Book review: Rock Classics – MEAT LOAF – BAT OUT OF HELL by Geoffrey Feakes

September 16th, 2024 by andynathan

Sonicbond Publishing (Publication date: 26.04.24)

Having issued numerous tomes in their two series of ‘On Track’ song by song analysis, and looking at a band in a particular decade, Sonicbond take this to a fresh level of detail with a new series focusing on a single record.

In this case Geoffrey Feakes takes on one of the biggest selling albums of all time and a cultural phenomenon in Meat Loaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’. Nevertheless it is a hard task to fill even its slim 80 pages with such a narrow specialist subject, not least as it rests entirely on secondary sources with his biographies and autobiographies quoted extensively.

In describing their pre-fame years, he does however paint quite vivid character sketches of Jim Steinman, the musical prodigy who grew up seeing rock and roll and classical music forms as entirely compatible, and Meatloaf, overcoming adversity and family difficulty to forge his path as a jobbing actor and singer through sheer hard graft. It is also astonishing how much money was sunk into the project prior to even gaining a record deal.

The track by track album descriptions are naturally more detailed than the ‘On Track’ series – right down to data on the beats per minute tempo – but only run to 11 pages, leaving a lot of space still to be filled.

A section on the legacy and influence of this massive album is short and underdeveloped, and instead we move on to a potted history of Steinman and Meat apart. Given he was still a regular hit maker in the UK in the eighties, I had no idea quite how much of a busted flush the latter was, especially in his home country).

As in all the best stories, there is the redemption arc of the multi million selling reunion for Bat Out of Hell 2, described in much less detail, before we resume a brief history of Meatloaf, including Bat 3 where he collaborated with Desmond Child though a couple of existing Steinman compositions (in typical fashion) were repurposed, and bring the story to what in hindsight seems an inevitable conclusion of the Bat Out of Hell musical.

It was an interesting and well written if slim read but is unlikely to tell the committed Meat Loaf fan anything new for their £12.99. The jury is still out on whether a single album format is going to work for this series of books. ***

Review by Andy Nathan

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Power Plays w/c 11 November 2024

ARCANE MOON Hello Sun (indie)
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KLOGR face The Unknown (Zeta Factory)
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