But, against the odds and against the instincts of a string of record companies that turned him down, Meat Loaf achieved his fame and fortune on the back of an album so cheesy you could slap it in a bun and call it a Whopper.
Bat Out Of Hell took off like a flying nocturnal mammal out of Hades, but only after a three-year cycle of writing, rewriting, pitching and pleading. It was the intervention of the E Street Band's Steve Van Zandt that finally paid off when Epic Records' subsidiary Cleveland International agreed to oversee the album's 1977 release.
So, why does the album work? What is it about this inflated piece of rock theatre that has seen it continue to sell about 200,000 copies per year?
Well, it's due to every criticism about it being spot on: Writer/composer Jim Steinman's cartoonish treatment of teenage lusts; the unrelentingly epic thrust of his arrangements; the pillaging of ideas from Springsteen and Spector and the positioning of a libidinous, lank-haired lardball as the album's bombastic Lothario.
We silently cheered as Meat toyed with Karla Devito in the video for Paradise By The Dashboard Light, and backed him as he walked away from a second-rate relationship in Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad. And as he had his words frenched from him on that burning, fog-covered beach, we saw his body shake.
"Yay, Meat! Go for it, mate," we cried, for here was living proof that there is hope for us all.
Did we care that these songs weren't the earnest scratchings of a tortured genius? Not on your life.
