In this episode, Tom wonders a lot about Jim Steinman, writer of Meatloaf’s two Bat Out Of Hell opuses, and author/producer of Total Eclipse of the Heart, and other aural monuments to desire and excess. Tom wonders, now that Steinman is no longer with us, what are the secrets? What perversions fed the appetites in these songs?
Spoiler alert! We can’t find any!
But follow Tim along as Tom guides him through the fabulous career of excess and low taste that was Jim Steinman’s, and the creative partnership that was Steinman and Meatloaf.
Thanks for listening!
Jim Steinman episode timestamps
0:00 Jim Steinman and Meatloaf
2:00 Bat out of Hell for the uninitiated
3:43 Steinman’s sort of handsome!
4:20 Total Eclipse of the Heart etc.
5:10 The songs, excessive and adolescent. Teen sex, etc.
7:00 Describing how young and beautiful we are, going all the way, Phil Rizutto’s play by play
11:00 Tim and Tom on podcasts
12:45 The relationship, the dynamic, between the author and the ego
13:30 Car crash songs
15:50 Todd Rundgren supplies the motorcycle crash sound
17:15 Curious about Steinman for 40 years, he has to be insane
19:00 For Crying Out Loud, crotch joke
21:55 Stanley Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell
23:45 Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
24:45 Steinman the performer?
26:20 The 90s songs
27:45 He’s healthy? There has to be a catch
29:00 Now I’ve got the guy to sing my songs
31:30 Low taste, the canon, etc.
32:30 MFA programs and theory
34:30 Tim: If you can find something ecstatic that moves you, who cares where it comes from
35:45 Tim: The best we can do is find 5 minute here or there to find something to latch on to that seems alive and real.
36:30 Andy Warhol
38:10 Objectivity, and the new Beatles song
43:00 Art artifacts, The narrative of the creation of it.
44:00 The most expensive guitars ever sold on auction
47:30 The early Beatles albums, 2 minute songs, The Doors’ The End
48:30 Creative partnerships holding it together
50:30 Tim’s black rock from Iceland, Tom’s Dogwood tree.
52:00 Tom’s Reading Corner: articles about Jim Steinman
