Steinman proves ‘rock and roll dreams’ can come true

By Jesse O. Walls
Reporter

A record-breaking album for both Steinman and vocalist Meat Loaf, the record still remains in the Guinness Book of World Recordsas the longest charting album, and is currently the second top-selling album worldwide ever.

Using sexual innuendos and metaphors to paint a dark and tragic tapestry of the passion and angst of teenage love and lust, Steinman creates epic mini-rock operas with each song. Such hits as Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” or Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” are prime examples, depicting the passion and tragedy of love on an epic scale in which he reveals his lyrical genius.

Steinman has also accomplished great feats in songwriting, feats that other songwriters only aspire to. The album, Bat out of Hell, is the only record in the top twenty albums to be written exclusively by one person, and in 1983, his hits “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Making Love out of Nothing at All” held the top two positions in the charts. This was the only time a songwriter has ever held the top two slots at one time.

Through the decades, Steinman has collaborated with a few other songwriters, such as Dean Pitchford (“Holding out for a Hero” from the Footloose soundtrack), and as lyricists for Andrew Lloyd Webber on Whistle down the Wind. He’s written music for musicals such as Tanz der Vampire, and had been working on a Batman musical until Warner Bros. dropped the project.

Currently Steinman is working on a Bat out of Hell musical, roughly adapted from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, as well as a hard rock version of the Nutcracker, titledNutcracked. True Stein-fans anticipate new music, while they fill their time with timeless classics that will never grow old.

For those who have not yet discovered the music of Jim Steinman, Q Magazine namedBat out of Hell, “Rock’s #1 Guilty Pleasure.” For those who already know and love his musical genius and lyrical wit, remember “the beat is yours forever, that’s when rock and roll dreams come through” (“Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through”).