Rock legends don’t get much bigger than Meat Loaf, with an estimated 50-70 million album sales under his belt.
New release and thirteenth studio album, Braver Than We Are, was initially going to feature two or three of long-time collaborator Jim Steinman’s songs, but quickly evolved into an entire collection of the songwriter’s material, much of it rewritten from past projects. For instance, ‘More’ was originally recorded by The Sisters Of Mercy in 1990, and ‘Loving You’s A Dirty Job’ first appeared on Bonnie Tyler’s 1986 album Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire.
Steinman was in daily contact with Meat Loaf and producer/guitarist Paul Crook, acting as creative consultant, reworking the songs and remotely assisting in all aspects of the project. The end result is as suitably epic and as over-the-top as all of Meat & Steinman’s best work together: an album which the singer declares, “is a tribute to both of us and our work together.”
Meat, in fact, says he agrees with Steinman in considering it, “one of the best things that he has ever worked on in his entire life.
“I’ve never seen Jim so much in love with a record since we’ve been working together,” Meat declares passionately, “and I have listened to this record more than all of the other records I’ve ever made combined. This record, if you really sit to listen to it, it will take you on a journey. It will hypnotise you. It honestly does. It’s hypnotic, and I’ve never done a record like that!”
Friends and occasional collaborators since “somewhere early in ’72,” Meat insists that business disputes between the two have never affected their friendship.
“That’s an assumption of the press – the media actually. Because what happens is lawsuits happen. But I don’t file a lawsuit against Jim, and he doesn’t file against me. Some manager will file a lawsuit against that other manager, or the record company will file against something, and then they turn to me and Jim and go, ‘okay, you two can’t talk to each other.’ [But] Jim and I have always talked to each other!”
Despite the insane success of their past work together – Bat Out Of Hell alone is estimated to have sold in excess of 43 million copies – Meat is adamant they don’t work to expectations.
“I’ve never lived my life like that,” he declares. “What happened yesterday, happened yesterday. Not all of it good, [but] some of it good, some of it bad, some of it incredibly great – and so you learn from your mistakes. You learn from your failures, and you learn from your successes, but you can never live off of either one. You have to move forward, and the one thing that I have never done is, I’ve never not given 110%, even if it’s not good. I always give everything I have, so people are going to judge this record against Bat Out Of Hell.”
A lynchpin of the album is ‘Going All The Way’. Edited down for release as a single, at 11 minutes the album version is nothing short of epic.
“I’m going to be honest with you. If people really go and listen to the first verse of ‘Bat Out of Hell’ and the first verse of ‘Going All The Way’, it’s the same voice, just a different timbre,” Meat insists. “I think the first verse of ‘Going All The Way’ is the best thing dramatically that I have ever put on record.”
As if that declaration wasn’t enough, the track also features both Ellen Foley – who sang the studio version of Paradise By The Dashboard Light from 1977’s ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, and Karla DeVito – who appeared in the video clip for the song and sung it live on tour with Meat Loaf.
“Ellen was a little apprehensive at first,” Meat admits, “It hadn’t been the greatest relationship between those two – and completely understandable, because Ellen felt she didn’t get the recognition because Karla did the video with [Ellen’s] voice, so I get that… but the next day we had two different cars booked [for Foley and DeVito], and they said, ‘never mind, we’ll come together,’ and they had dinner that night. They checked in together, and they have remained in contact ever since then. That was one of the greatest things Jimmy and I have ever done.”
Braver Than We Are features a suitably epic cover painting of Meat and Steinman facing down what appears to be the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Possibly serious, possibly tongue in cheek, Meat declares “it’s a defiance against the record industry. They’re the Four Horseman of the Record Industry,” and he remains hopeful he can bring the album on tour to Australia.
“It’s been tossed about, but there is nothing concrete,” he reveals, “I’d love to come back – for more than one reason.”
Written by Shane Pinnegar