https://www.discogs.com/release/15433577-Meat-Loaf-Bat-Out-Of-Hell
Try a game. See how soon the result you’re looking for is popping up in the search options. Bat out of hell didn’t come further as ‘Bat o’. It is number four in the list of best selling records of all time. It spawned two followup albums and a musical (even though it is based on a musical itself).
Boy: On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses? Girl: Will he offer me his mouth? Boy: Yes. Girl: Will he offer me his teeth? Boy: Yes. Girl: Will he offer me his jaws? Boy: Yes. Girl: Will he offer me his hunger? Boy: Yes. Girl: Again, will he offer me his hunger? Boy: Yes! Girl: And will he starve without me? Boy: Yes! Girl: And does he love me? Boy: Yes. Girl: Yes. Boy: On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses? Girl: Yes. Boy: I bet you say that to all the boys.
The best known track on this record is Paradise by the dashboard light. A teenage fantasy about car sex, of which producer Todd Rundgren said that he could not imagine Jim Steinman having the personal experience, but “he could imagine Jim Steinman imagining it”. The song has three parts and was according to Meat Loaf in an interview on VH1 Storytellers meant to be 27 minutes long.
It is the longest possible track that fits on a 45rpm 7 inch. Alas, I don’t have that version. It is still shortened however, it doesn’t contain the famous baseball sequence.
Jim Steinman originally was working on a musical called Neverland, which was a futuristic version of Peter Pan. He was inspired by Wagner among others, so there is a operatic quality to his music. Everything is a heightened version of reality, like an Italian opera.
In 1977 the first reception of the album was not good. It might have been too different from what was common at the time. It took off very slowly, starting in Australia and England. But it kept selling, and experienced kind of a revival in the nineties. When I discovered it.
This is one of those recordings that actually sounds better on vinyl. It might be because I’m used to it, but I think the 96kHz/24bit Flac version I’m listening to on Qobuz (I do comparisons sometimes) doesn’t sound as good. It is just a bit too harsh, too digital. That also proves that the vinyl record is a perfect cut, mastered with respect to the grooves. No idea who did it, but it is a superb job.