back-into-hell

[back-into-hell]

finalowen replied to your post “I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on what to post here tbh. This...”

Tumblr mobile has started recommending my own posts to me, so yeah, it's a limited base, but ah well. :P

OOF. It’s a lot of the same type of content over and over again too. There can only be so many Total Eclipse memes. 

[back-into-hell]

I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on what to post here tbh. This blog has been inactive for a year (? I actually haven’t checked) and I can still always post content I find. I highly doubt there’s a large Steinman fan base on tumblr but it’ll probably just be more for myself at this point.

[back-into-hell]

“The sea is whipping the sky, the sky is whipping the sea…” Bad For Good - Jim Steinman (1981)

What do you do when you want the set and story of Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical but all you have the budget for is a 1970s Doctor Who set and an array of twinks? Probably something like this. Bonus points for the prelude ‘The Storm’ which features a 2001 parody and Jim delivering the “Love And Death And An American Guitar” monologue.

[back-into-hell]

“I bet you’ve never tried this before…” Dance In My Pants - Jim Steinman and Karla DeVito (1981)

This track from Steinman’s solo album Bad For Good has perhaps the most random video of any of his songs, and that includes the one by Ken Russell. But I love every goddamn moment of it.

[back-into-hell]

“The beat is yours forever…” Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through - Jim Steinman (1981)

In probably the most straightforward video from the album Bad For Good - which isn’t saying much - our prototypes of Raven and Strat perform some elaborate dances together before Jim himself, with Rory Dodd (he of ‘Turn Around Bright Eyes’ fame) taking the lead on vocals.

[back-into-hell]

Total Eclipse of the Chart

[back-into-hell]

Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf (1981)

[back-into-hell]

This song is just so perfect it’s unreal!

[back-into-hell]

[back-into-hell]

Who knows where my body ends And where their bodies begin?

Jim Steinman (”City Night” Neverland 1977)

[back-into-hell]

“Well I could tell you goodbye or maybe see you around, with just a touch of a sarcastic, Thanks!”

Songs by Jim Steinman, no further reason to buy an album is needed.

Record Finds, week 35 Meat Loaf - Dead Ringer 1981

[back-into-hell]

MEATLOAF

Singer Michael Lee Aday and songwriter Jim Steinman began work on their band’s first album, Bat Out of Hell, in 1972. When they shopped the finished project around five years later, it was greeted with blank stares by record executives. The songs, which drew equally on broadway musicals, early 1960s pop and Wagner, performed by a 300 lb frontman with a three-octave vocal range called MeatLoaf, resembled nothing heard on mid-’70s radio. Its climax and proposed first single was an 8-minute operetta, performed by MeatLoaf and background singer Ellen Foley, with recitativo by Phil Rizziuto, about the high school dilema of “going all the way” called “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” When he first heard the demos, Todd Rundgren said no, but its weirdness stuck in his mind, and he eventually agreed to produce and perform on Bat Out of Hell.

Despite Rundgren’s association with the project, the record found no takers, until the small Cleveland International label, having nothing more likely to hand, took a gamble and released it in 1977. The band toured heavily in supported the record and the performance of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” which featured MeatLoaf and Karla DeVito acting and belting out the lover’s quarrel, and ended with the 300 lb singer wearing a ruffled tuxedo shirt and drenched in sweat lying on the stage gasping for breath, became a sensation. Trained in theatre and a natural actor MeatLoaf, who had recently appeared as Eddie in the The Rocky Horror Show on broadway and in its screen adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), tore up the stage, lavishing vocal attention on every note and cliché. His seemingly willingness to risk a heart attack by pushing his out-sized body to the limits transformed his weight from a liability into an index of his commitment to his art and fans. When this take-no-prisoners approach was captured in a dramatic Saturday Night Liveappearance in 1978, the single and album went to #1. It didn’t matter that MeatLoaf didn’t sound like anything else on the radio because for the next year, Bat Out of Hell was the radio.

Since 1977, Bat Out of Hell has sold over 43 million copies—an average of 1 million per units each year from its release to the present day.

[back-into-hell]

You'll never find your gold on a sandy beach

Jim Steinman (Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad)

[back-into-hell]

The songs are myths, panoramas, vistas, voyages - voyages to a country of lost girls and golden boys who refuse to grow up. It's a land everybody wants to get to, a rock kingdom in which the major theme is: all revved up with no place to go.

Jim Steinman

[back-into-hell]

Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf (1978)