In a better time for the world, we would all go to the karaoke bar tonight to mourn the late great Jim Steinman. This man was more than just the composer behind mega-bombastic hits from Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Celine Dion, Air Supply and so many others. He was the patron saint of karaoke singers. His idea of the perfect song was a powder keg that gave off sparks, one that anyone could sing out loud. Think of a karaoke anthem – “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad”, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” – and chances are Steinman wrote it. Even before the art form was invented, he composed as if he saw it all coming. That’s why karaoke fans everywhere mourn him tonight, even though we cry icicles instead of tears.
Steinman liked to call himself “Little Richard Wagner,” and he always lived by that heritage, in a rock style that he called “mythical opera.” There was something so beautifully democratic about his vision – these were songs that could turn anyone into a rock star. He lived to make you louder. He made meat loaves of all of us. So every karaoke fanatic owes him thanks. His message was that we all have a Coupe De Ville hidden at the bottom of our Cracker Jack box of a voice.
When I wrote a book about karaoke a few years ago, I named it after its most karaoke-friendly hook: Turn Around Bright Eyes. While reading my book on the Upper West Side, a gentleman from the audience asked how I chose the title. I went into a long, unsolicited rant about Jim Steinman’s genius, how he never got his due respect, but how his songs embodied the populist spirit of karaoke. The man later came to say goodbye – it turned out he was Steinman’s brother. He told me Jim bought the book online (he saw the title and appreciated the tribute), but I had to sign a copy for the man, a total eclipse to my heart as a fan. The first line of my book: “Once upon a time, I fell apart. Now I always fall in love. (That came from the Beta Band, which did the tribute ‘The Hard One’ in 1999.)
His background was theater, but he found stardom when he hooked up with a bar singer named Meat Loaf. Their blockbuster Bat from hell had the words on the cover, “Songs by Jim Steinman” – an unheard of flex at the time. He enjoyed his role, as he put it: “the Dr. Frankenstein who created the character Meat Loaf.” This didn’t help his notoriously combative relationship with Mr. Loaf, who once threw a baby wing at him. “We have certainly been influenced by Springsteen,” he said Rolling stone in 1978. “But our songs aren’t as street-oriented as his. Our music is more of a combination of West Side Story and A Clockwork Orange. “
One of Steinman’s most famous tunes was the Meat Loaf hit, “I Would Do Anything for Love, But I Won’t Do That.” Yet his greatness was that he was always No hook was too shameless, no concept too ridiculous for that. Want a Bonnie Tyler duet with Todd Rundgren called “Loving You is a Dirty Job But Somebody’s Gotta Do It”? Want a Cher / Meat Loaf duet called “Dead Ringer For Love”? Do you want Billy Squier to do a rock-disco crossover that became the infamous career killer “Rock Me Tonight”? He could do that.
But whoever was singing, you could always tell it was a Steinman song. He wrote long, melodramatic piano ballads, with a long title, a lyrical twist on a cliché, Phil Spector drum wallops, backup choirs, and were we talking about major changes? As he said Melody Maker in 1989: “I get very disappointed when people don’t like what I do, but I always believe it’s right. But it’s not like I’m going to sit down and say, “Okay, time for another megalomaniac epic here.” “
Steinman was infamous for a studio Svengali that rarely gave control of the singer. As he admitted, “There have been few instances where I have been interested in what the artist thinks. I mean, I’m not interested in what Bonnie Tyler wants to do. I don’t think she has any idea what she’s doing. She probably just wants to do the housework while the record is playing. He worked briefly with Def Leppard calling them “interesting, in a way a scientist finds a very strange kind of insect interesting”.
His only solo hit was’ Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through ‘, featuring lead vocals from Rory Dodd – you don’t know his name, but you’ve heard his voice all his life as he’s the voice of the choir squeaking,’ Turn around, bright eyes! ”in“ Total Eclipse. ”Steinman released the 1979 solo opus Bad for good, with the self-explanatory ‘Love and Death and an American Guitar’. It should have been Meat Loaf’s second album, except Meat blew his voice – or maybe he just got cold feet hearing ‘Dance in My Pants’. After years of lawsuits (there would be many more where those came from) Steinman and Meat regrouped Bat Out of Hell 2: Back Into Hell and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose.
He could score hits for everyone and build one of the strangest resumes in the biz, from Australian yacht-rock smoothies Air Supply (“Making Love Out of Nothing at All”) to British goth rockers Sisters of Mercy (“This Corrosion”). He was obsessed with the details. In front of Bat from hell, he even got Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg on drums, for that E Street key. When the piano joins the six-note drum solo in ‘Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad’, that’s the essence of Steinmanism.
His ultimate moment as a go-to guy was the 1984 teen movie Streets of fire, starring Diane Lane as a rock & roll outlaw. He wrote songs for her fictional band Ellen Aim and the Attacker, but they sounded great on MTV – especially her anthem “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young.” Bruce Springsteen didn’t let them use his “Streets of Fire” in the movie, but only Steinman could consider this a personal challenge to reach his peak of Bossness. The Attackers were one of the best fake movie bands of the 1980s, although despite Diane Lane’s best efforts, the “ lead singer in a blinding red shroud with a deep V in the back ” failed to catch on.
“Rolling stone has always hated us, ”he said. For once in his life he was guilty of understatement: all critics hated his hits and prayed that they would go away. Steinman inspired some of the bitchiest reviews of the era, which he happily quoted. Paradoxically, the most remarkable tribute written in his lifetime was a total destruction – Mitchell Cohen’s review of the second Meat Loaf album, Dead ringtone, in We create in 1981. Cohen did it not like the album, but accidentally summed up the composer’s unique vision. “No doubt Steinman sees his screenplays as part of a tradition that goes from ‘Summertime Blues’ to ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ to ‘Jungleland’” – that really nails it. (Also love these kind words about the album’s lyrics: “The Typesetters Union just awarded Steinman the 1981 Inner Sleeve Verbosity Plaque.”)
Steinman had surprisingly simple chemistry with the Sisters of Mercy, producing their eighties goth classics “This Corrosion”, “Dominion” and “More”. As singer Andrew Eldritch said, “‘This Corrosion’ is ridiculous. It should be ridiculous. It’s a song about ridiculousness. So I called Steinman and explained that we needed something that sounded like a Borgia disco party. And that’s what we have. “
But there is a reason why “Total Eclipse of the Heart” will always be his most famous song. It sounded too exaggerated for the radio in 1983, but it’s been ubiquitous on the airwaves ever since. It has so many of its most memorable scream hooks: “Turn around with bright eyes,” “I really need you tonight,” “Every now and then I fall apart.” He wrote it for Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, whose only previous American hit was the 1978 Rod Stewart sound “ It’s a Heartache. ” But Steinman turned her into a rock diva. He thought her voice sounded like John Fogerty, which is why he had her cover Creedence’s “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” on her album, which had the no-more Steinman title, Faster than the speed of the night.
But it’s a song anyone can sing, which is why it’s still the ultimate karaoke banger. Every karaoke room has it – it’s # 117498 in Sing Sing’s book on Avenue A. (Even after a year of lack of mic, I still know the song by heart.) Like all of his songs, it sounds like he’s always sounds best through a room full of drunken strangers at two in the morning
Steinman went back to the theater and wrote the lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Whistle in the wind. He did it too Bat Out of Hell: The Musical, as well as the 1997 production Dance of the vampires, reviving “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. “I actually wrote that as a love song for vampires,” he said Poster at that moment. “The original title was ‘Vampires in Love’ because I was working on a musical of ‘Nosferatu’, the other great vampire story. If anyone listens to the lyrics, they really are vampire lines. It’s all about the darkness, the power of the darkness and the place of love in the dark. “
Jim Steinman brought that darkness to life in his songs. Too bad we can’t properly honor him tonight by singing his hits in the karaoke rooms. Instead, like Bonnie Tyler, we’ll have to settle for love in the dark. RIP to a true master of redundancy.