In the wake of Brighton Fringe we needed some slammin' music to stir us from our lethargy. And this episode provided it in spades. It's All Coming Back to Me Now and Modern Girl gave us all sorts of nonsense to chew over:
Three different versions of one bangin' power ballad? Got it.
Two music videos about ghosts and one about filth? Sorted.
A visit with Captain Kirk to the planet where the only surviving adult is Meat Loaf? Regrettably that too.
Next time: Emma sticks with her copy of Bad Attitude as she invites us to listen to Nowhere Fast, while Sam sticks with the classics and treats everyone to a Paradise By the Dashboard Light.
Chat out of Hell is a is a review podcast: all music extracts are used for review/illustrative purposes. To hear the songs in full please buy them from your local record shop or streaming platform. Don't do a piracy.
Music extracts on this episode:
It's All Coming Back to Me Now by Celine Dion from the album Falling into You (1996)
It's All Coming Back to Me Now by Meat Loaf from the album Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose (2006)
It's All Coming Back to Me Now by Pandora's Box from the Album Original Sin (1989)
Modern Girl by Meat Loaf from the album Bad Attitude (1984)
In the wake of Brighton Fringe we needed some slammin' music to stir us from our lethargy. And this episode provided it in spades. It's All Coming Back to Me Now and Modern Girl gave us all sorts of nonsense to chew over:
Three different versions of one bangin' power ballad? Got it.
Two music videos about ghosts and one about filth? Sorted.
A visit with Captain Kirk to the planet where the only surviving adult is Meat Loaf? Regrettably that too.
Next time: Emma sticks with her copy of Bad Attitude as she invites us to listen to Nowhere Fast, while Sam sticks with the classics and treats everyone to a Paradise By the Dashboard Light.
Chat out of Hell is a is a review podcast: all music extracts are used for review/illustrative purposes. To hear the songs in full please buy them from your local record shop or streaming platform. Don't do a piracy.
Music extracts on this episode:
It's All Coming Back to Me Now by Celine Dion from the album Falling into You (1996)
It's All Coming Back to Me Now by Meat Loaf from the album Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose (2006)
It's All Coming Back to Me Now by Pandora's Box from the Album Original Sin (1989)
Modern Girl by Meat Loaf from the album Bad Attitude (1984)
Hello Emma.
Emma:Hi Sam
Sam:Don't we normally do let's call it, amusing riff on the lyrics from one of our podcast songs?
Emma:A little bit of banter
Sam:A little bit of banter that we've pre scripted
Emma:Yeah yeah we do usually do that
Sam:And we're both very tired.
Emma:Yeah, it's been a long weekend
Sam:a long old weekend. This is Chat out of Hell! Welcome! Blah, blah, blah, chat out hell! Ah. Good. How are you doing Emma?
Emma:I am exhausted. I'm so tired. I think I can see through time.
Sam:To the past or the future
Emma:Both at the same
Sam:all right. Fair enough. I can only do one of those
Emma:I'm still quite jet lagged.
Sam:Yeah. So you're just back from Florida, which you were also just back from last episode because we recorded it into the future and predicted things.
Emma:Oh yeah
Sam:that was only two days ago Emma, I can't believe you've forgotten. And we've just done a two day run at the Brighton Fringe Festival, haven't we
Emma:We have!
Sam:Wasn't that
Emma:Wasn't that nice It was lovely. So many lovely dogs
Sam:Brighton is a top town for dogs. Incredible Okay this is not a podcast about dogs or Brighton. Oh, stop giving me business ideas.
Emma:LAUGHTER.
Sam:This is, of course, Chat Out of Hell, the only Meat Loaf analysis podcast that I could find in one page of Google results. There probably are others. What do we do on this podcast?
Emma:We dissect Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf songs in as much detail as we can be bothered to,
Sam:Which involves a lot of searching on Wikipedia Every fortnight on this podcast we both bring a Meat Loaf or Jim Steinman song for us to kick about and talk about and make silly jokes about. Then we decide how good they are. And at the end of this series we've made a vague promise that we're going to write our own Jim Steinman slash Meat Loaf rock opera song. You still feeling good about that?
Emma:Oh no, not even slightly, but I'm up for it. Good. I'm up for it. I just think it's going to be an absolute car crash, which is kind of appropriate for a Jim Steinman themed song
Sam:ha ha ha ha by my count, there are over 300 Meat Loaf or Jim Steinman songs, so we've got a long time before we need to be
Emma:to be done. Lovely.
Sam:So shall we go through our mailbox Eddy Thomas sent in some comments on Martha, which we discussed last time. He said, I went off to listen to Martha and thought it was just really long, but actually I had it on repeat three
Emma:times this was the same song.
Sam:song.
Emma:Oh!
Sam:Oh. That's savage criticism
Emma:That is pretty damning, isn't it?
Sam:Charlie Etheridge Nunn. I'd not heard his version of Martha before listening to it in preparation for this episode. I still prefer the Tom Waits version. Emma, you've got a lot of friends in our audience when it comes to Meat Loaf's
Emma:version of that. The Tom Waits version is better.
Sam:And then comments on Where the Rubber Meets the Road. Do you remember I asked the listeners to count how many seconds before they said Jesus
Emma:Christ himself
Sam:Eddy Thomas again did that. Eddy said it was 24
Emma:24 seconds.
Sam:And I went back and listened to the song. The song hasn't started by then
Emma:then. Which does. Are we still doing all the crappy door slamming? Yeah, like
Sam:with 30 seconds of crickets and a couple getting into a car and to be fair Eddy, yeah Yeah, do you know what? It's not the jesus christ. I was thinking of but fair enough getting with the
Emma:song I do remember when I first received this album for Christmas when it came out hearing that opening and thinking, is there something wrong with the CD?
Sam:Ha ha ha ha it turns out yes there is it's got that song on it any other pre show chat before we get into what we're discussing this episode?
Emma:Ah. I think I think
Sam:The banter's really flying tonight.
Emma:We have been bantering all weekend
Sam:this is the longest that we've spent in each other's company and it's showing.
Emma:The drive home tomorrow is going to be in cold, stony silence, isn't it?
Sam:mm hmm. But tonight, we are gonna listen to two Meat Loaf songs. So, I have brought It's All Coming Back to Me Now, made famous by Celine Dion in 1996, and you have
Emma:brought Modern Girl Which is, I believe, released in 1984 I'd recommend watching the Modern Girl video
Sam:So, listeners, go away. Go to Spotify, YouTube, wherever you want to find it. Listen to It's All Coming Back to Me Now. Come back to us. I'd recommend the Celine Dion version. Celine Dion does an incredible girl power head wobble on the line. I never wasted any of my time on you since then. Keep an eye out for it because I think it's absolutely amazing.
Music:When I touch you like this And I hold you like that It's so hard to believe but it's all coming back It's all coming back, it's all coming back to me now There were moments of gold and there were flashes of light There were things I'd never do again but then they'd always seemed right There were
Sam:We've just listened to Celine Dion's version of It's All Coming Back To Me Now, and Emma's had a lot of fun with that video.
Emma:It's so good.
Sam:so good. Right, shall we start with the song
Emma:Yeah okay
Sam:Do you like the song?
Emma:It feels like a song that was missing from Bat Out of Hell
Sam:2.
Emma:It's got those sorts of
Sam:vibes Well, we will talk about that later on.
Emma:Yes..
Sam:It does have absolutely those vibes. Celine's version released 1996. This was the first track on her fourth English language record. So she's kind of getting quite massive by now. Jim Steinman off the back of Bat Out of Hell 2 can do whatever he wants. And he chooses to work with Celine Dion. This is the same year that Meat Loaf releases Welcome to the Neighbourhood. So this is what Jim was up to in the same period that Meat Loaf was starting a record with 25 seconds of crickets and a couple getting into a car and then a misogynist song about women being liars.
Emma:Yep.
Sam:Inspired by Wuthering Heights
Emma:I can believe that.
Sam:Steinman's Own words on this song. This song is an erotic motorcycle. It's like Heathcliff digging up Kathy's corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight. You can't get more extreme, operatic, or passionate than that.
Emma:Every time I think that I've said something really wanky about my own like, comedy and art ambitions, Jim Steinman manages to make me feel like the most grounded human alive.
Sam:I'm glad you enjoyed that because I've got a lot of good Jim Steinman quotes this episode
Emma:Oh good, I'm looking forward to these
Sam:Just want to clarify, because I did have to double check, because it didn't sound like the Wuthering Heights I remember, at no point in the novel does Heathcliff dig up Cathy's corpse and dance around with it.
Emma:At which point does the ghost of Heathcliffe ride a motorcycle through the building?
Sam:I've got some notes on the video later on, but if you haven't chosen to watch the video, listeners just know that Celine Dion is singing about a man whom she evidently has no interest in whatsoever,
Emma:Oh she looks so bored with him
Sam:All of the romantic scenes between them, and one or two are quite steamy, she looks like she would rather be doing the ironing.
Emma:She is definitely writing a shopping list in her head
Sam:This song was described by giggling empathy void Andrew Lloyd Webber as"the greatest love song of the millennium". And of Celine's version he said,"this will be the record of the millennium". This was 1996, the millennium was on a lot of people's minds, looming at the time. Record of the millennium?
Emma:it's a good song. It's and I like it. I remember the first time I heard it I think I actually saw the video on Top of the Pops Back when it came out and I remember thinking that this sounds like a song that should have been done by Meat Loaf. This is before I knew it was written by Jim Steinman. So it's got it's got a You know, Celine's version, it's got all the classic stuff. There's, there's the choir that I think is Jim's own personal choir that he keeps in his home studio
Sam:Drags around with him to every
Emma:Every recording. Cause it does sound like the same choir that was on Bat Out of Hell 2.
Sam:The Calgary Sun said this was the highlight of her English language recording career People Magazine called this"seven minutes of Wagnerian melodrama. Dion's crystalline soprano swelling and trembling with operatic abandon worthy of the Ring Cycle's immolation scene." That was People Magazine.
Emma:the people that read People Magazine understand? I mean, I'm struggling with that.
Sam:Somebody got lost on their way to Melody Maker.
Emma:Oh yes.
Sam:Not everybody was kind about this. The Vancouver Sun called Celine Dion a"Madonna meets Meat Loaf vocal freak." and the song,"intensely self indulgent, pompously self important, and mediocre beyond belief, this song never ends". Aside
Emma:Aside from the mediocre beyond belief bit, I mean, it's all about pomposity, isn't it? That's what Steinman songs are about. Especially this phase. I kind of agree with the quote, but it's still a good song.
Sam:It slightly outstays its welcome, I think. it doesn't have the three or five act structure that most of Steinman's longer songs do
Emma:it would benefit from something else in there.
Sam:Well Meat Loaf cuts a couple of verses out when he does his version later on and We'll we'll talk about Meat Loaf's version. In fact, i'll make you watch all three versions. The listeners don't have to But we'll get on to that. But the reason I brought this song along today is last time we talked about Meat Loaf and how once him and Jim Steinman had a falling out in the 80s, he fell into the depths of misogyny and being a prick. So I wanted to talk about what Jim Steinman gets up to in the same time period. So I'm going to run through the Stein line. line Here's the Stein line. So Jim Steinman
Emma:The Stein line.
Sam:The Steinlein.
Emma:You're really pleased with that, aren't you?
Sam:Not really, it's sort of I feel like it's expected of me. Yeah,
Emma:if you feel I say lean into
Sam:Okay, well I just have.
Emma:Be proud of it.
Sam:Jim Steinlein was born in Hewlett Harbour on Long Island in 1947. He grew up listening to rock and roll records alongside things like Wagner and sees absolutely no difference between the two. He attends Amherst College, Massachusetts in the late 60s. I am fairly certain, and I'll check before I put this bit in the podcast, Potentially my parents in law were at college with Jim Steinman.
Emma:Wow.
Sam:they went to Amherst around that time.
Emma:god. I mean, I'm now imagining that they're all best friends and that they went to parties together and
Sam:so he goes to Amherst in the late 60s. He writes and produces a lot of mad, weird rock operas and musical shows. He graduates, he goes to New York and he starts producing or writing for Broadway shows. He meets Meat Loaf in the early 70s when Meat Loaf is auditioning for a role they hit it off. They do some touring productions together. And eventually Meat Loaf convinces him that they need to quit the touring game and make actual records. And that result is Bat Out of Hell, which we've talked about. It was a slow burn to start with, but over a couple of years it becomes massive. Sell out shows, loads of tours. That brings us into the 1980s. Off the back of Bat Out of Hell, the record label demand a follow up. Steinman writes this fantastic record called Renegade Angel. Gives it to Meat Loaf to sing. But Meat Loaf's voice is fucked. Three years of touring and drugs mean he cannot perform, so Steinman records it himself and releases it in 1981 under the name Bad For Good. You've listened to that album?
Emma:I I have, I love that album.
Sam:The songs on that album are great, we'll talk about it later, but Jim Steinman is not Meat Loaf as a performer. And critically, it suffers from that. Doesn't go anywhere. But there's an even bigger problem, because, just as that record is being finished and released, Meat Loaf is feeling better. So he asks for another record, and Jim Steinman has to quickly fire one out, and produces Dead Ringer. Which is quite disappointing and lacklustre, so much so that the only good song on it, Dead Ringer for Love, Gets stuck on the end of re releases of Bat Out of not salvageable record.
Emma:It is one in my mum's record collection though.
Sam:Well? Sorry. Sorry, Amanda. I'm sure it's good. But yeah, neither of those two records do great and the two of them drift apart. They fall out big time, in fact. Steinman sues Meat Loaf for 85 million dollars, making Meat Loaf declare bankruptcy. They spend a lot of the next two decades suing each other back and forth over weird stuff, although later in life Meat Loaf claims that they never sued one another and it was just their management But, as we'll go into later on in this episode, they said some very cruel things about one another while not suing each other. So yeah. Steinman spends this decade writing and producing for various other artists. But, being a prick about it, too. He gives Making Love Out Of Nothing At All to Air Supply, whom he called"two boring idiots from Australia" he gives Left in the Dark to Barbara Streisand. He gives Bonnie Tyler the incredible Total Eclipse of the Heart. Bonnie Tyler, he recalled"it was a mad scene. I mean, that woman was mad singing. Her voice sounds like she's been put on the rack."
Emma:Oh my god!
Sam:"There have been very few cases where I'm interested in what the artist thinks. I mean, I'm not interested in doing what Bonnie Tyler wants to do. I don't think she has any idea what she's doing. I've liked almost everyone I've worked with. Even the people I felt were ridiculous, like Def Leppard. Because they're all um, interesting. Leppard was interesting in the way a scientist finds a really strange sort of insect interesting."
Emma:Oh my
Sam:So that was from an interview with Melody Maker in 1989 and I do have something else about Def Leppard, We're not here to talk about Def Leppard, but I do want to bring this up starts producing a record for Def Leppard, while their regular producer has had a breakdown, but then the regular producer sort of comes back in and takes over and Steinman gets annoyed He hated working with Def Leppard, he thought of them as like a manufactured shit band."I knew I was in trouble when we were in Amsterdam recording and Joe, Joe Elliot, the singer, comes into the studio going,'Hey Jim, I just saw a really fucking brilliant film last night, man.' I asked what it was and he said,'Police Academy 3.'"I said,'Oh god, great, was it, Joe?' And he said,'Oh yeah, much better than Police Academy 2.' And then it was just a question of, If I quit, I wouldn't get paid any money. So I held out until they canned me."
Emma:God.
Sam:Jim Steinman is a miserable prick.
Emma:Oh. but, you've sat in cars on the way home from gigs. Jim Steinman would fit in perfectly! in the back of a post gig car journey.
Sam:That is true, for those listening who aren't comedians, we are a bitchy bunch! Another good quote not everybody appreciated Jim Steinman's work."For Diana Ross, nothing could be negative. It was,'This suggests all of life is horrifying and dark. What can you say that's positive?' And I said,'Well, I'm positive that everything is horrifying and dark.'"
Emma:Also, Jim Steinman is a little bit of me.
Sam:Andrew Lloyd Webber offered him the job of lyricist for Phantom.
Emma:Wow Yeah,
Sam:but he had to turn it down because he was contracted with Bonnie Tyler to do another
Emma:album.
Sam:So there's a little glimpse into the world that you could have seen there. Melody Maker describes him as an affable narcissist, which is definitely what I'm getting from these quotes. On being accused of being a megalomaniac,"I don't know, says Steinman. I'm not even sure if I know what megalomaniac means. I think the fact that I consider everyone else inferior and pathetic and unfit to hear the treasures I've created isn't relevant."
Emma:Part of me wants this to be tongue in cheek playing up to the character.
Sam:So I'm starting to think of him as, The Oscar Wilde that we know is the Oscar Wilde of quotes and witticisms and oh, the only thing I have to declare is my genius. But hanging out with the real man must have been insufferable. You think that Jim Fucking give it a rest, Oscar. Do you want chips or not? That's that's what Jim Steinman is. but yes, he's a colossal egomaniac. right, here we get to the breakup with Meat Loaf. Basically, I only stopped working with him because he lost his voice. As far as I was concerned, it was his voice I was friends with. In his mind, I was his best friend, but I never was. It was his voice. I liked him, but it was a package deal. Without the voice, it was a little hard."
Emma:little hard. that's like, oh, oh, yeah. I'm her best friend, but she's not my best friend.. Uh huh, That's so schoolgirl
Sam:know, I know. They reunite to work on Bat out of Hell 2 in the early 90s, but they've just spent a decade and a half being million dollar bitches at one another. it's incredible. But before we get there we get to 1989. And an outfit called Pandora's Box. decade started with Bad For Good, which was Jim Steinman stepping into Meat Loaf shoes in inverted commas, but reading between the lines. I think this is him thinking, this is my chance. I can finally be a rock star. And Pandora's Box in 1989 is his final roll of the dice as a performer. So, this is a band that he's assembled himself. It's him on keyboards. Vocals from Ellen Foley, who sings with Meat Loaf on Bat Out of Hell. She was the female part on Paradise By the Dashboard Light. Gina Taylor, Elaine Caswell, and the definitely real Deliria Wild. Whom Steinman described as,"of Cuban, French, Italian and German descent in that order," and was"thrown out of a nunnery five years ago for something so shocking I can't bring myself to tell you what it is." Yeah. What we have here is Jim Steinman surrounding himself with young women.
Emma:It's the midlife crisis years
Sam:year. It's midlife crisis time for Jim. He realises this is his last chance to really show the world what he is as a performer. And he creates this record, Original Sin, with the band Pandora's Box. He wanted to call the band Rockman Philharmonic.
Emma:Ooh.
Sam:Yeah. They release the album. It goes to number one in the album charts in South Africa Very poor sales in Europe not released at all in America
Emma:Is available on apple music
Sam:the lead single is It's All Coming Back to Me Now, which brings us all the way back around doesn't do very well at all. Jim Steinman gives that to Celine Dion in 1996. Meat Loaf sues to try to perform it himself and fails Steinman has always considered this a woman's song. And I think that's, well, we'll watch Meat Loaf version of it soon. But it certainly suits a female. Voice All three music videos for all three versions of this are amazing Celine Dion we've just watched it. Celine sits in a castle vaguely reminiscent of the one from I'd Do Anything For Love and surrounds herself with memories and the ghost of a man on a motorbike who rode away one day and exploded. Celine gets progressively sadder and hornier and may actually bone the ghost at some point. Eventually, the ghost is satisfied that she can live on without him and rides off on his ghost motorbike. Through the house. The song came out in 1996 during a a Meat Loaf Steinman off again period and Jim Steinman is not a man known for subtlety in his metaphor. just saying, just. saying
Emma:I think this is a song about Jim and Meat Loaf's ongoing on and off again bromance.
Sam:Do you know who else thinks that? Meat Loaf.
Emma:genuinely concerned that Meat Loaf and I have a similar opinion on anything. You think?
Sam:Meat Loaf said that he was in tears when he first heard this song which he stated is"the only time that's happened"
Emma:What a man!
Sam:He's also said that the song could refer to Steinman and himself, with an array of emotions coming back every time they work together. Referring to lines like, When I kiss you like that, he said,"Although I loved, Jim Steinman, I wouldn't French kiss him.""To me, it wasn't a song about romance, it was about me and Jim Steinman. We'd had a load of problems with managers in the early 80s, and all of a sudden, after five years, we started to communicate."After I'd been to his house, he sent me the song, and it was It's All Coming Back to Me Now. Not the line, when you kiss me like that, but the emotional connection. It doesn't have to be literal!"
Emma:Methinks the lady doth protest too
Sam:much. I rather think so, Emma
Emma:Other thoughts that I've had on this particular version. So obviously there's the amazing ghost in the mirror set up, which is beautiful. Not too far into it. The bells start and it makes it sound like a Christmas
Sam:song. Yes, when the ghost appears to her,
Emma:it's Christmassy. It's
Sam:come up, yeah.
Emma:and festive.
Sam:I mean, it could be a Hallmark movie.
Emma:Quite a horny one.
Sam:We're now gonna watch the Meat Loaf version. Listeners, you really don't have to.
Emma:What a load of I don't think that this is a bad version. duet works well. I know that's partly there because Meat Loaf was starting to lose his range. But his voice is still strong enough to carry it at this point. Whereas later songs that he releases, it, the last few albums, there's a real noticeable decline. this still feels like a powerful song on his part.
Sam:The music videos are very similar, I've described the Celine one to you just now. Meat Loaf one, for people who haven't just viewed it. Meat Loaf sits in an Art Deco mansion, vaguely reminiscent of the one from The Great Gatsby, and surrounds himself with hot chicks, and the ghost of a woman in a car who drove away from him one day, and exploded. Meat Loaf gets progressively sadder and reminiscienter, and thinks about the time he was much younger and hotter and met her at a party that definitely isn't inspired by the Kubrick movie Eyes Wide Shut Eventually, he is satisfied he can live on without her, covers up the magic mirror they were singing at each other through, and goes off, probably to bone all those hot chicks who keep hanging around.
Emma:I am enjoying your continued use of hot chicks. Such a feminist.
Sam:I'm just viewing the world through Meat Loaf's eyes. eyes yes. So Meat Loaf did say,"I believe that the version that Marion Raven and myself did on this album is the definitive version."
Emma:Of course he would.
Sam:Jim Steinman had a different opinion. He called this the second worst cover of any song just behind Scooter's version of The Logical Song in 2001. You're gonna
Emma:You're going to get it in every episode then?
Sam:Four for four
Emma:the worst thing is, it creeps up on me
Sam:I thought you would see that one coming.
Emma:I should have seen it coming. God damn it.
Sam:So that was Meat Loaf, thousand and six off the album Bat out of Hell Three which Jim Steinman wasn't really involved in. Shall we talk about Pandora's Box now?
Emma:I really want to see this video because you've told me not to watch it,
Sam:That's right, but Emma, before we watch the video, it's time for the quiz.
Emma:Oh!
Sam:One of these three is a fake description of the Pandora's Box video. Is it 1. A woman's near death experience from a motorcycle crash is set amid operatic excess and black leather. In a simulated city engulfed by an apocalyptic blaze, British vocalist Elaine Caswell sings and participates in a ritual to celebrate the song's Knights of Sacred Pleasure.
Emma:I mean, that sounds so Steinman. it actually hurts.
Sam:Description two: a girl, near death, is being ministered to by paramedics, fantasizing and being sexually aroused by a large anaconda, and writhing on a bed that lights up in time with the music, while surrounded by a group of bemused, semi naked dancers on a day trip from their regular gig in Cats. Or is it three? Steinman demanded, and the director Ken Russell wholeheartedly agreed, that the only fitting end to the song is for a man to ride a motorcycle up the steps of a local church tower and jump out of the turrets at the top and then explode. To the surprise of only two men, Jim and Ken, the wardens of the 500 year old church refused.
Emma:one
Sam:Emma
Emma:Emma one of those is not true. They're all true, this is Steinman
Sam:One of them's not true, Emma.
Emma:OK I am going to go for option B
Sam:A girl near death is being ministered to by paramedics, fantasizing and being aroused by a large anaconda and writhing on a bed that lights up in time with the music,
Emma:yeah I don't think that that's that's the description
Sam:You're correct. That's not the correct description. Because it was a large python,
Emma:not a giant anaconda. Shall we? Good lord. me When I blimey.
Music:believe all to me. It's all coming back. We seemed right. There were nights of sacred pleasure. There were those empty threats. But you, he's today of my time.
Emma:Wow. I don't really know what I've just witnessed. It feels like we might have just watched some weird porn.
Sam:you are reading a lot of people's minds tonight. Jim Steinman's manager on watching this said, It's a porno movie. It is filth! It's filth. yeah! Very like
Emma:80s filth Sure. lot of big hair. Not that hair though. You don't see any of that. It's, it's definitely it's, I mean, PG is probably wrong, but
Sam:fifteen?
Emma:Yeah, I wonder which music channels would have shown that.
Sam:Well, I think that might be the sales problem right there
Emma:Yes, yes, I think so. You're not going to see that one on top of the pops, are you? Wow. The video probably didn't help, because music videos were quite a big thing by that point, weren't they? MTV generation. Exactly. And with it not being viewable on anything, really, I mean, wow, there was quite a lot of bum visible
Sam:bum. There's a lot of bum. And do you know what? There's also Torture
Emma:Yeah.
Sam:there's a bit where she's on a
Emma:it's very S& M.
Sam:kind of I guess flash forwards to various possible futures And there's one where she's being ministered to by sci fi paramedics who sort of do colossal acupuncture and shove huge spikes in her.
Emma:I'll be honest with you. It doesn't do it for me. But I bet it does for someone.
Sam:if You can look past the video. Huh.
Emma:Huh. I
Sam:The version of the song?
Emma:It's alright. Think Celine does it better. It's nice that the Christmassy bells are still there. But yeah, Celine's version is the definitive version as far as
Sam:concerned. Agreed. This is from Raleigh E. Joe who says the ambulance briefly seen at 5 minutes 30 is a Citroen CX registration C909JGS. Apparently still exists according to the DVLA. Status is SORN. I wonder if it is still alive purely because of this connection.
Emma:So is that an estate car? Because it looks like she's climbing into the back of an estate not an
Sam:estate. It is. Yeah. Do you know what? It's really, really unprofessional of me, I didn't look up what a Citroen CX looks
Emma:like before
Sam:the show, but yeah, there's one.
Emma:She just
Sam:She just sort of rolled into the back of an estate car and rolled away. But,, God bless you Raleigh E. Joe for thinking that the ambulance from the Pandora's Box version of It's All Coming Back Me Now is being kept in a garage somewhere It's a collector's item, it's going to be worth a Emma with all of our songs, we rate them on one of two scales. If Jim Steinman is involved, we rate on the scale of Jim Steinman to Jim Fineman. To Jim Declineman. How are we gonna rate this song?
Emma:I think it's a Jim Steinman
Sam:it's a Jim Steinman to me as well. Let's play the jingle that isn't a jingle, Jim Steinman.
Emma:I just think You sound like a happy dog when you're doing that.
Sam:Sausages Yes, I was on That's Life in the 80s
Emma:Straight after the piece about raunchy music videos.
Sam:So Emma, you might need to remind the listeners what song you've brought
Emma:I've brought Modern Girl from the album, Bad Attitude.
Sam:Brilliant. Listeners, find that on your song platform of choice and we'll see you in a few minutes.
Emma:So, Sam, we've just watched the video for Modern Girl any first thoughts?
Sam:Like a five minute Advertising jingle.
Emma:jingle. That's a very good description. Do you want to know how many times"gimme the future" is said? Because I counted them, but I'd like you to guess.
Sam:Forty-seven
Emma:Higher.
Sam:Seventy-four. Lower.
Emma:Lower.
Sam:Seventy four.
Emma:Oh, the old ones are the best, aren't they?
Sam:Fifty-six
Emma:It's 66. 66. Give me the futures. That does include the ones that give me the future with a modern girl, but that's still, that still counts I think. that's a lot.
Sam:Right. this is a habit of both of them though. We can't have a go Meat Loaf for doing this when Jim Steinman is guilty of the same thing. Any Meat Loaf or Steinman song, if you took out the repetition, could fit inside a matchbox.
Emma:lyrical matchbox.
Sam:matchbox.
Emma:This was released in 1984, the year of my birth it was from the album, Bad Attitude. It was a moderate commercial success. It peaked at number 17 in the UK chart. It was written by our friends Paul Jacobs and Sarah Durkee, Yeah, I
Sam:remember mentioning this last time.
Emma:the Rubber Meets the Road.
Sam:it
Emma:My, my notes here are lyrically, this is terrible.
Sam:is
Emma:When I first heard this on my Walkman on the way back from the school French trip in year seven, when I bought the Hits out of Hell cassette from the bargain bin at a service station, we stopped at. And when I first heard it,, I liked the song cause I thought, this is different from him. This sounds kind of modern in a strange sort of way. And I also thought that some of the lyrics kind of made it feel like there was a more modern outlook
Sam:It was a bit cool and girl power.
Emma:I thought that Meat Loaf wanted a modern woman to have an equal relationship with, but no. When, when he sings about, the world being a broken down machine, I was having some quite high hopes that it's going to be a song about the struggling environment and his hopes to fix it with his modern woman, but also no. It's a song about nothing Just the words give me the future over and over again. I think the video really expresses how much about nothing it is at the beginning. There's the low budget supermarket sweep for life stuff
Sam:Yeah
Emma:And I got quite angry when later on in the video they are just wantonly destroying that. I just, I don't know if it's the middle aged in me that's just annoyed at the unnecessary destruction of, all that food and stuff. I know. Do you want to know who directed the video?
Sam:Uh, was it George Miller
Emma:it was not. There's a guy called Brian Grant, who has also directed quite a few music videos and TV shows. He directed the video for Olivia Newton John's Physical, which won the first ever video Grammy. So he'd got, Pedigree. He's also done music videos for Kim Wilde. He did the Kids in America video for T'Pau China in your hand.
Sam:Your
Emma:And Duran Duran's hungry, like the wolf. So there's, a real mix there, but more interesting than that is his TV. He's done episodes of Doctor Who. Also, episodes of teen drama on Channel 4. As If.
Sam:Do remember As If? It was
Emma:was quite forgettable. But the best one, the best one is that he'd directed episodes of the erotic drama anthology series, Red Shoe Diaries starring David Duchovny Shown on Channel Four's soft porn
Sam:slot.
Emma:he slot
Sam:all men of my age have a, have a memory of Red Shoe diaries.
Emma:I'll be honest with you Sam, not just men
Sam:just
Emma:We all are watching with the volume down. Finger on the remote Control in case mum and dad came in,
Sam:Kids today get that from the hedge of the internet they'll They'll never know how weird it is to get your nudity from the same man who gives you sci fi adventures every Saturday night
Emma:So strange. So strange. Let's not even start on Eurotrash. So the video was filmed at the Becton Gasworks in London. Becton Gasworks was actually used as a location in quite a lot of things over the years. I think it's mostly non existent now, things have been built there instead. But it was used for the opening scene of the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.
Sam:Oh. Is that the one where Blofeld gets picked up on a
Emma:Yes, I believe so, Yeah. It was used as a dystopian landscape in the 1984 film version of 1984 And Stanley Kubrick used it in Full Metal Jacket And and yet this as well
Sam:it's got a sort of Mad Max vibe to it which is why I
Emma:Mad max like filmed on a sixth form budget
Sam:I've just looked up Mad Max while we were talking cos I I had. An inkling that maybe it was a practice run at the real Mad Max but Mad Max came out in 79 Mad Max 2 came out in 81 and the third one was 85
Emma:So this is very much inspired by the part that I most enjoyed watching your face watch this video was the American flag
Sam:the big American flag behind Meat Loaf. Which is so at odds with the lyrics
Emma:Yeah. But I feel like a lot of the video is at odds with the lyrics.
Sam:Well, We'll break it down into the three act structure. Act one. A beautiful Miss America meets Mr. Right. They have a baby. Those are the classic American couple. The baby grows up in Act 2 to be the modern girl. The future. She doesn't need the picket fence and the Norman Rockwell home.
Emma:She needs a mad rocker on a
Sam:needs a mad rocker on a motorbike. And I don't think that ties in with the big Patton American flag. I'm just now going to look at what year the film Patton came out because that is a scene ripped straight off that. Oh 1970 Are you familiar with Patton? Okay, so it's a biopic of an American general George Patton um, and the sort of the big stirring scene in it is him giving a speech to his troops in front of the colossal flag and that's where that trope comes
Emma:Right.
Sam:So Meat Loaf is really drawing on the establishment of the establishment for that scene
Emma:I mean, part of me wondered if he was trying to do a bit of a Bruce Springsteen as Somewhere just between the past and something darning new. There's a break in the chain, a skip in the clock. Girl, that's where I'm gonna find you. Ugh. Between the boy I was before and what I'm gonna be, There's a clash on the border, a flame in the sky, Girl, that's where you're gonna find me. So I feel like there's something kind of weirdly optimistic about that. And the video just doesn't play
Sam:you're gonna I There is the lyric"baby it's a brand new world mmm so the optimistic reading of this video is that the uh gang of teenage feral warriors are gonna start the world anew and sweep away the ashes of the old very much like in the fourth Mad Max film, where Them women do that.
Emma:Them women do that, As I say, this is something that I used to really love because it felt quite uplifting as a song. And so it has been on many, many playlists of mine over the years, but I'm just not feeling it so much anymore. I think since watching the video, I've been put off because I hadn't watched the video until I started looking into it for this. And now I feel a bit differently about it because the video is so shit. It feels really half arsed
Sam:I think it's probably very telling that the only version we can find of it on YouTube is a looks like a rip off of an old VHS. It's incredibly low quality, so Meat Loaf's record label have not rushed to put out the high res version of it
Emma:Meat Loaf appears in, full midlife crisis outfit As he's wandering the wasteland, pondering his future with the modern girl So he's got the whole leather jacket and the, the long hair that's looking a bit sad by this point he could do with a bit of a tidy up
Sam:When does he lose the long hair?
Emma:It's after Bat Out of Hell 2 I think between then and Welcome to the Neighbourhood, he has a proper sensible haircut.
Sam:And Steinman keeps the long hair throughout his life. Yes. And looks more and more like What We Do In The
Emma:Shadows. Yes. Yes he does. He goes full vampire.
Sam:But not like good vampire. One of the rubbish
Emma:in
Sam:who lives in a weird apartment on Staten Island
Emma:No,
Sam:Can we compare this to last episode's song Where the Rubber Meets the Road, which was also, as you say, a Durkee and Jacobs collaboration, and which was misogynist as balls. What went wrong? Like, I think the intent in this
Emma:intent I don't feel that this is a misogynistic song. This is a man looking for a modern woman.
Sam:Actually there is a bit in the video where quite towards the end you're seeing all the biker gangs driving around and in the background is a giant iron that is like skyscraper sized iron that is rusting to show that modern girls don't do ironing and household jobs and that.
Emma:I tell you what gang, this modern girl doesn't do any ironing. So crumpled. I feel like this is, this is it's not a feminist song. That's the wrong, that's the wrong.
Sam:not
Emma:it's not a misogynistic song feels like, as I say, it feels like it should be full of optimism, but the video Maybe it's just the horrible grey landscape of the video that just makes me feel a bit sad
Sam:it's supposed to be set in the post apocalypse, it's the London Docklands in the 1980s, which is somehow worse.
Emma:Yeah. it's the apocalypse of the 60s Star Trek landing at a quarry kind of.
Sam:Yes it is. yes. Oh, you're absolutely right, yeah. No, you can see Captain Kirk just out of the shot being like, Oh what's this week's planet? It's one where Meat Loaf is is the only surviving adult.
Emma:Oh God, imagine Meat Loaf is the only surviving adult and he
Sam:And he
Emma:what all the kids do. And so they're all on motorbikes and have, oh, just society wouldn't last long, would it?
Sam:There's no cooking. There's no maintenance
Emma:maintenance. Only motorbikes. Nobody's in
Sam:charge of medication. That's where they
Emma:destroy the supermarket, isn't it Yeah. In the supermarket sweep, but yeah. Yeah. Oh God, I got so annoyed at that. Any final thoughts on that?
Sam:it's alright. If you were to play that to me and I hadn't heard any of the Steinman songs, I would say, Who is this man? It's forgettable nothing, isn't it? We talked about the timeline earlier, this is from, he's just been sued into oblivion, and he's plugging away, keeping going. As discussed he was in many ways a horrible man, but he was a grafter and Fair play
Emma:to the lad. He was touring a lot to try and churn money that way. And this was one of the better received songs of that time. This is one of the few songs from that time that appears on the greatest hits things.
Sam:Sorry, I just pulled a face because I still have the Wikipedia page for the Citroen CX open. Oh, okay.
Emma:okay.
Sam:A Citroen design principle was that turning signals should not cancel themselves. This should be a conscious decision of the driver. Fuckin
Emma:Fuck off.
Sam:Sick of Anyway, that's it. Emma, shall we rate this song? I feel like we've reached the end of useful discussion about Modern Girl. So our rating scale for songs by Meat Loaf, without the presence of Jim Steinman, run from Marvin Lee Aday, to Marvin Lee Okay, to Marvin Lee No Way. So where does this stand
Emma:I think it's probably Marvin Lee. Okay.
Sam:I agree.. We should get a spreadsheet for this. So far, I believe we've had one Marvin Lee No Way in the utterly excreble yet catchy Rubber Meets the Road. This is reasonably catchy. It's not offensive to half of the planet.
Emma:planet.
Sam:It's gotta be Marvin Lee Okay, right? Yeah, I
Emma:I think so. Marvin Lee, Okay. M
Sam:m m m Marvin Lee Okay
Emma:I like that one. I really like that.
Sam:It's so late, listeners, it's
Emma:else, we're having
Sam:fun. That is the end of this episode of Chat Out of Hell. We're both very tired now. Hopefully you've enjoyed that just as much as we have. Do keep your name suggestions coming in for our cheeky bat mascot in order to win a badge of it. We've not had a winning name in yet. chatoutofhellatgmail. com So I think we're just going to keep it open until somebody comes up with a good enough suggestion. Songs next time. Emma, what are you going to go for?
Emma:I'm sticking with Bad Attitude, but this time I'm going for a Steinman song, which is Nowhere Fast.
Sam:I've never heard nowhere fast.
Emma:You're going to hear more than one version of it.
Sam:Brilliant. Emma's gonna be the one to bore me because I get to bring an absolutely brilliant song next time.'cause I am also gonna bring a Steinman. We're going back to the classics. It's Paradise by the Dashboard Light time. Somebody's gotta bring these listeners some joy and it ain't gonna be you.
Emma:How rude
Sam:I'm being rude about Meat Loaf's output in the mid 1980s. Your commentary on it it is wonderful. But as always, listeners, please do let us know your thoughts on those songs, or the songs that we've discussed today. Chat out of hell at gmail. com. Keep your general Meat Loaf thoughts and anecdotes flying Did Meat Loaf shove in front of you in a queue for a book signing at the Hay Festival? Let us know, chatoutofhellatgmail. com That's it! End of Chat Out of Hell. Emma, how tired are you?
Emma:Pretty tired.
Sam:tired. I am exhausted as well. If any of you do see us on the M1 tomorrow, get out of the way.
Emma:the
Sam:I'm a bit sleepy. But yeah, we'll see you all in two more weeks time for another exciting episode of Chat Out of Hell. Bye everybody! Bye!