104. Meat Loaf / Bat Out Of Hell. 1977. 5/5.

Given its enduring legacy, it seems amazing that this album took so long to come together, and that it was knocked back by several record companies prior to being accepted. Jim Steinman is the man behind the album, as the writer of all of the songs, and this album made him as a writer, after which he went on to write for many other prominent artists. Todd Rundgren was the producer of the album, who was not only an artist in his own right but transferred that to production as well, and while he was well known prior to this album, and was in fact hired for his reputation, that reputation garnered greater weight after the release of “Bat out of Hell”. While it was Steinman who came up with all of the arrangements for the songs on the album, it was Rundgren who actually put them together when it came time to record. This came about, so it is said, because Steinman would hum what he wanted, which Rundgren would then take and orchestrate.
This left the artist himself in Meat Loaf, whose actual name was Michael Lee Aday, and as an offshoot, whose daughter is married to Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian, making Scott Ian the most rock person in music with Meat Loaf as his father-in-law. Meat Loaf had met up with Steinman in a touring group, at a time when Steinman was putting together some songs that he wanted to create an album around, based on a musical he had written based on Peter Pan called Neverland. The songs “Bat out of Hell”, “Heaven Can Wait” and a form of “All Revved Up with No Place to Go” all appeared in that musical. Over a period of about two and a half years, they wrote and recorded material to get this up and running, all the while trying to get some interest from a record company to sign them for its release. Amazingly, they lost count of the number of rejections they received, even when they performed the material live to those companies. They eventually signed up to Cleveland International Records, and independent record label, to get the album to come to its fruition.
Upon its completion, there was still little response from the American market. However, videos recorded of the main songs being played by the whole ensemble took off in both Australia and the UK, and the album raced to the top of the charts as a result. And it was the initial singles, such as “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” that helped this enormously.

“Bat out of Hell” is written in the style of a rock opera, much like other powerful album of the age including The Who’s “Tommy”, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, Queen’s “A Night at the Opera” and productions such as “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. As a result there is a varying style of song on the album, reflecting just what part of the show that it represents. The very love angst pieces such as “Two out of Three Ain’t Bad” and “Heaven Can Wait” play off the more passionately sung songs of “For Crying Out Loud” and “You Took the Words Right out of My Mouth”. And then there is the faster and heavier songs where the scenes play out before you. “All Revved Up with No Place to Go” mixes motorcycle metaphors and teenage angst again. “Bat out of Hell” itself, in Steinman’s own words from the ‘Classic Albums” episode on this album, came as a result of Steinman's desire to write the "most extreme crash song of all time”. I think he succeeded. And the beautiful mix of musical sing off between characters in classic “Grease” style on “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” is the perfect example of why this works, even without the visual of a stage show.
All this results in an album that works in almost every setting. It isn’t stuck to a genre or anchored to its time as a result. The mix of hard riffing guitars and heavy beat drums with the rifling keyboards, and then back to the piano driven ballad with an orchestral feel about it, makes it a perfect music stage experience, but still also an album in its own right. With just seven tracks throughout, it still manages to have highlights throughout. Meat Loaf is brilliant throughout in both raising the tempo and drive of a song and also delivering the meaningful emotional songs with the same authority. It isn’t easy in delivering a song like “Heaven Can Wait” as well as being able to belt out the lyrics over several stanzas in the multi part epic that is the title track “Bat out of Hell”. And given his experience on the stage and screen by this stage, not least in the aforementioned “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, his performance in “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” is just terrific.

There has been little of my life without this album being a part of it, or so it seems looking back. My father got this album back around the time that it was release, or again so it seems, and mixed amongst the Johnny Cash and Tom T Hall and Kris Kristoffersen that floated through the house when he was in a mood also came this album. Certainly I recall it on longer car trips especially. And in the days where the radio was the main form of music both at home and in the car, it was unusual to have forty odd minutes of the same singer all coming out together. Eventually in my teenage years, when I wanted my own copy of the album, I went to my next door neighbour, and borrowed his vinyl copy of the album to record to cassette tape, and that really sounded so much better! And it was in those teenage years, when I started to listen to bands and buy their albums rather than just stick with the singles on the radio, that I truly began to appreciate this album overall. Because then I began to listen to it all over and over, and take in each song on its merits and how it fitted into the whole. And as I discovered rock musicals and the such and began to enjoy them, that just made this album even better.
There are times when Bat out of Hell almost became a premonition, driving around in my mates car and probably going way too fast, with this booming out of the tape player. And in the long run it is probably a strange album to love, given that it isn’t heavy metal, it isn’t hard rock, it isn’t soft rock... it is a combination of them all over the course of the seven tracks, and that to love one is to love all seven, and not just enjoy one or two of them separately. And I loved it as a kid, I loved it as a pop single pre-teen, I loved it as a hard rock mid-teen, and as a heavy metal mid-teen to the present. No matter what time of my music listening history I was in, this was an album that has always been on the play list. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it has lasted the test of time. Like a bat out of hell.