Bat Out of Hell |
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Released: October 21, 1977 Peak: 14 US, 9 UK, 5 CN, 17 AU, 13 DF Sales (in millions): 14.0 US, 3.28 UK, 50.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock |
Tracks:Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 46:36 |
Rating: 4.283 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings)
Quotable:“There are only a small number of records that fall into the ‘essential rock album’ category, and this is definitely one of them.” – Steve Marshall, TheNightOwl.comAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
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His BeginningsMarvin Lee Aday is one of rock’s unlikeliest superstars. He was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1947. He got the nickname “Meat Loaf” in seventh grade because of his 240-pound frame and later intentionally gained sixty pounds so he would fail his physical exam for the Vietnam War draft.When his first efforts at a music career failed, Meat Loaf turned to musical theater, joining a Los Angeles production of the musical Hair. That earned him a contract with Motown, where he made an album with Shaun “Stoney” Murphy, a fellow Hair performer. That generated the song “What You See Is What You Get,” which reached #71 on the Billboard Hot 100. Jim SteinmanIn 1973, Meat Loaf landed parts in the shows More Than You Deserve (written by Jim Steinman) and The Rocky Horror Show. The latter led to his eventual reprise of the role of Eddie in the movie version (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) while the former led to a longtime collaboration between Meat Loaf and Steinman, a classically trained pianist whose who’s theatrical, over-the-top writing style would come to define Meat Loaf’s sound.As a composer, Steinman drew on the “pomp and circumstance of Richard Wagner” TB and subscribed to the same principle which “made Andrew Lloyd Webber a multimillionaire knight: if you do kitsch, do it big.” AZ “There never could have been a singer more suited for [Steinman’s] compositions than Meat Loaf, a singer partial to bombast, albeit shaded bombast.” AM Peter Pan Becomes Bat Out of HellMeat Loaf and Steinman decided to work on a musical album project based on Peter Pan. It evolved into the Bat Out of Hell album. TB Their work was interrupted by Meat Loaf’s stint as lead vocalist on five of the nine tracks on Ted Nugent’s 1976 album Free-for-All.The pair had a hard time getting signed by a record company because their songs didn’t fit into a recognizable industry genre. They finally landed a deal with Cleveland International Records and got the album produced by Todd Rundgren, who “gives Steinman’s self-styled grandiosity a production that’s staggeringly big but never overwhelming and always alluring.” AM. Bat Out of Hell was released in October 1977. The Album’s Unique Place in Music History“There is no other album like Bat Out of Hell, unless you want to count the sequel.” AM “Nobody else wanted to make mini-epics like this.” AM This collection of songs makes for “one of rock’s most theatrical, grandiose records” 500 and one of the genre’s “least likely hit albums.” AZ It is “overwrought and undeniable;” AZ “epic, gothic, operatic, and silly – and it’s appealing because of all of this.” AM “It’s rock as soap opera.” PR“It’s hard not to marvel at the skill behind this grandly silly, irresistible” AM and “brassy, brash and over the top” ZS “megaselling, megabombastic mega-album.” 500 “There are only a small number of records that fall into the ‘essential rock album’ category, and this is definitely one of them.” NO The SongsThis is musically “a savvy blend of oldies pastiche, show tunes, prog rock…and blistering hard rock (thereby sounding a bit like an extension of Rocky Horror Picture Show.” AM The songs are fused with “sentiments are deliberately adolescent and filled with jokes and exaggerated clichés.” AM This is “the sound of the American dream slipping into a coma as images of drive-in movies, teenage sexual fantasies and motorbike mythology flash before its eyes.” PR “It may be easy to dismiss this as ridiculous, but there’s real style and craft here and its kitsch is intentional.” AMThe album “often gets compared to [Bruce Springsteen’s] Born to Run.” CQ Bat has “Springsteen-esque narratives,” AM “the same small-town themes, epic production, and even personnel [E Street Band members Max Weinberg and Roy Bitten] but where Born to Run provides a nuanced look at the trials and triumphs of kids bursting out of small town America, Meat Loaf throws subtlety out the window. Everything here is bigger.” CQ Bat Out of Hell turns ‘Born to Run’ into a 10-minute roar, throwing motorcycle sound effects and ‘Leader of the Pack’ melodrama into the pot.” CQ “There’s real (albeit silly) wit behind these compositions” AM and “Meat Loaf finds the emotional core in each song, bringing true heartbreak to Two Out of Three Ain't Bad and sly humor” AM to “the breathless nookie-quest [of] Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” AZ complete with “baseball announcer [Phil Rizzuto] to narrate the backseat hookup.” CQ
Notes:A 2001 reissue added a live version of “Bat Out of Hell” and its intro, “Great Boleros of Fire.” |
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First posted 3/22/2008; last updated 9/13/2024. |
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