Meat Loaf

It's an unsettling feeling, realizing your first exposure to an artist came well after the album that made them famous. This was the case with R.E.M. and Pearl Jam (my first albums of theirs were Monster and Vitalogy, respectively), and even more absurdly, with the legendary Meat Loaf.

The 90s did not own Meat Loaf. He just baked the world a loaf of music while passing through, a loaf entitled Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell. The lead single, "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do that)," was one of the catchiest pop songs of the decade, supported by what might have been the single most epic music video of all time. What it contained: helicopters, motorcycles, castles, floating furniture, lightning, masks, a police chase, heartbreak, longing, wailing, and profound lyricism (example: "Will you hose me down with holy water if I get too hot?") Grab some popcorn and watch it in its nearly-eight-minute-long glory.

I'm especially weirded out by the law enforcement aspect, since it implies that Meat Loaf's character has done something very wrong, and at best his crime was spying on the woman in the bed. At worst... well, I'll just say the video gets more and more disturbing as I imagine Mr. Loaf having committed more depraved and perverse crimes. Also, how about Inspector Glasses McGhee at 5:03? Somehow that guy made sense as an authority figure in the early 90s.

I was so into this song when I was nine years old that I actually acted out the music video with my Legos. First I had a Lego guy in medieval garb ride around on a motorcycle while being pursued by a space ship (I didn't have a helicopter). Then the guy narrowly escaped into a giant Lego castle and sang to a Lego wench in the next room. If you can fuse together the four images below, you will have a clear idea of what it was like:

Of course the number "II" in the album's title entailed a first Bat out of Hell, but despite my overwhelming love for the sequel I never bothered seeking out the original until about two years ago. My parents knew about Bat out of Hell and thought it was a silly, overwrought product of the late-70s. Eventually I would learn that this was 1. totally true; 2. totally a good thing. I also didn't realize that Bat II marked Mr. Loaf's return to form with Bat I collaborator Jim Steinman, who wrote all of the songs on both albums. Steinman had always intended to continue the Bat saga, but some personal feuds during the 80s stalled the process. In his own words:

I didn't call it Bat out of Hell II just to identify with the first record. It really does feel like an extension of that... It was a chance to go back to that world and explore it deeper. It always seemed incomplete because I conceived it like a film, and what would you do without Die Hard 2?

What, indeed? Bat II retained Steinman's musical magic as well as his deep lyrical skills. The song "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer than they Are" was an emotional and cathartic exploration of his difficult past:

It's a really passionate song. It's really, I think maybe, the most passionate one on the record. I mean, I'm really proud of it because that's really one that goes over-the-top in the sense that it's got images - it has religious imagery of resurrection, it's got images of fertility and rebirth, it has really very good sexual images, images of cars - which I always like.

I see no better way to close this celebration of Meat Loaf than by listening to the man at the height of his glory. Here's the original song, "Bat out of Hell," with its motorcycles, Roy Bittan piano line, and soaring choruses. Also, it's got images.