Meat Loaf - "Paradise By The Dashboard Light"

[dth1971]

Remember the 1978 minor Top 40 hit by Meat Loaf from his "Bat Out of Hell" album called "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" which featured a faux baseball game announcing by recently died at age of 89 baseball announcer Phil Rizutto? This song only spent 2 weeks in the Billboard Top 40 and AT40 only played 4 minutes of the song that could have been played longer after the AT40 show expanded from 3 hours to 4 in October 1978 and the song was still in the top 40.

[WotUNeed]

Not one of my favorite songs from Meat Loaf.

[G-Reg]

ahhhhhhhh only 2 weeks in the top 40?! whatever, this song is a CLASSIC. love it.

[irock]

I wouldn't want to hear it often, but it's a good song. Best thing Meatloaf ever did, imo, and the best song Jim Steinman ever wrote (at least I think it was Steinman, he wrote most of Meatloaf's material). And without that little Rizzuto passage this wouldn't have been anything special at all.

[Crimsonio]

Glee made me revisit this classic and WOW, and a song!

[areyoureadytojump]

Jim Steinman has died:

www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jim-steinman-meat-loaf-songwriter-dead-obituary-1158472/

Jim Steinman, Hitmaker for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Dead at 73
By JON BLISTEIN

Songwriter and composer also worked with Celine Dion, Air Supply, Barry Manilow, and more

Rock and pop hitmaker Jim Steinman, who wrote and composed music for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Celine Dion, and more, died Monday, April 19th. He was 73.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Connecticut confirmed Steinman’s death to Rolling Stone. A cause of death was not given.

Steinman’s wholly unique career found him working as a composer, lyricist, and producer for an array of artists in a variety of styles. According to a biography on his website, the records he’s worked on have sold more than 190,000,000 million copies worldwide. He was nominated for four Grammys over the course of his career as well, ultimately winning Album of the Year for his work on Dion’s 1996 smash, Falling Into You.


Steinman began his career in musical theater, writing and starring in a rock musical while in college called The Dream Engine, which garnered the attention of New York theatrical producer Joe Papp. After graduating, Steinman worked at the Public Theater in New York (which Papp established) and juggled various creative projects. In 1973, Yvonne Elliman recorded his song “Happy Ending,” which became his first commercially released tune, while that same year, the Public Theater staged his musical, More Than You Deserve.

One of the actors who auditioned for More Than You Deserve was Meat Loaf, and he and Steinman soon struck up a close personal and professional relationship. The two began working on Meat Loaf’s proper solo debut, Bat Out of Hell, in the early Seventies, but the album wouldn’t be released until 1977. And it wasn’t until about one year later — after Meat Loaf performed on Saturday Night Live — that the album became a certified hit.

“There is no other songwriter ever like him,” Meat Loaf said of Steinman when inducting into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012. “I can never repay him. He has been such an influence, in fact, the biggest influence on my life, and I learned so much from him that there would be no way I could ever repay Mr. Jim Steinman.”

Despite the success of Bat Out of Hell, however, Meat Loaf and Steinman’s relationship began to fray after Steinman started working on a follow-up with Bruce Springsteen’s keyboardist Roy Bittan without telling Meat Loaf. Although they completed and released Dead Ringer in 1981, Steinman and Meat Loaf’s work together became much more sporadic and they were frequently engaged in lawsuits against each other.

During the Eighties, Steinman would collaborate with Barbra Streisand, the Sisters of Mercy, and Fire Inc. He produced Tyler’s next record, 1986’s Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire, composed the theme music for pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and wrote “Holding Out for a Hero” from the Footloose soundtrack (sung by Tyler). Meat Loaf also recorded a handful of Steinman songs for 1984’s Bad Attitude, while in 1989 Steinman released the album Original Sin with his group Pandora’s Box.

The start of the Nineties found Meat Loaf and Steinman properly reuniting, and in 1993 they released Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, which featured the hit, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).” A few years later, Steinman linked up with Dion, producing Falling Into You and writing her hit, “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” Steinman also took on several musical theater projects in the Nineties, collaborating with Andrew Lloyd Webber on Whistle Down the Wind, and crafting his own project, Tanz der Vampire, which opened in Austria in 1997.


In 2006, Meat Loaf released Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, which was credited and promoted as another production with Steinman, but the pair were once again embroiled in a legal dispute and didn’t really collaborate on it (in an interview with Rolling Stone, Meat Loaf admitted the album “should have never happened” and said, “To me, that record is nonexistent”). But the pair once again overcame their differences and in 2016 they released what would become their last album together, Braver Than We Are.

[Dammn Baby]

An epic song. Hilarious and awesome.

[areyoureadytojump]

This was a Heardle song recently