← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Turn Around, Bright Eyes, Part 1
00:49:04
Forever’s gonna start tonight.
Loading summary
Transcript49 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Hey there Hit Parade listeners. As we recently announced, we are thrilled to be bringing our full length episodes back to non Slate plus listeners. Starting this fall, Non plus listeners will hear our episodes in two parts. What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It's just $35 for the first year and it supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hip the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives, our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, that's slate.com hitparadeplus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show 33 years ago this week in October 1983, America's number one song was a master class in melodrama. It was sung by a raspy voiced woman from Wales who'd only scored one prior American hit. She would never top Billboard's Hot 100 again, but her biggest hit became iconic. That same week. In 1983, America's number two song was by a duo from the other side of the world, Melbourne, Australia. This Aussie duo had never met the Welsh woman sitting next to them on the Hot 100 that week, but their respective hits sounded uncannily similar to each other, like thundering theatrical twins. The secret to the similarity had nothing to do with the Welsh woman, Bonnie Tyler, or or the Australian duo Air Supply. It had to do with the song's writer and producer, Jim Steinman. This is what Steinman sounds like when he's singing, but he did not make his greatest mark as a frontline performer. Steinman's pop legend is rooted in the songs he wrote and produced for others. And more than most producers and songwriters, Jim Steinman has a style so well defined, florid and grand, it often outshines the performers brave enough to take his songs on, Even when the performers doing Steinman's songs are pretty grand themselves. But there was one performer Jim Steinman worked with more than anybody, his most frequent frontman and unlikely music. These two men, Jim Steinman and his primary vocalist who went by the name Meat Loaf, would come up in the music business together and scale the charts as a team, producing one of the best singles selling albums of all time, Bat out of hell. And 16 years later, against the odds, they would come back with an improbable smash sequel. In the middle of these two triumphs though, Steinman and Meat Loaf would have more fallings out than than a soap opera couple. You can almost tell the story of Steinman's career by chronicling all the songs Meat Loaf sang and did it sing. Today on Hit Parade we run right into hell and back with Jim Steinman, the self declared lord of excess and the guy who never never met a ten word song title he didn't love. A man who started his career writing for the stage and never stopped bringing the drama. Even when his songs proved a better fit for the radio than for Broadway. Steinman brought camp theatricality to pop music and the top of the charts. And that's where your hit parade marches today. The week ending October 15, 1983, when Jim Steinman was in the middle of a three week run as the sole producer and songwriter of the top two songs in America. The number two, Air Supply hit, Making Love out of Nothing at all and of course.
- [06:36]
B
Heart.
- [06:45]
A
The number one Bonnie Tyler smash Total Eclipse of the Heart, the man behind the curtain was nonetheless hard to miss. So turn around bright Eyes, because we're about to go deep into the vampiric world of Jim Steinman, pop's own Phantom of the Opera. And by the way, he even worked with the Phantom of the Opera. I know it's still a little early in the year for Christmas music, but I'm playing Darlene Love's classic Christmas Baby, please come home to focus for a moment on the impact of the producer in popular music. Because as legendary as Darlene Love is, she's been in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame for more than a decade now. The architect of her sound on this song is equally famous, maybe more so.
- [07:54]
B
But it's not like Christmas at all.
- [07:59]
A
That, of course, is the legendary and infamous producer and songwriter Phil Spector, famed for his wall of sound. The classic 1963 album that this song comes from, titled A Christmas Gift for you from Phil Spector, was credited to him, not the performers who sang the holiday favorite. Over the course of 40 episodes, Hit Parade has focused on several legendary producers, many also songwriters who made an incalculable impact on the sound of the artists they were producing. For example, Giorgio Moroder, along with his associate Pete Bilotti, helped Donna Summer change the sound of dancers. As we noted in our episode about Summer, what made Moroder so remarkable was even while working with Summer, he proved versatile. Whether on the all electronic masterpiece I Feel Love or the rock oriented disco chart topper Hot Stuff. And by the 80s, even when Moroder was working with other performers like Irene Cara on the chart topping Flashdance, what a feeling he gave each hit its own distinctive touch. Or consider turn of the millennium pop mastermind Max Martin. In our Britney Spears episode, we discussed how his irresistible mathematically precise deployment of hooks created a sleek new aesthetic for 21st century pop. But Martin too is a chameleon. Even when you could tell his Scandinavian melodic math had been the secret sauce behind hits like Britney's Baby One More Time or Kelly Clarkson's since youe Been Gone, The songs themselves took on different pop forms right up to this year. You may not have even realized that Max Martin is Behind one of 2020's biggest hits, the Weeknd's 80s style techno pop throwback Blinding Lights. But even more than Max Martin or Giorgio Moroder, the aforementioned Phil Spector is in a category all his own. The producer whose brand is as big as or bigger than the artists he's producing. Spector produces the way Martin Scorsese or Christopher Nolan directs a film. He is the author or auteur of his material. Spector shaped the sound of songs as legendary as the Ronette's Be My Baby.
- [11:32]
B
Baby.
- [11:35]
A
Or the Crystal's 1962 chart topper he's a Rebel, on which he swapped vocalists and didn't even tell the actual singer, Darling in Love. And Phil Spector added cinematic depth to the 1965 number one smash you've lost that loving feeling. The Righteous Brothers hated working with Spectre and avoided him for the rest of their career. But he did give them their breakthrough. However, even Phil Spector came in multiple guises. He angered Paul McCartney by adding strings to the Beatles final number one hit, the Long and Winding Road to the Long.
- [12:39]
B
Winding Road.
- [12:45]
A
But you couldn't accuse it of sounding like the Ronettes or even the Righteous Brothers. A decade later, when Spector produced the Ramones album End of the Century, he gave the rockers a kind of girl group punch. But he was reinventing his wall of sound for the age of punk.
- [13:05]
B
Rocket rocker radio let's go Rocket rock and roll radio let's go Rocke in.
- [13:12]
A
Other words, if you didn't know and someone told you that Phil Spector produced the Beatles or the Ramones, you'd definitely recognize his touches on those recordings. But it is possible to hear these singles and not immediately think of Phil Spector. That is not the case with the subject of this Hit Parade episode. Jim Steinman has often been compared to Phil Spector, but arguably Steinman had a sound and songwriting style even more overpowering than Spector's. Not better. Even Steinman's fans acknowledge his songs are over the top glorious schlock. But if you know the Jim Steinman sound the first time you hear one of his songs, no matter who the frontline artist is, you know it's him. Steinman's songs are operatic, bombastic, Wagnerian, even tragic. And they are lyrically purple with knowingly absurd titles like 2 out of 3 ain't bad or Making Love out of Nothing at all or even my favorite title, Objects in the Rear View Mirror may appear closer than they are. Even when his titles are relatively pithy, like, say, Bonnie Tyler's 198084 hit Holding out for a Hero, They are structured like pop arias, produced to deliver maximum drama and minimal subtlety. In short, like Phil Spector, Jim Steinman has always been creatively self assured. Fortunately, unlike Spector, Steinman was not known for pulling guns on his recording artists. But Steinman certainly was headstrong. He saw himself as an artistic visionary, and in the most basic sense, he was right. He envisioned a lot of his future hit material from an early age. Born in New York City and raised in the Five Towns area of Long Island, Steinman was something of a prodigy, winning a prize for his writing while still in high school. Entering Amherst College in Massachusetts, he devoted his attentions to the theater. Steinman wrote music for productions of Bertolt Brecht, and he directed a production of Beat poet and playwright Michael McClure. The next logical step was writing a show of his own, and so Steinman's senior project was a musical. That's a recording of Steinman's 1969 college production of the Dream Engine. This number is called Hymn to Fire. When your city is Burning. Steinman produced an epic rock musical at a time when the rock musical itself was still new. Hair on Broadway was at this point less than two years old. Set in a distant future, the Dream Engine was a tale of generational rebellion culminating in revolution, and Steinman gave himself the lead role. Baal, named after the 1918 Brecht play of the same name. Here's Steinman as Ball, singing a melody that might sound familiar. A line he would later use on his hit Total Eclipse of the Heart. The Dream Engine drew unusual acclaim for an original college production. Legendary New York theater producer Joseph Papp came to Massachusetts to see it, and by intermission he had purchased the rights to the show for his Public Theater. And though the play was never produced at the Public, Steinman began working with Joe Papp and the show brought him back to New York. After college, Steinman got a publishing deal and a tiny office near Broadway where he could write songs that blended opera and rock and roll. Steinman later told music writer Paul Myers that he was after music that was, quote, very heightened and larger than life. As a boy, I would constantly go from Richard Wagner to Little Richard. Now plugged into the New York theater scene, Steinman produced music for multiple shows and recorded demos of his compositions, such as this demo sung in 1972 by a rising Broadway actress named Bette Midler. Midler was not yet a recording artist, and this song, heaven can Wait, would later wind up on Steinman's magnum opus, Bat out of hell. By 1973, Steinman was recording demos of himself singing songs for his next musical, More Than you Deserve. These songs too would wind up on Steinman produced album films. Years later, Joseph Papp agreed to produce More than you Deserve and Steinman staged the show at the Public theater in late 1973. But the most important thing about More Than youn Deserve wasn't the show itself, which ran at the Public for about seven weeks. It was the actor Steinman met who was playing a couple of supporting roles. A large voiced, large size, larger than life performer, the same age as Steinman. Born Marvin Lee Aday in 1947, he was already going by the name Meatloaf. That's Meatloaf singing lead for a short lived 1968 band called Popcorn Blizzard when he was about 21. The stories about Mr. Aday's stage name, by the way, vary. In one version, he claimed that growing up in Dallas, Texas, his family called him Meat Loaf, as young as four months old. In another story, it was his nickname on his high school football team. Whatever the true story was, the young man did reportedly weigh in at £240 by seventh grade. By the early 70s, meat, that's what most people call him, had already tried his hand at both recording and acting. His stage breakthrough came in the 1968 Los Angeles production of Hair.
- [21:30]
B
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarium.
- [21:41]
A
Meat Loaf was even briefly a Motown recording artist. He signed to Rare Earth, a subsidiary of Motown, as part of the duo Stoney and Meat Loaf formed with his Hair castmate Sean Stoney Murphy. Some Fun trivia Meat Loaf's first top 40 hit on a Billboard chart was on the soul chart. Stoney and Meatloaf scored a number 36 R B hit in 1971 with what you see is what you get. After Stoney and Meatloaf broke up, Meatloaf arrived in New York in late 1972 and joined the cast of the Broadway Hair. He soon auditioned for the Public theaters More Than youn Deserve, where Jim Steinman took to his lung busting vocals and instantly began workshopping material with him.
- [22:44]
B
Listen, boy, won't you take some more it's what you came for.
- [22:55]
A
Steinman had finally met his muse. In 2000, he would tell Classic Rock magazine quote, meat was the most mesmerizing thing I'd ever seen. He was much bigger than he is now, and since I grew up loving Wagner, all my heroes were larger than life. Meat's eyes went into his head like he was transfixed. I can seem arrogant at times because I'm certain of things and I was certain of him. Meat Loaf's star was on the rise in the theater community. Not long after his stint in Steinman's show, he went back to Los Angeles after being cast in the first ever US production of Richard o' Brien's satire of B movie sci fi, the stage musical the Rocky Horror show in la. Meat originated the role of the undead greaser Eddie. And when the show was turned into a movie, the Rocky Horror picture show in 1975, Meat reprised the role singing Eddie's classic rock and roll greaser anthem, Hot Patootie. Bless my soul. Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman kept in touch. They had begun collaborating on songs from the moment they met, songs written by Steinman and brought to life by Meat Loaf. At one point, Steinman saw these songs fitting into a musical retelling of the Peter Pan story that he called Neverland. But by 1975, Jim and Meat had begun conceiving of it as a seven song cycle that could play not as a show, but as an album. Of course, what also happened in 1975 in the world of rock gave them further inspiration. The breakthrough of a certain New Jersey rocker.
- [25:04]
B
Side rap we gotta get out while we're young.
- [25:14]
A
Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen's third album and chart breakthrough not only got the rocker on the COVID of both Time and Newsweek, it also set a new mid-70s benchmark for cinematic maximalist radio rock to rival Phil Spector's Wall of Sound after seeing Springsteen play New York Club the bottom Line. In 1975, just before Born to Run's release, Steinman called Meat Loaf, telling him he had to see Springsteen's next show because it was exactly what they'd been trying to create with their Neverland. So.
- [25:55]
B
Feels I want to know Love is wild, baby.
- [26:03]
A
Quote I was so impressed with what Bruce was doing, but I could also see how it related to what I was writing. Steinman later told Paul Myers. I wanted to make an album that sounded like a movie. Fired up by Springsteen's success, Steinman and Meatloaf began pitching their song cycle to every record label in New York, showing up for live auditions where Meat and his fellow stage actor and then girlfriend Ellen Foley would bellow the songs while Steinman pounded the piano. Were rejected everywhere. Steinman's songs were as grand as Springsteen's, but much more operatic and florid, and the label executives didn't see the plus size Meatloaf and his quirky accompanist as stars. Steinman to this day still relishes the memory of his rejection by legendary executive Clive Davis, who had just launched his new Arista label, but told Steinman he couldn't write and that Meat Loaf couldn't sing. Eventually, through a series of fortuitous connections, they found themselves in a New York rehearsal room for a private audition for musician and studio wizard Todd Rundgren. He was both a producer and a fellow performer, and as a hitmaker, Rundgren was a one of a kind. Eccentric Think of me.
- [27:48]
B
You know that I'll be with you if I could.
- [27:52]
A
Todd Rundgren was still coming off the success of his landmark hit 1972 double album Something Anything, most of which he played himself, as well as his successful spin off band Utopia. While climbing the charts with these projects under his own name, Rundgren had also built a reputation as a truly eclectic producer. He'd worked with bands ranging from Badfinger and the Band to the New York Dolls and Grand Funk Railroad.
- [28:26]
B
We're an American man We're coming to your town we're helping party.
- [28:36]
A
So that day in New York City, as Jim Steinman, Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley played for Rundgren, their renditions of Steinman's songs like for crying out Loud. The producer looked bemused at first, saying nothing when they played him the more ripe and rollicking tracks like paradise by the Dashboard Light, Rundgren laughed. According to both Steinman's and Foley's recollections, Rundgren seemed to find the songs hilarious. And as they finished playing, Rundgren stood up and told them, so what's the big problem? We just record it and that's it. They had found their producer. Todd Rundgren would invite Steinman's team up to his usual workplace at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York. And as 1975 turned to 76, Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf began recording the album. That would change their. For the band, that would help them realize what became Bat out of Hell. Jim Steinman wasn't content to merely imitate Bruce Springsteen's maximalist sonic approach. He actually borrowed two players from Springsteen's E Street Band. He hired E Street drummer Max Weinberg and keyboard player Roy Bitton, who were fresh off Springsteen's Born to Run. And from the opening moments of the album, Bitten and Weinberg brought the epic sound Steinman heard in his head. I thought Roy was the best pianist I had ever seen in my life, steinman told Todd Rundgren biographer Paul Myers. For the kind of music I do, he's without parallel. I was very impressed with Max, too. I loved the fact that even when Max was rehearsing Bat out of Hell, it would speed up. Max's emotionalism was my favorite thing about his playing. It was like a classical rubato where the conductor controls the flow. While Steinman wrote all the songs on the album, he was, of course, not the producer. Todd Rundgren was. And Rundgren was vital to the creation of Bat out of Hell. He fronted the costs of the album when the original label backed out, and he did everything from arranging vocals to playing guitar. He, even, at Jim Steinman's request, captured the sound of a revving motorcycle. For the album's title track, Steinman thought they would need an actual motorbike, but the wizardly Run Grimm emulated it with nothing but his guitar and an overblown amplifier. But even as Jim Steinman happily ceded overall control to Todd Rundgren, the album was artistically Steinman's. Even more than the nominal star Meat Loaf, it was Steinman who asked Rundgren to emulate the sound of vintage Phil Spector on you took the words right out of my mouth. Steinman also directed singer Ellen Foley to sing her part on the randy teenage epic paradise by the Dashboard Light, as if she were acting as in west side Story. And it was Steinman who reached out to veteran New York Yankees shortstop and game announcer Phil Rizzuto to do the song's minute mid coital baseball style play by play entry. And then there was the Theatrical overheated dialogue at the start of you took the words right out of my mouth, in which a man asks a woman if she would offer her throat to the wolf with the red roses. That's Jim Steinman reciting dialogue he wrote for the stage show Neverland. On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses? Yes.
- [34:08]
B
I bet you say that to all the boys.
- [34:13]
A
Recording Bat out of Hell only took a few weeks. It was done by early 1976, but finding a label to release the album took the better part of a year. Todd Rundgren had bankrolled the recording, backed by Bearsville Studios, but Bearsville's parent company, Warner Brothers, still turned down the project even when it was complet. It was months before Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf were connected with Steve Popovich, an AR man who managed his own small imprint, Cleveland International Records. Popovich loved the album and signed the duo after hearing half a song. Ironically, his Cleveland international label was distributed by Epic Records, one of the labels that originally turned down Jim and Meat. Even after they were signed. It took until late 1977 for bat out of Hell to see release. During that long delay, Meat Loaf kept himself busy by recording vocals for Ted Nugent's 1976 album Free for All.
- [35:37]
B
Love you so I told you I lied when I told you goodbye and.
- [35:43]
A
Jim Steinman actually staged Neverland, the show that Bat out of Hell was originally supposed to be. Neverland played as a work in progress workshop at the Kennedy center in Washington D.C. in the spring of 1977.
- [36:01]
B
We've only just been a few.
- [36:15]
A
Bat out of Hell vocalist Ellen Foley sang lead on songs like Heaven Can Wait, which would be issued on the LP as a Meatloaf song about six months later.
- [36:30]
B
But I don't know who to wear Nobody's gonna tell me now and I don't really care no, no, no I.
- [36:43]
A
Gotta taste the paradise Bat out of Hell finally hit record stores in October 1977. It was a slow grower, debuting the at number 185 on the Billboard LP chart and knocking around the lower reaches of the chart for half a year. It took television to finally make the album connect on both sides of the Atlantic. Once again.
- [37:10]
B
Here's Meatloaf. Maybe we can talk all night.
- [37:28]
A
On March 25, 1978, Meat Loaf was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, performing rousing renditions of All Revved up with no Place to Go and his then current single 2 out of 3 ain't bad. A month after the SNL performance 2 out of 3 ain't bad cracked the top 40 on the Hot 100 on its way to a number 11 peak. A couple of weeks after that, Bat out of Hell also broke into the top 40 on the album chart. It would ride the album chart for nearly two years. In the uk, the televised music show the Old Gray Whistle Test ran a nine minute long video of Meat Loaf performing the album's title track. It was so popular with the audience, they played it again the following week. Bat out of Hell entered the British album chart and essentially never left. At 522 weeks, it's still one of the longest charting albums in UK chart history. Among studio albums, Bat trails only Fleetwood Max Rumors and Pink Floyd's dark skills, side of the Moon for UK chart longevity. Back in the us, two out of three Ain't Bad was followed on the charts by paradise by the Dashboard Lite and you'd took the words right out of My Mouth. Both singles peaked at number 39, but given the song's length, it was remarkable. They scraped the top 40 at all. Even edited down for radio, paradise by the Dashboard Light was over five and a half minutes. Bat out of Hell would ultimately peak at number 14 on the Billboard album chart in the fall of 1978. It never cracked the top 10, but it just kept selling. It was Certified platinum in 1978, quadruple platinum in 1984. Diamond by 1994 In America alone, bat sales, according to the RIAA, stand at 14 million copies. Around the world, sales are reportedly over 40 million copies. Bat out of Hell made stars out of both Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman. Meat began acting in more movies, such as playing a menacing biker in 1979's scavenger hunt. You got some kind of death wish or something?
- [40:33]
B
Man, ain't nobody touched one of our bikes. No, no.
- [40:36]
A
And taking the lead role in 1980's Roadie opposite a dozen music stars, including Alice Cooper.
- [40:45]
B
Redfish can fix it. Redfish can fix anything. Why, he's the best roadie in the whole world. I'll do just about anything For a bus ticket home A bus ticket home I'll buy the whole damn bus.
- [40:59]
A
As for Jim Steinman, going Hollywood meant scoring some actual films. For the 1980 movie a small Circle of Friends, Steinman once again reused one of his own prior melodies, the tune to which he had sung Turn Around Bright Eyes in his college musical back in 1969. It still wasn't a pop song, But the challenge for Steinman and Meath Loaf would be following up Bat out of Hell. They tried no less than three times to record a sequel. As early as 1978, Steinman began writing songs for a purported follow up called Renegade Angel. Tracks like Lost Boys and Golden Girls displayed Steinman's penchant for heroic titles and overblown themes. He even began creating spoken word interludes that would provide a kind of storyline for the new album.
- [42:17]
B
I don't remember if it was a.
- [42:19]
A
Telecaster or a Stratocaster, but I do remember that it had a heart of.
- [42:23]
B
Chrome and a voice like a horny angel.
- [42:28]
A
In an unexpected twist, these recordings would ultimately be released under Steinman's own name. That was because Meat Loaf was unable to record them. Exhausted and overwhelmed by his newfound fame, the singer had a nervous breakdown around 1979, and he lost his singing voice for about a year while Meat Loaf visited psychiatrists to get past his emotional block. Steinman finished the recordings not as Renegade angel, but under the album title Bad for Good. He issued Bad for Good as a Jim steinman album in 1981, and though it sold modestly, one track, rock and Roll Dreams Come through, sung by frequent Steinman collaborator Rory Dodd, actually cracked the US top 40, reaching number 32 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1981.
- [43:28]
B
I treasure your love I wanna show you how to use it.
- [43:37]
A
Meanwhile, when Meatloaf finally got his Voice Back around 1980, he and Steinman regrouped to record a different sequel to Bat out of Hell. The result was the ill fated 1981 Meatloaf album dead Ringer, Sporting one of the most outrageously lavish and freaky album covers ever. Seriously, Google Meet Loaf, Dead Ringer and brace yourself. I hope you like Greek mythology. Meet's sophomore album was a near total misfire. Only its first single, I'm gonna Love her for the both of Us, cracked the Hot 100, and it peaked at a lowly number 80. This time, Jim Steinman, not Todd Rundgren, was the producer. And as with Bat out of Hell, all of Dead Ringer's songs were penned by Steinman. Some dated back years, including the title track from the 1973 Steinman musical Where he and Meat met.
- [44:58]
B
More than you deserve what you came for.
- [45:12]
A
By dropping this album In September of 1981, nearly four years after bat out of Hell, Meatloaf had landed in a new pop era. Dead Ringer arrived one month after the launch of mtv.
- [45:30]
B
What did you tell him?
- [45:38]
A
And the music topping the charts in late 1981 was tighter and more new wave driven. And it came packaged with music videos sporting telegenic pop stars like Rick Springfield. Of course, Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman had never shied away from the visual, and Meat tried to keep up. He shot a video for the song Dead Ringer for Love, a duet with none other than Cher. Cher even agreed to appear in the.
- [46:17]
B
Clip.
- [46:31]
A
But Cher herself was focusing more on her acting than her singing in 1981, and the song went nowhere either at MTV or on the charts. Dead Ringer peaked at number 45 and was off the album chart before Christmas 1981. In the wake of the failed follow up, Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf would wind up suing each other over profits from Bat out of Hell, and they stopped collaborating directly for nearly a decade, contractually obligated to record at least one more album for Epic and Cleveland International. Meat Loaf's next LP, 1983's Midnight at the Lost and Flower Found, was his first without styling. What was ironic and perhaps tragic about this early 80s rupture in Meat Loaf's relationship with his collaborator was that Steinman was about to score the biggest hits of his career as both a producer and songwriter, and these hits could all have gone to Meatloaf. When we come back every now and then, Jim Steinman dominates the charts. Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer for this episode is Benjamin Frisch, and we also had help from Rosemary Belson. Special thanks also to Todd Rundgren, biographer and all around swell guy Paul Myers. June Thomas is the senior managing producer and Gabriel Roth, the editorial director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanphe.