Jim Steinman - Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through

Might as well wrap up this whole “Meatloaf and Friends” ramble. The fourth musician to have tracks on this compilation album is the man Jim Steinman himself.

Steinman spent his career a song writer. He worked with many musicians, usually seeking vocalists to perform his songs. He wrote many musicals and was the driving musical force behind “Streets of Fire.” He has had a very full and vibrant career, and I think it is nice he has a solo album to round his out resume.

“Bad for Good” has a complicated background, mostly because it was never the plan for Steinman to release his own solo album. The project was initially intended to be Meatloaf’s follow up album after “Bat Out of Hell,” titled “Renegade Angel,” (good name) but Meatloaf, the man, had worn himself out and temporarily lost his voice. They had a schedule to keep and Steinman decided he did not want to the project to go to waste or wait, so he decided to perform on the album himself.

I am probably stating the obvious when I say, the reason “Bat Out of Hell” was so amazing, was because of the divine combination of Meatloaf’s powerful voice and Steinman’s genius song writing. So, as you can imagine, Steinman, as talented as he is, unsurprisingly, is an inferior singer to Meatloaf, you know, like most human beings.

A lot of critics at the time could not help but notice the sharp decrease in quality in singing when the unavoidable comparison to “Bat Out of Hell” was made to “Bad for Good.” The songs were too huge and powerful for Steinman’s voice to carry like, well, a bat out of hell. I love Steinman, but I have to be real, I hear it too, the songs would be enhanced with a stronger vocalist.

“Bad for Good” is inferior to “Bat Out of Hell,” and Steinman is clearly a stronger song writer then performer. But here is the thing, I just love Jim Steinman. I love Steinman’s songs so much, that mediocre performance of a Steinman song will still result in above average music. Quality of music is a major, but not singular reason, why Steinman’s music stands out to me, there is a personality that is rarely recaptured. Steinman had a lot of tropes he used in the storytelling of his music, but there were his tropes. Lovers in the night; motorcycle odysseys; sarcastic witticisms; and sometimes vampires; these are the things Steinman’s music is made of, and all these are enjoyable. All these things are present on “Bad for Good.”

We should be fair, the biggest reasons we are being critical of Steinman’s performance on “Bad for Good” is because we cannot help but compare it to Meatloaf’s performance on “Bat Out of Hell.”

There are ten tracks on “Bad for Good” and over the course of time Meatloaf and others have covered eight of them. This comparison between Steinman’s performance and everyone else become harder to ignore because of this, but this is also where we can sing Steinman additional praise. Taste is subjective, but many of these covers are probably considered superior by most, but there are a couple where I prefer the original.

The two best songs on “Bad for Good” are the “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through.”

A serious effort went into making “Bad for Good” a grandiose flagship title track. It is the closest thing to “Bat Out of Hell” on this album, the song “Bat Out of Hell.” It is more lighthearted and playful then the more aggressive motorcycle crash song. Partially because it is the title track, but this song is forever linked to Jim Steinman as one of his most personal songs, at least I perceived it to be. “Bad for Good” was covered by Meatloaf in the third installment of “Bat Out of Hell,” where a serious effort went into making it a respectful rendition. This cover is very good, yet even with the help of the great Brian May on guitar, I still prefer the Steinman version.

In my opinion “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” is the best song on “Bad for Good.” It is also my opinion that “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” is the most Jim Steinman song ever. How do we quantity a song as measurably Jim Steinman?

Insanely, Steinman would not need to write a song for it to be very Jim Steinman like in essence, I spoke about Ellen Foley’s “We Belong to the Night” earlier this month, and that song is very Jim Steinman, I was shocked to learn he did not write it, nonetheless the most Jim Steinman song would need to be written by Jim Steinman.

Since Steinman did not perform on many of the songs he wrote, a song need not include Steinman’s presence to be very Jim Steinman like. Steinman was not involved with the actual performance in the musical “Dance of the Vampires” but his presence is in every single second of sound. Nonetheless, the most Jim Steinman song ever should have Steinman.

My criteria naturally leads us to the “Bad for Good” album, so among these ten songs, we need to look at other aspects. Steinman is a smart ass, I love that about him, and “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” opens with one of my favorite witticisms of his.

“You can’t runaway forever,
But there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start.”

Great start to a song.

While being far from his most epic track, and there being no motorcycle or vampires, the soul of Steinman is very much on display. The savior is rock and roll. Salvation from all struggle will be reward to us, when we need it the most music, rock and roll, will come through for us. Not even hell can keep the spirit of rock and roll from young lovers, no matter down and out. That is the unifying spirit of Steinman’s music. An everlasting love letter to rock and roll.

“Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” was covered by Meatloaf on the second installment of “Bat Out of Hell.”

Meatloaf version from Bat Out of Hell II

Here is something I did not know until just now, nineteen-year-old Angelia Jolie is in that music video.

Steinman was heavily involved on that album, so I have always assumed it was he on piano and maybe the backing vocals. It is a very good version, arguably superior to the “Bad for Good” original, but I love Jim so much, that I like the softer original. As passionate as Meatloaf is, and he is obviously the superior singer, Jim’s voice carries something in it that I link with, like he is bearing his soul to us.

It could be I am just projecting the image of Steinman that I hold in my mind from years of listen to his music, onto this song specifically, but I cannot rule out the very real possibility that genius song writer Steinman meant “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” to be the spiritual epicentre of his creative musical efforts. Even if I am wrong, I am still partially correct, “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” is undeniably a Steinman track through and through, and for that reason, I will always enjoy hearing him sing it more than anyone else.

Until next month, keep on rocking in the free world.

- King of Braves

 

Fire Inc. - Nowhere Fast & Tonight is What it Means to be Young

Nowhere Fast:

Tonight is What it Means to be young:

1984’s “Streets of Fire” is not a good movie, but it has proven to have some impressive staying power. The movie is self described as “a rock and roll fable” and I would agree that is an appropriate description. It took me a long time to final get around to watching “Streets of Fire” but it was a movie I knew I needed to see, if for no other reason the involvement of Jim Steinman.

I have talked about Jim Steinman a few times previously. He is most famous for writing the music of Meat Loaf, but he is also written many songs performed by famous musicians like Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply and Celine Dion. But of all the crazy places Steinmen’s music has shown up, my favorite is probably his insane German vampire rock opera “Tranz de Vampire” which I talked about last year:

http://colinkellymusicinreview.blogspot.ca/2017/02/dance-of-vampires.html

Of all the places I have come across and investigated the works of Jim Steinman’s the movie “Streets of Fire” always stood out as highly interesting, however for a variety of reasons it remained on the back burner as a priority to actually sit down and watch. It looked like a bad movie, like a really bad movie, but it had William Dafoe, so it was probably secretly awesome. Somehow it was both.

It is a goofy movie, with a very simple plot, and very contrasted quality in acting, for example the female lead Diane Lane, who was eighteen at the time, is terrible, but, unsurprisingly William Dafoe as the antagonist Raven is great. It is also a movie that has aged in a very strange way, because it is super eighties, but the movie is trying to look like the fifties, so it feels double aged from two vantage points, but creates a sort of fascinating visual experience. The script is also garbage, probably the weakest point is the script. Then there is the music, which is sort of a mix bag of decent and amazing.

I think the soundtrack is decent with the exceptions of the opening and closing songs which are the two songs written by Jim Steinman. Fire Inc., the band, was created specifically to perform and record these two songs for this movie. They might as well have credit Jim Steinman directly, but I guess that was not dramatic enough band name.

The movie opens with an Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) concert and the mood is set by the song she lip-syncs “Nowhere Fast.”

I love “Nowhere Fast.” To me, it is a perfect Jim Steinman song. A rock song with lots of piano that feels like part of a rock opera with strong lead vocals… being lip synced by a younger female… and with lyrical content that is a combination of poetry and sarcasm.

I like to call it the “Steinman Witt.” The man had a way with words where he would always find some way of slipping something incredibly smart ass at the end of a very powerful line. Look at the entirety of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” as a perfect example, or the line that immediately follows “You Took the words right out of my mouth,” “It must have been while you were kissing me.” Pure smart ass, and I love it.

In “Nowhere Fast” the chorus is the most Steinman chorus in any Steinman song ever written:

“You and me we're going nowhere slowly,
And we've got to get away from the past.
There's nothing wrong with going nowhere, baby,
But we should be going nowhere fast.

Everybody's going nowhere slowly,
They're only fighting for the chance to be last.
There's nothing wrong with going nowhere, baby,
But we should be going nowhere fast.
It's so much better going nowhere fast.”

Did you catch it? The most Jim Steinman lyric in all of Jim Steinman’s work. Here I will point it out for you:

“Everybody's going nowhere slowly,
They're only fighting for the chance to be last.”

At one point in time I had misheard the lyric and instead of “slowly” I thought they said “someday,” further implying that everyone dies someday, and we are only fighting against this unavoidable eventuality. I still believe that is the intended take away from this lyric, were going literally nowhere slowly/eventually, were only fighting for the chance to be last.

I have actually been listening to “Nowhere Fast” years before I knew of the existence of “Streets of Fire.” Not everyone has bothered to learn this, but Meat Loaf had four albums between “Bat Out of Hell” and “Bat Out of Hell 2.” In 1984, the same year “Streets of Fire” was released, Meat Loaf released “Bad Attitude” which include a cover of “Nowhere Fast.” To say “Nowhere Fast” was my favorite song off of “Bad Attitude” would be an understatement, it was by far the best song on that album. Meat Loaf’s version is excellent:

Meat Loaf - Nowhere Fast:

It is unlikely I will revisit the topic of “Streets of Fire” again anytime in the foreseeable future, so I would be remised if I did not discuss the other song written by Jim Steinman for this movie, “Tonight is What it Means to be Young.”

The original plan for the ending of “Streets of Fire” was to have the character Ellen Aim perform a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Fire.” Makes sense. However, they could not get the rights to Springsteen’s song, so the asked Jim Steinman to write a new song, which he did, in two days.

Jim Steinman is very proud of “Tonight is What it Means to be Young,” and rightfully so, it is a very complete and full sounding song. It is insane to think that Steinman some how crafted such a song in only two days, but I guess that is genius for you.

Apparently, the reshooting of the ending to accommodate the new song costs something unseemly, which contributed to the failed Tom Cody trilogy. Oh right, they planned to make three films about the protagonist Tom Cody, but after the box office failure “Streets of Fire” had, the idea was canned.

Or was it?

In 2008, Michael Pare agreed to reprise the role of Cody, in the unofficial, ultra violent, sequel “Road to Hell.” I have not seen this movie. I cannot find any means to see this, interesting film, but I want to just for novelty of it.

The new versions of Jim Steinman's songs look, I do not know uninspired, and once again lip-synced.

Road to Hell - Nowhere Fast:

Road to Hell - Tonight is What it Means to be Young:

Judging from all metrics “Streets of Fire” should have been forgotten, poor reception, universally agreed as a bad film, and made no money, that should have been the end of it. It should have had a fate of obscurity. Yet it has lived on, and its cult following is strong enough to encourage an eccentric director like Albert Pyun to make an unofficial sequel. From my perspective the only really great thing about “Streets of Fire” was Jim Steinman’s involvement, he wrote two excellent songs, two of the best songs Steinman ever wrote were for this train wreck of a film, and I believe that is the primary reason this movie is still so fondly remembered. It is the only reason I watched it, and by far the biggest reason I was able to enjoy it.

It just goes to show what a great original soundtrack can do for film.

- King of Braves

Dance of the Vampires - For Sarah

Jim Steinman is quiet possibly the most underrated song writer of all time.

Steinman is best known for his work with Meat Loaf, as he wrote literally every song Meat Loaf recorded until the half and half mix of “Bat Out of Hell 3.” However, he was very busy during the eighties and nineties writing a lot of music for female pop stars, namely Ellen Foley, Bonnie Tyler, and Pandora’s Box. He also wrote the music for the cult classic, street gang fight, musical, “Streets of Fire.” Lastly, his biggest success outside of his collaboration with Meat Loaf must be his creation of songs like “It’s all Coming Back to Me Now,” which was made famous by Canada’s Celine Dion, so yeah, we have Jim to blame for that, but still, an impressive resume. However, his greatest accomplishment outside of Meat Loaf, must be his 1997 musical creation “Tanz der Vampire” or “Dance of the Vampire.”

1967's "The Fearless
Vampire Killers."

“Dance of the Vampires” is a rock opera based off of Roman Polanski’s 1967 comedy horror film “The Fearless Vampire Killers.” The basic plot of both is Professor Abronsius and his assistant Alfred are attempting to prove that vampires exist when they meet the genuine article, Graf von Krolock. At the same time, they meet Sarah, the innkeeper’s daughter, and Alfred immediately falls in love with her, but unfortunately Krolock has also taken notice of the beautiful young girl and decides to make her his.

A wonderful thing about writing hundreds of songs for other people is you get to keep the rights to those songs and use them however you see fit, which is exactly what happens with “Dance of the Vampires.” Steinman rehashes some of his past songs and reworks them for this vampire adventure. The most prominent example being Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of The Heart” now reworked as “Vampires in Love:”

"Total Eclipse of The Heart" now with vampires... finally:

Other notably examples of Steinman doing this include; “Original Sin” which was originally performed by Pandora’s Box; “Is Nothing Sacred” was originally recorded by Meat Loaf on the “Very Best of” album; “Confession of a Vampire” is a rework of “Objects in the Rear-View Mirror may Appear Closer Than They Are,” from “Bat Out of Hell 2;” and the closing title track “Dance of the Vampires” is a rework of the main theme from the movie “Streets of Fire” called “Tonight is What it Means to be Young.” These are all interesting songs to explore and discuss, but some of the original material from “Dance of the Vampires” really stand out as some of the best songs in the play. I am extremely fond of “Carpe Noctem” but I prefer to focus on the key love song from the play “For Sarah.”

Marjan Shaki as Sarah

As mentioned before Sarah is the innkeeper’s beautiful daughter and Alfred falls madly in love with her at first sight. Our vampire lord Krolock spirits Sarah away and Alfred exclaims his resolve to find and save her in this epic ballad “For Sarah.”

On paper “For Sarah” is a rather simple song, just piano and a singer, but it follows the more complicated center piece of the musical’s “Carpe Noctem” so it is meant to be a softer song, a quiet and sweet moment for Alfred to express the strength of his love and conviction to save the damsel in distress. What makes this song special is the singer himself. I have seen several different individuals perform this song live online and while some are more impressive than others I have enjoyed them all. It is a truly nice love song surrounded by fantastic factors, I mean vampires and all, and that makes the level of declared potential sacrifice a little more serious since actual death lays around the corner for our heroes.

Now, most people reading this have probably never heard of “Dance of the Vampires” and that has a lot to do with the utter failing to bring the musical in the United States. The original “Tanz Der Vampire” was a huge hit in Austria and Germany, and from everything I seen, heard and read about it, the German language version is superior to the English one in every conceivable way; but why is that? The songs were all written by an American, why did the US version fail so catastrophically. Well according to Steinman, the cast and crew in the US version did not take it seriously, and I can kind of understand why. The movie that inspired the story for “Dance of the Vampires” was a comedy, and the subject matter is silly and also rather trite in our current cultural zeitgeist regarding vampires. I mean “Vampires in Love” how cliché has that idea become?

Nonetheless Steinman is correct. Too many jokes were inserted into the English version. The great charm of “Tanz Der Vampires,” and the song “For Sarah,” was the passion put into it by it’s performers. The Germans and Austrians took this musical very seriously and they put together a highly emotional and exciting, albeit perhaps a little silly, musical experience. The wishy washy approach the Americans took undermined the story, the music and all the emotion that was required for making this piece of art work.

Because the music at it’s core is so damned good, the English versions of the songs are still thoroughly enjoyable. “For Sarah” is a song that needs, and in fact demands, the highest calibre of singing performance. For this reason, I believe the English version holds up very well, but I must say it is worthwhile to investigate the multiple German language version you can find online. I used to listen to one version on youtube a lot, but as these things go I can no longer find it, so here is a slightly not as great version:

Live German Version:

I feel for Steinman. He is likely to go down as one of the most overlooked song writers of his generation, and what might have been his magnum opus after the original “Bat Out of Hell,” this epic vampire musical, will likely be forgotten mostly by the English speaking music listening audience. This is the sort of review I think is highly important, I suspect a lot more people should be enjoying this over the top vampire rock opera than there are currently; and I am just doing my small part to help that along.

- King of Braves

Meat Loaf - Everything Louder Than Everything Else

1977 was a good year for Meat Loaf and the gang, “Bat Out of Hell” was a super hit and the world tours that followed were smash hits. But things were turning ugly. Meat Loaf partied and toured himself to exhaustion and began to lose his voice, also he made numerous enemies in the music industry that poisoned his and Jim Steinman’s ability to get a proper record production going. Slowly but surely Meat Loaf sank into obscurity.

Most stories like this one would end here. A huge flash in the pan and then some casual world tours with a loyal but fleeting fan base, luckily for Meat Loaf and his fans, his fate would be very different from this.

After four albums that flopped, though one is an arguable exception, Meat Loaf was gaining an impressive amount of traction touring Europe and growing his cult following. Someone advised Meat Loaf do the obvious thing and regroup with Jim Steinman, the mastermind songwriter behind “Bat Out of Hell” and see if they could once again reignite the fire of that first album.

Again, normally, the story would end with a flat dud, but this is not one of those stories.

Steinman decide they should create “Bat Out of Hell 2: Back Into Hell.” In some ways, the second installment of Bat Out of Hell was very much an attempt to return to form of the original. In some ways “Bat Out of Hell 2” was a unique and special experiment. In most ways, the album was showcase of Jim Steinman songs that had previous been recorded by other artist and lost to the sands of time. For this last reason critics panned the album, believing no one could enjoy a rehashing of Steinman’s mostly failed endeavours; but what do they know? The general public strongly disagreed, and they loved the hit single “I Would Do Anything for Love.”

“I Would Do Anything for Love” is a wholly original song, and while inspiring the same sort of over the top drama for stark raving love that we had seen before, there had never been anything in the Meat Loaf or Jim Steinman playlist quite like it, there had never really been anything ever like “I Would Do Anything for Love.” Logically it became a number one hit song and the album was a huge success, and Meat Loaf became a legend.

I guess one could argue that “I Would Do Anything for Love” is a touch on the sappy side, what with it being so direct in proclamation of extreme love, and while that is part of it’s charm I am not going to dwell any longer on this song, because unbeknownst to most the best song off of “Bat Out of Hell 2” is “Everything Louder Than Everything Else.”

“Everything Louder Than Everything Else” is another completely original song from Steinman and it is very different than the passionate love songs, and is perhaps I a little more akin to the original “Bat Out of Hell” song itself, only instead of focusing on a street gang fighter’s motor bike crash, this song is an ode to the joy of life, lust and rock and roll.

On the album before “Everything Louder Than Everything Else” begins, a poem read by Steinman plays titled “Wasted Youth,” which is interesting because the turn of phrase “a wasted youth is better by far, than a wise and productive old age,” is present in “Everything Louder Than Everything Else.”

“I remember everything!
I remember everything little thing, as if it happened yesterday.
I was barely seventeen, and I once killed a boy with a Fender Guitar.
I don't remember if it was a Telecaster or a Stratocaster,
But I do remember that it had a heart of chrome, and a voice like a horny angel.
I don't remember if it was a Telecaster or a Stratocaster,
But I do remember that it wasn't at all easy.
It required the perfect combination of the right power chords,
And the precise angel from which to strike!

The guitar bled for about a week afterwords,
And the blood was zoot, dark and rich, like wild berry's.
The blood of the guitar was Chuck Berry red.
The guitar bled for about a week afterwords,
But it rung out beautifully,
And I was able to play notes that I had never even heard before.

So I took my guitar,
And I smashed it against the wall,
I smashed it against the floor,
I smashed it against the body of a varsity cheerleader,
Smashed it against the hood of a car,
Smashed it against a 1981 Harley-Davidson,
The Harley howled in pain,
The guitar howled in heat.

And I ran up the stairs to my parents bedroom.
Mommy and Daddy were sleeping in the moonlight.
Slowly I opened the door,
Creeping in the shadows right up to the foot of their bed,
I raised the guitar high above my head,
And just as I was about to bring the guitar crashing down upon the center of the bed,
My father woke up, screaming ‘Stop!’
‘Wait a minute. Stop it boy. What do you think your doing?’
‘That's no way to treat an expensive musical instrument.’
And I said, ‘God Damn It daddy,’
‘You know I love you, but you've got a hell of a lot to learn about Rock n' Roll.’”

This poem/intro was original recorded on Jim Steinman’s solo album “Bad For Good” only titled as “Love, Hate and American Guitar.” It’s presence on the second Bat Out of Hell is highly appropriate given the contents of the song that follows it. The dialogue between father and son fits very well with the whole “wasted youth” theme, and the desire to never fully grow up. Rock and Roll was always in theory a young man’s game, but by the nineties, and even more so now, since even more time has passed, we have seen great rock legends age and mellow, but for the most part they never lost that youthful joy of sex, drug and rock and roll, or at the very least they never lost a love for life.

We, the listener are hits with a barrage of witty phrases exemplifying an arrested development and the contrast of joy of partying and enjoying life compared with the dryness of being responsible and pursuing society’s mature goals; and a final thought on all of this is put in the intro to what a bridge:

“But it seems to me to the contrary, of all the crap they're going to put on the page,
That a wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.”

In a literal sense, we could probably debate the merits of a wasted youth versus a productive one, and as someone who has invested an extraordinary amount of time and energy into being productive I got to say there are regrets. All in all, we have a classic rock song about rebellion and defying expectations and being true to one’s self, the very essence of rock and roll. “Everything Louder Than Everything Else” is a very upbeat song, and is one of the tunes I often turn to get some positive energy into my mind. There is this focus on what really matters and it is not all about power, health, glory, or wealth.

Until next month keep on rocking in the free world.

- King of Braves

Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell

Approximately forty years ago, Jim Steinman and Michael Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf, set out to create the ultimate motor cycle crash song. They succeeded.

When I was a child my parents owned a copy of “Bat Out of Hell” on vinyl, and I remember looking at the cover art and being fascinated by what I saw. Some muscular biker dude was bursting out of the ground of a graveyard on a motor cycle ready to confront a giant bat. I remember my older brother and I wanting to hear this record and learn how this biker was going to fight the giant bat. Despite that story not existing in any context on the actual content of the music, when we finally did listen to it the narrative stories therein did not leave my young mind disappointed. The music was so epic that it satisfied my youthful wild imagination, even though I was too young to fully appreciate the social dynamics of a song like “Paradise by The Dashboard Light.”

“Bat out of Hell” is a one of kind album, even though there are now three albums by that name by Meat Loaf. Despite reasonably revisiting the general and vague album concept of bat out of hell twice more there could not be a real recreation of the original. A perfect storm of creativity was unleashed when “Bat Out of Hell” was produced. The two men involved Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman were both extremely eager to explode onto the music scene and their combination of talents was exactly what the world needed.

Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf.

Jim Steinman was a marginally successful screen writing for a handful of musicals, and Meat Loaf was a virtual unknow who’s primary body of work consisted of playing a supporting role in the musical “Hair.” Both men were eager to break into the mainstream, Steinman was a methodical thinker and had a masterplan all sorted out, meanwhile Meat Loaf was a force of nature, a powerful singer who presumed he would charge his way to success with sheer force of will. Their chance meeting came when Steinman was looking for a unique singer with an unique presence, someone possessing something special, an edge, a certain grit. Steinman was hoping for a handsome young man, who would sound and look the part of a Hollywood star, what he got instead was a powerful fat man who sang perfectly for his ambitions but looked nothing like what was expected. While uncertain at first if Meat Loaf was the right choice for this project, Meat Loaf successfully charged his way into Steinman’s life.

It should not have worked. From a business perspective, the concept album of “Bat Out of Hell” should not have been a commercial hit. The forty-five-minute album had only seven songs on it, making the average song length six and half minutes in length, typically far too long to be pop music radio friendly. Grandiose epics about motor cycle crashes and trying to hook up with the head cheerleader were in theory too aggressive and uncouth for the late seventies and arguably still now. Also instead of a young pretty boy as the front they had this berserking fat man singing his heart out. In theory that should not appeal to the simple-minded masses, but magically this is one of the those times when something totally awesome was deservedly well received by everyone.

Effectively “Bat Out of Hell” is one of those rare perfect albums, and a persistent candidate for my list of ten albums to include on a deserted island.

My favorite song on this album has change about six times in my life but I have found in recent years the title track has persistently stood out to me the most.

As stated in the opening sentence of this review, “Bat Out of Hell” is the greatest motor cycle crash song ever recorded. The opening is over two minutes of instrumental, which is one of the many reasons this album should not have had much success with pop radio. However, this serves multiple purposes, beyond simply being fantastic. Steinman having trained himself to write full musicals is presenting his overture in this opening two minutes. The pace and tension is set for high drama without a word being uttered.

With out first verse the scene described in the beginning of “Bat Out of Hell” is one of violence and danger:

“The sirens are screaming, and the fires are howling
Way down in the valley tonight.
There's a man in the shadows with a gun in his eye
And a blade shining oh so bright.
There's evil in the air and there's thunder in the sky,
And a killer's on the bloodshot streets.
And down in the tunnels where the deadly are rising
Oh, I swear I saw a young boy down in the gutter
He was starting to foam in the heat.”

Street and gang violence is what is present here. This fits perfectly with the motor cycle theme but also with Steinman’s interests, the man always seemed fascinated with gang warfare, leather jackets, and guitars, this because all too obvious when we discover “Street of Fire” a Jim Steinman musical movie about exactly all these things described just now.

Our rock and roll hero, has come to town for one reason, some babe he is in love with, for she is “the only thing in this whole world, that’s pure, and good, and right.” But like a bat out of hell he’ll be gone when the morning come. Taking off “faster than any boy has ever gone” he with blaze our out of town on his motor cycle.

Steinman had wanted to include the sound of an actual motor cycle in the song, and at the six-and-a-half-minute mark you can hear it, only it is not a real motor cycle but rather guitarist Todd Rundgren mimicking the sound of motor cycle with his guitar. This is made all the more impressive when you discover he had to improvise the sound after the studio disallowed Steinman to use the real thing.

Then it happens, the crash:

“Then I'm down in the bottom of a pit in the blazing sun,
Torn and twisted at the foot of a burning bike,
And I think somebody somewhere must be tolling a bell.
And the last thing I see is my heart, still beating,
Breaking out of my body and flying away
Like a bat out of hell.”

I have never been entirely sure how to take the part about his heart breaking of his body and flying away. I thought it might have been about ascending to heaven after death, a final redemption, where our rock and roll hero’s soul breaks free from hell in the after life. Or perhaps it is meant to simple declare the intensity of his passion and love for the women he is presumably singing this song to.

Epic might an inaccurate description for “Bat Out of Hell,” perhaps over the top would be more appropriate. Everything about Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman, and “Bat Out of Hell” is dramatic. What could be a straight forward song about crashing your motor bike and dying becomes this nearly ten-minute rock opera about gang violence, true love, and possibly salvation. We all seek these things, we want things to be dramatic, and that is probably why the zealous melodrama of “Bat Out of Hell” appealed to so many people, myself included.

In conclusion, “Bat Out of Hell” is a great song. Most of you already knew that, but it bears repeating.

- King of Braves.

Meat Loaf - In The Land of the Pigs The Buthcer is King

On the eightieth, I’m going to go see Meat Loaf with my two little brothers and my good friend Jeff Agnew. It should be a great time. Because Meat Loaf will be in Calgary this month I might as well do one of his songs.
As those who know me, you know that I am likely the biggest Meat Loaf fan you will ever know. Of course I have all three Bat out of Hell CDs. I even have three of the five CDs of Meat Loaf’s that were never released in North America (Thanks HMV!). I know more Meat Loaf songs then anybody I know, by far!

So lets talk about Meat Loaf for a moment.

If you look at your Bat Out of Hell CD (I’m just assuming you have one), you will see at the bottom of the cover in small text “songs by Jim Steinman.”

So lets talk about Jim Steinman for a moment.

Jim Steinman for those of you who don’t know, and I presume most of you don’t, is one of the greatest songwriters of our time. Other then writing nearly every single Meat Loaf song, he is creditable for making stars out of pop sensations Bonnie Tyler, Ellen Foley, and Fire Inc. (maybe you’ve seen “Streets of Fire”, I haven’t.). He also helped Cilene Dion’s ass by writing every song of hers that is actually any good. Barry Manilo, yep, he wrote a bunch of his songs too. He also wrote the Hulk Hogan theme song, you know the one by Rick Derringer - “Real American”. More importantly he has won international success by writing theatrical musicals. Back in the seventies he meet Meat Loaf when casting for his musical “More Than you Deserve”, which is a great song by the way. Since then his biggest success was in 1998 with his German production of “Tanz Der Vampire”, or “Dance of the Vampires” if you prefer. My brother Niall has the CD soundtrack for “Tanz Der Vampire” and it rocks. Expect to hear more from “Dance of the Vampires” in future music in reviews.

So now that you know more about my friend Jim Steinman, lets talk about Batman, that’s right, Batman.

Music producers were in awe of how awesome Jim Steinman was at creating “Tanz Der Vampire” so they offered him another gig. Guess what? Batman the musical.

How I know what you’re thinking, “Colin that’s a stupid idea. Batman the musical?” Well all I have to say is SHUT UP! Jim Steinman could make it work and if you don’t believe me, listen to March’s song in review. Meat Loaf – “In The Land of The Pig (The Butcher is King)”. This is the only song written for Batman the musical that has been recorded to date. Yeah apparently most people felt that Batman was better off not as a musical so Jim Steinman was stuck having written five songs for effectively nothing.

Now Meat Loaf sings “In The Land of The Pig”, which now you know is supposed to be sung by the bloodsucking villains to Batman at the climatic end just before Batman busts their asses. I don’t know about you, but I can totally see Two-Face, yelling at Batman about how out of control Gotham has become.

“There’s only one law Batman. The law of averages!” Two-Face tosses his coin in the air; will it be good side, or bad side? “In the land of the pig, the butcher is king, Batman!”

See what I mean! They should have made this musical! Like you wouldn’t go see it just for the novelty of it all.

Anyway I hope you enjoy Meat Loaf’s version of Jim Steinman’s Batman song. If you are really impressed or just love Batman as much as I do, check out also off “Bat Our of Hell III” the song “Cry to Heaven.” This song was not written for Batman the musical exactly. It is a base song Jim uses a lot in musicals. In “Dance of the Vampires” it’s instrumental fundamentals helped make the song “Angels Arise”, but for “Batman the Musical”, “Cry to Heaven” is apparently more or less as it was intended to be off Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell II”.

Crazy world right? Batman… awesome,

Until next month keep on rocking in the free world.

- Colin