Read 'Em and Weep

Jim Steinman, ‘Bat Out of Hell’ Songwriter, age 73
April 19, 2021

Sirens are screaming and the fires are howling way down in the valley tonight.  Not for the normal reasons but Jim Steinman is gone.

I don't know what to say.  I've been listening to him a lot recently but that's typical when I get in the mood for music.  He was able to make rock'n'roll songs into epic works.  They start off fairly straight-forward, ballads or standard rock, but they just kept going and couldn't be restrained like generic pop songs.

It's not clear if he would have had any success without Meat Loaf.  He didn't have much without him, but the two Bat Out of Hell albums are enormous successes.  Then there was the reputation.  Singers have to be good to make those work.  Music lyrics aren't known as working on the level of literature - well, they aren't accurately known that way - but his are on the higher end of the scale.  "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" is about as good as it can get in extensively detailing human nature.  And it has a catchy melody too.

I don't know if it's the brain bleed or what, but I've been thinking about existence, formed in far more levels than we can perceive of.  Steinman's music was definitely very high up on whatever levels he was working on.  Even if he wasn't selling tons of records most of the time, he definitely influenced other musicians.  In 1978, Meat Loaf gave a show for CBS executives soon after Bat Out of Hell came out and hadn't been selling  a lot, Billy Joel led the standing ovation as it finished.  Obviously a lot of that would be for Meat Loaf but Billy Joel had more than a clue how important songwriting is for performance.  If he wasn't a superstar yet in 1978, he was getting close.

And so another one is gone.  I'll kill him if he doesn't come back.