Bat Out Of Hell : The Facts

TEXT VERSION (with minor corrections)

• Track listing: "Bat Out Of Hell", "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)", "Heaven Can Wait", "All Revved Up With No Place To Go", "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad", "Paradise By The Dashboard Light", "For Crying Out Loud".
• Released: October 21, 1977
• Recorded at: Bearsville Studios, Woodstock, NY. Additional, later sessions at Utopia Sound NY, The Hit Factory NYC and House Of Music NJ.
• Produced: Todd Rundgren
• Written by: Jim Steinman
• Musicians: Meat Loaf (vocals); Todd Rundgren (all guitars); Roy Bittan (piano); Keyboards Jim Steinman, Todd Rundgren, Roy Bittan; Kasim Sultan (bass); Max Weinberg and John Wilcox (drums); Roger Powell (synthesizer); backing vocals; Rory Dodd, Ellen Foley (also lead vocal on Paradise By The Dashboard Light) and Todd Rundgren, plus Phil ‘Scooter’ Rizzuto (baseball commentary on ‘Paradise…’); Steve Margoshes (piano and orchestral arrangements on ‘For Crying Out Loud’); New york Philharmonic (orchestra on ‘For Crying Out Loud’); Edgar Winter (saxophone on ‘All Revved Up…’ and ‘Paradise’)
• Cover artwork: Richard Corben (from Jim Steinman's concept)
• Sales: 34 million worldwide. It's estimated that ‘Bat…’ still sells around 200,000 copies per year, nearly 23 years after its release.
• The album cost around $235,000 to record.
• Three songs, ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, ‘Heaven Can Wait’ and ‘All Revved Up With no Place To Go’, were originally written for the musical Neverland.
• Todd Rundgren improvised the now-famous ‘motorcycle guitar’ on ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ only after Steinman pleaded with him throughout the sessions.
• Meat Loaf maintains that the real moment ‘Bat…’ took off was when he performed ‘For Crying Out Loud’ at the CBS annual conference in New Orleans in January 1978.

They were yelling and whistling and climbing on chairs… all for a damn ballad. That night set the wheels in motion. Whether they hated ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ with a passion or not, they got behind it.

• Some good came of Meat Loaf's abortive attempts to record a follow-up, ‘Bad For Good’; he met his wife Leslie at the sessions.
• Jim Steinman is giving some of the ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ and ‘Bat… 2’ material a country and western update. Such tunes as ‘Paradise By The Dashboard Light’, ‘Heaven Can Wait’ and ‘You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth’ are among the songs to be re-worked for an album on American label Restless Records.

"I always dreamed of being a country singer," explains Jim. "I mean, ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, any trucker could have written that. ‘You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth’ - if that isn't a pure-bred country title, I don't know what is."

Er, yeah, right, Jimbo…

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