CD Odyssey Disc 1878: Meat Loaf

It was brought to my attention that my last review (for Neil Young’s “Harvest” was published on Neil Young’s 80^th birthday. I 100% did not know this (Neil, not having invited me over for the festivities) although all those “best Neil Young song lists that were popping up make a lot more sense now.

Disc 1878 is… Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell

Artist: Meat Loaf

Year of Release: 1993

What’s up with the Cover? Our motorcycle riding barbarian from the original album (reviewed at Disc 1860) has returned, and while back on earth he has managed to find some pants.

Emboldened by his newfound clothes, and armed with a ball of hellfire that probably should be stored more securely when riding, he heads for the gates of hell, which are guarded by a the big bat demon from the original album, and also a golden angel.

The angel is there presumably to ask, “are you sure you want to do this?” and sadly for all of us, the barbarian is undeterred as are we, his hapless audience, who are about to be subjected to this record.

How I Came To Know It: Meat Loaf wasn’t on my radar in 1993, but I liked the video for the song “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” enough that when I saw this record sitting in the $3 bin earlier this year I said, “what the hell”.

How It Stacks Up: I have two Meat Loaf albums, and this is by far the lesser of the two.

Ratings: 1 star

“Bat Out of Hell II: Back to Hell” is the worst collection of aimless, pointless, directionless bombast I have heard in a very long while. If I could send this collection of songs back to hell, reader, I would do so.

The sequel to “Bat Out of Hell” takes all the lessons learned from the 1977 record and misapplies them so badly I felt multiple times that Meat Loaf and songwriter Jim Steinman were deliberately punking me.

Even the record’s most recognizable and arguably best song, the exhaustingly titled “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” can’t get it right. The original “Bat Out of Hell” title track is a song that successfully breaks all the rules. Almost a full 10 minutes of overblown glory, and you love every minute of it.

The video edit of “…I Won’t Do That” is a chunky 7:40 journey that is a bit tiresome in places, but lifted up by a really hot girl running through a mansion, and a guest vocal (famously not sung by the lip synching woman in the video) that is a delightful counterpoint to Meat Loaf’s signature vibrato.

The album version is almost five minutes longer, with no discernable melodic or narrative value in the extra content. Minus the pretty girl to look at, it quickly becomes interminable. We’re left to wonder just what Meat Loaf famously won’t do when he references “that”.

Through the course of the song he confirms he will do a number of his duet partner’s requests. These include: make magic with his ‘own two hands’ (barf), build an emerald city with grains of sand, cater to her fantasies (one of which includes being hosed down with holy water), take her on trips and provide a parting gift when she goes home. Check, check, and check.

Apparently, the only things he “won’t do” are break up with her or screw around, both of which are not things you typically do for love anyway. The mind is tempted to marvel at what else he won’t do but ultimately, we yawn.

And that’s one of the record’s good songs.

After this we get a whole load of songs that are overlong, go nowhere, and have sprawling titles like “Life is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back”, “Out of the Frying Pan (And Into the Fire)” and “Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are”. These song titles need an edit as badly as the songs themselves (which are respectively 7:58, 7:22 and 10:14 in length).

Along the way you will be treated to such tortured “Meat-aphors” as:

“If life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car”.

By track four – the aptly titled “It Just Won’t Quit” (n.b. also over seven minutes long) you realize that Jim and Meat really won’t. It was when I heard this stanza:

“Oh, is this a blessing or is it a curse?
Does it get any better? Can it get any worse?
Will it go on forever? Is it over tonight?
Does it come with the darkness? Does it bring out the light?
Is it richer than diamonds, or just a little cheaper than spit?
I don't know what it is, but it just won't quit”

…that I began to suspect this drivel was fucking intentional.

Whatever magic Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf captured on their first album is long gone. I imagine the two of them sitting around in the studio having a conversation like this:

“Hey Jim - I’ve got an idea. Kind of half developed, and featuring a strained and obvious metaphor. Can you help me out?”

“Sounds great, Meat. I can write that. But rather than developing it into an epic rock song, how about we just double down on that tired metaphor, throw in some overused phrase that you hear every day, and repeat it ad nauseum for a solid seven to ten minutes.”

“Um, yeah, OK – but let’s put a pretty girl in the video to boost sales.”

The record’s final song is the right-sized (five minute) and generally passable “Lost Boys and Golden Girls” which right at the end reminds you that Meat Loaf, for all his faults, has a great rock and roll voice, and that Steinman can write a song. But by then I had already endured 70 minutes of garbage and was too far gone to care.

Best tracks: The video edit of “I’d Do Anything for Love” (n.b. – not on the record), and “Lost Boys and Golden Girls”

CD Odyssey Disc 1860: Meat Loaf

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 19^th 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