FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell

FEATURE:

Vinyl Corner

Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell

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FOLLOWING the sad…

death of Meat Loaf on 20th January, there were a lot of tributes about his success and legacy as an artist. Whilst he recorded so many great albums through his career, 1977’s Bat Out of Hell will always be seen as his peak. Produced by Todd Rundgren, the album spawned huge hits like You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night), Paradise by the Dashboard Light and Bat Out of Hell. One of the best-selling albums ever in the U.S., this is an album that everyone needs in their vinyl collection. No matter what your age, everyone can remember and sing along to the biggest songs on the album. It is operatic and huge, yet there is so much variety in terms of the songwriting and sound. I am going to end with a review of Bat Out of Hell. Prior to that, there are a couple of articles that give background to the blockbuster album. Classic Rock Review note how the album was a collaboration between Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman (who wrote the tracks) and producer Todd Rundgren:

“Although credited as a solo album by Meat Loaf, the blockbuster album Bat Out of Hell was actually forged through a collaboration of three people – Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday), songwriter Jim Steinman and producer/guitarist Todd Rundgren. This album would go into the stratosphere sales-wise, certified platinum fourteen times over and currently ranked ninth all-time in worldwide sales. However, these gentlemen may have been the only three to believe in this project during its early years. By the time of its release in late 1977, the album had been worked on for over five years but it had been rejected by every major Label (and quite a few minor labels as well). The project was finally picked up by tiny Cleveland International Records, not so much by musical merit but more so when owner Steve Popovich heard the witty dialogue which precedes the song “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)”.

Meat Loaf met Steinman shortly after releasing his soul-influenced debut album Stoney & Meatloaf in 1971. Both were deeply interested theatrical music as Meat Loaf had starred in several Broadway plays and the film, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Steinmen had composed for several productions including a sci-fi update of Peter Pan called Neverland, which was a pre-cursor to Bat Out of Hell. Writing for the album started as early as 1972, with the songs fully developed by the end of 1974, when Meat Loaf decided to leave the theatre to concentrate on this project. In 1975, the dual performed a live audition for Todd Rundgren, an avant garde performer and producer, who was impressed that the music did not fit any rock conventions or sub-genres to date. However, this was a double-edged sword as they had immense difficulty finding a record company willing to sign them. According to Meat Loaf’s autobiography, the band spent two and a half years auditioning the record and being rejected. One of the most brutal rejections came from CBS head Clive Davis, who first dismissed Meat Loaf by saying “actors don’t make records” before turning his ire towards Steinman’s songwriting.

The group had reached a verbal deal with RCA Records and started recording the album in late 1975 at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, NY. However, the RCA deal fell through during production and Rundgren essentially footed the bill for recording himself. And this was no small bill as the album includes contributions by sixteen rock musicians and singers as well as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Some of these backing musicians include members of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band as well as Rundgren’s backing band, Utopia.

Steinman, who wrote every song and gave the album its title and artwork, had wanted equal billing with Meat Loaf on the album’s title, but was out-voted by record execs who felt that Meat Loaf alone was a more marketable, with the unorthadox, “Songs by Jim Steinmen” sub-heading appearing on the album’s cover. Even after the album was finally released in October 1977, it took awhile to catch on In the U.S. Ironically, it was after a CBS Records convention where Meat Loaf performed a song for that label’s top artist Billy Joel, that the album finally got some mainstream momentum”.

The phenomenal songwriting of Jim Steinman (who sadly died last year), the huge personality and titanic voice of Meat Loaf and the epic production from Todd Rundgren is a brilliant combination! Bat Out of Hell is one of the defining album from the late-1970s. Albumism celebrated forty years of a classic in 2017:

“Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell is outstanding in every sense of the word. Produced in 1975, released in 1977, it went on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time. It sits neatly in the cross-hairs of all major rock music trends of the 1970s: teen angst storytelling, reverberating guitar shreds, and smooth soft-rock vocals. And yet, Bat Out of Hell is a complete oddball. It is an epic unto itself: a seven-track album averaging six minutes per song. The lyrics are kitschy and the song structure is intentionally inconsistent. It was a rock opera parody often taken a little too seriously. It was misunderstood, underestimated, and almost never released.

Bat Out of Hell plays like the soundtrack to a musical that would be cost-prohibitive and very dangerous to make: a tale of brash and intense young love, with motorcycles and fire strewn about. It’s intentionally over-the-top. The title track opener is an eight minute, 784-word opus that tests the limits of endurance from both a performer and listener’s perspective. It tells the story of a man who has crashed, is hurt and presumably dying (“Oh, like a bat out of hell / I'll be gone when the morning comes”). What ensues in the album is the flood of memories of his life with love: “If I gotta be damned, you know I want to be damned / Dancing through the night with you.” The subject is recklessness and the lyrics are carefree. As a whole, the album opener is turbo-charged and makes you want to move your feet at 158 bpm. The beginning of this album sounds like any other musician’s closer.

Though it was Meat Loaf’s second album, it was his first collaboration with writer/composer Jim Steinman. Meat Loaf has a reputation for incredible vocals and passionate delivery, but Steinman represents the “signature sound”—a fact not lost on either party since the album’s release four decades ago.

Steinman shows strength in creating legendary singalongs without subscribing to pop music norms. One of his influences was 19th century opera composer Richard Wagner; Steinman described Bat Out of Hell thematically as Wagnerian Rock. One notable aspect of Wagner’s was his “through-composition”—that is, he set lyrical stanzas to different music for each verse, rather than relying on a more traditional “strophic” form which repeats the same music for different stanzas. Most songs on this album subscribe to this through-composed structure. “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” covers the whole arc of a teenage relationship in iconic micromovements, re-lived clumsily on most wedding dancefloors in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

According to Meat Loaf’s autobiography, producer and lead guitarist Todd Rundgren joined the project because he thought the concept was “just so out there.” It’s the exact reason label executives rejected the album left and right. Clive Davis of CBS famously lambasted Steinman on his inability to write music that fits into the pop music formula.

After at least two years of shopping it, Bat Out of Hell was ultimately picked up by Cleveland International Records, a subsidiary of Epic Records. According to Frederic Dannen’s book Hit Men, Cleveland International President Steve Popovich “did not care much for it” upon first listening but solicited feedback from two women whom he trusted: his ex-wife and sister-in-law. They both loved it. Ultimately the album grew on him and he thought the uniqueness of the sound could work to its advantage. After Cleveland/Epic picked it up, it took a few years of local radio play and a live performance or two before the album finally took off to the success we associate with it today. It has now sold over 43 million copies worldwide.

Unfortunately, the success of Bat Out of Hell is one that very few people shared in. According to a 1993 article by John Aizlewood in Q Magazine, after its release “Steinman hadn't been paid for Bat Out Of Hell. He sued Meat Loaf's publishing company, who hadn't been paid either. Everyone seemed to sue Meat Loaf, who filed for bankruptcy.” Steinman and Meat Loaf collaborated on follow-up projects but continued to wage subsequent legal battles (most recently over the use of the “Bat Out of Hell” name). Popovich sued Epic (now Sony) Records for lost royalties as record sales continued to soar and Sony hid behind a cross-collateralization clause, claiming that the costs of the album’s production were still not covered. Popovich passed away in 2011 in the midst of legal battles. Seemingly most important was his desire to restore the original “Cleveland International” logo to the album cover as his legacy”.

I am going to end with a review. AllMusic showed a lot of love and respect for an album that, whilst not ranked alongside the very best albums of the ‘70s in some people’s views, it definitely should be there:

“There is no other album like Bat Out of Hell, unless you want to count the sequel. This is Grand Guignol pop -- epic, gothic, operatic, and silly, and it's appealing because of all of this. Jim Steinman was a composer without peer, simply because nobody else wanted to make mini-epics like this. And there never could have been a singer more suited for his compositions than Meat Loaf, a singer partial to bombast, albeit shaded bombast. The compositions are staggeringly ridiculous, yet Meat Loaf finds the emotional core in each song, bringing true heartbreak to "Two out of Three Ain't Bad" and sly humor to "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." There's no discounting the production of Todd Rundgren, either, who gives Steinman's self-styled grandiosity a production that's staggeringly big but never overwhelming and always alluring. While the sentiments are deliberately adolescent and filled with jokes and exaggerated clichés, there's real (albeit silly) wit behind these compositions, not just in the lyrics but in the music, which is a savvy blend of oldies pastiche, show tunes, prog rock, Springsteen-esque narratives, and blistering hard rock (thereby sounding a bit like an extension of Rocky Horror Picture Show, which brought Meat Loaf to the national stage). It may be easy to dismiss this as ridiculous, but there's real style and craft here and its kitsch is intentional. It may elevate adolescent passion to operatic dimensions, and that's certainly silly, but it's hard not to marvel at the skill behind this grandly silly, irresistible album”.

We sadly said goodbye to Meat Loaf earlier this month. The outpouring of love on social media proves how adored he is. His music will stand the test of time and be revered decades from now. It has been an hour including Bat Out of Hell…

IN this Vinyl Corner.

FEATURE:

Vinyl Corner

Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell

Sam Liddicott