“I have traveled throughout the universe over the years to find her. “Sometimes going all the way is just the beginning.” The roar of a powerful motorcycle at full speed, stalked by cars, motorcycles and a police helicopter to an imposing Gothic-style mausoleum where a creature with brutal features has hidden. This is how the video clip begins I would do anything for love (but I won’t do that)(I’d do anything for love, but I won’t do that) the song by Meat Loaf (born Michael Lee Aday, Dallas, 1047-Nashville, 2022) that led to the rocker having the most successful song on the global charts in 1993 that reached number one in 28 countries . 30 years later, in the midst of the era of minimalism, of the instantaneous, of trap hits that do not last two minutes, he shines as the last great exponent of a way of making music, spectacular, bombastic, larger than life. And that, in the midst of the dictatorship of the algorithm, it will hardly be repeated.
I’d do anything for love (but I won’t do that) It was the first single from Bat out of hell II: back into hellwhich marked the return to success of an artist who had debuted one of the best-selling albums in the history of rock in 1977, Bat out of hell, with 43 million copies shipped worldwide to date. The years that separate the two albums were full of health problems, legal disputes and a handful of releases of modest success. They had also seen how Jim Steinman, the composer behind the epic sound and overwhelming lyrics of Meat Loaf’s debut, had been distancing himself personally and professionally from his former great friend.
Jim Steinman’s music has been defined as the result of an eventual collaboration between Phil Spector and Richard Wagner and he played everything on theatricality and explosiveness. Steinman’s name is behind hits like Total eclipse of the heart, by Bonnie Tyler or Making love out of nothing at all from Air Supply. According to Bonnie Tyler just months ago, Loaf was furious when he discovered that Jim Steinman had given Total Eclipse of the Heart to Bonnie Tyler, and even more so when she became the global success that he needed to boost his career in the eighties. He maintained that the song had been originally written for him, but his record company refused to accept Steinman’s conditions and fees as a highly successful songwriter. Steinman (who also passed away in 2021) always maintained that Eclipse It was intended, from the beginning, for Tyler. His reconciliation with Meat Loaf, at the beginning of the nineties, would allow them to triumph at the blow of power ballad just two years after Nirvana revolutionized the way of relating rock and success with their Nevermind.
The video clip was directed by Michael Bay who was already beginning to stand out for his spectacular nature in both music videos and advertisements shortly before inaugurating a fruitful relationship with action and adventure cinema with films such as Two Rebel Police, The Rock, Armageddon either Pearl Harbor. It is a seven-minute frenzy full of foresight, beauty and decadence starring Meat Loaf himself and model Dana Patrick. This seven-minute version is the short one: the one on the album, that is, the one that the 14 million people who bought Bat out of hell II: back into hell heard, it lasted 12. For 12 minutes you can play sponge cakeby Rosalía, seven times.
A rock opera in the middle of grunge
Today, perhaps there are those who identify 1993 with Creepby Radiohead Mr. Jonesby Counting Crows or What’s up? of 4 non blondes. But the truth is that I’d do anything for Love (but I won’t do that), released in August of that same year, found its place in charts in which Bon Jovi, Def Leppard or Aerosmith did not clash alongside Whitney Houston and Madonna. Of all of them, Meat Loaf’s song is, of course, the most excessive. We would have to go back to Hey Jude of the Beatles to find a song so long that was so successful, and we had to wait almost ten minutes into all around the world of Oasis to find a successor.
All the imagery shown in Michael Bay’s music video is an expanded reflection of what the song offers. The fantasy of a character halfway between The Phantom of the Opera and Beauty and the Beastthe vampiric gothic or the very charged inks of the story of impossible love with dedication beyond the mundane connect perfectly with the parameters in which Jim Steinman liked to place his lyrics, whose love for musicals (he managed to carry out several, one of them with Andrew Lloyd Weber) is very noticeable.
Steinman would also have been, in his own words, responsible for choosing the performer of one of the great successes of the song: the duet coda with which, in the final part of the song, the impossible love of Meat Loaf he questions. Although at the time the names of Cher, Melissa Etheridge or Bonnie Tyler would have been considered, it was an unknown British singer with a prodigious voice, Lorraine Crosby, who ended up taking the assignment. Crosby was working performing with her rock band on American military bases around the world when Jim Steinman decided to sign her to his short-lived artist representation agency after hearing a demo. The singer and her husband, Stuart Emerson, participated in the recording sessions by making arrangements and choirs. Bat out of hell II: back into hell When the opportunity arose to record the duet I’d do anything for Love (but I won’t do that). “The idea was never that it was used, it was just helping at a specific moment,” Crosby would say years later. Six months later, Meat Loaf himself suggested using the improvised recording.
Her exceptional contribution to the song did not lead her to stardom, as one might at first think. On the album she appears credited with what was going to be her stage name, Ms. Loud, and in the video clip it is the model Dana Patrick who appears “singing”, which meant that she was the one who received offers from several record labels while Crosby saw how her record contract was canceled after the breakup between Jim Steinman and the MCA record company due to cost overruns. Bat out of Hell II: back into hell, due to the spectacular design of the album and also to the very long 22 months that Loaf took to record it. Lorraine Crosby never charged for participating in the recording session and learned that she had the right to royalties when it was too late to claim what had been accumulated during the six years following the release of the single. She returned to the United Kingdom, where she dedicated herself to performing in cabarets, amusement parks, and did not release her first album, self-released, until 2008.
I’d do anything for Love (but I won’t do that) It was also the milestone that allowed Meat Loaf to become more than just a musician. “There are few people who sound like that and that, in pop music, is already winning half the battle,” highlights popular culture expert José Viruete about the American singer. A characteristic that, according to the divulger, combined with the fact that he was a very fun guy to listen to. “He did some very good interviews and he spent a lot of time on late nights and other television programs, where he told many little stories,” he concludes. One of the most recurrent was to respond to what Meat Loaf meant by the “that” that he said he did not want to do in I’d do anything for Love (but I won’t do that). The artist, sometimes even using a blackboard, explained that the answer was repeated several times in the lyrics of the song itself. It is easy to end this enigma: among the things that the singer affirms that he would do for love, he includes some that he would not do, such as “stop dreaming about you”, “do it better than I do with you.” When the female voice suggests that he should realize that it is time to leave her and move on, he also clarifies: “I won’t do that.” mystery solved.
To the rhythm of the Royal Guard
Viruete, one of the names behind veteran pop culture podcasts like Bizarre Times and Camp Krypton and responsible for one of the historical blogs in Spanish, has a special connection with Bat out of hell II: back into hell (”the first album I bought with my own money, remember”), which highlights that it was a great business card for Meat Loaf in our country. “I’d do anything for Love (but I won’t do that) We have it as a reference for Meat Loaf in Spain, because its first great success, Bat out of hell, it didn’t sound much around here,” he says. Viruete remembers how the video clip was a more than usual presence on MTV and the various music video programs, although he believes that the song becomes truly important in its twelve-minute record version: “If you are going to listen to something that grandiose, there is “Listening to the full version, the duration is part of that majesty.”
Finally, the disseminator highlights the significance of an artist who knew how to adapt to the times and play with his own person, whether playing extreme characters in films like Fight club or letting Seth Rogen convince him to be represented as an animated piece of meat for a cameo in his movie The sausage party. A figure who, upon learning of his death at the beginning of 2022, at the age of 74, brought back I’d do anything for Love (but I won’t do that) to millions of people (including the British Royal Guard, who paraded through Buckingham Palace to the song as a tribute) and to dozens of articles analyzing his genius. This, 30 years after the last great larger-than-life rock ballad, is another one of them.
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