Bat Out Of Hell Meatloaf

Bat Out of Hell Album: Bat Out Of Hell (1977)
by Meatloaf

Like all of Meat Loaf's hits, this was written by the pianist-composer Jim Steinman. He said he wrote it to be the ultimate "motorcycle crash song." The lyrics refer to a rider being thrown off his bike in a wreck and his organs exposed:

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

The song "Leader Of The Pack," which also features a motorcycle, was a big influence to Bat Out of Hell.

The motorcycle sound in the middle of the song is producer Todd Rundgren on electric guitar. Todd hated the idea at first, but Steinman begged him until he tried it, pulling it off, along with the subsequent solo, in one take.

Jim Steinman wrote this song for his stage production Neverland, which he had been developing since 1975. The play debuted at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, on April 26, 1977. The Bat Out Of Hell album was released on October 21, 1977 and contained two other tracks from Neverland as well: "Heaven Can Wait" and "All Revved Up with No Place to Go."

Steinman trademarked the name "Bat Out Of Hell" in 1995, and in 2006, Meat Loaf sued him when Steinman wouldn't let him use the title "Bat Out Of Hell III" for an album. Steinman produced the album Bat Out Of Hell II, but Desmond Child produced the 2006 album.

Like a "Bat Out Of Hell" is an expression meaning very fast. He shot outta there like a "bat outta hell!"

Producer Todd Rundgren told Mojo magazine February 2009 of Bruce Springsteen's influence on the Bat Out of Hell album. Said Rundgren: "Jim Steinman still denies that record has anything to do with Springsteen. But I saw it as a spoof. You take all the trademarks - over long songs, teenage angst, handsome loner- and turn them upside down. So we made these epic songs, full of the silly puns that Steinman loves. If Bruce Springsteen can take it over the top, Meat Loaf can take it five storeys higher than that - and at the same time, he's this big, sweaty, unappealing character. Yet we out-Springsteened Springsteen. He's never had a record that sold like Bat Out of Hell, and I didn't think that anyone would ever catch on to it. I thought it would be just a cult thing. The royalties from that album enabled me to follow my own path for a long time after that." More proof you suck Bruce da pedo...

The Bat Out of Hell album spent 474 weeks on the UK albums chart and became one of the top five all-time best selling albums there.

Aside from a limited-edition 12-inch, "Bat Out Of Hell" was never issued as a single in the US, but it was the first song many radio stations started playing after the album came out. Running 9:56, it was far too long for pop radio, but embraced by the Freeform and Album Oriented Rock stations that were all over the airwaves.

Bat Out Of Hell went on to sell about 30 million copies (give or take a few million depending on whose accounting you believe), but when it was released, its success was anything but a given. Meat Loaf was a very obscure artist and the album was unconventional, with nothing that sounded like a standard radio hit. This break in convention ended up distinguishing the album and prompting the huge sales figures.

Even the guys who played on the album thought it would flop. In an interview with Kasim Sulton, who was the bass player, he said that while recording it, he thought the album was "the biggest joke that I've ever been involved in." He learned that it was not a joke when he heard the song on the influential New York City radio station WNEW-FM. "I hear this track, and I said to myself, 'That sounds vaguely familiar. Where have I heard that song before?'" Sutton said. "Then it hit me: 'I played on that!' It was 'Bat Out of Hell,' that track. And then after hearing it on WNEW, the record exploded."

In the UK, this was edited down to 6:40 and released as a single, charting at #15 in February 1979 - 16 months after the album was released. In 1993, it was re-released in the UK (this time cut to 4:50), and charted at #8.

On the album version, the vocals don't come in until 1:55.

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.[14] 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.[14] 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. [He] 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.