Bat Out Of Hell

(CLEVELAND INTERNATIONAL/EPIC, 1977)

The combination of whacked-out songwriter Jim Steinman’s horny pocket symphonies and Meat Loaf’s leather-lunged operatic howl was unstoppable and untoppable. The hits will continue to resonate for the next thousand years. Your children’s children’s children will know all the words to Paradise By The Dashboard Light and Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad. A perfect melange of 1950s teenage death ballads, Broadway pomp and head-caving hard rock, Bat was created in a long-gone world where rock’n’roll gods stomped the earth and no one stomped heavier than Meat Loaf. The term ‘classic rock’ was practically invented for this record.