Soon after Meat Loaf released the classic 1977 ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ album Jim Steinman set to work on a new batch of songs that were intended to be the follow-up. It never happened.
Meat Loaf suffered vocal problems while recording the intended ‘Renegade Angel’ album and eventually the project was aborted for Meat Loaf but continued for Jim. “I spent seven months trying to make a follow-up [to Bat] with him, and it was an infernal nightmare. He had lost his voice, he had lost his house, and he was pretty much losing his mind,” Steinman is quoted as saying in The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
Steinman then decided to make the album himself, with the Meat Loaf band minus Meat Loaf. The album was released as ‘Bad For Good’ in 1981. It reached no 5 in Australia, no 7 in the UK and no 63 in the USA.
Over the decades Meat Loaf would re-record the songs and include them on his various albums. ‘Surf’s Up’ was on 1984’s ‘Bad Attitude’, ‘Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through’, ‘Out of the Frying Pan (and Into The Fire), ‘Love and Death and the American Guitar’ was retitled ‘Wasted Youth’ and ‘Lost Boys and Golden Girls’ were released on ‘Bat Out Of Hell: Back To Hell’ in 1993. ‘Left In The Dark’ was on ‘Welcome To The Neighbourhood’ in 1995 and ‘Bad For Good’ was eventually released by Meat Loaf on ‘Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose’ in 2006.
The two songs that were never released by Meat Loaf were ‘Stark Raving Love’ and ‘Dance In My Pants’ as well as the bonus single track ‘The Storm’.
11 years before Meat Loaf recorded ‘Left In The Dark’, the track made its way to Barbra Streisand who had a Top 40 hit in Australia with the song.
Meat Loaf’s final album was ‘Braver Than We Are’ in 2016. All songs on the album were written by Jim Steinman. Steinman died in April 2021.
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