It still does to this day - obviously, you can tell. Usually people want to hear themselves on the radio, but “Two” would come on and I’d go, “Not gonna listen to that.” “Maybe we can talk all night…” I could walk out there and sing it live like that and sound just like the record, but I’d be a complete fool, because people wouldn’t believe a word of it. When “Two Out of Three” would come on the radio when it was a hit, man, I sounded like Alvin from the Chipmunks! It would come on the radio and I would turn it off. So that’s how much we sped that record up. You could make a symphonic record 53 or 54 and still get some volume out of it, because there’s no drums and no electric guitars. So they sped that record up by almost a minute and a half, because if not, you couldn’t get any volume. And then he said, “Plus, you can’t put it on the record because we don’t have time.” Because we were dealing with vinyl, and vinyl, with a rock record, the maximum was like 49 and a half minutes, and we were almost 52. The song “Who Needs the Young” was originally going on “Bat Out of Hell.” And Todd (Rundgren, the producer) didn’t like it. And besides that, “Bat Out of Hell” had to be sped up to get on vinyl. Because they come to shows, and expect me to sound like I did when I was 26. There will never be another “Paradise.” You might get another pop song like “Took the Words,” which we have, but it’s not like “Took the Words.” But there are people that say they’re fans that only own “Bat Out of Hell,” and it drives me crazy. You’re not gonna ever be able to do “Bat Out of Hell” again. There are fans out there that are gonna not like it, because it’s not like “Bat Out of Hell.” It’s like Springsteen trying to recreate “Born to Run”-it’s not gonna happen. Is it difficult to put out a new album, knowing that it’s going to be rated against a classic? Almost none of that 2016 chat ever saw the light of day, but with Meat Loaf having died on Thursday, it seems like an appropriate occasion for Variety to bring some of our lively conversation out from the vault, as we say a last adieu to Marvin Lee Aday. The purpose of our get-together was to create some press notes for “Braver Than We Are,” but the conversation often detoured toward “Bat,” his history with Steinman, the rejection they experienced before becoming stars, and the working methods he used in firmly believing that he was an actor above all, and a singer secondarily. But the principals have some growing to do.In 2016, I went into a conference room in Beverly Hills to spend a couple hours talking with Meat Loaf, who had just finished recording what would be his final studio album, “Braver Than We Are.” The project found him dipping into nearly 50 years’ worth of Jim Steinman songs that he’d never gotten to or that had been newly revised, and he also brought in Ellen Foley and Karla DeVito for cameos to really make the project feel like old home week, as much he was adamantly opposed to trying to recreate the sound of his 1977 breakout, “Bat Out of Hell.” The arrangements aren’t bad, although they play into the hammiest of Meat Loaf’s postures, and the playing is excellent, led by pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg of Springsteen’s E Street Band and producer Todd Rundgren’s guitars. Steinman is wordy, and his attempts to recapture adolescence are only remembrances he can’t bring out the transcendently personal elements that make a song like “Night Moves,” an obvious influence here. Some of the songs here, particularly “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth,” are swell, but they are entirely mannered and derivative. ![]() Jim Steinman, who wrote and arranged the entire album, needs a lot less of both. He needs a little less West Side Story and a little more Bruce Springsteen. Meat Loaf has an outstanding voice, but his phrasing is way too stage-struck to make the album’s pretensions to comic-book street life real. ![]() Bat Out of Hell reflects such diversity, but can’t resolve it. Meat Loaf earned his somewhat eccentric name as a performer in the Rocky Horror Show, the theatrical torture, although he had previously spent several years as a rock singer in Detroit, even recording a single or two for Motown.
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