Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell

Other than a mention in a list of landmark albums I’m not sure how much my appreciation for the music of Meat Loaf has been obvious across my writing here or elsewhere, but it is something that has very much informed my musical interests from when I very first started getting into any form of rock ‘n’ roll.

That would have been around the time of the release of Bat Out Of Hell II, and it’s unlikely hit single I Will Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), in the early 1990s but as I’ve decided, apropos of very little, to have a re-listen to some of ‘The Loaf’ (as I’m sure no one calls him) I have gone back to source and 1977’s landmark Bat Out Of Hell.

Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf

Looking back at it now Bat Out Of Hell is renowned as one of the biggest selling albums of all time, according to the list I found, third behind only AC/DC’s Back In Black and Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

However, when you actually listen to the album it’s success feels undeniably unlikely as it’s combination of sounds and styles is almost entirely at odds with not just the musical landscape of the time, but pop music of pretty much anytime – maybe it’s in this though that it finds what has made it so enduring.

Meat Loaf

While not strictly a concept album the record feels loosely narrative, with the title track and opener setting the scene in a kind of operatic, dark heart, of Americana with teenage motorcycle gangs rubbing shoulders with suggestions of the occult, dark city streets and teenage romance.

From it’s frantic opening Bat Out Of Hell (the song) contains as much detail as you’d find on most full records and, as introductions to a band and a performer go, it leaves you with no questions as to what Meat Loaf and song writer Jim Steinman (along with producer Todd Rundgren who I think is just as important in the overall feel of the album) are capable of delivering and really, if you’re not on board at that point chances are that, even forty-four years later, you’re unlikely to have got with it.

Jim Steinman

After that epic nine minutes and fifty seconds the album takes the listener on a journey that feels like a combination of American Graffiti and The Lost Boys and in this is truly cinematic in scope with a raw and naive sexuality mixing with unashamed romance and hints of the kind of darkness The Doors tapped into at their height.

After the initial operatic histrionics, You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night) is a dark and dangerous tale of young love wrapped in comparatively pop package (it’s the nearest thing the album comes to an obvious single) while All Revved Up And No Place To Go delves deep into small town Americana but with a similar theme.

Along with these are more melodic numbers Heaven Can Wait and Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad that counterpoint the more rocking moments and allow Steinman’s piano to shine, while also showing the more subtle side of Meat Loaf’s remarkable and unique voice.

Meat Loaf live with his band in 1977

The album is then rounded off by two more epics.

Closer For Crying Out Loud throws in a little of everything from across the rest of the album in an overblown affair that, for me, is the albums one misfire, but before it comes possibly the best moment, the duet of Paradise By The Dashboard Light.

Following on from All Revved Up… in style, Paradise… is a back and forth encounter between a pair of young lovers in that most Americana of situations, the back seat of a car, with a baseball game playing on the radio.

Meat Loaf and Karla Devito who provided the female vocals on tour

Across eight minutes we get the record’s most theatrical moment that is, rather like the title track, a mini concept record in its own right as it goes from telling the story of the night to looking into its own future all without missing a beat and allowing Ellen Foley (who is present across the record) to share the limelight with Meat Loaf and Steniman.

Musically it’s as interesting a mix as it is conceptually, but clearly comes from a similar source to the sound of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, just with added operatic overtones and possibly even more of a foot in classic rock ‘n’ roll.

Ellen Foley who provided female vocals on the record

In a way this feels counterintuitive but somehow comes together to work in an exceptional way that few have replicated, or even attempted making a unique beast of an album.

Bat Out Of Hell then is a real mass of contradictions that was as out of time upon its release as it remains now, being gothic before goth was a thing and rock ‘n’ roll well after the heyday of it’s particularly version of that sound, but with a histrionic operatic approach that defies any time or place in pop (though may have gone down a storm with emo kids of a certain sort, it’s hard not to find something of a link between this and My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade on listening now).

The photo from the album’s reverse

With only one duff song (and really even that is only a personal quibble) Bat Out Of Hell remains as much of an idiosyncratic and unapologetically nerdy delight as it’s ever been while highlighting, in Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman, a combination of performer and writer I don’t think has ever found a comparison and I think is unlikely to ever do so.