MEATLOAF AGAIN

Ah, Meatloaf, we hardly knew ye. And there's a rumor on the electric wind that you died of Covid. And now there are all sorts of weird back and forths about whether or not the album Bat Out of Hell is some seminal happening or a blight on the aural landscape. 

For those who don't know, Meatloaf was a singer/actor who died recently. Long ago and far away he had an album called Bat Out of Hell, full of songs by a guy named Jim Steinman, that was very huge. The most famous song on it is Paradise by the Dashboard Light. He also played Eddie in the movie Rocky Horror Picture Show. For that alone, attention must. be paid.

I first came to him not from that huge album of 1977, but at Cinema 150, on Camino Royale in Santa Clara, in 1979. That was the year my brother took me to Rocky Horror for the first time. And the second. And third. And on and on. In my mind, we went every week end that entire year. I was all of thirteen, navigating eighth grade in your average American dysfunctional home. Which seems to be what most kids were doing at the time. Rocky Horror was scary, exciting, and liberating. I felt at home going to that movie. Nothing was taboo, everyone seemed cool with everyone else, regardless of how they looked or dressed, and I was accepted as I was. 

And on Cinemo 150s huge screen, along with Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon and Richard O'Brien and Little Nell and Barry Bostwick and that narrator with no fucking neck was this chubby biker dude who came out of a frozen sort of suspended animation to sing a song about Saturday night, only to get axed, literally, by Frankenfurter.

This was my introduction to Meatloaf. 

It was glorious. 

Years went by, and suddenly I was in High School and there was this thing called MTV, which showed music videos, and since this was a new format, we got lots of old vidoes at first. And one that seemed to be in heavy rotation was Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Very awesome, dirty, cool. Some of my more musical purist friends spoke of Meatloaf with disdain, but I liked the song. It didn't change my life or anything, but it was fun. 

More years go by, and I am out of college and seeing a gal who was going to UC Santa Barbara, and while waiting for her to get out of class, I went to a matinee of Wayne's World, and there was Meatloaf, playing a bouncer in a club.  I watched that movie a lot. Not as much as Rocky Horror, but a lot. 

So Meatloaf again had a presence in my life, now as a sort of has-been showing up in the movies. 

And then, in the summer of 1993, I took an extended road trip with my brother, and at some forgotten gas station bought a cassette of Bat Out of Hell, and played that sucker over and over, across Arkansas, over to Graceland, up to Chicago, and on to NYC. 

And I realized that the album was pretty fucking great. A pop album, yeah, and a bit juvenile, but there was a kind of glory in that unvarnished teen age angst and lust. I would play it from time to time, and some of my friends would smirk, roll their eyes, or worst of all, ask me if I could play something else. 

More years go by, and then Meatloaf and Steinman get back together and make Bat Out of Hell II. 

Now that sucked. It was like they wanted to make an album that was as stupid and shallow as some had said their first effort had been.

And they succeeded. 

I think the last big thing I remember Meatloaf doing was sing the National Anthem in what I hope was a drunken stupor and not just where he was, singing wise, for a rally for Mitt Romney during the latter's run for President.

I think about that moment from time to time. Here was this guy who at one time had a multi-million selling album, a dude who was in the movie Rocky Horror Picture Show, who I later learned was in the original cast of the musical Hair, standing in front of a crowd, singing horribly in honor of a man who bore a striking resemblance to that neckless narrator from Rocky Horror. 

What a downfall. Or so it seems to me. Who knows, really? Maybe that's what he wanted to do. To make bad follow up albums trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle. To support what seems to have been the polar opposite of what he stood for in his youth. To become the butt of far too many jokes.

I don't know. 

I do know I loved him in Rocky, and I still listen to Bat Out of Hell from time to time. 

Here's a song. It's Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Crank it up.