Q - Did you break a chandelier on Saturday Night Live?
JS - Well, that was just, that's a great metaphor for the whole experience of Meat Loaf where everything's mixed together. He was so nervous doing Saturday Night Live 'cause it was a big deal for us. It was also the week he was on the cover of People Magazine on the, not on the main cover, but on the cover photo on the top left. It was the first week we were really breaking through and making a dent.
JS - Saturday Night Live was a big deal also 'cause we knew all the people. He was really close to John Belushi and I remember it was a really cool show to do. I mean, this was the first year I think, or second year, I don't remember if '77 was the first year or not. But it was right at the beginning and I think it might have been the first year. It was, I don't know, we were on this show. It was actually a great show, it was the one where Dan Akroyd did the Bass-O-Matic.
JS - Where he put the fish in the blender, it was a classic skit, and Christopher Lee, from horror movies, was the host. It was a really cool show to do and I don't remember being nervous. I always had a strange sort of out of body kind of way of looking at it. But what I remember was, when I played the opening to Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad, they had a close-up of my hands on the piano, 'cause we did the rehearsal.
JS - And I just remember, as I was playing, having this really kind of wonderfully giggly thought that, hey, there's 25 million people watching me live, I could just go like, give them the finger (laugh), I can do anything I want now. I'm in control right (laugh) now. It was just a cool feeling. I was kind of giddy. Then Meat was really nervous but he did really good. They didn't let us do the long songs. I wish we could have done Paradise By The Dashboard Light, but we did All Revved Up With No Place To Go and Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad.
JS - When the show was over we went backstage and Meat was always just as intense after the show. It was just, you had to be really careful, 'cause it didn't go away. He was very explosive after the show 'cause it was still there, all that volcanic energy. We were in the Green Room, I remember there, our dressing room, and he said how'd I do, Jimmy? I did okay didn't I? I said, you did really good Meat. Saturday Night Live.
JS - People Magazine. We're good, we did (it), we did it, we did it, and he threw his fist up in the air and he went: "We did it!" Unfortunately, there's this huge chandelier right there and he busted the whole thing. It came crashing down all over us in shards of glass. You have to understand, I was always psychotically scared about broken glass. I had had a lot of experience with glass getting embedded in my eye and things.
JS - All the sudden there's literally a hundred pieces of broken glass in my hair and my head and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) just you big fat dumb pig (laugh). It's like, it was all the things mixed together. Yeah, you have to have your moment of triumph and bring down a chandelier, breaking glass all over me. I remember I had to go home and take a shower carefully to get all this glass. I always remember that all this glass was in the little drain in the shower thing.
JS - And wondering if I got it all out so I could rush back to the party (laugh) for Saturday Night Live. He just ignored it. He probably had swallowed the glass and ate it. But I remember that was kind of metaphoric, like perfect. His moment of triumph also involved catastrophe and danger, but it was cool. It was a cool thing to do that show, every little step was cool 'cause it was the first time and then you get a little used to it, but not a lot. It was still amazing.
JS - I have to admit, I still have never stopped getting chills when I hear a song of mine on the radio. That's never gone, which is neat. In that way I'm still like a kid from Wisconsin.
Q - What was the first time you ever heard a song from Bat Out Of Hell on the radio?
JS - I remember it really well. We were at the Record Plant. We were mastering the record actually and NEW, I guess I don't know all the details, but I guess NEW was playing it before we did the finished mastered version. But I know we were in the mastering room of the Record Plant in New York City and someone said, hey your song's on the radio. We went running into the other room and there was NEW FM in New York, Scott Munie, playing, back to back.
JS - We heard him announce it 'cause they knew he was gonna do it. He said, okay as promised here are the two big ones from the really big one, Bat Out Of Hell, Meat Loaf, here they are, Bat Out of Hell and Paradise By The Dashboard Light. Looking back at it now I know that he went, good now I can go take a dump and I don't have to come back for 20 minutes, thank God.
JS - But they played the whole 20 minutes and we sat there like worshippers. You know, it wasn't like, we had done it, and we just like, and I, looking back I can remember (SOUNDS LIKE) Jimmy Iovine saying, it sounds great. It's on the radio. It sounds great. It was so magical to me to hear it on the radio and it has never left me to this day. If I hear a song of mine on the radio I still get chills. It's partly 'cause I feel connected to that kid in Wisconsin under the sheets and that widower and that woman working in Texas.
JS - You know, radio's a magical thing and that's something, I suppose people do it from every art form. But I think radio may be the most intimate in music (MUMBLES) I always think of music as still the most jugular of art forms, that's the word I think of. Actually when you ask me why I think Bat Out Of Hell works, one of the words I should use is, I think it's a jugular record.
JS - You know, there are a lot of records that are capillaries and things like that, but this is really the jugular vein and you connect to it. It's like hooking up to an IV and that's how Bat Out Of Hell should be heard. They should (laugh) hook up an IV and then it should go right into the bloodstream. I just remember that, always being in music more than anything, and it's true. People use music most personally of every art form. I mean, I think people define their lives, style their lives, shape their lives more to music than they possibly could to film, television or anything.
JS - It's less a spectator art than one that's, in the pure sense, is communal. You know, you do ingest it, you take it intravenously. I think music is an intravenous art (laugh) and they can figure out how to stop downloading. But all I care (laugh) about is it's intravenous, and that's a good thing.