BOOK REVIEW: Like A Bat Out Of Hell: The Larger Than Life Story Of Meat Loaf by Mick Wall

Shane | 21 March 2018 | Reply

BOOK REVIEW: Like A Bat Out Of Hell: The Larger Than Life Story Of Meat Loaf by Mick Wall

Hachette Australia
November 2017
Paperback, $32.99
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar

Biography, Rock & roll

8.5/10

Mick Wall’s biography of Meat Loaf, the fat, bullied kid who wanted to be loved, is much more than just another story of rock n’ roll success and excess. It’s the story of two men – yin and yang twins who would enjoy far more success when united than when separated, which they were for most of their careers, pushed apart by ego and greed and business and mistakes and fiery tempers and stubborn feuds.

The story of Meat Loaf simply cannot be told without the story of Jim Steinman, and yet – like the original Bat Out Of Hell album – the book is billed as Meat Loaf’s story, rather than the story of these two very enigmatic sides of the same coin, so different, yet far more similar than either would like to admit.

Steinman, the Wagner-meets-rock n’ roll composer of completely over-the-top epics who wanted nothing more than to be a rockstar, despite not having the voice for it.

Meat Loaf, the insecure, picked on and abused kid with the epic vocals who could act, inhabiting Steinman’s songs like he was born to sing them, but struggled to write himself.

Together they ruled the charts, apart they made their own records – some good, some terrible – and sued each other relentlessly, all the while claiming it was the managers, nothing personal, all the while both hoping secretly for the time they could work together again, burying the hatchets for real instead of in each other’s backs.

It’s one hell of a story, worthy of its own rock opera, including sex, drugs, madness and epic, epic triumph – and Wall tells it well.