Bat Out of Hell
Bat Out of Hell is the debut studio album by American rock singer Meat Loaf and composer Jim Steinman. The album was developed from the musical Neverland, a futuristic rock version of Peter Pan which Steinman wrote for a workshop in 1974. It was recorded during 1975–1976 at various studios, including Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York. The album was produced by Todd Rundgren, and released in October 1977 by Cleveland International/Epic Records. Bat Out of Hell spawned two Meat Loaf sequel albums: Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose.
Bat Out of Hell has sold over 43 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is certified 14× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. It is the best-selling album in Australia, having been certified 26× platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. As of June 2019, it has spent 522 weeks in the UK Albums Chart, the fourth longest chart run by a studio album. In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked it at number 343 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album inspired Bat Out of Hell: The Musical, staged by Jay Scheib in 2017.
Pre-production
The album was developed from a musical, Neverland; the play is a futuristic rock version of Peter Pan which Steinman wrote for a workshop in 1974, and performed at the Kennedy Center Music Theatre Lab in 1977. Steinman and Meat Loaf, who were touring with The National Lampoon Show, felt that three songs were "exceptional" and Steinman began to develop them as part of a seven-song set they wanted to record as an album. The three songs were "Bat Out of Hell", "Heaven Can Wait" and "The Formation of the Pack", which was later retitled "All Revved Up with No Place to Go".Bat Out of Hell is often compared to the music of Bruce Springsteen, particularly the album Born to Run. Steinman says he finds that "puzzling, musically", although they share influences; "Springsteen was more an inspiration than an influence." A BBC article added "that Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan from Springsteen's E Street Band played on the album only helped reinforce the comparison."
Steinman and Meat Loaf had difficulty finding a record company willing to sign them. According to Meat Loaf's autobiography, the band spent most of 1975 writing and recording material, and two and a half years auditioning the record and being rejected. Manager David Sonenberg jokes that new record companies were being created just so the album could be rejected. They performed the album live in 1976, with Steinman on piano, Meat Loaf singing, and sometimes Ellen Foley joining them for "Paradise". Steinman says that it was a "medley of the most brutal rejections you could imagine." Meat Loaf "almost cracked" when CBS executive Clive Davis rejected the project. According to Meat Loaf's autobiography, Davis commented that "actors don't make records" and challenged Steinman's writing abilities and knowledge of rock music:
Do you know how to write a song? Do you know anything about writing? If you're going to write for records, it goes like this: A, B, C, B, C, C. I don't know what you're doing. You're doing A, D, F, G, B, D, C. You don't know how to write a song.... Have you ever listened to pop music? Have you ever heard any rock-and-roll music.... You should go downstairs when you leave here...and buy some rock-and-roll records.
Meat Loaf asserts "Jim, at the time, knew every record ever made. is a walking rock encyclopedia." Although Steinman laughed off the insults, the singer screamed "Fuck you, Clive!" from the street up to his building.
In one 1989 interview with Classic Rock magazine, Steinman labeled Todd Rundgren "the only genuine genius I've ever worked with." In a 1989 interview with Redbeard for the In the Studio with Redbeard episode on the making of the album, Meat Loaf revealed that Jimmy Iovine and Andy Johns were potential candidates for producing Bat Out of Hell before being rejected by the singer and Steinman in favor of Todd Rundgren, whom Meat Loaf initially found cocky but grew to like. Rundgren found the album hilarious, thinking it was a parody of Springsteen. The singer quotes him as saying: "I've 'got' to do this album. It's just so 'out' there." They told the producer that they had previously been signed to RCA.
Production
Recording started in late 1975 in Bearsville Studios, Woodstock, New York. Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg, the pianist and the drummer from Springsteen's E Street Band played on the album, in addition to members of Rundgren's group Utopia: Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell and John "Willie" Wilcox. Edgar Winter played the saxophone on "All Revved Up". Rundgren himself played guitar, including the "motorcycle solo" on "Bat Out of Hell". Both Steinman and Rundgren were influenced by Phil Spector and his "Wall of Sound". According to Meat Loaf, Rundgren put all the arrangements together because although "Jim could hear all the instruments" in his head, Steinman hummed rather than orchestrated.When Rundgren discovered that the deal with RCA did not actually exist, Albert Grossman, who had been Bob Dylan's manager, offered to put it on his Bearsville label but needed more money. Rundgren had essentially paid for the album himself. Mo Ostin at Warner Bros. was impressed, but other senior people rejected them after they performed live. Steinman had offended them a few years earlier by auditioning with a song named "Who Needs the Young", which contains the lyric "Is there anyone left who can fuck? Screw 'em!".
Another E Street Band member, Steven Van Zandt, and Sonenberg arranged to contact Cleveland International Records, a subsidiary of Epic Records. After listening to the spoken word intro to "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth ", founder Steve Popovich accepted the album for Cleveland.
Rundgren initially mixed the record in one night. However, some of the mixes were unsuitable, to the extent that Meat Loaf did not want "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" on the album. Jimmy Iovine, who had mixed Springsteen's Born to Run, remixed "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad". After several attempts by several people, John Jansen mixed the version of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" that is on the album, along with "All Revved Up with No Place to Go". According to Meat Loaf, he, Jansen and Steinman mixed the title track.
Phil Rizzuto's baseball play-by-play call for "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" was recorded in 1976 at The Hit Factory in New York City by Rundgren, Meat Loaf and Steinman. As an Italian Catholic, Rizzuto publicly maintained he was unaware that his contribution would be equated with sex in the finished song. However, Meat Loaf asserts that Rizzuto claimed ignorance only to stifle criticism and was fully aware of the context of what he was recording.
In a 2016 interview with the BBC, Meat Loaf claimed the entire album was "sped up" when it was released as compared to the recording.
Composition
Todd Rundgren states that Steinman was highly influenced by the "rural suburban teenage angst" of Springsteen. According to manager David Sonenberg, "Jim would always come up with these great titles and then he would write a song that would try to justify the greatness of the title."Since 1968, Steinman had been working on a magnum opus, which finally opened in 2017 in the form of Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical. The first incarnation of his work was a musical called The Dream Engine when he was in college at Amherst. The qualities of teenage rebellion and a girl joining a "tribe" led by a charismatic leader are present in all versions of Steinman's work. It is in The Dream Engine that the spoken word piece "Hot Summer Night" originates, and is the earliest work that appears on the Meat Loaf album, where it is performed by Jim Steinman and actress Marcia McClain.
The next incarnation of Steinman's magnum opus, during the 1970s, was a musical called Neverland, which contained many of the same scenes and themes as The Dream Engine but was now largely depoliticized and contained many Peter Pan references. Some scenes in Neverland, such as the parents feeding their imprisoned daughter "dream suppressant" drugs, are still present in Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical, but overall Neverland was of a much darker tone. This musical contained the songs "Heaven Can Wait", "Bat Out of Hell", and "All Revved Up with No Place to Go". On the 25th anniversary version of Bat Out of Hell, one of the bonus live tracks, "Great Boleros of Fire", is an instrumental version of another song from Neverland titled "Gods".
When staged in 1977, the cast of Neverland included Ellen Foley as Wendy – who performs the lead female vocal on "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" on the album. The music for Neverland was performed by Orchestra Luna, and one of their members at the time was Karla DeVito. Foley was not available when it came time to go on tour for the album, so Karla DeVito took her place. In the various promotional music videos for the songs on the album Bat Out of Hell Karla DeVito's lips are synced to Ellen Foley's album vocals.
The opening track "Bat Out of Hell" is the result of Steinman's desire to write the "most extreme crash song of all time".
"You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth" is musically inspired by the rock chords of The Who's "Baba O'Riley" with a Phil Spector-style melody on top. In Jim Steinman's Neverland and Bat Out of Hell: The Musical, the spoken word "Hot Summer Night" and this song are used as an exchange of wedding vows, and to celebrate a wedding.
The song "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" was written in direct response to actress Mimi Kennedy asking Jim Steinman whether he could write a simple song like Elvis Presley's "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You". Todd Rundgren identifies how the song was influenced by the Eagles, who were successful at the time. The producer also highlights the "underlying humor in the lyrics", citing the line "There ain't no Coupe de Ville hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box." He says you could "get away" with that lyric only "in a Meat Loaf song."
Ellen Foley, who appears on "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", first met Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman while they were all working together on the National Lampoon Road Tour, so they had a history of performing over-the-top musical comedy sketches together. The baseball commentary make-out section performed by New York Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto was written with the announcer in mind, using phrases he would actually say during commentary.
"For Crying Out Loud" was originally written for the 1975 New York Shakespeare Festival musical Kid Champion, and a recording by an unknown artist is in the New York Public Library archives. Jim Steinman considers the line "And can't you see my faded Levi's bursting apart" his most daring lyric on the entire album.
Comparing the album to Steinman's late-1960s musical The Dream Engine, Classic Rock magazine says that Steinman's imagery is "revved up and testosterone-fueled. Songs like 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light,' 'Two Out of Three Ain't Bad' and 'For Crying Out Loud' echoed the textbook teenage view of sex and life: irrepressible physical urges and unrealistic romantic longing."
Steinman's songs for Bat Out of Hell are personal but not autobiographical:
I never thought of them as personal songs in terms of my own life but they were personality songs. They were all about my obsessions and images. None of them takes place in a normal world. They all take place in an extreme world. Very operatic...they were all heightened. They don't take place in normal reality.
For example, citing the narrative of "Paradise", Rundgren jokes that he can't imagine Steinman being at a lakeside with the most beautiful girl in school, but he can imagine Steinman "imagining" it.