Pandora's Box: Original Sin (1989) Written and Produced by Jim Steinman

The 1980s had been a big decade for songwriter and producer Jim Steinman, with the success of songs like "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Holding out for a Hero" for Bonnie Tyler, and "Making Love out of Nothing at All" for Air Supply, as well as his work on films like "Streets of Fire" and "Footloose", his recent production work for 80s group Sisters of Mercy ("Floodland", highly recommended), and at one point he was even talking with Andrew Lloyd Webber about writing lyrics for a little musical you may have heard of called "The Phantom of the Opera", but there was something missing here. Jim had not written a full album's worth of songs since Meat Loaf's 1981 "Dead Ringer". "Bad for Good" and this album were the last ones he had actually fully written.

Why was this? I think if you go back and listen to both of them, you can sort of see why, without getting the official story. How many well known songs did he have in the 80s? How many other songs did those projects have that weren't so well known? "Bad for Good" has one really familiar song from it, "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through" which Meat would record for 1993's "Bat out of Hell II", and today "Dead Ringer for Love" seems to be the most well known song from "Dead Ringer", an important inclusion in the "Bat out of Hell" musical partly due perhaps to the song's popularity in the UK. But what about the rest of the songs? Barry Manilow had cast new light on "Read 'em and Weep" and gave it the success it deserved the first time around. Then you put that together with all of the effort that goes into writing one of Jim's songs, not to mention producing it so that it sounds like a Wagnerian rock and roll symphony, and suddenly you begin to say "Ah!"? No wonder he was only writing two, three, four songs per project. A song is a terrible thing to waste, as another Steinfan once said. With Jim, you really believe it.

By the end of the 80s though, Jim was finding himself hungering toward writing another album in the vein of "Bat out of Hell" or "Bad for Good", something he'd conceived from beginning to end. Meat and Jim were already discussing "Bat out of Hell II", and had gotten a new deal with Virgin Records, but now Jim was putting together an all girls rock group called Pandora's Box.

Jim had started another band before, with the two songs from Streets of Fire, called Fire Inc., which consisted of singers like Rory Dodd, Eric Troyer and Holly Sherwood who had worked with Jim on many of his biggest hits, but he had not recorded an album. Now Jim had brought together singer/actress Ellen Foley, who he had worked with since "The National Lampoon Show" and "Neverland" productions in the 70s, and who had appeared in the world premiere of musical "Into the Woods" and 80s thriller "Fatal Attraction", with three ladies named Gina Taylor, Elaine Caswell and Deliria Wilde. Deliria Wilde, what a name! What an artist! What an awesome "Where are they now?" story I'm just dying to read. From what I understand however, Deliria was a composite of probably the dancer from the "Good Girls go to Heaven" video directed by Brian Grant, and the vocals of Tonight is What it Means to be Young's Holly Sherwood (Have you listened to it yet??? Btw even if you know it back to front, go and listen to it again). The Pandora's Box project also featured a singer named Laura Theodore who contributed vocals to the opening and closing verses of the title song "Original Sin". Meanwhile, the Steinmaster of the Wagnerian Circus was writing and producing, with J.K. Potter contributing cover art.

The result of the tremendous amount of energy that must have gone into this project, clearly a labour of love, was the 1989 release of "Pandora's Box: Original Sin", the year of Tim Burton's "Batman" starring Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger and Jack Nicholson (there was even a promotion badge mocked up in the style of the movie's logo: "Forget BatMan! Here's SteinMan!"). Fans of the album were greeted with the following, first of all: the front cover of a young woman lying in bed, which morphs into a shark infested sea, with a purple evening sky on the horizon, and next to her the logo of "Pandora's Box", and underneath over a backdrop of wavy blue containing the repeating words of "I've been looking for an original sin", we get the album title "Original Sin" and the credit Written and Produced by Jim Steinman. If you own a copy of this on vinyl, you will see that it's a gatefold, and as you open it up to look at the picture on both sides (The Opening of the Box?!), you will see a mind-bending photo/art collage created by Audrey Bernstein. (She illustrated another piece which has fascinated me for two decades now, when I discovered it on a now defunct section of "Dream Pollution" called "The Gallery of Despair". This picture can be glimpsed in the background of the promo video "Jim Steinman opens Pandora's Box", and a fragment of it on Audrey's website, at least the last time I checked, but other than that I have never seen the picture in full, blown up to the size of say "Bat" on vinyl.) 

I sound like I'm making a fuss over just some album art, but you don't understand!!! Or you understand all too well, the first time you opened the cover of "Bat out of Hell II" and were greeted with the illustrated lyrics inside, all from fantasy art by Michael Whelan. Just wow!

Now there are the songs! Yes, even though the album is predominantly Jim written or composed, there are several cover versions of older tracks like "Twentieth Century Fox" and "My Little Red Book" first recorded by the Doors and Manfred Mann (Toni Basil, remember "Hey Mickey", did a fun version as well in 1981.)

"The Invocation" --- we begin with Ellen Foley chanting this uber awesome poem, which comes from the 1963 Ross Macdonald book "The Chill", which I have never read, only that poem which I relished every second of performing onstage in 2018 before I sang "Total Eclipse of the Heart". It is so cool.

"Original Sin (The Natives are Restless Tonight)" --- all the girls come out to introduce us to the music, with the first big song, which launches into an emotional rollercoaster that leaves you feeling like you want to join the ballet, and then learn how to dance while you're flying through the air over a hanging net. This song blows my mind. It grabs you by the throat, practically screaming "Listen here, fucker!" and you almost get the feeling that even Meat Loaf would be terrified by the end of this. The first time I heard this, I knew then I was in the presence of Steinman and musical greatness.

"Twentieth Century Fox" --- it begins with the logo music from a certain Hollywood movie studio, followed by a sample from Jimi Hendrix "Foxy Lady", before Ellen launches into this fun, upbeat cover of the Doors song. The instrumental with the keyboard and piano is my favourite part, even though I love Ellen's vocals here and just about anything she's recorded in general. The quote from Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour" is the icing on the bat cake.

"Safe Sex" --- this sadly underrated Steinman classic is introduced by Gina Taylor, and by the time those choruses have swept you away into the ocean on the front cover, you're left with just a music box reprising the chorus over and over again until it fades away. Lines like: "We'll never be as young as this/No matter how we try we grow" are just fantastic. Jim's talent is as vibrant and inspirational as ever.

"Good Girls go to Heaven (Bad Girls go Everywhere)" --- this time sung by Holly Sherwood, one of the three singles and two music videos released from the album. I wasn't going to mention other versions in this review, but I can't help it with this one, and actually I think I've mentioned it before: I love the contrast between this version and Meat's. His is darker, this is lighter. They're sort of like different sides of the same coin. The middle section of this song "Every time I try and dream you" is my favourite part.

"Requiem Metal" --- this is one of the little experiments on this album, taking in this case the "Dies Irae" from Verdi's "Messa da Requiem" and offering up a one minute edit before Jim's monologue. Yes, I would prefer the full version of the piece, but that this is on here at all is majorly neat.

"I've Been Dreaming up a Storm Lately" --- something I probably haven't mentioned in my Meat Loaf/Jim Steinman reviews before, is the long standing tradition (it would seem) of spoken recordings. "Pandora's Box" is no exception, and this one is particularly vivid. That it comes before the song "It's All Coming Back" is chilling. Note: this is also one of the elements missing from "Bat III", there were no monologues, and even the closest "Braver" got was the middle of "Godz".

"It's All Coming Back to me Now" --- here it comes! To this day, still one of the best love songs/songs period I have ever heard in my life, and this is the original version with Elaine Caswell and the guitar solo! It kills me. Andrew Lloyd Webber called it the "record of the millennium". I cannot top the Baron's comment.

"The Opening of the Box" --- in the vein of "Love and Death and an American Guitar" and "Wasted Youth", the second half of "The Storm" from "Bad for Good" is copied and pasted into this part of the album, and at first it was all part of the amusing parlour game of trying to pick which songs Jim's reused/recycled over the years (A song is a terrible thing to waste!). Now it just seems to make total sense. The Pandora's Box girls needed it for the listening party designed in the style of Prince Prospero's feast in "The Masque of the Red Death".

"The Want Ad" --- Ellen returns with this wild monologue, and OMG it is a classic from beginning to end. It's fun to hear it in the "Room by Room" promo single mix, like a twenty minute highlights reel of the album, and I definitely recommend you track that one down after hearing this. I found a copy that was a mini-disc CD.

"My Little Red Book" --- firstly, I've always loved the little vocal part at the beginning and then Ellen comes in. For some fans, the cover songs are the weaker moments of the album, while for others the monologues get a bit too much too, and I kind of have to agree depending on my mood, but there ain't no doubt about it, I still think this rocks.

"It Just Won't Quit" --- here comes one of the other underrated classics of Jim's here, sung again by Elaine. With all of the would be singles this album might have had before this one, you can see why it kind of gets lost, but jeez... between this and "Bat II", it's such a shame, and I wish someone out there would take the initiative of doing it again. This is a beautiful performance.

"Pray Lewd" --- the moment that scared me it was so amazing, this piano medley of songs from the album arranged and performed by Steve Margoshes. The moment it hits the chorus of "It's All Coming Back", well it might just be even better than "Tonight is What it Means to be Young" again.

"The Future Ain't What it Used to Be" --- the group sends us out on a ten minute epic, sung by Gina Taylor, which as several people have noted to me now might have been the anthem for 2020. "The future just ain't what it used to be... It's never gonna be like it was... I wish it wouldn't come but it does." The "More Than You Deserve" and "Surf's Up" riffs is just too much for this listener. It's like the rock equivalent of "Dumbledore's Farewell" being reprised in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II". This song is everything. The A Cappella ending is also reminiscent of the one for "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through", which is one of the things that makes you say, well yeah this is the closest we get to a second Steinman album.

With that, the album was over and it got sensational reviews at the time from what I understand, and there were two videos, including the one directed by Ken Russell for "It's All Coming Back", and then... something happened and this album was not released in the US, and nor did it follow in the footsteps of "Bat" and "Total Eclipse", but to me and other people I've spoken with over the years, it has become an enduring cult classic. If you love "Bat", "Bat II" and "Bad for Good", and Jim's work from just about any era, and you haven't heard it yet, well... for God's sake, get on your motorbikes and drive! Faster than the speed of night!!!

I first learned about this album from websites "Dream Pollution" (which brilliantly used the front cover as the opening portal to the site), and when I finally heard it in full, it did not surprise me that I totally fell in love with it. And that is all I have to say.

Thank you for reading,

Ryan.