Meat Loaf: Bat out of Hell Songs by Jim Steinman (1977)

Friday 21 October 1977 saw the release of one of the greatest rock albums of all time, "Bat out of Hell" sung by Meat Loaf featuring songs written by Wagnerian rock composer Jim Steinman. When Jim was seven years old, he listened to a broadcast of the complete "Ring Cycle" by Wilhelm Richard Wagner, and after it was finished he put on a record by Little Richard, the two experiences melding together in his mind to form... Little Richard Wagner.

The epic duo had met at auditions for Jim's 1973 musical "More Than You Deserve" at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and when Meat sang the title song he felt like he had never experienced that kind of reaction on a stage before, ever in his life. It was a life-changing moment.

Meat and Jim spent the next few years working on an album together, which according to Meat's then manager would be turned down by every record company in the world, for some reason or another. They couldn't translate the sound onto a record (Meat and Jim would turn up at auditions playing the songs live, with just Meat performing, sometimes Ellen and Jim providing piano accompaniment.) Meat Loaf wasn't like other rock acts of the day. The music was too long. It was too operatic and over the top. "Of course it's over the top," Jim once said. "If you don't go over the top, how you can see what's on the other side?!".

Eventually Meat and Jim were introduced to Todd Rundgren who didn't question the album at all, and after Steve Popovitch heard it when he was in the process of setting up his new label Cleveland International, well the rest is history. And the album that emerged on that Friday in late 1977 would go on to conquer the world and become one of the highest selling albums of all time. Here is what our friend Mr. Wikipedia has to say: "It sells about 200,000 copies per year and has sold an estimated 43 million copies worldwide, including 14 million in the United States and over 1.7 million albums in Australia, where it is the best-selling album in the country and re-entered the ARIA Charts in June 2007, at number 34. It has stayed on the UK album chart for 522 weeks, making it the UK's third longest charting studio album behind Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon." It is also one of the only classic albums to have been given a sequel, but more on that another time.

Every single song on the album is a hit, many of them accompanied by epic music videos of Meat Loaf and Jim performing with the band (but since Ellen Foley who had recorded on the album was committed elsewhere, it was Karla DeVito from the tour who appeared in the video instead, performing to her vocals). How many of us know at least some of them? There's "Bat out of Hell", "You Took the Words Right out of my Mouth", "Heaven can Wait", "All Revved up with no Place to go", "Two out of Three Ain't Bad", "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and quite simply one of the best love songs I have ever heard, "For Crying out Loud". Since Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had written another one of those great love songs "If I Loved you" for their musical "Carousel", I would have loved to have known Rodgers' reaction to this song, if he ever heard it.

The first time I heard the album was sometime in 1993, when Dad showed up with a copy of the tape, asking Mum if she remembered this album. They played a little bit of it then, and immediately the intro ("Bat Overture" as it was called on a B-side) stood out to me as something that was different and fun. Mum would play that album in the car, so I was hearing all of these songs like "Bat", "You Took the Words" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and really getting into them. But it was "Bat II" the sequel recorded over 15 years later that really sealed the deal. "I'd do Anything for Love" was probably the best song I'd ever heard. Nowadays, I don't think there's a year that goes by where I haven't listened to either of these albums at some point.

To me, "Bat" was so brilliant, so powerful and so complete, so committed to everything that went into it (including the stunning cover art by Richard Corben which was based on Jim's concept of a man on a motorcycle bursting out of his own grave driving headlong into the night in some hellish looking graveyard), that Meat and Jim need never have made another album again.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this! When this album appeared, it was so successful in just about every way that in my opinion they could have retired right there and then. Of course, I'm glad that they didn't! The world would have been deprived of "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through", "Dead Ringer for Love", "Total Eclipse of the Heart", "Holding out for a Hero", "I'd do Anything for Love", "It's All Coming Back to me Now", and so much more. But if I'd written a song like "For Crying out Loud" and just finished listening to that tape for the first time ever, I could have been happy forever.

In an alternative timeline, I just imagine them remaking it over and over again, using all of the latest technology that's available to them as they go along. Imagine a "Bat 2" production sounding "Bat", or the big Gothic orchestral sound of Jim's score for "Tanz der Vampire". Imagine it 5 years ago. What would it have sounded like in 1983? What would it sound like in 30 years from now? Not that Meat and Jim themselves would be around to hear it. 

Anyway, the songs themselves:

"Bat out of Hell"---written to be the most violent car/motorcycle crash song ever written, in the vein of songs like "Tell Laura I love her" and "Leader of the Pack". The last bit: "Then I'm dying at the bottom of a pit in the blazing sun..." always sticks with me the most. I know every lyric from this song. I think it is one of the best rock songs ever written.

"You Took the Words Right out of my Mouth (Hot Summer Night)"---absolutely love the total contrast from "Bat" to nothing but the two voices speaking here, and that line, that imagery! "On a hot summer night would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?" What would the writer Edgar Allan Poe have made of that? This and "The Raven" to me are among some of America's finest poetry. The song itself is just sheer joy.

"Heaven can Wait"---now we have a soft and gentle song. I feel like this song is about someone running away from home, and they're at peace now. I love this too.

"All Revved up with no Place to go"---OK, if "Bat" has to have a weak song, this would be it for me, but only because I've heard the live versions from Meat Loaf and the Neverland Express, and the rewritten epic from "Bat out of Hell: The Musical". If I hadn't heard that, I wouldn't have this problem. The saxophone on this track is ear-bending. It really, really is. I love the fast bit as well.

"Two out of Three Ain't Bad"---listen to these lyrics, they're just precious. "I know you're looking for a ruby in a mountain of rocks/But there ain't no Coupe de Ville hiding at the bottom of a Crackerjack Box". I almost feel like I should yell back, "Smart-arse!" because they're so good. I love this. There is a fine live version as well, with a fiddle solo, on Meat's 2013 live album "Guilty Pleasure Tour".

"Paradise by the Dashboard Light"---oh my, and it feels like the cast recording for a musical that never was. This is the movie that should have been made after "Rocky Horror", "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease", not to mention Brian De Palma's "Carrie" before that (which was not a musical but I can see it existing in the world of "Bat".) I've heard this album so many times my life, this is probably the one I've grown the most "used to", but believe me it's a classic. "Praying for the End of Time" is my favourite part, along with the lines "It was long ago and it was far away" which are then referenced in Bat 2's "Objects in the Rear View Mirror".

"For Crying out Loud"---this song is like an emotional asteroid to me. It starts out with the piano, and you can see the meteor coming towards you in the distance, and then BANG!!!! The impact right as the orchestra explodes and sweeps you right off the face of the earth. The last sections make me feel like I'm kneeling inside a huge temple with light all around me. It is just phenomenal. If Jim thinks of this as his best song, then I can understand why.

So there are my thoughts on "Bat out of Hell". Stayed tune as I talk about the Meat Loaf follow-up "Dead Ringer". PS. Please let me know if we ever get a box set special release of "Bat", including the full gig from Nassau Coliseum.