Information AboutBat Out Of Hell |
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| meat loaf albums | |
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| 1977 albums | |
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''Bat out of Hell'' is the extremely successful second Album of Singer Meat Loaf , released in 1977 . It was written by Jim Steinman and produced by Todd Rundgren . Its musical style is influenced by Steinman's appreciation of Richard Wagner , Phil Spector and Bruce Springsteen . Although not an immediate hit, the album has become one of the Biggest Selling Of All Time . It sells about 200,000 copies per year and has sold an estimated 34 million copies worldwide. '' Rolling Stone '' magazine ranked it at number 343 on their List Of The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time . Steinman produced a sequel in 1993 called '''', released in October 2006, featured seven songs written by Steinman. PRE-PRODUCTION The album developed from a musical, ''Neverland'', a sci-fi update of Peter Pan , which Steinman wrote for a workshop performed at the Kennedy Centre in 1977.12 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.3 The three songs were "Bat out of Hell", "Heaven Can Wait" and "The Formation of the Pack", which was retitled "All Revved Up With No Place to Go." Steinman and Meat Loaf had immense difficulty finding a record company willing to sign them. According to Meat Loaf's autobiography, the band spent most of 1975, and two and a half years, auditioning the record and being rejected.4 Sonenberg jokes that they were ''creating'' record companies just so they could be rejected.5 They performed the album live, 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. The singer recounts the incident in his autobiography. Not only did Davis, according to Meat Loaf, say that "actors don't make records", the executive 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.Clive Davis, as recalled by Meat Loaf, in Meat Loaf/Dalton, pg. 117 Meat Loaf asserts "Jim, at the time, knew every record ever made. {Link without Title} is a walking rock encyclopedia." Although Steinman laughed off the insults, the singer screamed "Fuck you, Clive!" from the street up to his building.Meat Loaf/Dalton, pg. 117 . In an 1989 interview with ''Classic Rock'' magazine, Steinman labeled the Canadian musician "the only genuine genius I've ever worked with." PRODUCTION Recording started in 1976 in , Roger Powell and Willie Wilcox . Edgar Winter played the Saxophone on "All Revved Up." Rundgren himself played guitar, including the infamous "motorcycle solo" on "Bat out of Hell."Meat Loaf/Dalton pg 121-2 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 orchestrating. 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.Meat Loaf/Dalton pg 123-4 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!"Meat Loaf/Dalton pg 125-8 Another E Street Band member, Steve Van Zandt , and manager David 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 Popovitch accepted the album for Cleveland.6 Rundgren Mixed the record in one night. However, the mixes were not suitable to the extent that Meat Loaf did not want "Paradise" on the album. Jimmy Iovine , who had mixed Springsteen's '' Born To Run '', remixed some of the tracks. After several attempts by several people, John Jansen mixed the version of "Paradise" that is on the album. According to Meat Loaf, he, Jansen and Steinman mixed the title track. COMPOSITIONS Todd Rundgren acknowledges that Steinman was highly influenced by the "rural urban teenage angst" of Bruce Springsteen .7 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." The album opens with its title track. " Bat Out Of Hell ", taken from Steinman's ''Neverland'' musical. It is the result of Steinman's desire to write the "most extreme Crash Song of all time".8 It features a boy who is riding so fast and ecstatically that he is unable to see an obstruction until it's "way too late." The next track, " You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth ", opens with spoken word, performed by Steinman and Marcia McClain, that was also taken from the ''Neverland'' musical, as were the next two tracks.9 "All Revved Up With No Place to Go" describes the beginning of a relationship and also the taking of the girl's Virginity :
Side two opens with "'' documentary, 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 only "get away" with that lyric "in a Meat Loaf song." The sixth track, " Paradise By The Dashboard Light ", is an epic story about teen romance and sex. A duet between Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley , the couple reminisce driving to a secluded spot, at which he plans to have sex. They "make out" heavily in the middle instrumental section, described in metaphor in a baseball commentary by New York Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto . However, she stops him just before they have sex, insisting that he first proclaimed his love for her. The final part of the song displays the couple in an acrimonious relationship, in which they are "praying for the end of time" because "if I got to spend another minute with you I don't think that I can really survive." Whereas the title track is the "ultimate car crash song", this, according to the writer, is the "ultimate car sex song." It epitomizes the album's, as Ellen Foley describes, "pre-pubescent sexual mentality."10 The final track of the album, "For Crying Out Loud," is a more sedate love song. It recounts the positive changes that a girl has made to the singer's life, which had "reached the bottom." The song also incorporates some sexual innuendo with the line "And can't you see my faded Levi's bursting apart." Comparing the album to Steinman's late-60s 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 play in 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 than he can't imagine Steinman being at a lakeside with the most beautiful girl in school, but he can imagine Steinman imagining it. TRACK LISTING All songs written by Jim Steinman. Side one # " Bat Out Of Hell " – 9:48 # " You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night) " – 5:04 # "Heaven Can Wait" – 4:38 # "All Revved Up with No Place to Go" – 4:19 Side two # " Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad " – 5:23 # " Paradise By The Dashboard Light " – 8:28
# "For Crying Out Loud" – 8:45 The album also exists in numerous other formats and rereleases, including a twenty-fifth anniversary edition with three bonus tracks ("Great Boléros of Fire (live intro)", "Bat out of Hell (live)", and "Dead Ringer for Love") and the ''Hits out of Hell'' DVD, and a "Bat out of Hell: Revamped" release featuring the song "Dead Ringer for Love". COVER Steinman is credited with the album cover concept, which was illustrated by Richard Corben . The cover depicts a motorcycle, ridden by a long-haired person, bursting out of the ground in a graveyard. A large statue of a bat towers above the rest of the tombstones. In 2001, '' Q '' magazine listed the cover as number 71 in its list of "The Hundred Best Record Covers of All Time."11 Steinman had wanted equal billing with Meat Loaf on the album's title. He wanted it to be called ''"Jim Steinman presents..."'' or ''"Jim and Meat,"'' or vice versa. For marketing reasons, the record company wished to make 'Meat Loaf' the recognizable name. As a compromise, the words "Songs by Jim Steinman" appear relatively prominently on the cover. The singer believes that this was probably the beginning of their "ambivalent relationship."Meat Loaf/Dalton, pg 124-5 The album was dedicated to Wesley and Wilma Aday (Meat Loaf's parents) and Louis Steinman. Title The phrase "bat out of Hell" can be traced back to the Greek playwright Aristophanes ' 414 BC work entitled '' The Birds ''.12 In it is what is believed to be the first reference to a bat out of Hell : Steinman registered "Bat Out of Hell" as a ''.14 RECEPTION ''Bat Out Of Hell'' was released by Cleveland International on October 21 1977 . Cleveland International's parent label was Epic Records , where almost everyone hated it. In 1993, Steinman reflected that the album is "timeless in that it didn't fit into any trend. It's been a part of what's going on. You could release that record at any time and it would be out of place."15 Response to the album was slow. Steinman asserts that it was "underpromoted", having a reputation of being "damaged goods because it had been walked around so many places." Australia and England were the first to develop interest. The BBC Television programme '' Old Grey Whistle Test '' aired a clip of the live band performing the nine-minute title track. According to ''Classic Rock'', response was so overwhelming, that they screened it again the following week. They later invited to band to perform "Paradise" live. "As a result, in the UK ''Bat'' became and unfashionable, uncool, non-radio record that became a 'must-have' for everyone who heard it, whether they 'got' Steinman's unique perspective or not." The album was not an immediate hit; it was more of a growing one. ''Bat Out of Hell'' still sells about 200,000 copies per year and has sold an estimated 34 million copies worldwide,16 14 million in the United States alone,17 over 1.5 million (22 times platinum) albums in Australia (even re-entering charts on June 2007, at number 43 on the ARIAs) becoming one of the Biggest Selling Albums Of All Time .18 It stayed on the United Kingdom charts for 474 weeks,19 a feat surpassed only by the 477 weeks of Fleetwood Mac 's '' Rumours ''.20 In 2003, the album was ranked number 343 on '' Rolling Stone '' magazine's List Of The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time .21 In 2006 it was voted number nine in a Poll conducted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to discover Australia 's most popular album.22 Reviews were initially mixed. '' Rolling Stone '' calls the songs "swell, but... entirely mannered and derivative." The arrangements "aren't bad", although the musicians are commended. The review ends with the assertion that the "principals have some growing to do."23 Contemporary reviews are more positive, however. '' All Music Guide '' declares "this is Grand Guignol pop -- epic, gothic, operatic, and silly, and it's appealing because of all of this." They acknowledge that Steinman is "a composer without peer, simply because nobody else wanted to make mini-epics like this." Rundgren's production is applauded, as is the wit in the music and lyrics. "It may elevate adolescent passion to operatic dimensions, and that's certainly silly, but it's hard not to marvel at the skill behind this grandly silly, irresistible album."24 PERSONNEL
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