Meat Loaf unleashes "Bat" for third flight
NEW YORK (Billboard) - By his own estimation, Meat Loaf has turned down offers to appear in five movies, six episodes of the new TV hit "Heroes" and a guest-starring stint on "CSI" this year.
If he wanted, the rock veteran could be working like, well, a bat out of hell. But come to think of it ... he is anyway. The monster that Meat Loaf helped create in 1977 has been unleashed again, and it's chewing up all his time and energy -- with his full and willing cooperation.
Virgin Records releases "Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose" on October 31, adding a new chapter to the biggest and best-known album serial in rock 'n' roll history. Its two predecessors -- 1977's "Bat Out of Hell" and 1993's "Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell" -- have sold nearly 50 million copies combined, and Meat Loaf is well aware that the anticipation for the threequel is as much, if not more, about the "Bat" than it is about him.
"'Bat Out of Hell' are not Meat Loaf's records," the singer says. "'Bat Out of Hell' is bigger than me. It's bigger than any of us who are involved. Meat Loaf becomes the spoke in the wheel of an event, and it's the event that takes over."
STAGE ROOTS
The "Bat" experience started in the mid-'70s. Back then, Meat Loaf, a one-time high school football player born Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas, had established credits on stage ("Hair") and screen ("The Rocky Horror Picture Show"), recorded an album for Motown in 1971 with "hair" colleague Shaun "Stoney" Murphy and sang on Ted Nugent's "Free for All" album in 1976.
Meat Loaf met Jim Steinman when the singer performed in the composer's musical "More Than You Deserve." The two were part of a tour for the National Lampoon Road Show. While Steinman was working on what Meat Loaf calls "a futuristic Peter Pan story" called "Neverland," he came up with the idea for the first "Bat Out of Hell" album, enlisting his friend to sing. All melodrama and bombast -- Phil Spector meets Tod Browning -- the Todd Rundgren-produced album became a late-'70s sensation, spawning three hits ("Two Out of Three Ain't Bad," "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light") and logging an 82-week stay on the Billboard 200.
A second "Bat" project was planned to follow immediately, but Meat Loaf suffered a psychosomatic voice loss he now chalks up to simply being unready to take the plunge again.
"I thought it was way too early," he says. "My intuition said, 'You don't want to do this. "Bat Out of Hell" is still selling this many copies a week. Why do you want to squash this? Why not let it just run its course? Come back in five years and do it.'
"If that record came out when they wanted to bring it out, I wouldn't be sitting here talking about 'Bat III."'
Instead, Steinman recorded the songs himself as 1981's "Bad for Good," which didn't come close to equaling the success of "Bat." But a dozen years later, "Bat II" hit pay dirt, winging to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and pushing Meat Loaf toward a Grammy Award for best male rock vocal performance for the chart-topping single "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)."
DIFFICULT BIRTH
"Bat III" went through a little hell before it became a reality, too. Meat Loaf and Steinman started working on it in late 2001, but the composer suffered some health setbacks, including a heart attack, forcing Meat Loaf to make the difficult decision to move forward without him.
"I told Jim I wouldn't do 'Bat II' without him, and I had no intention of doing that," Meat Loaf says, adding that "lawyers worked for over a year putting together a contract for him to do 'Bat Out of Hell III.' It was one of the best producer's contracts in the history of the record business."
Meat Loaf acknowledges that his decision to sideline Steinman -- who still composed seven of the tracks on "Bat III" -- "was absolutely selfish on my part. He had a heart attack and two strokes; his health was the main concern for me. I know the stamina that it takes to put together a 'Bat Out of Hell' record, and the intensity. I just did not believe he was healthy enough to sustain it.
"The decision not to use Steinman has taken its toll on me. It was not easy, because I am a really loyal person. But I had to make the decision that was right. I couldn't sit around and wait."
Steinman would not comment on the issue, but his manager, David Sonenberg, says that "Jim's health is excellent. That's not the reason he didn't participate in ("Bat III"). He had some meaningful health problems about four years ago, but he's been totally healthy the last couple of years. His health in no way impacted on his involvement in the 'Bat Out of Hell' project."
Sonenberg says Steinman is in the midst of working on a "Bat" theater piece, which probably will debut in England.
Meat Loaf subsequently wound up going to court earlier this year to wrest from his collaborator the "Bat" trademark, which the singer says Steinman had acquired through an attorney's "clerical error." The $50 million matter was settled out of court. Steinman received profit percentage points on the record, which Meat Loaf says is "fine. ... That kind of makes up for me not using him" to produce it.
GUITAR ARMY ENLISTED
Meat Loaf chose Desmond Child, a hitmaker with plenty of hard rock credits (Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Kiss) and a burning desire to be part of the "Bat" story.
Child -- who began recording sessions by playing Slipknot CDs to get the assembled musicians in the mood -- had plenty of help bringing "Bat III" to life. Rundgren returned to help arrange backing vocals. Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx, former Marilyn Manson and current Rob Zombie guitarist John5, Steve Vai and James Michael contributed to the songwriting, while Vai, John5, Grammy-winning producer John Shanks and Queen's Brian May were part of the album's guitar army.
"I didn't just want to bring in rock players -- I wanted to go to extreme rock people," Meat Loaf says. The result, he adds, is an album that "has all the touches of the other two 'Bats,' but it's much more of a rock album."
Nevertheless, the album's first single, a duet with Marion Raven on "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," falls decidedly on the pop and even adult contemporary side of the spectrum. The song, a Steinman-penned hit for Celine Dion in 1996, originally was slated for "Bat II," and Meat Loaf is still disappointed ("I'd use a stronger adjective," he says with a laugh) that he didn't get first crack at it.
The "Bat III" campaign, however, started with the hard-rocking title track. Honing in on Meat Loaf's association with Major League Baseball -- dating back to the spoken segment on "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Hall of Fame broadcaster Phil Rizzuto -- Virgin took "The Monster Is Loose" to the league for play at ballparks during broadcasts.
Meat Loaf's appearance in the upcoming Tenacious D film "The Pick of Destiny" should also be a boost for "Bat." And on Halloween night, Pillar Entertainment will present a "Bat III" release event in more than 100 theaters across the country, which will include footage from the recording sessions and the video for "It's All Coming Back to Me Now."
Meat Loaf is planning a "Bat III" world tour that begins in March in Florida. He staged a special concert showcasing all three albums October 16 at London's Royal Albert Hall, with a "Bat on Broadway" performance slated for November 2 at New York's Palace Theater. He'll also perform the show in Toronto, Atlantic City, N.J.; Uncasville, Conn.; and Mexico City.
"I'll tell you what ties (the albums) together," Meat Loaf says. "They're all very funny. They're all tongue-in-cheek. It's all these high, tense, emotional songs that are way over the top, and that's what makes them 'Bat Out of Hell' ".
He adds, "Maybe that's what makes them so difficult to make."
CDs are dead: recording company CEO
A top recording industry executive on Friday said the music CD is dead and that recording labels must become more innovative if they hope to sell the discs in the future.
"The CD as it is right now is dead," Alain Levy, chairman and CEO of EMI Music said in his keynote address at the London Media Summit.
Levy acknowledged that the control over content that the industry once wielded by virtue of controlling the means of distribution is rapidly slipping from its grasp.
"Power is shifting everywhere from manufacturers, content providers and retailers to consumers. In this age of empowerment, the consumer is king," he said.
He noted that 60 per cent of people rip their music CDs on their computers to transfer the songs to digital music players such as Apple Computer's market-leading iPod.
Recording companies must make CDs more appealing to people by adding value that compels individuals to buy physical media, Levy said at the conference being held at the London Business School.
"We have to be much more innovative in the way we sell physical content," he urged the industry, adding that EMI is practicing what he was preaching. "By the beginning of next year, none of our content will come without any additional material."
Oscar buzz grows for Penelope Cruz in "Volver"
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Penelope Cruz calls it the hardest role she's ever played, and if early reviews and award buzz hold up, her portrayal of an abused girl's mom in "Volver" could win Cruz the first-ever Oscar for a Spanish actress.
The movie debuts in major U.S. cities on November 3, and it reunites Cruz with award-winning director Pedro Almodovar, who cast the then relatively unknown Spanish beauty in his 1997 movie "Live Flesh" and later in "All About My Mother."
In English, "Volver" translates into coming back, and Almodovar returns to exploring the lives of Spanish women -- which characterized his early films -- and to his quirky sense of humor after more dramatic fare like 2004's "Bad Education."
Despite the funny moments in "Volver," viewing sexual abuse with anything but a serious mind is hard, and getting the right mix of comedy and tragedy challenged 32-year-old Cruz.
"It's the most difficult and complex character somebody has put in my hands," she told Reuters. "I know women who have gone through things that could have destroyed them, but they kept fighting. ... My character is not a victim."
Of course, numerous movies have yet to be seen before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gives out its coveted awards in February, and Cruz faces stiff competition from the likes of Helen Mirren in "The Queen" and Kate Winslet for "Little Children," among others.
But Cruz has several factors in her favor including global star power and an increasingly strong resume that varies from box office winners like "Gothika" to art-minded "Vanilla Sky" and critically lauded Italian film "Non ti muovere," or "Don't Move," in which she played a poor, small town waitress.
SWEET REVENGE
In "Volver," Cruz portrays Raimunda, the wife of a husband whose roving eyes land on Raimunda's teenage daughter. When Raimunda discovers this, she gets revenge in a way that, ironically, puts her into business running a local cafe.
At the same time, Raimunda's sister, Sole, has begun seeing the ghost of their dead mother, and Sole's visions lead to the unraveling of a mystery that has strained family relations.
Cruz said the script was the best she ever read, and that type of comment is high praise for Almodovar, who won the screenwriting Oscar for 2002's "Talk to Her."
"He has cast me in movies, he has given me characters that had nothing to do with other parts I played and nothing to do with who I am in real life," she said. "He has a great imagination to see what actors can do before they've done it."
Because of her striking good looks, Cruz often played the sexy love interest of leading men in her early Hollywood roles. But in films like "Don't Move" and "Volver," she expanded her range to portray independent-minded women, and her contemporary beauty became as much a liability as an asset.
For "Volver," Almodovar required Cruz to wear a "false ass" so she would appear like 1950s Italian film heroines, such as Sophia Loren, with a round, curvy figure.
Critics have responded with mostly good reviews. "She is the kind of actress who depends on a strong screenplay and a good director, but I think the potential is there," said Emanuel Levy, a veteran reviewer at Emanuellevy.com.
Asked about all the Oscar talk, Cruz said she was flattered and excited but preferred not to think about it.
"I like being honest about those things and of course it would make me happy. I have no interest in pretending to be cool about it and say, 'I don't care,' because that is fake."