Conclusions

Individuals, obessives, they’re the ones who save rock ‘n’ roll form extinction. Forget the sales figures: when a giant and a man given to compose quad synth scores for King Lear unite to form one twisted personality belting out pop cliché (check the titles for literal usage of same) and utterly unheralded hybrid concepts, you can forget punk lacerations. Meat: “There’s three elements that I really look at as rock ‘n’ roll, which are the fever, the fantasy and the fun … There’s gotta be that fun, and I think punk misses it a little for me. The fever of rock ‘n’ roll is in the new wave. Some punk fans come to see us and enjoy it. I think The Ramones are funny.”

Now punk is all yesterday’s papers and Meat Loaf has weathered the storm. Jim Steinman, quiet, Jewish, graying. How can he go on about Wagnerian supermen, the detractors howl? “I’m half-Jewish so maybe my other half is really vicious! The thing about Wagner, I totally separate what he creates from what he talks about. If you really start caring about that, I mean who knows about Elvis Presley’s politics … Wagner wasn’t nearly as bad as his reputation, I mean Richard Strauss, now he was a real visious anti-Semite and a real maniac. Wagner was just enthralled by the ideas of a superworld and a super race. I think it was more abstract, but who knows, he could’ve been a real schmuck and a shit too. Wagner was definitely out of his mind!”

“Broadway looks so mediaeval.” —Television, Venus.

“New York still looks mediaeval to me.” —Jim Steinman.

Whether dumping a bag of fantasy magazines on his bed or lovingly gazing out of his Manhattan apartment window and eulogizing the electrical storms that often rage above the city, Jim Steinman is a man who has managed to reconcile the mundane aspects of everyday life with the heroic temperature within his mind. Fantasy is the answer for the guy who admits, "It’s hard to be a hero in 1981.”

His every sentence is apt to soar in the clouds, just as his every song, via self and Meat Loaf, is prone to transcend the norm. “Over there is the Metropolitan Opera,” he says from his NYC balcony. “When there’s a show on all the yellow cabs converge on it. It looks like the Yellow Brick Road from the Wizard Of Oz!” Likewise his Los Angeles story evokes illegal chemical hallucinatory qualities. "I awoke about 3 am on a floor littered with unconscious bodies in a hotel above Sunset Strip. It was at a time when the deal with Warner’s was about to fall through. Earlier in the day, Meat had picked up these two identical twins — human surfboards with hair — and brought them back to the hotel. They cooked this huge duck in white wine sauce for dinner, and when I woke up the room was fairly dripping with it.

“I was looking out at the vista of violence that is L.A. — except out there they call it romantic violence — thinking about how I’d like to wipe away the stagnant dross of Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles with a single stroke. Then I saw this chemical fire in the distance. It was eerie — a blue and red haze everywhere. I felt like I was trapped in a jukebox. About ten minutes later all the smoke was absorbed into the valley and the network of city lights melted into electrical strings and veins. I thought: ‘L.A. is a total junkie, the rouge on a scar. And Fleetwood Mac is the rouge.’…”

At this point, his friend Sam starts to levitate while all else sinks, and Jim bemoans to the corruption of beautiful L.A. A metaphor for rock ‘n’ roll.

When fever and passion become an air-conditioned thrill and fantasies become cluttered by tax returns, rock ‘n’ roll dreams come through.

Fun …

Fever …

Fantasy.

Amen.