As exemplified by the quotation Jim Steinman is a very witty song writer. He is also a brilliant composer and organizer, and it is rather depressing, that the average rock listener doesn't even know his name. On the other hand, everybody knows Meat Loaf - a phenomenon not easily overlooked either. But because of the way Meat Loaf was initially promoted back in the late seventies only a few will know, that he was originally part of a team: He only acted as the vocal interpreter of a musical universe basically created by Jim Steinman. This holds good for the first and without comparison most successful album ascribed to Meat Loaf, Bat Out Of Hell (1977). But it's the same story with his second album, Dead Ringer For Love (1981), and when he came back after several albums of mixed quality, it was once again Jim Steinman, who was pulling the strings - namely on Bat Out Of Hell II (1993).
You don't have to be blind to the remarkable qualities of Meat Loaf as a singer and performer to find it unjustly, that these albums are presented as his work. But the story gets even worse. For Jim Steinman also happens to have written a handful of hits for Bonnie Tyler, including the absolute smash hit Total Eclipse Of The Heart (1983). And then clever salesmen, presumably sensing something like a spiritual kinship between Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf, have gotten the splendid idea of making a shared compilation with hits from both of them. So you can actually stumble upon a best-of-Bonnie-Tyler-and-Meat-Loaf, which will to a very large extent (10 out of 14 tracks, to be exact) come down to a best-of-Jim-Steinman, performed by the two mentioned. Off course, this fact will be evident to everybody caring to read the liner notes, but if you only see the album cover or hear the songs announced on the radio, you will never notice Jim Steinman.
To some extent this may be considered quite normal for people writing music for the stars. But Steinman is more than just a song writer. He is an inventer of whole concepts, images and albums, and he has been directly involved in the performing and recording of the music mentioned (For instance, he supplied backing vocals and played several instruments on Bat Out Of Hell). Furthermore, he has acted as producer or co-producer on the albums, one upshot of this being that both Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler has benefitted from his choice of musicians. Some obvious examples are the drummer Max Weinberg and the pianist Roy Bittan. Weinberg and Bittan are a marvellous couple of instrumentalists, and they made a huge impact on Bruce Springsteens music, when they joined his E Street Band in 1974.
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