A (Fan's) Tribute to Jim Steinman

If I could only find the words, then I would write it all down.  

If I could only find a voice, I would speak.  

Oh, it’s there in my eyes and coming straight from my heart. 

It’s running silent and angry and deep. 

Oh, it’s there in my eyes and it’s all I can say. 

Come on and look at me and read ‘em and weep. 

• “Read ‘Em and Weep” - Meat Loaf, 1981 

Music and lyrics by Jim Steinman 

“This will never sell.” 

“This stuff belongs on Broadway, not on an album.” 

“Your songs are too long.” 

“Radio stations will never play them.” 

“Your songs are too complicated.” 

“Do you even know how to write a song?” 

These were just some of the rejections that two American men in their late twenties faced in the mid-1970s when they were touring the record companies in New York, searching for a label to sign their ambitious debut album. 

They didn’t provide a demo tape. Instead, they went and performed live in the offices of every company, big and small, in the hopes of finding a backer. No one was interested. It wasn’t commercial, it wasn’t disco, it wasn’t easy-listening. No one knew what to do with it. 

After multiple brutal rejections, they found a label willing to take them on; they found a producer, and Bat Out of Hell became the biggest-selling debut album of all time, with a conservative estimate of around 50 million copies. 

One of those men was Meat Loaf, the singer; and the other was the composer, Jim Steinman. Somehow, two socially awkward misfits from opposite ends of the States in both geography, character and culture managed to find each other, when the former auditioned for a role in a musical written by the latter. 

Together, they formed a symbiotic creative relationship, defied the doubters and bucked the trends when their unique project became one of the most iconic, influential and controversial albums in music history. Hated as passionately as it was loved for its overblown, operatic, theatrical songs, it finally gained traction in the States, Europe and Australia thanks to their persistence, perseverance, and a handful of people who saw its potential and who had the influence to wrangle them a spot in a couple of all-important live performances at conventions and on television. 

Jim Steinman died on Monday 19th April 2021 of kidney failure. You may not know his name or his face, but you’ll know his songs. Here are some of his most famous compositions:  

Meat Loaf: 

• Bat Out of Hell 
• You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth 
• Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad 
• Paradise By the Dashboard Light 
• For Crying Out Loud 
• Dead Ringer For Love - duet with Cher 
• I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) 
• Objects in the Rearview Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are 

Bonnie Tyler: 

• Total Eclipse of the Heart 
• Faster Than the Speed of Night 
• Holding Out for a Hero (written with Dean Pitchford) 

Others: 

• It’s All Coming Back to Me Now - Céline Dion (Meat recorded it as a duet with Marion Raven in 2006, but check out the original Pandora’s Box version) 
• Making Love Out of Nothing At All - Air Supply (Bonnie Tyler also recorded it, but I wish Meat had done this one at some stage; it’s so obviously written for his voice!) 
• Whistle Down the Wind - Tina Arena (lyrics by Jim, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber) 
• No Matter What - Boyzone (lyrics by Jim, music by ALW, and Meat has recorded a version of it) 
• Tonight is What It Means to be Young - Fire Inc (for the movie Streets of Fire) 
• Nowhere Fast - Fire Inc (for the movie Streets of Fire) 

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Jim Steinman has written and produced so many epic, evocative and imaginative songs - each of them a mini movie in their own right - that you could spend a month browsing YouTube and still find rare gems that you’ve never heard before. I managed this even without the aid of YouTube Recommends. 

He combines the poetry of Shakespeare, the mythical storytelling of Tolkien and the grandiose sound of Wagnerian opera into his own unique and imitable style. Thundering power chords, tinkling piano riffs, unexpected transitions, memorable bridges, harmonious backing vocals and vivid lyrics are his hallmarks. 

It is, admittedly, an acquired taste. You either love it or hate it, there’s no middle ground. There are those who would rather stick burning pokers in their ears than listen to ten seconds of a Steinman song; and there are those who plan their entire funerals around them. They won’t rest in peace until either Meat Loaf’s angelic vocals on “Heaven Can Wait”, or producer Todd Rundgren’s motorcycle-guitar solo from “Bat” has sent them off into whatever afterlife they believe in. 

It’s also not something you stick on for a bit of background music or ambience. You have to be one-hundred percent committed to listening to a Steinman-penned album; preferably at top volume while tearing along a scenic road with the car windows rolled down...just, watch out for that sudden curve… 

He’s a brilliant, intelligent, witty, articulate man with a penchant for the macabre. He doesn’t conform to conformity, and unapologetically does his own thing in his way. He embraces his eccentricities and finds inspiration in everything from Hitchcock to Peter Pan to a snippet of conversation. 

So, how did a small, quiet, introverted, raised-in-the-Catholic-faith girl like me end up becoming obsessed with a composer whose most famous songs are about sex, sports and motorcycle crashes? 

It was 1993. I was six years old, and all of a sudden, this one particular song was everywhere. Every radio station and every TV channel (okay, so we only had four channels back then) was playing it. You know the one I mean: “And I would do anything for love. I’d run right into hell and back…” 

Even at that young, tender and impressionable age, I knew it was something special. That song, that piano intro, those lyrics...but most of all, that incredible, beautiful, powerful, otherworldly Voice that drove the whole thing. 

It went straight on my mental list of “Songs I Really Like”, and there were only two others. If you’d asked me back then what the others were, I couldn’t tell you either the song title or the artist*, but I knew this one was “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” by Meat Loaf. I never thought there was anything unusual about his name; I didn’t know what he looked like, and I didn’t care. I just liked the song. 

*One of the songs turned out to be Cutting Crew’s “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight”. I can’t even remember the other. 

My Mam got Meat Loaf’s album for Christmas that year. The first time I got a good look at it will be etched into my memory forever. I’d gone into our video cabinet to pull out a movie I wanted to watch, and the album was sitting on top of the unit. Even at cassette-size, it made an impression on me. That dramatic fantasy art cover by Michael Whelan, depicting a giant bat perched on top of the Chrysler building against a brewing storm, and a long-haired blonde guy on a motorbike flying in to kick its butt. Then there was the title: 

Meat Loaf 

Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell... 

Songs by Jim Steinman 

“Hm, that looks interesting...but does he not write his own songs?” I remember thinking, before I grabbed my video and forgot all about it.  

Like I said, I was six years old, and at that time I thought all artists, singers and bands wrote all their own songs. Now I know better, and when I see the words Songs by Jim Steinman, my eyes light up, and my eardrums brace themselves for a physical assault on their membranes. But back then, music wasn’t something I was interested in, not at that age. 

Fast forward about five years. I’m now in secondary school, about eleven or twelve, and like many girls my age, I’m starting to get into the current pop music on offer. My Mam and Dad had just got Sky TV installed, and I used to have the music channels on quite regularly; featuring Britney, ‘NSync and that kind of ilk. 

Then one day, quite out of the blue, while watching VH1 or MTV, I suddenly thought: “Is this it? Is this all there is on offer?...It doesn’t really excite me. I want something... bigger...better...louder…” 

Not long after that, Mam offhandedly suggested that we listen to her Meat Loaf tape in the car on the way to our caravan in the Lake District, about an hour and a half’s drive away from our home in the north east of England. I hadn’t said a word to her about my sudden craving for a different kind of music, but I jumped up and found the tape straight away. 

Off we set in the car, with Dad driving. In went the cassette and, well…You know how Dorothy leaves Kansas in black and white and lands in Oz in full HD, 4K colour? That happened. 

Turns out that “bigger, better and louder” are Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman’s bread and butter, turned up to the max. 

I think my jaw hit my lap about a quarter of the way through “Anything For Love” at around the three-minute mark, and stayed there for over an hour as I simply sat and listened in awe to this album. Yes! This is it! This is what has been missing from my life! 

For the first time I was hearing “Anything For Love” as it was supposed to be heard, not the butchered radio edits. Here was the unrestrained, full-throttle, full-length magnum opus that is still too short, and makes you feel like you’ve just watched the twelve-hour, extended-edition version of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in twelve minutes. 

The pacing, passion and intensity did not let up. I barely had time to breathe at the end of one track before the next one came with the subtlety of a anvil to the skull. By the end of it, I was excited and energised at the opportunity to get to explore this avenue, while at the same time utterly exhausted from the emotional rollercoaster I’d been taken on. 

Bat II transformed the weekend car journeys to the caravan from “Are we there, yet?” to “We can't be here already! Lost Boys and Golden Girls hasn't finished!” 

Once I’d learned every lyric by heart, I began to look into Meat Loaf’s other albums. We didn’t have a computer back then. There was no internet, no YouTube, no iTunes. All I had to go on was the limited selection in my local HMV, and begged, borrowed and bootlegged copies of tapes from the girls at school: “You like Meat Loaf? Oh, my Dad’s got one of his albums / videos. I’ll copy it for you.” 

*Disclaimer: I’ve since bought all the albums, most notably the two Bat albums in every format apart from eight-track. I’ve had them on CD, digital, and vinyl. Yes, I went through the vinyl and picture disc phase, too; scouring the charity shops for them. I even found a pristine copy of Jim’s solo Bad For Good album in a tiny record shop that’s tucked away beside the bus station, for crying out loud! 

So, yes: through Meat Loaf I discovered the rest of Jim’s work and back catalogue, and went on the hunt for everything I could lay my hands on. My parents already owned Bonnie Tyler’s Faster Than the Speed of Night album on vinyl, so that was straightforward. The rest proved to be trickier. 

I went to see the Whistle Down the Wind musical three times at the Sunderland Empire because Jim wrote the lyrics. For the few months it was on a UK tour, I would aim to get the bus to school that went the long way through town and passed by the theatre; just so I could see Jim Steinman’s name on the advertising poster in the box office window every morning. 

In 2017 Mam and I saw the Bat Out of Hell musical during its run at the London Coliseum. While it was thrilling and emotional to see Jim’s lifetime ambition come to fruition, there are two things that I remember most about that night. The first was the age-range of people in the audience, from teenagers to those of my parents’ generation; which goes to show how timeless his music is. 

The second was at the end, when Mam and I took the lift down to the ground floor, and the lift attendant got talking to us about the songs. Bear in mind that the Coliseum is home to the English National Opera, so the attendant has heard all the famous arias by all the great composers in her time working there; and she was astonished at the beauty of Jim Steinman’s music and lyrics. 

Somehow, those songs always came to find me when I needed them. A six-hour shift at my former part-time job in a supermarket was made bearable when I could sing along to “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” in an otherwise empty aisle, and send customers leaping out of my way as I screeched around a corner with a large and heavy dot-com trolley with “Bat Out of Hell” blasting on the shop floor’s CD player. 

One day, when I was waiting interminably to hear if I was going to get transferred to another department within the store, I went into work feeling particularly despondent and frustrated. I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to turn around and go straight back home. That evening, I took the long route through the shop down towards the checkouts, a route that took me past the CD player. I was lost in my own grim thoughts, when my ears perked up. I know that song… 

It was “Rock ‘N’ Roll Dreams Come Through”. It wasn’t even Meat’s version from Bat II, it was Jim’s from Bad For Good, on this random rock music compilation CD that someone had decided to stick in the stereo that day. And I happened to walk past it right at the chorus: 

Keep on believing, and you’ll discover, baby. 

There’s always something magic. 

There’s always something new. 

And when you really, really need it the most, 

That’s when rock ‘n’ roll dreams come through. 

Somehow, it was more poignant and raw because it was Jim’s version playing. Who else but my favourite songwriter would be there to reassure me through one of his songs blasting out on a CD player in a faceless UK supermarket in a working class, formerly industrial town in the north east of England? 

Alright, so the songs haven’t saved my life, helped me through a personal trauma or introduced me to the love of my life, but they have done for so many people around the world. That much is obvious from the thousands of posts, tributes and videos all over social media, in the press and online.  

Steinman’s music has touched, moved and inspired people in a unique, even intimate way. While everyone’s individual stories are different, the common denominator is joy. He brought joy, light and colour to a world that would seem dull without him. Everyone who loved the Bat album on its release 44 years ago still love it, and there are many more who are only just discovering his work today. We’ll still be listening in 444 years, because it’s both out of its time, and timeless. 

For me personally, he’s been a constant source of inspiration and reassurance, daring me to aim higher and dream bigger, and taught me that it’s okay to be different, it’s okay if not everyone likes you, and in fact, some people will hate what you do. But don’t let it put you off.  

Do what you love doing, embrace your oddities, and someone, somewhere will “get” what you’re trying to achieve and put everything, even their own health, sanity and life on the line to help you get there. If that someone happens to come in the shape of a shy, long-haired, twenty-stone Texan with the strength of an ox and the singing voice of an avenging angel, just go with the flow and see where it takes you. 

Trust yourself and stand by your decisions, even when everyone around you is asking “why?”, or doubting if things will work out. So what if everyone else in your industry is using the tried and tested ABC formula? There are 23 other letters in the alphabet, so why not use them? 

I began this blog post / tribute / thesis / autobiography not knowing exactly what to say, and it’s taken me three days to get everything out of my head and into some sort of coherent order. But I do know how to end it. I’ll leave you with these lyrics from “Rock ‘N’ Roll Dreams Come Through”, which every single one of his fans unhesitatingly and affectionately applies to him: 

Every golden nugget coming like a gift of the gods.  

Someone must have blessed us when he gave us those songs. 

Yes, Jim. You did.