Jim Steinman, the Grammy-winning composer who wrote Meat Loaf’s bestselling Bat Out Of Hell debut album, as well as hits for Celine Dion, Air Supply and Bonnie Tyler, has passed away, his brother said. He was 73.
Bill Steinman told the Associated Press that his brother died of kidney failure on Monday and had been ill for a while. He said Jim Steinman died in Connecticut, near his Ridgefield home.
“I miss him very much already,” said Bill Steinman by phone on Tuesday.
Jim Steinman was born on November 1, 1947 in New York City.
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012 and won Album of the Year at the 1997 Grammy Awards for producing songs on Celine Dion’s Falling Into You, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last month, and the power ballad written by Steinman. It’s All Coming. Now back to me.
Steinman wrote the music for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, released in 1977 and one of the best-selling albums of all time. It has achieved 14-fold platinum status by the RIAA, which equates to sales of 14 million albums in the US alone.
Steinman also wrote Meat Loaf’s 1993 album Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell, another commercial and multi-platinum success. It contained the international hit I’ll Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That). Steinman has also written such hits as Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart and Air Supply’s Making Love Out of Nothing at All.
He was also behind the lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Whistle Down the Wind which opened in the West End in 1998.