Meat's voice was clearly in no state to be recording another timeless classic (which we would hear later in the year on "Dead Ringer" - his voice would not recover for another decade), but there were songs that needed to be sung. Steinman was in his all too brief productive period, and letting the songs sit any longer could have brought a premature end to his creativity.
Jim Steinman was not a frontman. He did not have the theatricality, despite writing theater pieces, nor did he have the voice/image to fill Meat Loaf's shoes. Steinman was quirkier, weirder, someone who would have fit in decades later in the alternative/artistic scene. For 1981, and for a big-budget follow up to a massive hit, he was the wrong actor cast in the wrong part. But the show must go on, and half the songs he had been writing became his one and only solo album, "Bad For Good".
To listen to Steinman's music not filtered through the voice of another artist is to get the purest sense of his personality. There is no one here to hold him back from making exactly the record he wanted to, which is both its greatest asset and it's worst downfall. Another singer would not have thrown their voice into muppet-esque trembles the way Steinman did, and perhaps some of the language would have sounded suave coming from someone with charisma. It's a variation on the Cyrano story, where the person responsible for the sentiment isn't always the best one to deliver the message.
The ensuing decades would teach us this lesson, as much of the record would get re-recorded by Meat Loaf in bits and pieces. Those versions would be more polished, more 'professional', and would be smoother deliveries that did a better job of carrying the romantic melancholy of Steinman's stories. When Meat Loaf belted the chorus of "Surf's Up", it was a more powerful statement than Steinman could manage (We'll get to how that sentence is wrong in a moment). Likewise, his take on "Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through" was a more desperate sounding plea to the power of the rock gods that eclipsed the original for obvious reason. A great song is always a great song, but legend is when a great voice is paired with it.
Jim Steinman knew he was not the voice for his songs. That was why he worked with Meat Loaf in the first place, but it's why even on his own solo album Steinman is not the voice we are always hearing. Session vocalist Rory Dodd takes the lead on several tracks, and makes clear the singularity of Steinman's writing. Dodd is a capable singer, but his voice is too clean, and lacks the personality and power for the scope of Steinman's vision. Steinman's music is not 'nice', but Dodd's voice is, which is a clash of styles that cannot be ignored.
The spoken-word piece "Love And Death And An American Guitar" makes its first appearance here, and Steinman's dramatic reading makes that point all too clear. He throws himself into the performance, shifting from whisper to scream, his voice struggling to keep up with as much emotion as he wants the piece to have. It's a man on the edge, losing control, which is exactly in line with the theme. That is what Steinman brings to the songs he sings lead on. His songs have always been the voice of desperation screaming at the gods for love (or sex, usually sex) to come his way, and that is what he sounds like more than anyone else who ever sang his songs. The singers who had fame, and charisma, and confidence, could never embody the character of Steinman the way he could for himself. It's a character I am well-acquainted with, and I hear in his voice what my inner monologue used to scream into the wind as well.
Steinman's baritone was able to project an undercurrent of madness and depression that not even Meat Loaf could manage, and when he sings of being lonely and desperate in "Stark Raving Love", I believe every word he says. Compare Steinman's take on the lines "there are no lies on your body/so take off your dress/oh, I just want to get at the truth" to Meat Loaf's. Steinman is nearly animal, not singing as much as begging and pleading. It's stark, and all too familiar.
The most remarkable moment of the record comes right at the start. The opening title track is the rare instance where Meat Loaf could not bring more to a song than Steinman himself. Meat attempted the song on "Bat Out Of Hell III", but his voice was beginning to thin out by then, and he appeared not to understand the song at all. He sang the song, but he did not live it the way Steinman did. Voiced by Steinman, the song is nearly nine minutes of a man turning his feelings into the most epic drama he can conjure. It isn't real, but Steinman convinces himself the connection is as grand and powerful as nature itself, even if it lasts only one night.
The song is a chronicle of a man's self-loathing, wanting to be someone else, someone the girl will want to be with. his pleas that they will both wind up "bad for good" is almost a confession that anything they would do together could be considered a sin, but he knows a sin is only worth the punishment if it lasts longer than the flash of a bad decision. And yet, one night is all he is asking for, because when you're that desperate, sins of the flesh will kill you just as much as the mortal ones. You hear none of that in Meat Loaf's perfunctory version of the song, because Meat could never understand what it meant to 'be' Jim Steinman. I'm being presumptuous here, but I think I do. It's the difference between acting and living, and that song is the best example of it I may have ever heard.
"Bad For Good" is an album steeped in melodrama, building a stairway to heaven just so Steinman could knock on the door and ask what the deal is with the meaning of life. It is as flawed as Steinman was, as self-indulgent, and yet it is the best illustration of how he was more responsible for Meat Loaf than Meat himself ever was.
If this record was made in 1978 with Meat's undamaged voice, the rest of music history might be entirely different. Perhaps this album is another massive hit, perhaps Steinman keeps writing at this pace for many more years, perhaps he burns out completely even earlier. There's no way to know, but if everything happens for a reason, it seems clear to me the reason "Bad For Good" exists is to show us who the man behind the music was. It would have been a shame to only know his music diluted through the voices of the singers he worked with.
"Bad For Good" is perfectly imperfect, and if nothing else, I would be worse off if I didn't have these songs to remind me of these things.
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