MEAT LOAF – "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)"

Ah yes. All the kids at school were complaining the song was so long. I was listening to 70s prog at this stage. I considered it short…

One of the related articles is on the Gregg’s Sausage Roll. I would say this was a clever comment on the bombastic and slightly fattening nature of the song, the sense in which it’s enjoyable and fun but recognisably bad for you and probably difficult to stomach in large quantities… but it’s probably just because the artist has ‘meat’ in his name.

Anyway. Good fun but – as Tom notes in his third paragraph – the way the song is structured means it never really gets properly going like, say, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” does, and I could definitely imagine getting bored by its mega chart run. But it doesn’t feel as long as its seven minutes, and it’s definitely better than Bryan Adams. [6]

Watching the vid. again now for the first time since 1993, it takes about 2 seconds for Michael Bay’s dread visual signature to be visible. I suppose, however, that he’s a good fit for Steinman and Meat Loaf.

Anyhow, I find this song drags and is close to being an immediate channel-changer whenever it (very infrequently) comes on the radio… It’s recognizably the same old Steinman/Meat song but just not as good as previous iterations. The main melody and vocal lines need to be better or more ear-wormy or something for the record to really get airborne and be thrillingly, pleasantly ludicrous and karaoke-perfect for daredevils (the way, say, ‘You took the words’ and ‘Total Eclipse’ undoubtedly are). As it is, IWDAFL for me invites the response ‘But I won’t listen to that’. Still, #1 in 28 countries according to wiki, so what do I know?

The *that* explained at the end of the song strikes me as pretty clever now I look at the lyrics (I don’t remember thinking anything about the lyric at the time):
5

The firs verse is, like, the longest sentence, and the ‘that’ is somewhere in the middle. So, by the time we get to the payoff, we’ve forgotten what it was.

As Meat has said, the ‘that’ is the ‘but I will never forget…. no way’ bit.

May I also put my hand up for “Dead Ringer For Love”? I loved the urgency and you could almost see the static lighning between Cher and ‘Loaf as they duelled all the way through that song. The dynamic between ‘Loaf and Lorraine Crosby (?) on IWDAFL(BIWDT) is damp and mildewy by comparison.

I didn’t really enjoy “Bat Out Of Hell II” as an album, so I’m not going to be overly charitable to this single. All the things that made Steinman/MeatLoaf such an unstoppable behemoth of my developing years; the (and I’m struggling for the words) SHAMELESSNESS of the 1977 BOOH, which was pretty thrilling to the younger me, simply didn’t materialise on the 1993 album (sequel?). Was it necessary to revive BOOH at all? I certainly didn’t think so at the time. I didn’t even consider buying the third incarnation in 2006, but then Steinman had nothing to do with it either.

Paradise By Dashboard Light/Dead Ringer For Love >>> IWDAFL. There’s just not enough sass or zip to this to hold a candle to the male/female duets from Meat Loaf’s heyday.

I’m all for the histrionics and turning up to 11 of some of Meat Loaf’s earlier material. Some of BOOH is a great collision between rock opera and Springsteen. I think it probably helped that Roy Bittan from The E Street Band (and probably their best musician) and Todd Rundgren were involved in BOOH. I strongly suspect that Todd Rundgren is the missing element from this to be honest, as I just don’t find it as engaging as Bat Out Of Hell -this is just a bit limp by comparison.

Seems reasonably clear to me why BOOH II came about though. No one had thought of Meat Loaf in years, so bringing back his best known stuff into the public consciousness by making a sequel must have made some sort of sense. It works in the movies, so they must have thought, why not give it a whirl here.

Seems Lorraine Crosby was unlucky to only feature as “Mrs Loud” on the album, and not get a “feat.” credit on the single. She was originally brought in to lay a guide vocal down for MeatLoaf. This meant she wasn’t entitled to any royalties as a guest artist. A “close, but no cigar” moment for the girl from Newcastle, then. Here’s her website:

http://www.lorrainecrosby.com/

Meat rounding off the very indie/rock “side 2” there (i.e. 2nd half disk 1). What a curious but triffic Now. Lena Fiagbe! Tina Turner Disco Inferno? Leftfield & Lydon! Frankie Relax?

Alan @ 15. Yes, a classic Now. We used to drive to school with the PSB’s version of Go West blasting out on a 3rd gen. tape which was as much hiss as music. Happy Days!

For reasons that should be abundantly obvious I am abstaining from posting long comments on Popular from hereonin, though will still be adding my marks to each entry (for this one it was a 9).

Reasons in brief:
1. As the number ones go on, my responses to them will become progressively more personal to a private life level.

2. Too busy with TPL to expend time and energy commenting on what will become an increasingly dodgy list of singles (dodgy in terms of shortlived, fly-by-night, triumph-of-marketing, out of the charts in a month “number ones” as opposed to the foundation of future classics). I’ll still be posting TPL update links, though.

3. This is not to be interpreted as grumpy old man doesn’t like modern music since there will continue to be great number ones (such as this one, and I’ve lumbered myself with writing about the whole album!) but I don’t feel the need to write at (any) length about every one of them, especially if I’ll be writing about at least some of them elsewhere.

#20 I hadn’t noticed the omission until you mentioned it.

Yeah, “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” (the original Pandora’s Box version) is quite a bit better than this.

But, still, a surprisingly welcome return for the big man, and just on the right-side of falling into self-parody.

My main memory of this song involves sitting in a bar near Buchanan Bus Station in Glasgow, waiting for a coach back east, admiring the smart Edwardian (we thought) crocheted cardigan a friend had bought earlier in the day at the great and late lamented (or removed to an industrial estate, with far less style) Saratoga Trunk vintage clothing store, supping on our beverages while this song played in the background.

Somehow up until that point not one of the four of us had noticed that this this pretty crocheted cardigan was patterned all over with that favourite symbol indicating progress and modernity across Europe for the first few decades of the 20th century, but which soon obtained a more sinister meaning i.e. swastikas (not that this stopped a tube station being opened in 1935 with that symbol at the heart of its decoration in the booking office – still there today, too)

The song’s quite alright, as far as it goes, and far far better than many exponents of its genre. I suspect the excessively lengthy title (and the fact that we never find out exactly what “that” is) maybe add to the slight, but much needed, frivolity, or irony, or something.

That’s exactly my problem with this record! I’m not immune to Steinman’s melodramatic ouevre but compared to Total Eclipse or even It’s All Coming Back To Me Now, this is such a chore. After about four minutes I always decide I’ve got better things to do with my time than wait to find out what ‘that’ is (and I wasn’t all that interested in the first place.)

For me Steinman returns to a proven formula. Motorbikes revving, the gentle intro that’s a bit like the outro, and the kind of messa di voce that litter his more epic numbers. This and others go; “here’s the headlines”, “here’s the story”,and finally, in case you weren’t listening, “the headlines again” It’s not that I don’t like it. Steinman is good at this, Meatloaf can deliver. The piano at the beginning of “I’d Do Anything…” always sounded to me like a much slowed down version of the beginning of “Baba O’Riley” the opener from “Who’s Next”. I think I may be dwelling on the over slowness of the former and the terrific pace of the latter. Please don’t check this out by changing speeds – I’m sure it bares no scrutiny. (“do it, do it now”) Hugh Laurie in “House” rocks along with this track from the Who, and it features in the series more than once.

One thing that slightly irked me at the time, was that it didn’t get much stick for being too long. I may be misremembering. The single edit was a big reduction from the album, and I’m sure Radio One at least , edited it some more. Now 26 (thank’s wichita lineman) edits the beginning, the end, and possibly the middle, to shave nearly two minutes off the track. 6

A few years later I noticed the year end best sellers (of which this was the worst best selling) around this time, were all a bit samey in theme. I’m sure “meanings of song lyrics” might say otherwise, but Houston, Adams, Wet Wet, Wet, and Unchained Melody twice, – to mix artists and tracks- talk a lot of “love” “doing it” or not, and over do the parentheses.

Tom, your first paragraph outlines what I think when I hear the song; it immediately reminds me of the furore over what “that” was, and the rude or dirty connotations. This is a shame. I can hear now, Sarah Millican in her geordie voice saying “putting out the bins, is that what he means?”

Though Meatloaf can act, his cameo in “Spiceworld -The Movie” where -from memory- he utters the line “but I won’t do that” in reference to something actually dirty, and not in the rude sense, makes most of us shake our heads and tut. It can’t have looked good, even in the script.

Chart watchers note. This entered the top ten the same week as the previous number one “Relight My Fire” and the first 4 weeks positions were the opposite. RLF 1-1-2-8, Meatloaf 8-2-1-1 etc. Not that exciting, but in the previous decade only one other track copied Meatloaf’s climb, the aforementioned Adams, “(Everything I do), I do it for you”. Uniquely both twice using “do” in their titles. Coincidence or what? Yes – coincidence.

Incidentally, the song title pictorially appears on the cover of Paul Copperwaite’s book, “Pop Charts- Comedy Graphs of Your Favourite Tunes” -worth a look on Amazon if you want.

Finally, I just found this site after a favourite band – Saint Etienne- name checked you on their recent album. Much kudos to you all. Like.

I know very little about Meat, other than:
• Bat Out Of Hell was successful enough to be in my childhood Guinness Book Of Records for something or other;
• he was hamming it up as some kind of uberTexan on a stars-do-opera (of all things!) variety show a couple of years back; and
• this song.
Oh, and he was in Fight Club.

So I’ve always wondered: what the hell is this guy? Is he a rocker, is he an actor, or what? How did he get started?

PS lovely start, Speedwell, and welcome!

He was signed to Motown as a double act, “Stoney and Meatloaf”

More than that, I don’t know. (OK, I do but it’s all out there)

I quite like it, despite being not really my genre. I think it’s the sincerity of the emoting. It only really works with the girl bit, which usually comes after the radio-playlist cutoff.

Bat Out of Hell was one of those landmark records when I was a teenager in early ’80s Oz – wherever you turned, there it was, like Cold Chisel or The Eagles’ Greatest Hits. Meat Loaf was also well-known for his Rocky Horror appearance; the movie was already a cultural touchstone, having been shown pretty much continuously at drive-ins since its release. In later years, when the drive-ins had all closed, it was an independent cinema late-night staple, with fans dressing up for their ritual viewings.

He didn’t bother the Australian charts much during his Steinman-free years, but when IDAFLBIWDT rolled around it was rewarded by his latent Aussie fanbase with eight weeks at number one – unusually coming before its UK run, rather than after – and ended up as the highest selling single in the country that year.

I didn’t buy it myself, though. I never owned Bat Out of Hell, either, and to this day still haven’t seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But Mr Loaf, as some newspapers so delightfully call him, has always been an inoffensive presence in my own musical hinterland (I think I said as much in the thread for the Meat Loaf number one that got away), and that pretty much sums up my feelings about this song too: an inoffensive 5.

Wasn’t it all a grand scheme to get Johnny Rotten on Question Time?

From a chart standpoint, an example of a perfectly timed and executed comeback which resulted in an unexpected worldwide smash. In America, Meat Loaf had never had a Top 10 single or even a Top 10 album despite the millions of copies Bat Out of Hell had sold over the years. BOOH had gradually grown into required listening among my generation if my college was anything to go by, with “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” and “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” familiar sounds in my dorm hallways. So things had kind of reached a critical mass when the release of BOOH2 was announced in 1993. Number one on the album chart was not unexpected but number one on the Hot 100 was certainly not something I would have bet on. Sales of course drove the single, but it got decent airplay too, surprisingly considering its 7-14 minute length depending on which edit was being used. Initially bemused by its success, I eventually succumbed to its charms like everyone else I knew. Not the best single of 1993, or even Meat Loaf’s best single ever, but good enough for 8/10 from me.

From Wiki:

Y. Bhekhirst (apparently born in 1952) is an outsider musician based in New Hyde Park, New York. Although not much is known about him, his sole known record, Hot in the Airport, released in 1986 and re-released in 1994 on New Hyde Park-based label HDG Records, is prized by some outsider music collectors for its decidedly dadaistic, shambling songs.

Information on Y. Bhekhirst is scarce, to say the least. Irwin Chusid, who brought Bhekhirst’s music to the public’s attention in the mid-90s, reported that a man calling himself Y. Bhekhirst was distributing his cassettes in New York record stores; handing them over to the clerks and then walking out abruptly without further explanation.

One song on Hot in the Airport, “I Will Sing,” features the repeated line, “And I will do anything for love.” The melody of this line is nearly identical to that of the title line of Meat Loaf’s 1993 hit “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).”

(42 seconds in… you decide) https://youtu.be/oxEjasqh2w8?t=42s

Poor Lorraine Crosby given very short shrift here. I remember watching a making of doc for the video where the director was talking to Meat before filming one of the climactic scenes and said “well, let’s see whether she can act”. That this was in fact Michael Bay, as I found out just now, came as no major surprise.

And that is, as they say, that. RIP Marvin Lee Aday, aged 74.