What If? Following Up "Bat Out Of Hell"

One of the most confounding bits of pop philosophy is our ability to put our consciousness to the worst use, asking ourselves in nearly every situation, "What if?".

If we believe in multiverse theory, the answer to the question is that any scenario we conjure has indeed come to pass, merely in a time and place we cannot see the result. If we are grounding ourselves in this reality, the answers will never be anything but untestable hypotheses, the sorts of guesses we argue about with a terrifying level of fervency. We talk as if an argument can be made so persuasively that an alternate history is undeniable by anyone with half a working brain. It's foolishness on our part, and yet our desire not to live in the darkest timeline encourages us to take on these tasks in the search for a way of understanding the world that makes the inevitable feel like a choice instead of a fate.

Knowing this, I still find myself asking that very question sometimes. When it comes to events from my personal life, I have long come to the conclusion that any decisions I could have made would have led me into the same state of mind. While I don't believe in fate as a concept, I do believe there are immutable truths about ourselves we cannot change, or at least cannot give the appearance of change until we fully understand the costumes we must wear to do so. I did not have this knowledge until recently, so I see no way I could have taken a path that did not wind up exactly where I am. Every idea looks in hindsight like it would have been a bad idea.

We all know "Bat Out Of Hell" as the most unlikely album on the list of best-sellers. It is an absurdity that never should have worked, and yet it is one of those records that has endured for decades as a keystone to what life in that time was like. Following that album would always be a monumental task, but the failure that ensued would echo for an entire decade, wiped away only when an even more absurd comeback gave rise to our theory of the twenty year cycle of music.

Did it have to be that way? Could there have been an album Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman made that would have been enough of a success to change the course of history?

The answer to that seems obvious to me; no. By the time "Dead Ringer" came out, the world had moved on to the beginning of the digital 80s. Meat Loaf was already a relic of the past when "Bat Out Of Hell" came out, and he sounded even more out of place after the next decade set in. Another album mixing 50s rock and roll with Wagnerian opera and Broadway melodies was not going to stand up against the New Wave. Couple that with Meat's vocal issues that left him sounding like a shell of himself, and he could not have even recorded such an album if one was given to him. The deck was stacked, and he was probably always going to fall into obscurity.

The better question to ask is not whether Meat could have continued his chart success, but whether he could have made an album that cemented his legacy among his fans to such a degree that he and Steinman would not have spent so much time working apart. Would we look at Meat Loaf differently if he has put out back-to-back classics right from the start?

Jim Steinman had that album in him. It took four years of writing and waiting for Meat's voice to heal, but 1981 gave us a glimpse of what could have been. Meat Loaf released the disappointing (to most, not to me) "Dead Ringer", while Steinman was so fed up he recorded his own solo album, "Bad For Good". Between them, if things had been different, there is an album to be found that not only could have lived up to the legacy of "Bat Out Of Hell", but might have even been better.

We can start with the obvious choices. "Read 'Em And Weep" and "Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through" would both become hits later on. If even Barry Manilow can't make a song uncool, I believe that makes it undeniable. And while in this scenario we would never get the music video with a young Angelina Jolie, or the fragment of slap bass I have always loved, that trade-off would be worth it. Add to those the song "Dead Ringer", the duet with Cher that was a hit in European markets, and this imagined album would have had more radio potential than "Bat Out Of Hell" ever did.

We could have followed the pattern set by "Bat Out Of Hell" by opening with an epic statement. That would come in the form of "Bad For Good", which I consider the quintessential Steinman song. It is eight minutes of cheese and bombast, with guitar solos and pleas to the rock gods. When it did eventually get recorded by Meat, it was a pale imitation that only made me take up this mental task with more urgency. My imagination has only partially healed that disappointment.

We also have our multi-part melodrama in the form of "I'll Kill You If You Don't Come Back". Like "Paradise By The Dashboard Light", it starts as classic rock and roll before moving to a new section. This time, rather than the epic call and response that ends with wishing for death, we stay in high school drama as Steinman writes about the girls who find out the disappointment of spending so long building up what will only take a minute. It may not be the karaoke staple of its predecessor, but there is a resigned sadness that plays well against the fiery passion.

Then we get into the songs for the Steinman devotees among us. "Surf's Up" is one of Steinman's greatest songs, using a massive build-up and soaring guitar solo to mask the fact the song is about an erection. That is the heart of what makes great Meat Loaf music great Meat Loaf music, and it would have been one of those wonderful bits of insider trivia that elicits chuckles when it goes over the heads of casual listeners. And lest we forget, we could also include "Left In The Dark", which might contain the single best line Steinman ever wrote. "There are no lies on your body, so take off your dress/I just want to get at the truth." It is undeniably horny, certainly corny, and one of those bits that has echoed in my head for decades.

That gives us an album with a track listing such as this:

Bad For Good
Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through
Dead Ringer
Love And Death And An American Guitar*
Surf's Up
I'll Kill You If You Don't Come Back
Read 'Em And Weep
Left In The Dark

*spoken word

Those are all Steinman classics, and if they could have been sung in Meat's classic voice, make up an album I would choose over "Bat Out Of Hell". Despite being an institution, that album is flawed. "Heaven Can Wait" can sometimes drag, "All Revved Up With No Place To Go" is too old-fashioned for its own good, the baseball narration gets old on repeated listens, and "For Crying Out Loud" goes on too long with its false endings. "Bat Out Of Hell" truly is an album of four all-time great songs, and four that are more mid-tier.

This possible follow up does not have that problem. From beginning to end it would be the very best of Meat and Steinman.I can hear this record in my head, and it hurts to know it lives only there.

Of course, that leads us to the further question of what would have come after. We never would have gotten "Bat Out Of Hell II" as we know it, and perhaps the songs Steinman wrote and produced for others through the 80s ("It's All Coming Back To Me Now", "Total Eclipse Of The Heart", "Loving You's A Dirty Job", and "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All") would have all been Meat Loaf songs on yet more great albums.

I doubt that, though. After 1981, Steinman would only write one(ish) full album ever again. Despite success, or perhaps because of it, he began recycling his ideas in new permutations. I fear he did not have the songs left in him to continue the run for album after album. This imagined world does not give us more great music, just a different configuration of it.

So would it be a better world? Actually, I don't think it would. While the unnamed record would potentially be one of my all-time favorites, we would miss out on "Bat Out Of Hell II", and the songs that popped up on the other Meat Loaf records. We would also miss out on the 'lesser' songs from "Dead Ringer" and "Bad For Good", which are still worthy additions to their catalogs.

We can ask "What if?" all we want, but sometimes the answer turns out not to be any better. Maybe we are where we should be.