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1MEAT LOAFBAT OUT OF HEll

(Cleveland/Epic, 1977)

The sound of the rock'n'roll

apocalypse.One ofthe greatest albums ever

made. Obviously. Jim Steinmanwrote epic, funny, lengthy songs

where teenagers tried to lose their

virginity,where girls were slim anddevious and boys tubby andstupid, where the motorbike wasan analogy for everything and, toquote a future Steinman momentof genius, "where everything waslouder than everything else".Brilliantly, the distinctly rotundMeat Loaf sang the whole lotwithout irony, while Steinmanand producer Todd Rundgrenfashioned a widescreen,

Wagnerian backdrop. Somehow,the whole was even mightier thanits already heaving parts, hencethe 10-minute title track where

a man watches himself die; For

Crying Out Loud, perhaps themost full-on, gut-wrenching balladever recorded and the sheer,onanistic frustration of All Rewed

Up With No Place To Go. Therewas nothing like it in 1977.There has been nothing likeit since, Bat Out Of Hell II

notwithstanding. Staggering.KEYTRACK: Bat Out Of Hell

SEE ALSO: Meat Loaf, Bat Out OfHell II:BackInto Hell(Virgin,1993)

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- - -- .,~~'~~~SlMeat Loaf- "a hotheadkidfromTexas"- and songwriter Jim Steinman first metin NewYorktheatreland in 1972. Theirexperiments in fusing classical bombastwith rock'n'roll would eventually produceone ofthe best-loved albums in history.Meat Loaf: Evenat schooland on the footballteam, everyone called me Meat. 1put together aband, Popcorn Blizzard, moved to Los Angeles,cut a first record, which did nothing, made analbum [Stoney & Meat Loaf], which 1didn'tlike, and ended up in the stage musical Hair.By 1972 1was in New York doing all theseBroadway-type shows. One of them wasa two-act musical play called More ThanYou Deserve, which was written byJimSteinman. Jim would come out in these crazyoutfits, pound the piano and do stuff that wastotally out there.Jim Steinman: Growing up, 1was intoclassical music. Then, one day, aged 12,1 heardWagner's The Ring Of The Nibelung followedbyJerry Lee Lewis. 1just went, "Wow! Thesethings go together!" 1went to New York where1tried to write musicals. Meat walked intoan audition for More Than You Deserveand sang a gospel song. His hands convulsedand his eyeswent up in his head. 1thought,"This is the guy!" The fact that he was 350lbwas part of it. He was like something out ofa Marvel comic book.ML:Jim and 1began working together, but by'74, we started to get serious. 1decided 1wasn'tgoing to do any more theatre. Then 1got askedto understudy John Belushi in The NationalLampoon Show on Broadway. When theysaid they were taking the show on the road,1agreed to do it only if they took Jim as thepiano player. Ellen Foley was singing in theshow, and we started to duet on one ofJim'ssongs, Paradise ByThe Dashboard Light.The three of us worked on those songs,and out of them came the fantastic charactersof Bat Out Of Hell.JS: It was amazingly out-of-step for the time.But 1wanted our records to be like movies.1wanted Bat Out Of Hell to be like enteringa film.ML:Weauditionedfor,like,18recordcompanies and got turned down by everybodyand their mother. We kept being asked,"Who's going to listen to all this long crap?"JS: We didn't have a demo tape. We just hadme at the piano and Meat singing. 1rememberwe auditioned for [Arista Records'] CliveDavis in a tiny office.There 1am pounding thepiano with my hands bleeding and Meatsweating like a maniac! Clive Davis didn't getit. Sometimes we'd have two backing singers,Ellen Foley and Rory Dodd, with MeatFrench-kissing Ellen during Paradise ByThe Dashboard Light - making out likeBeauty And The Beast in this tiny office.Nobody understood.ML:As we'd walk down Sixth Avenue afterthese meetings, I'd rage at Jim. These fuckingrecord company guys are so set in their ways...Jim would just laugh.JS: 1didn't care, because I'm always convinced1don't know what I'm doing. I'm the first oneto thinkI'm a pieceof shit[laughs].Producerswouldn't touch us either. Finally, though, wegot hold of Todd Rundgren. He was the onlyone brave enough to take us on. He'd heardMeat and me do the songs on the piano,but he was the only one to turn around and say,"1seeno problem here." -t

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[now the Apollo] in London, then Manchester,and then the Old Grey Whistle Test TV show.Bob Harris: We first showed the video to BatOut Of Hell and the reaction was incredible.It was a love-it-or-hate-it record, but we werestruck by the sheer gothic, over-the-topsplendour of the thing. They came to thestudio and did Paradise ByThe DashboardLight, and the intensity of the performance andall this sexual energy between Meat and KarlaDeVito was mind-blowing. Meeting the manup-close, though, he looked awful- sweaty,puffy, pale-faced. I heard he had to be givenoxygen after one of the shows.ML:Then Melody Maker came out with a two-page live review, calling us "the worst band inthe world" under the headline "Fat Out OfHell"! At first I was seriously pissed off. Thenwe went back to New York and did a showin Central Park, and there were press from allover the world. There was one guy there fromIndia and I asked him, "Why are you here?"He said, "Melody Maker... 'worst bandin the world'." That's when I realised it wasworking for us.JS: I toured with the band until late spring '78,and I went back home only to write the secondrecord. One moment, we were just having funplaying the music, then all of a sudden, it's allabout record deals and delivering more songs.I wrote Bad For Good, which was supposed tobe the follow-up to Bat Out Of Hell, but Meatcouldn't sing it. Meat had abused his voiceon the road and by the end of the Bat... tourit was pretty much shot. Then" couldn't singit" became "didn't wantto sing it", becausehe didn't like it.ML:I was mad at Jimmy; Jimmy was mad atme. We fought about everything. I didn't want

:isto make a Xerox copy of Bat Out Of Hell.~JS: SoI sang it and Bad For Good came out as

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a Steinman solo record in 1981- and it nearlykilled me, because it was all written for a voicethat was about an octave higher. As for Meat,Jon Landau, Springsteen's manager, suggestedthis guy in California, who was like a sort ofwitch doctor. The guy's treatment is he injectsyou with your own urine and then beats theshit out of you.ML:His theory was I had become traumatisedwhen I fell off the stage and broke my legin'78, and this was the reason I couldn't sing. Histherapy consisted of having me lie down on thefloor and sing notes while he vibrated a Black& Decker hand sanderwith a sheepskin padon it against my leg-and it worked! In 1980,I began work on a newalbum, Dead Ringer.Steinman wasn'tinvolved, other thanwriting the songs andhanding them to us.JS: It was a stupid set-up because Bad ForGood came out andthen Meat Loaf'ssecond album, DeadRinger, came out twomonths later. Crazy!

By 1983, the winningpartnership haddissolved. A disputeover profits from BatOut Of Hell's salesled to Meat Loafbeing sued by bothSteinman and hismanagers. Meat Loaffiled for bankruptcy,

Who'sWho?MEATLOAF

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while releasing albums intermittentlythroughout the rest of the decade; noneof which came close to matching thesuccess of Bat Out Of Hell. Steinmanbegan producing and writing for MORartists, including Bonnie Tyler and AirSupply. Then came a chance meeting.ML:I ran into Jim at the end of 1985 at thePower Station studio in New York. He goes,"You're singing good. Why don't you comeout to the house?"JS: I remember it well, because it was the daymy mother died. He sang the entire Bat Out OfHell album at the piano with me. He soundedgreat - and that was the key to Bat Out Of Hell2. It was always really about the voice.ML:The record company didn't actuallywant Bat Out Of Hell 2, because they thoughtit would cost too much money. So it didn'thappen until 1993. Did I ever imagine there'dbe a Bat Out Of Hell 3 [currently due forreleasein October 2006]? God, no! ButJim has no involvement other than we haveseven or eight of his songs on the record.[Sincebeing interviewed for this article,Steinman, who holds the copyright to thephrase Bat Out Of Hell, has refused to allowMeat Loaf to use the title for the record.In May, Meat Loaf filed a lawsuit against hisex-partner in response.]JS: I love Meat Loaf as a performer. He hasthat sense of the Gothic and the ridiculous.And that's a huge part of what Bat Out Of Hellis all about. That's the very soul of the record.ML:Would I change a thing about the album?No... How could you even suggest changingsomething like that? Bat Out Of Hell isstill untouchable. [iJ

Further reading: To Hell And Back: AnAutobiography by Meat Loaf, with DavidDalton (Virgin Books, 1999)