‘Everyone hated Bat Out of Hell’: how Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf made a misunderstood masterpiece Rolling Stone gave it zero stars. But its 'Springsteen on Broadway on steroids' excess paved the way for 80s bombastic rock 21 April 2021 • 10:08am '10-minute Wagnerian explosive anthems sung by a 350-pound guy with a huge voice': Jim Steinman on Bat Out of Hell, his collaboration with Meat Loaf New York in the mid-1970s was the crucible of two emerging music scenes. Nightclubs such as The Loft, The Gallery and – from 1977 – Studio 54 were playing disco music, while CBGB was home to the nascent raw punk sound of Patti Smith and Television. There was little room for anything else between these two musical pillars, let alone a 24-stone singer from Texas with a voice that could fell trees. And yet, in a theatre in Lower Manhattan, Meat Loaf was forging a creative collaboration that would lead to Bat Out of Hell, an album of operatic rock anthems that – against the grain of everything else going on – would become one of the most popular records of all time.