Meat Loaf

[LurkerNan]

We all saw Meat Loaf on American Idol the other day, trying desperately to be relevant again...

But now he's being sued by Jim Steinman for trying to cop the phrase "Bat Out Of Hell" for use on his next album. Everyone who knows Meat Loaf's music knows that all his greatest hits were written by Jim Steinman, and that Steinman has always been pissed that MeatLoaf has taken the lion's share of the fame and fortune associated with those songs.

Now he's trying to put out a third album without Steinman's involvement? Yeesh, that's the definition of asking for a lawsuit.

[tinyshoes]

Last thing we need is another Meat Loaf comeback. I'm still having nightmares about "I would do anything for love."

[carrier76]

Oh good, not dead.

I Would Do Anything For Love (but I won't do that) was just another in a long line of cliched song titles by Mr. Loaf. My friends (and band class--shut up!) were obsessed with this song at the beginning of my senior year, fall 1993....

[LurkerNan]

See, I'm much older than that. I remember when the original Bat Out Of Hell album came out when I was in high school. And while most people remember Meat Loaf singing the song, it was understood by fans that the true artist there was Jim Steinman's writing the song and music.

Damn, I'm old.

[Wol]

Preach it, LurkerNan! Steinman is a god!

Meat Loaf has lost his voice. It is gone. That's what was happening on Idol, his recent recordings have more Pro-Tooling and overlay and backing vocals than Britney. It was a great rock voice back in the 70s - way too theatrical for popular music - but it is gone, baby, gone.

I met him several years ago. I said "Do I call you Mr. Loaf?" He said "Just call me Meat." Real nice guy.

I met Steinman too, at a club in NYC. Or rather, I wept and grovelled at his feet and burbled something incoherent about everything he'd ever written, and he tried to remain calm and polite in the face of another lunatic fan. Good times.

[LurkerNan]

Wol's got my back, I feel better now...

In reading more about this lawsuit, it turns out that MeatLoaf is suing Steinman because Steinman is blocking Meat using the title "Bat Out of Hell" in a third album. (Steinman trademarked the phrase back in the mid-90's.) Steinman says it's because he originally pitched the idea of three BOOH albums as a trilogy, and that he would write the songs for all three. Even though they are fallen out, Meat intends to put out a third album of inferior quality using Jim's songs with a different producer.

So Meat is going on the offensive with the lawsuit, on the basis that the phrase is associated with him more than Steinman. Huh, beg to differ there.

[Deleted]

Anyone watch "Supergroup" on VH1? Ian Scott, from the band Anthrax, is engaged to Meat's daughter, Pearl. She was on last week's show and was really sweet and pretty.

That's all, carry on.

[carrier76]

Hey, what all is Jim Steinman responsible for? I know he did "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and that Celine Dion song...."It's All Coming Back to Me Now". Did he do "Making Love Out of NOthing At All" also??

[jdkwfan4ever]

Paradise By the Dashboard Lights is one of my favorite songs.

That's all I've got.

[Wol]

eataknobatnight, Pearl Aday is adorable. She is a good singer, too. She is named after Janis Joplin. Meat and his wife have another daughter, Amanda, who wanted to be an actress at one time. Pearl has toured with Meat as a backup singer.

carrier76, Jim Steinman is a pretty awesome songwriter. He wrote all of Bat Out of Hell 1 & 2, plus stuff for people with voices like Meat's (shrill, heavy vibrato) like Bonnie Tyler and Celine Dion. He wrote two brilliant songs for the "Streets of Fire" soundtrack and he's written a few musicals. He and Meat actually met performing in a production of "Hair" in LA in the 70s. He's really a frustrated theater composer, and his pop songs are all very theatrical (Paradise by the Dashboard Light is a perfect example). He's obsessed with Peter Pan. He wrote the lyrics for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Whistle Down the Wind" ("A Kiss is A Terrible Thing To Waste" is the masterpiece from that show). He wrote music and lyrics for "Dance of the Vampires," which did very well in Europe (it's based on a Roman Polanski movie) and died a horrible, gruesome death on Broadway last year, closing in minutes to scathing reviews. He recycles A LOT - most of "Bat Out Of Hell 2" is on Steinman's recording "Bad for Good," he lifted "Total Eclipse of the Heart" for "Dance of the Vampires", "Holding Out for a Hero" is lifted from part of a song on "Bad for Good" - but that's the only bad thing I can say about him. He's a real specific style - most people love him or hate him. I love him so much that when I heard "I Want To Spend My Lifetime Loving You" over the closing credits of "Zorro" I said "That sounds like a Steinman song; he only produced it, but I can hear his imprint cause I'm a big freak like that.