So Jim Steinman is dead and with him passes a part of my youth. I recall clearly the first time I heard Bat out of Hell and was captivated from that moment on.
For me, Total Eclipse of the Heart was one of the very best, but it’s a long list and so hard to choose. On the Bat album there were moving, haunting ballads such as Heaven Can Wait and Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad – the achingly beautiful outro track For Crying Out Loud with its desperate declaration of love was a fitting finale to the album. On Bad for Good, Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through and that Todd Rundgren guitar solo on Stark Raving Love stirred the blood. Not to forget the nineteen eighty one Harley Davidson…
Steinman’s talent was one of those that burned brightly and briefly. I always hoped for another album even though I knew deep down that by the early nineties it was done. Some of his later stuff was clearly recycled phrases and lyrics lifted from earlier works suggesting that the originality had gone and it was time to call it a day, which from the writing perspective, he did.
Although Meatloaf was the iconic performer of Steinman’s work, the all female Pandora’s box with Ellen Foley’s rendition of Original Sin and the evocative eleven minute final track, The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be with its gospel finale as it faded out is superb. All of these tracks were subsequently covered by Meatloaf, but he never surpassed that all female original offering.
His music, so over the top with operatic theatrics and glorious puns where he took common tropes and idioms and turned them on their heads struck a chord for me – it hinted of teenage angst and a girl I once knew and even now, listening takes me right back to another time, another place and people buried deep in my memory.
If you believe in that sort of stuff, the heavenly host will be dancing to a new tune now. One with screaming guitar solos, cascading keyboards and over the top lyrics sung to a racy beat. But then, Steinman was ahead of the game, because the angels had guitars before they had wings.
Jim Steiman RIP
I saw Meat Loaf at Sheffield City Hall in the eighties. It was when he had got his voice back and it was a really good gig. I had Bat out of Hell on vinyl but my enduring memories of Steinman’s stuff was on mix tapes in the car. I had a Clarion tape deck and I can remember my dad thinking that I was insane spending that much money on a car stereo. An old workmate used to define value for money by dividing how much it cost by how many times you use it. It got used a lot.
I still listen to most of my music in the car. I saw a couple of Meatloaf gigs in Bristol in the late eighties early nineties.
RIP, music lives on??
I got put off Bat Out Of Hell in my first year at university, because one of the blokes I shared a flat with played it seemingly all day, every day. You can go off almost anything in those circumstances…
When living in the Sgts Mess in a previous lifetime, the bloke in the next room played Bat Out Of Hell all the time, and ignored polite requests to occasionally play something else or turn the volume down. I got my revenge by playing “The Best of Jess Conrad” on a continuous loop.
Bat out of Hell – first time I heard was in cafe on Royal Mile, still like it
Total Eclipse of the Heart – first time I heard I thought ‘That’s a Meatloaf song’. Half correct, a Steinman rock ballad
Mr Steinman, thank you for your wonderful songs
God bless