Chapter 13

And now, the exciting non-sequiter conclusion to our tale:

Oh, wait, wait, wait. We didn't hear GREGORY'S take on Nevermind. What sayeth the skeleton from out the closet? 

I THINK WE SHOULD HAVE A VISIT WITH MORTIMER. 

Really? Like listening to Meatloaf's first album will just magically clear everything up? Preposterous! Ok, i like a challenge, Bat Out Of Hell in 3, 2, 1... 

This one time Todd Rundgren thought he was making a spoof of a Bruce Springsteen album, so he did what anyone would do and hired half the E-Street band and Edgar Winter to play on it. And don't forget that play-by-play monologue from The Scooter. Lundgren legit thought the entire thing was hilarious. 

Nobody wanted to publish this thing. I mean nobody. Every exec they pitched said "have any of you baffoons ever even heard a rock album before?!" That was kind of a problem considering they lied to Todd Rundgren, who had been paying people out of his own pocket this whole time. 

You need some background on Meat Loaf. He had a successful band with tons of big label offers. He passed on all of them. Then he was in Hair. Motown begged him to be on their roster, then replaced his duet on the only song he liked from those sessions with Edwin Starr, and everyone just kind of treated him like the worst Sunday dinner ever. Meat Loaf is the nickname his football coach gave him. Bat Out Of Hell was a Peter Pan rock musical called Neverland (itself a reworking of a previous musical) Jim Steinman started at a writer's workshop. 3 of the songs were great (how many crap songs did that musical have?) and they decided to turn them into a Meat Loaf album. How can you expect anyone to take any of this serious? 

Fast forward to modern times, it's still selling ridiculous numbers of copies for a 40+ year old album, but in the mid 70s it was a joke. The goofy warewolf intro to You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth is what finally got Steve Popovich interested enough to take it on. 

Here's how this thing caught fire. Meat Loaf went to the UK and performed these songs. Next day this was the most underground cool must have album that could never be broadcast mainstream. 140,000 copies with no radio play later, Popovich called his former boss at CBS and said you guys aren't doing jack, start a marketing campaign in Canada and i guarantee they'll be flying like hotcakes after one concert. And they did. So, they pushed it into Omaha, and radio stations had to buy bigger phones to handle all the call ins every time they played it. 

Who woulda thunk it? A teenage testosterone fueled fantasy world turned out to be pretty popular. 

Unlike Kurt Cobain, this is exactly what Meat Loaf wanted, and 40 years later he's still Meat Loaf. My favorite line from Popovich is you could publish this anywhere, anytime and it would be the most bizarrely unexpected thing ever. It's a spectacle. 

I agree. The only thing it's not is a great album. All the parts are fantastic, but it's a bit of a chore to listen to in one sitting. The songs don't flow, the narrator is as inconsistent as Cobain's is absent, and i'm completely confused by just how damned long these songs feel. They aren't really that long, but an 11 minute Tool song goes by twice as fast as the 10 minute title track. The 5 minute Heaven Can Wait takes at least half an hour, and i'm crying out loud for Crying Out Loud to end already before the halfway point. They aren't bad songs, they're just too much food on one little plate. I love Meat Loaf, but i don't need 7 servings. 

No joke i listened to the full Nevermind 4 times in the last 3 days, but i barely made it throught Bat Out Of Hell once. I feel like i failed the 72oz ribeye challenge at the Texas Roadhouse, and i've got the red and black splatter all over my turntable to prove it.

The end.