of this company will be the music itself,” Teller says. “But as technology provides all sorts of new vehicles to hear music with, we will follow that path. Who’s to say what form it will take?”