Friday, January 21, 2022

Like a bat out of hell

 Ah, Meatloaf. 

I can't say I'm overly surprised. You never really did look that healthy, especially in the later years. 

And despite the fact you conceived one the the three albums I never, ever want to hear again (Yes one of those albums is Bat Out of Hell. The other two are INXS's The Swing, thanks to a school ski trip in 1983 where the only cassette we had, and played, was that bloody album. The other being that travesty, Hooked on Classics, which my mother played for what felt like years on end.)

Anyway, I'm sad your gone. 

You were a good actor. Heavens, I think of Fight Club and I think of you. Because Bob with the bitch tits is one of my favourite bits of what is a great film, made greater by your presence.


And of course, you were the original Eddie in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Gotta love an ex-delivery boy who ends up ina meat grinder after being disposed of by an ice pick. 


So I wish you well on your way, Michael Aday. You appeared to be a genuinely nice bloke, even if you were heavily criticised that time you came and sang at the AFL Grand Final that year. Probably was as bad for you as it was for the crowd. 

But now you're gone, what worries me is that people are going to be playing Bat Out of Hell for the next while. 

I hate that album. 

It's not the music. Individually, some of the songs are okay. Two Out of Three Aint Bad and Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth I really like. 

But if I hear that album from end to end again - an album that takes me back to the worst job I ever had, back to the sub-basement of John Martins department store in the eighties, I don't quite know what I'll do. Over thirty years on, it is still the album which I associate with Room 101, the torture chamber in George Orwell’s 1984, which was named after a conference room at the BBC where Orwell would have to sit through tortuously boring meetings...

The album, to me, is the pinnacle of torture. 

You, however, seemed like a good bloke, and may you rest in peace. 

Just take your Bat Out of Hell album with you.

Today's song:

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