Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell
On October 21, 1977, "Bat Out of Hell", the studio album by singer Meat Loaf, was released.
Few works in the history of popular music were born from a complete refusal to conform to the spirit of the times and yet became an unprecedented cultural phenomenon. In 1977, when the music world was dominated by the minimalist punk revolution on the one hand and the glittering expanses of disco on the other, an album emerged that sounded like a head-on collision between a Richard Wagner opera, a Broadway musical, Phil Spector's symphonic wall of sound and Bruce Springsteen's urban romance. Behind this megalomaniacal vision stood two unbridled men of theater and music, the singer with the mighty voice Marvin Lee Aday, known by the stage name Meat Loaf, and the brilliant composer and songwriter Jim Steinman.
The fateful meeting between the two occurred in 1973 at auditions for the musical "More Than You Deserve" written by Jim Steinman at the Public Theater in New York. By that time, Meat Loaf had already established an impressive reputation on the stage thanks to his performances in the musical "Hair" and as Eddie in the cult musical and film "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." The immediate chemistry between Meat Loaf's operatic voice and explosive physical presence and Jim Steinman's dramatic and cinematic writing led them to develop a futuristic rock musical called "Neverland" in the mid-1970s, a dystopian adaptation of the Peter Pan story about a gang of lost boys who ride motorcycles. From that musical workshop were born three songs that became the backbone of the album, the title song "Bat Out of Hell", the heavenly ballad "Heaven Can Wait" and the early version of "All Revved Up with No Place to Go".
But the journey from the stage to the recording studio became a continuous agony. For two and a half years, Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman shuffled between the offices of every major record company in the United States and Britain, held live auditions with only a piano, and suffered rejection after rejection. Industry insiders claimed that the songs were too long, too theatrical, and not suitable for any radio slot. The most famous low point was recorded during an audition with the legendary CBS president Clive Davis, who slammed the duo for saying that actors don't make records, and chided Jim Steinman with the disparaging question of whether he even knew how a rock song was structured.
The turning point came from musician, guitarist and super producer Todd Rundgren. When Todd Rundgren first heard the material, he laughed out loud and was convinced that it was a brilliant and extreme parody of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" album. The theatrical extremity of the songs captivated him, and he decided to gamble on the project from his own pocket, producing the album at Bearsville Studios near Woodstock, New York, and even playing lead guitar himself. To give Jim Steinman's songs the authentic Bruce Springsteen sound, the two recruited two mainstays from the "E Street Band", pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg, along with members of Todd Rundgren's prog rock band, "Utopia", led by bassist and singer Kasim Sulton.
The album opens with a nearly ten-minute storm with the epic title track "Bat Out of Hell", a masterpiece that defines what symphonic and theatrical rock is. Roy Bittan's rhythmic opening on piano and Todd Rundgren's fast guitars lead into a romantic horror story about a motorcyclist racing to his death on a dark night. The iconic guitar solo, simulating the roar of a motorcycle engine and his fatal crash, was played by Todd Rundgren in a single improvised take without prior rehearsals, a technical feat that has become one of the most famous moments in the history of the electric guitar.
It's followed by "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth," which opens with an unforgettable theatrical dialogue on a hot summer night performed by Jim Steinman and actress Marcia McClain, before exploding into a sweeping pop-rock celebration in the spirit of 1960s rhythm bands. The third track, "Heaven Can Wait," reveals Meat Loaf's vulnerable, delicate, and lyrical side, displaying stunning vocal mastery over Roy Bittan's refined piano playing and Ken Ascher's soaring string arrangement. The record's first side closes with "All Revved Up with No Place to Go," a raucous youth anthem that describes the frustration and passion of adolescence, and is driven by a fiery saxophone solo by guest musician Edgar Winter.
The album's second side opens with one of the greatest and most beloved rock ballads of all time, "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad". The song was born after actress and singer Mimi Kennedy told Jim Steinman that his songs were too complicated, and asked why he couldn't write a simple and direct love song like Elvis Presley's "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You". Jim Steinman's answer was an honest, melodic and sober heartbreak ballad that climbed into the top twenty on the US Billboard charts and became the album's big breakthrough single in the United States.
The peak of the album's theatricality comes in the sixth track, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", an eight-and-a-half-minute mini-musical divided into three acts. The song describes a stormy youthful encounter in the backseat of a parked car, and is presented as a tremendous vocal duel between Meat Loaf and singer and actress Ellen Foley, who provided a powerful and unforgettable performance on the album, while singer Karla DeVito is the one who appeared in the famous music video and on the tour that accompanied the album. In the middle of the song, the creators incorporated a brilliant flash in the form of a simulated baseball commentary specially recorded by former star and legendary New York Yankees broadcaster Phil Rizzuto, which serves as a humorous metaphor for the boy's attempts to conquer the car seat.
The album closes with the moving and dramatic "For Crying Out Loud", a monumental ballad lasting nearly nine minutes, with philharmonic orchestration. Meat Loaf moves from an intimate, broken whisper to a desperate cry of love, sealing the album with utter catharsis.
Even after the album was completed, record companies refused to release it until producer and record label executive Steve Popovich, who at the time had founded the independent label Cleveland International Records under the auspices of Epic Records, listened to the recordings, believed in the vision without reservation, and released the album. Also making a crucial contribution to the record's mythology was the iconic album cover, conceived by Jim Steinman and drawn by legendary comic artist Richard Corben, depicting a long-haired motorcycle rider emerging from the dirt of a cemetery under the wings of a giant bat.
Despite a slow commercial opening and mixed reviews from the music press, Meat Loaf's electrifying television appearances on the British show "The Old Grey Whistle Test" and the American show "Saturday Night Live" in the spring of 1978 ignited a firestorm. "Bat Out of Hell" became one of the five best-selling albums in world music history with sales of over 43 million copies, fourteen platinum albums in the United States and a historic stay of over 522 weeks in the UK album charts. The success later spawned two follow-ups, "Bat Out of Hell II" in 1993 and "Bat Out of Hell III" in 2006, proving that sometimes the surest way to eternity is to break all the rules.
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