Meat Loaf, "Bat Out of Hell"

CJ is the wolf with red roses

CJ Kaplan

Mitch Blum

, and

Ken Warshaw

Oct 04, 2023

CJ’s Pitch:

“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.” -Voltaire

“Ain’t no doubt about it. We were doubly blessed. ‘Cause we were barely seventeen and we were barely dressed.” -Meat Loaf

“See what I mean?” -Voltaire

###

Colgate didn’t need a 6’ 2” small forward with a shaky handle and a questionable jump shot, so my basketball career was over before my freshman year even started. Thus disengaged from the sport that had taken up most of my time for the past four years, I looked for another activity to occupy my college years.

At an open house event for club sports, I meandered over to the table where the crew team was recruiting new members. They looked at my long, albeit thin, arms and legs and said, “We’ve gotta get you in a boat.” As so my rowing career began.

Crew is a sport of attrition. If you kept showing up for the brutal pre-dawn workouts in the gym and the grueling afternoon sessions on the water, you made the team. Being a glutton for punishment, that’s exactly what I did. Two weeks into training I had earned a seat in the Novice 8.

As hard as the crew team worked, we partied even harder. When there wasn’t a race, Saturday was a day off. The festivities started with a keg after practice on Friday afternoon and pretty much continued until the small hours of the following morning. Many of those Friday nights were spent at the apartment of two sophomore members of the women’s crew team where we played drinking games with dice and listened non-stop to Bat Out Of Hell.

It’s hard to say what so enthralled us with this album. Maybe it was because we knew all the words. Maybe it was because it was fun to sing the “guy” part of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” while my friends sang the “girl” part. Maybe Meat Loaf was just a good companion to irresponsible drinking. In any case, Friday nights were devoted to the king of “theater rock”.

###

I don’t know if “theater rock” is actually a subgenre of rock ‘n’ roll, but it ought to be. And in the late 1970s, theater rock was having a moment. In addition to Meat Loaf, Styx, Queen*, Jethro Tull, Kansas (“orchestra rock”?) and Genesis** were all topping the charts. On top of that, a husband and wife mime team called Shields & Yarnell had a primetime TV show. Mimes on television…not talking! So yeah, theater.

###

Listening to Bat Out Of Hell is like taking a walk down EONS memory lane. Oh look, there’s Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan from the E Street Band contributing drum and keyboard parts. And here’s Edgar Winter playing saxophone. I’ll be damned, that’s Todd Rundgren producing the whole thing. And there’s Clive Davis telling Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman (who wrote all the lyrics) to get the fuck out of his office with this bullshit.

And yet, when they finally released this thing after a half dozen years of being laughed at, rejected and mocked, it sold 14 million copies in the U.S. and over 20 million worldwide. Let that sink in for a moment. 20 million copies. Eventually, it eclipsed 40 million copies, which puts it in Dark Side of the Moon/Rumours/Hotel California territory.

How?

Sure, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” is a teenage rite of passage (and part of a Colgate Crew hazing ritual), but what about the rest of the album? “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” is probably the best track and likely cracks the Billboard Top 40 as a single from any other artist. The title cut is okay, if a little overstuffed at nearly ten minutes long. “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” has the most unintentionally funny intro in music history, but the song itself is decent. The rest of the album is like the songs on the Rent soundtrack that only people who have seen the show seventeen times know.

So let me ask again.

How?

Here’s the thing, kids. Rock ‘n’ roll is about the grand gesture. It’s being bombastic and outrageous and overwrought. And not apologizing for any of it. When we dream about being rock stars, most of us don’t picture ourselves sitting quietly on a wooden stool strumming a guitar and singing softly to a politely demure audience. We see ourselves running across a stage, long hair streaming behind us while we scream into a microphone as guitars wail, drums crash and thousands of adoring fans lose their shit.

That’s rock ‘n’ roll.

That’s theater.

They are two sides of the same coin.

So the question is: Does Bat Out Of Hell belong on Newbury St.?

What’s it gonna be, boys? Yes or no?

*It’s criminal that we haven’t done a Queen album yet.

**Yes, I put Genesis in there to piss off Mitch.

Mitch’s Response:

Contrary to popular belief, it isn't the over-the-top theatricality of Bat Out of Hell that makes me hate Meat Loaf.

You think musical theater is your ally? You merely adopted the theater. I was born in it, molded by it. I suffered through endless loops of Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest hits in my parent's car and forced participation in productions of "Oklahoma!" at summer camp. Like Mah Jongg and gefilte fish (Fish Loaf?), musical theater is just a part of growing up Jewish.

So, if it's not the theatricality, why do I hate Meat Loaf so very much, even moreso after being forced to listen to Bat Out of Hell for a week?

Meat Loaf is actually a good singer, so it's definitely not that. Plus, he's kind of an inspiration for sweaty chubby boys who want to be rock stars.

The music isn't bad. Sure there are too many parts to each song, but somehow Genesis brilliantly makes complex structures work on classic song suites like "Supper's Ready".

Nope, like Ceej deftly pointed out in his pitch, the problem is definitely the words. Whatever emotion Meat Loaf wrings out of the songs is completely underdone by the ham fisted lyrics. Even as a barely-literate kid I would recoil at silly, dated couplets like: "But there ain't no Coupe de Ville hidin' at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box."

In other words, two out of three things on this album ain't bad, but Jim Steinman's lyrics make the whole thing pretty unlistenable.

Which kind of makes me sad, because I can picture little Jimmy Steinman, setting up his mother's Mah Jongg board, singing along to "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" and getting ready to dig into a nice loaf of gefilte fish.

Pitch Failed (Gilbert & Sullivan > Aday & Steinman)

Ken’s Response:

I love you, CJ but I’m so mad at you for making me listen to this atrocity this week. I’m not sure what I dislike most, the asinine album cover, the sophomoric lyrics, the overly-dramatic vocal, the intro on “Bat Out of Hell” that takes an eternity to go nowhere, or the fact that Mr Loaf seems to take himself way too seriously. You know what, it’s probably just his penchant for ridiculous handkerchiefs that only Stephen Tyler and Stevie Nicks can pull off.

My sister and her friends used to sing “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” when they were in middle school, and even at 2 years their junior, I had the good sense to be listening to literally any other music made by any other artist in any other genre. Even listening to it this week, I cringed (literally, not like the kids say) listening to the awful spoken word at the beginning of “You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth”, the fake motorcycle sounds on the title track, the baseball announcer on the aforementioned “Paradise…”, and the horrific trying-way-too-hard vocals on “For Crying Out Loud”.

Congratulations to CJ and Meat Loaf for giving me the single worst album we’ve done on EONS!

Pitch Failed (two out of three is still two too many)

CJ’s pitch was unsuccessful and Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell shall not be defiling the hallowed halls of the Newbury St. Collection. What’s your take on Meat Loaf and schlock rock? Which Top 20 Album from 1978 would you have pitched? Please let us know in the comments section.

Exile on Newbury St.

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