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Jim Steinman: Difference between revisions
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Steinman got his start in musical theatre, scoring, arranging and playing piano in a number of productions. He met [[Meat Loaf]], then an aspiring singer and actor, when he auditioned for an off-Broadway musical composed by Steinman called ''More Than You Deserve'' and they began a partnership that led to the massively successful album ''Bat Out of Hell''.
Since then, he has worked as a prolific producer and composer. While more inclined to be involved in the behind-the-scenes aspects of the music business, he does perform on occasion; in 1981 he released a solo album called ''Bad For Good'' (composed of material he originally intended for Meat Loaf, who was recovering from damaged vocal cords at the time), and has been a "special guest star" in a number of Meat Loaf's tours. Less directly, he assembled and guided the all-female rock group [[Pandora's Box]] in the late 1980s, and produced their one album, ''Original Sin''.
Aside from his occasional reunions with Meat Loaf, he's collaborated in some capacity with artists such as [[Air Supply]], [[Barry Manilow]], [[Billy Squier]], [[Barbra Streisand]], [[Bonnie Tyler]], [[Celine Dion]] and [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]].
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* [[Author Appeal]]: He has a fascination (or perhaps obsession would be the better term) with ''[[Peter Pan]]'', and in addition to his work on ''Neverland'' random references to it show up all over his other work -- such as a digression about Captain Hook and how he coped with the Lost Boys in the middle of the Joker's song "Wonderful Toys" from his ''Batman'' musical.
* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: He's famous for his eccentricity. When Meat Loaf told the story of his first meeting with Steinman on ''[[VH-1]] Storytellers'', he began with, "Have you ever seen Jim Steinman? He's one weird dude."
* [[Epic Rocking]]: His compositions tend to last a bit longer than the average pop song, and in some cases they're more like mini-operas with distinct movements than songs with verses and choruses. Steinman reportedly burst into tears when he heard that radio stations wouldn't play the twelve-minute album version of "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" (keep in mind that the single edit was pushing it at seven minutes, and it's still one of the longest songs to get to number one in America).
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* [[Pop Star Composer]]: His greatest success in this capacity was composing the music for the enormously popular European [[Vampire Musical]] ''[[Tanz der Vampire]]''. He also wrote the lyrics for the [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]] musical ''[[Whistle Down the Wind]]'' and was asked to score ''[[Batman the Musical]]'' before that project fell through.
* [[Record Producer]]: Comes under several of the categories listed on that page --
** '''Acrimony Producer''': Steinman was infamously [[Executive Meddling|hired at the behest of the record company]] to produce the album ''Hysteria'' with [[Def Leppard]] after [[Mutt Lange]] initially decided to pull out. What should have been a [[Dream Team]] partnership promptly went south. Steinman wanted to produce a raw-sounding rock and roll record while the band wanted to make a more polished, [[Queen]]-style album. These differences proved
** '''One Trick Pony''': Most of his productions have grandiose, bombastic sounds, drawing influence from Bruce Springsteen, Phil Spector and classical composers such as Wagner.
* [[Rock Opera]]: Meat Loaf once explained that every song Steinman writes is treated as though it's part of his never-produced ''Neverland'' project, although only a few of his compositions have been identified as part of the potential production ("Lost Boys and Golden Girls" is only the most obvious).
* [[Self-Plagiarism]]: Steinman has a habit of reusing choice bits from earlier songs in later works. One of the most obvious is a bridge composed of repetitions of the line "Godspeed! Godspeed! Godspeed! Speed us away!" which has appeared in several different songs over the past
** Individual lines often show up in multiple places, such as "Forever is such a long, long time, and most of it hasn't even happened yet". Some of these appear often enough in his work that they approach [[Catch Phrase]] territory.
* [[Step Up to the Microphone]]: Aside from the spoken word passages he has contributed to some Meat Loaf albums, Steinman performed lead vocals on the 1981 album ''Bad For Good'' after Meat lost his voice. Most critics noted that his singing turned out to be the weak link on an otherwise strong album.
* [[Teenage Death Songs]]: The title track on ''Bat Out of Hell'' is his most enduring homage to this style.
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