Imagine a world where an unknown musical performer partners with an unknown lyricist…and has the good fortune to get produced by Todd Rundgren. The result? A stellar seven-track album that covers all manner of musical ground: hard rock, gentle ballads, operatic satire, and spoken word asides with an overlay of squirmy teen lust. The songs run long for conventional radio airplay, yet damn near all of them become hits and remain in the public consciousness to this day. It sells over 43 million copies globally and becomes an album that nails down a time and place with great specificity.
That album is 1977’s Bat Out of Hell, with lead vocals by Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday) and lyrics by Jim Steinman; sadly, both have passed. It’s riddled with hilarity and heartbreak. The cover art, conceived by Steinman and executed by illustrator Richard Corben, holds up as one of the most compelling in rock history: a fire-red background and a longhaired, bad-ass biker bursting forth from a cemetery like the titular bat out of hell.
The album became an enormous hit during the late ‘70s, but some early reviews ranged from mocking to baffled. Meat Loaf seemed an unlikely-looking rock star, with his girth and greasy hair and the rumpled, ruffled suit he wore. But his charisma was undeniable and his range, extraordinary. He was one of rock and roll’s great voices, filled with power and, where necessary, stunning gentleness.
Bat Out of Hell toys with our expectations by opening with its title track which might seem better suited to the end of the album. It depicts a life screeching to a violent conclusion as the hero wraps up his intended last night with the woman he loves before a needed escape. He goes over a cliff and watches his heart emerge from his body as he flames out. The track features instrumentals that replicate the sound of a motor and soaring vocals. There’s a whiff of Bruce Springsteen on steroids here, with its motorcycle themes and conjuring of a bleak nighttime landscape. It’s a combination of testosterone and tears.
The next song is an upbeat ode to teenage lust that hints at something even better: love. “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” opens with a spoken word riff between Jim Steinman and actress Marcia McClain followed by an invigorating downbeat that swings into the story of young lovers on a beach, so wrapped up in their task that they don’t quite get around to saying “I love you.” It’s loaded with tender lyrics (“When I listen to your heart I hear the whole world turning/I see the shooting stars falling through your trembling hands”) and delivers a tasty vintage pop feel.
“Heaven Can Wait” didn’t receive the radio play of the other tracks, perhaps due to its lower-key demeanor. But it warrants kudos as a reverent song that celebrates earthly love with gentleness and an air of mystery. Then comes the head-banging teen horniness of “All Revved Up and No Place to Go,” which bemoans a young man’s inability to score with his crush despite his adolescent egotism (“I was a varsity tackle and a hell of a block, when I played my guitar I made the canyons rock.”). His frustration builds with the music, as both come to a screeching halt.
Side Two opens with “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” a piece of full-circle poignance. The keyboard lead-in is by the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan (another nod to the Springsteen inspiration that permeates the album). Here, the narrator tells his girl that he’s walking away from their relationship. He regrets this, but the missing component of love can’t be forced. He tries for a sad joke: “I want you, I need you, but there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you/now don’t be sad…’cause two out of three ain’t bad.”
The penultimate piece is the album’s best-known track, “Paradise By the Dashboard Light,” eight and a half spectacular minutes of growing sexual excitement. It’s a mini-rock opera about a young couple parked in a car, getting increasingly hot and heavy as the man pushes for the final intimacy.
The girl (Ellen Foley, in a fabulously fearsome turn) puts a halt to the proceedings, demanding that he marry her and love her forever. It’s the last thing our hero wants and he puts up a weaker and weaker fight as she grows more insistent and he gets more desperate. “Paradise” is rock at its prurient, ballsy best. The poor guy doesn’t have a prayer. Then he starts “praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive,” because he knows that their marriage won’t work.
Legendary sportscaster Phil Rizzuto was enlisted for a genius “play by play,” calmly delivering the “rounding the bases” format in a context completely devoid of its original meaning.
Bat Out of Hell concludes with “For Crying Out Loud,” a lushly orchestrated ode to a woman who has dedicated her life to a troubled man. It’s his vocalized thanks to the lady who has given up so much of her life to make his a better one, and he wants to make sure she knows it before his days are over.
With Bat Out of Hell, Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman, and producer Todd Rundgren handed us all a world of memorable music that begins with treachery and death but finishes unjaded and profoundly human. We owe these gents an enormous debt of gratitude.
-Ellen Fagan
Photo: Jim Steinman, Meatloaf (Getty Images)
PS — While we’re on the topic of Rock History, you might enjoy our YouTube series of daily one-minute nuggets of memorable moments…
The world is a better place because this album exists.
I absolutely agree. So impactful!!
Excellent piece about an excellent and unique LP. When I heard that Meat Loaf died, I sat in my listening room and played the album straight through for the first time in years. It’s a masterpiece (and so is your article!)
Oh, thank you so much! That’s wonderful to hear. I felt that same ache of loss when he passed. This album is one for the ages.
Great piece! Worth noting that Todd did not only produce, he “put the arrangements together” (according to Meat), played the incendiary guitar throughout, and sang the backing vocals, along with Utopia bandmate Kasim Sulton, Foley, and Rory Dodd. Steinman called Todd “the only genuine genius I ever worked with.”
Wow! That’s high praise indeed for Rundgren. & very warranted!
This seems to downplay Steinman, who wasn’t just the lyricist, but the composer, the source. “Bat Out of Hell” evolved from a musical Steinman was writing, “Neverland” (a rock ‘n’ roll Peter Pan saga; much of which eventually wound up in the “Bat Out of Hell” musical). Ellen Foley was Wendy in the 1977 “Neverland” staging. Rundgren did masterful work on orchestrations and arrangements (and paid for much of the recording, while Steinman and Meat Loaf sought a label willing to take a chance), but based on what Steinman communicated by humming; what parts the composer couldn’t play, he heard in his head. Jimmy Iovine and John Jansen were brought in to remix “Two Out of Three” and “Paradise,” respectively; their versions are what’s on the record. Steinman often said he found the Springsteen comparisons puzzling (despite the presences of Bittan and E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg… Steven van Zandt also helped connect them to the Cleveland/Epic label). He drew more deeply from Phil Spector’s wall of sound pop/rock (which did also influence Bruce, especially in the densely layered “Born to Run” sessions) and from teen-angst/dying-for-young-love songs such as “Teen Angel,” “Leader of the Pack,” “Deadman’s Curve,” “Last Kiss,” and the like. Much more lost boys on hot bikes than Bruce’s lonely lovers on porches in rising dawn.
Superb information & insight – thank you!
1977 . . .another that should be landmarked. The music, the album, the artist and the article.
1977 in college, busting the fuses on my speakers when my buddy Bill came into my dorm room demanding “Give me some Loaf.” Loud & out the windows playing to the quad.
This record is truly the soundtrack for the late boomers and early Gen Xers. As a kid who graduated from high school in 1979, I can’t tell you how often I played this record, as I was trying to figure out the whole teenage sex thing.
Thanks for the great write up. Your writing gives life to the album 36 years later. Although, I would have given a sentence or two to the the set up of the singer “waiting for the end of time.” And the angst of realizing that you married the wrong person.
Great topic and terrific writing.
Thanks.
Glad you enjoyed; it truly is a classic album!
I was 3 when this album released. My parents didn’t start listening to it until later when my dad got the loudest top of the line Sansui stereo on the block. By then I was maybe 9 , and when my parents were gone I’d crank that stereo so loud the living room windows would rattle to meatloaf. Great memories. My love for Meatloaf was borne young