This review is a little longer than most but bear with me and we’ll see it through together.
Disc 1860 is…Bat Out of Hell
Artist: Meat Loaf
Year of Release: 1977
What’s up with the Cover? A very sexy, very flexible barbarian bursts forth from his grave on a motorcycle decorated with what may be the skull of a horse.
You’d think having died and (presumably) gone to hell once already that our rider would wear proper protective clothing while riding, but no. He’s dressed in nothing but a loincloth.
Also notable, the massive and ultracool bat headstone on the biker’s tomb. Big bat energy!
How I Came To Know It: This is a longer tale than usual, but I’ll try to be brief and hopefully we’ll exit to the main review with minimal emotional scarring. It is a tale of terror and redemption, told in two parts.
It began around the time it got released. I don’t remember my exact age, but well under 10. These were hard times. My mom was divorcing my dad who was a drunk, and not the fun kind. He was moved out of the house by this time, and at some point when I wasn’t home he had dropped off a copy of “Bat Out of Hell” on vinyl for me as a gift.
Later that night he called – drunk – and slurring away he butchered some of the lyrics to “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” at me, while my mom sat in the room, horrified, trying to be supportive, letting me know through a mix of whispers and gestures that I was free to talk to dad or hang up, whatever I was comfortable with. After an indeterminate period of fear-inspired paralysis, and some halting efforts to navigate the conversation, I hung up.
So Meat Loaf and I didn’t get off to a great start.
A few years passed, and into my teens this record became ubiquitous at parties and events, and like everyone else of my generation I got to know it pretty well, even to the point of singing along (n.b. this is a record that is very hard to not sing along to). It was a cursed relic in my collection – full of danger and dread but so compelling I couldn’t resist putting it on.
Flash forward many decades. Maybe ten years ago, I was walking home from the pub with Sheila and our good friends Cat & Ross, and on a whim the four of us decided to detour into the very suspect selection of CDs and records in the local London Drugs. Our mission? Buy one record or CD right there. Find something among the wreckage and buy it, no matter what!
I found Meat Loaf sitting there for $9.99 and while everything I just shared was still with me, it felt a little less dangerous with a couple of drinks in me (yes, I recognize the irony). Anyway, I bought it and got it home. Side note: my three companions all welched on our pact. Disappointing…
But back to the music. How do I feel about it now? Well, readers, that’s what you’re here to find out, innit?
How It Stacks Up: I have two Meat Loaf albums, and this is the best one by a goodly margin - #1.
Ratings: 4 stars
Let’s set aside the personal journal and just take a minute to bask in the overblown, ambitious, majestic glory that is “Bat Out of Hell”. This record is all the right kinds of crazy, with every musical idea that writer Jim Steinman could imagine, all dialed up to eleven.
You can’t talk about “Bat Out of Hell” without Steinman, who is the creative genius behind this hyperbolic collection of bombast. Meat Loaf is his muse, but Steinman is the conductor.
These songs feel better suited as part of a live rock opera a la Rocky Horror than a rock and roll record, but Steinman is a manic genius and bends the genre to his will, making songs that raise their quavering devil horns with such pure conviction that they can’t possibly be faking it.
Do you like excessively long rock anthems that are entirely unsuitable for radio play? Well, “Bat Out of Hell” has three of them. You’re welcome.
It all starts with the title track, which has about as many movements as a 19th century classical symphony. I could describe each of them but doing that would take the rest of my evening and this entire review, and I’m already over. The song captures the reckless energy of driving too fast, then the drawn-out pain of the inevitable crash and death, before ending with the image of a young man’s heart literally bursting out of his body and flying away…like a bat out of hell. What the flying fuck?
This sort of thing shouldn’t work, but fortunately Steinman’s genius has the perfect partner in the bigger than life person and voice of…Meat Loaf. Meat Loaf - one of rock and roll’s great all time voices - vibrating with a tension that pushes higher and higher but never snaps under all the resulting pressure. Instead you just know in your bones that everything he is singing about is REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT.
Everything that comes out of Meat Loaf’s mouth becomes bigger and better, and the record becomes a series of ultracool phrases that after multiple listens you start to eagerly anticipate.
On the album’s second song, “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” he practically trembles with emotion as he sings:
“It was a hot summer night, and the beach was burning
There was fog crawling over the sand
When I listen to your heart, I hear the whole world turning
I see the shooting stars falling through your trembling hands”
Yes! Yes and yes! If you aren’t getting it by reading the stanza, you can be forgiven, but if you’ve ever heard the song even in passing then right now there is a 50/50 chance you are already raising a clawed hand to the sky – Jack Black style – and brandishing your invisible goblet of rock.
Meat Loaf is the consummate front man, with acres of range both through the octaves but also emotionally. He can bring the power, but he can also sing with tenderness and love, as he demonstrates at the end of the record on “For Crying Out Loud” (another nine minute epic).
And in between those two epics we have the record’s biggest commercial moment which is fittingly also nine minutes long. “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” is the song that introduced my entire generation to sex in a car years before we even what sex was, or even that the song wasn’t remotely about baseball.
While “Bat Out of Hell” is a musical waiting to happen (I think it eventually did happen…), “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” is an entire story all on its own. It features young lust, a vigorous exchange of ideas between our two protagonists, consummation and – inevitably – regret.
Some great lines here as well, but my favourite: “And we're glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife” which captures that glint of light that comes from the instruments of the titular dashboard, even as it evokes the glow of youthful desire. Yeah, I said it. Titular.
Musically the record borrows from seventies stadium anthems, theatre, classical, doo wop and everything in between. You get pianos, guitars, duets, hand claps and all manner of excess, all blended into a soup of sex, speed, and rock and roll. sexual discovery through Steinman’s vision and Meat Loaf’s artistry. Is it all a bit ridiculous? You’re damned right it is – delightfully ridiculous.
There will always be a darkness lurking at the edge of my mind when I listen to “Bat Out of Hell.” I could harbour a futile anger at my now long-dead father for this, but life’s too short for that. In the end all we really have is how we own our experiences. “Bat Out of Hell” is a God-damned triumph. If it took a few decades longer than it should have for me to realize that, well that makes the victory – my victory – all the sweeter.
Post-script: Having written this I couldn’t remember if I even had my original vinyl anymore. Turns out, I don’t. I don’t remember when it left, and I don’t miss it. But the CD, and all the awesome memories it holds? That’s a keeper.
Best tracks: Bat Out of Hell, You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night), Paradise by the Dashboard Light, For Crying Out Loud
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