Two and a half years of closed doors ended with a spoken-word intro about a hot summer night. Meat Loaf, the American rock singer, and songwriter Jim Steinman had been turned away by record company after record company, told their bombastic rock opera would never sell. On October 21, 1977, the debut album Bat Out of Hell finally appeared on Cleveland International Records and Epic Records, and the industry discovered how wrong it had been.
From Neverland to the Wall of Sound
The project began as Neverland, a futuristic rock version of Peter Pan that Steinman wrote in 1974. Those theatrical roots never left the music. Steinman wanted the title track to be the most extreme crash song ever written, and he filled the record with motorcycle solos, baseball commentary, and a woman's voice answering Meat Loaf in Paradise by the Dashboard Light. This was not a quiet singer-songwriter debut; it was a full-blown spectacle. The sessions drew on musicians from Bruce Springsteen's circle: Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg of the E Street Band both played on the record. Utopia members Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell, and John Wilcox also contributed, giving the album a dense, layered sound that matched Steinman's theatrical vision. The recording sessions stretched across 1975 and 1976 at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, Utopia Sound, The Hit Factory, and House of Music. Steinman and Rundgren were both drawn to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, and that influence shaped the album's huge, layered production.
Producer Todd Rundgren paid for the recording out of his own pocket. He found the album funny at first, hearing it as a parody of Bruce Springsteen, but he still shaped Steinman's wild arrangements into something recordable. Steinman would hum the parts, and Rundgren turned them into notes and assigned instruments. Without that personal financial risk, the record might never have been finished.
Clive Davis and the long rejection
The rejections were brutal. Clive Davis at CBS dismissed the project by saying actors do not make records. Meat Loaf had been acting on stage and screen, and that reputation followed him into every meeting. Steve Popovich, who ran Cleveland International Records, finally said yes after hearing just the opening of You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth. One song, one intro, changed everything.
Steve Popovich, who ran Cleveland International Records, finally said yes after hearing just the opening of You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth.
The cover matched the music's excess. Illustrator Richard Corben drew a motorcyclist bursting out of a grave while a giant bat loomed over a mausoleum, a concept Steinman himself designed. The album's five singles included Two Out of Three Ain't Bad and Paradise by the Dashboard Light, the latter featuring real baseball play-by-play from Phil Rizzuto recorded at The Hit Factory. The cover also carried the words "Songs by Jim Steinman," a compromise between Steinman's wishes and the label's marketing plans. The album later inspired a stage musical, Bat Out of Hell: The Musical, which premiered in 2017.
Sales figures became absurd. Bat Out of Hell passed 43 million copies worldwide, earned a 14-times platinum certification in the United States, and became the best-selling album in Australia with a 26-times platinum award. By June 2019 it had spent 522 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, a number that means a full decade of chart presence. The album's reputation has only grown with time. In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked it 343rd among the 500 greatest albums ever made, and in 2001 Q magazine ranked its cover among the hundred best album covers ever made. What was once dismissed as unmarketable had become a permanent part of rock history.
The partnership behind the record eventually soured. Steinman registered the Bat Out of Hell trademark in 1995 and tried to stop Meat Loaf from using the name. Meat Loaf fought back in 2006, attempting to cancel the trademark so he could release Bat Out of Hell III. Two collaborators who had once needed each other to survive rejection ended up battling over the title they built together.