Biography
Theatrical rock and roll predated Jim Steinman, yet many contend that his contributions elevated the style to its highest expression. Although his own recorded output remained limited across a lengthy career, consisting solely of the 1981 album Bad for Good, Steinman left an unmistakable imprint through expansive melodies rendered with operatic intensity, arena-scale volume, and adolescent turmoil. Regardless of the vocalist involved, the resulting sound stayed consistent, modeled on his landmark achievement and defining work: Meat Loaf’s 1977 album Bat Out of Hell, a Springsteen-inspired project overseen by producer Todd Rundgren. Across the subsequent two decades, Meat Loaf and Steinman periodically rejoined forces, most notably with the 1993 release Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, while the songwriter’s distinctive approach persisted through recordings by additional performers. Bonnie Tyler carried “Total Eclipse of the Heart” onto the charts in 1983, the same year Air Supply scored a hit with “Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” and Celine Dion achieved her breakthrough American success via “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” in 1996. Steinman divided his efforts between production duties and songwriting, frequently returning to Meat Loaf; the pair reconvened for Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose in 2006, and ten years afterward Steinman transformed his Bat material into the jukebox musical Jim Steinman’s Bat Out of Hell, which finally placed him on the Broadway stage that had long suited his sensibility.
Steinman entered the world in New York City, completed his secondary education at George W. Hewlett High School in 1965, and began building a professional music career while enrolled at Amherst College during the late 1960s. As an Amherst student he supplied music for the school’s 1968 staging of Bertolt Brecht’s A Man’s a Man and performed analogous duties that year for an adaptation of Brecht’s Baal at the Island Theatre Workshop. In his final Amherst year Steinman composed the musical The Dream Engine, already displaying elements that would later surface in his pop compositions.
Following his Amherst graduation Steinman joined Joe Papp’s Public Theater, where he labored on several musical projects, among them a collaboration titled Ubu with puppeteer Demian and a reworking of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. His initial commercial breakthrough nevertheless arrived in the pop realm when Yvonne Elliman included his song “Happy Ending” on the 1973 album Food of Love. A still more decisive 1973 occurrence was Steinman’s introduction to Marvin Lee Aday, the performer who performed under the stage name Meat Loaf; Meat Loaf participated in Steinman’s musical More Than You Deserve, establishing the basis for their enduring partnership.
Steinman and Meat Loaf commenced sustained work together in 1974 on the Peter Pan adaptation Neverland, while two additional Steinman pieces reached the stage: Thomas Babe’s 1975 play Kid Champion and the 1976 production The Confidence Man. Steinman and Meat Loaf soon identified the core of a rock album inside Neverland and therefore elected to develop a full record for label submission, though no company extended an offer. Steinman eventually met Todd Rundgren, who responded enthusiastically to the demos and agreed to produce the album. Recording took place at Bearsville Studios with members of Rundgren’s band Utopia plus Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band; the sessions moved swiftly, yet labels still declined the finished tapes until Cleveland International, an Epic Records subsidiary, issued Bat Out of Hell in October 1977. Initial sales were modest, but word-of-mouth momentum, partly fueled by British success, transformed the album into a global phenomenon that eventually surpassed 45 million copies and launched both Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman.
Because Bat Out of Hell required time to achieve widespread popularity, Steinman and Meat Loaf’s follow-up project also developed slowly. Steinman originally envisioned a second album titled Renegade Angel, but obstacles including the loss of a lyric notebook and Meat Loaf’s vocal difficulties delayed recording; Steinman therefore repurposed the Renegade Angel material for his own 1981 solo debut, Bad for Good. Released in April 1981, Bad for Good reached the British Top Ten while peaking at number 63 on Billboard’s Top 200, and its single “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” climbed to number 32 on the Top 40 and number 14 on the Mainstream Rock chart.
Months after Bad for Good appeared, Meat Loaf issued Dead Ringer, another collection of Steinman compositions. The album underperformed commercially and contributed to the eventual separation between Meat Loaf and Steinman, whose disputes later entered the courts. Shortly thereafter Steinman achieved two major successes, writing and producing Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 album Faster Than the Speed of Night, highlighted by the chart-topping single “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” While that track occupied the top position, Air Supply’s power ballad “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” briefly held the number-two spot.
These accomplishments positioned Steinman as a sought-after pop songwriter. He contributed to the soundtrack of Walter Hill’s 1984 rock musical Streets of Fire, produced Billy Squier’s 1984 album Signs of Life, and supplied the music for Bonnie Tyler’s Footloose hit “Holding Out for a Hero.” He also ventured beyond mainstream circles, composing a 1985 theme for wrestler Hulk Hogan and producing Floodland, the second album by goth rock band Sisters of Mercy. Steinman closed the decade by assembling the group Pandora’s Box, which included vocalist Ellen Foley from Bat Out of Hell; the ensemble released Original Sin in 1989. He subsequently collaborated with Iron Prostate before that project dissolved mid-recording.
Steinman rejoined Meat Loaf in the early 1990s to create 1993’s Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell. Powered by the hit “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” the album unexpectedly returned Meat Loaf to mainstream prominence and underscored Steinman’s commercial acumen. His next major success arrived when Celine Dion took “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” to number two in 1996. Throughout the late 1990s Steinman alternated between film scores and theatrical work, supplying lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1996 musical Whistle Down the Wind and the 1997 stage version of Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, while continuing to produce occasional pop singles, most prominently Boyzone’s 1998 hit “No Matter What.”
In the 2000s Steinman concentrated on musical theater, developing a 2002 project centered on Greta Garbo and pursuing a Batman musical that remained unrealized. He served as executive producer for MTV’s 2003 adaptation of Wuthering Heights and oversaw much of its soundtrack. In 2006 he reunited with Meat Loaf for Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, authoring half of its fourteen tracks. Around the album’s release the two parties again entered litigation concerning the “Bat Out of Hell” title; an out-of-court agreement permitted Meat Loaf to issue his record as a sequel while allowing Steinman to mount the musical Jim Steinman’s Bat Out of Hell.
A decade elapsed before Jim Steinman’s Bat Out of Hell premiered in Manchester in February 2017. In the interim Steinman explored an adaptation of The Nutcracker with Monty Python’s Terry Jones and supplied new material for Meat Loaf’s 2016 album Braver Than We Are. After the Manchester opening, productions followed in London and Toronto during 2017, accompanied by an original cast recording that same year. The musical reached New York in summer 2019. Steinman’s final major achievement preceded his death on April 19, 2021, at age 73.
Steinman entered the world in New York City, completed his secondary education at George W. Hewlett High School in 1965, and began building a professional music career while enrolled at Amherst College during the late 1960s. As an Amherst student he supplied music for the school’s 1968 staging of Bertolt Brecht’s A Man’s a Man and performed analogous duties that year for an adaptation of Brecht’s Baal at the Island Theatre Workshop. In his final Amherst year Steinman composed the musical The Dream Engine, already displaying elements that would later surface in his pop compositions.
Following his Amherst graduation Steinman joined Joe Papp’s Public Theater, where he labored on several musical projects, among them a collaboration titled Ubu with puppeteer Demian and a reworking of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. His initial commercial breakthrough nevertheless arrived in the pop realm when Yvonne Elliman included his song “Happy Ending” on the 1973 album Food of Love. A still more decisive 1973 occurrence was Steinman’s introduction to Marvin Lee Aday, the performer who performed under the stage name Meat Loaf; Meat Loaf participated in Steinman’s musical More Than You Deserve, establishing the basis for their enduring partnership.
Steinman and Meat Loaf commenced sustained work together in 1974 on the Peter Pan adaptation Neverland, while two additional Steinman pieces reached the stage: Thomas Babe’s 1975 play Kid Champion and the 1976 production The Confidence Man. Steinman and Meat Loaf soon identified the core of a rock album inside Neverland and therefore elected to develop a full record for label submission, though no company extended an offer. Steinman eventually met Todd Rundgren, who responded enthusiastically to the demos and agreed to produce the album. Recording took place at Bearsville Studios with members of Rundgren’s band Utopia plus Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band; the sessions moved swiftly, yet labels still declined the finished tapes until Cleveland International, an Epic Records subsidiary, issued Bat Out of Hell in October 1977. Initial sales were modest, but word-of-mouth momentum, partly fueled by British success, transformed the album into a global phenomenon that eventually surpassed 45 million copies and launched both Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman.
Because Bat Out of Hell required time to achieve widespread popularity, Steinman and Meat Loaf’s follow-up project also developed slowly. Steinman originally envisioned a second album titled Renegade Angel, but obstacles including the loss of a lyric notebook and Meat Loaf’s vocal difficulties delayed recording; Steinman therefore repurposed the Renegade Angel material for his own 1981 solo debut, Bad for Good. Released in April 1981, Bad for Good reached the British Top Ten while peaking at number 63 on Billboard’s Top 200, and its single “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” climbed to number 32 on the Top 40 and number 14 on the Mainstream Rock chart.
Months after Bad for Good appeared, Meat Loaf issued Dead Ringer, another collection of Steinman compositions. The album underperformed commercially and contributed to the eventual separation between Meat Loaf and Steinman, whose disputes later entered the courts. Shortly thereafter Steinman achieved two major successes, writing and producing Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 album Faster Than the Speed of Night, highlighted by the chart-topping single “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” While that track occupied the top position, Air Supply’s power ballad “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” briefly held the number-two spot.
These accomplishments positioned Steinman as a sought-after pop songwriter. He contributed to the soundtrack of Walter Hill’s 1984 rock musical Streets of Fire, produced Billy Squier’s 1984 album Signs of Life, and supplied the music for Bonnie Tyler’s Footloose hit “Holding Out for a Hero.” He also ventured beyond mainstream circles, composing a 1985 theme for wrestler Hulk Hogan and producing Floodland, the second album by goth rock band Sisters of Mercy. Steinman closed the decade by assembling the group Pandora’s Box, which included vocalist Ellen Foley from Bat Out of Hell; the ensemble released Original Sin in 1989. He subsequently collaborated with Iron Prostate before that project dissolved mid-recording.
Steinman rejoined Meat Loaf in the early 1990s to create 1993’s Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell. Powered by the hit “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” the album unexpectedly returned Meat Loaf to mainstream prominence and underscored Steinman’s commercial acumen. His next major success arrived when Celine Dion took “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” to number two in 1996. Throughout the late 1990s Steinman alternated between film scores and theatrical work, supplying lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1996 musical Whistle Down the Wind and the 1997 stage version of Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, while continuing to produce occasional pop singles, most prominently Boyzone’s 1998 hit “No Matter What.”
In the 2000s Steinman concentrated on musical theater, developing a 2002 project centered on Greta Garbo and pursuing a Batman musical that remained unrealized. He served as executive producer for MTV’s 2003 adaptation of Wuthering Heights and oversaw much of its soundtrack. In 2006 he reunited with Meat Loaf for Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, authoring half of its fourteen tracks. Around the album’s release the two parties again entered litigation concerning the “Bat Out of Hell” title; an out-of-court agreement permitted Meat Loaf to issue his record as a sequel while allowing Steinman to mount the musical Jim Steinman’s Bat Out of Hell.
A decade elapsed before Jim Steinman’s Bat Out of Hell premiered in Manchester in February 2017. In the interim Steinman explored an adaptation of The Nutcracker with Monty Python’s Terry Jones and supplied new material for Meat Loaf’s 2016 album Braver Than We Are. After the Manchester opening, productions followed in London and Toronto during 2017, accompanied by an original cast recording that same year. The musical reached New York in summer 2019. Steinman’s final major achievement preceded his death on April 19, 2021, at age 73.
Albums
