What was the very first song that you heard by Meat Loaf?

[Elijah's way]

What was the very first song you heard by Meat Loaf? And what song got you hooked?

For me the first song was Took The Words when I was a small child and I absolutely loved it but I never knew who it was.

Many years later I heard Anything For Love for the first time on MTV and that's the song that got me hooked and MTV is the reason I knew who sang it because they had the artist name at the beginning and the end of course.

I found out many years later that he sang Took The Words because the only two albums I had for the longest was BAT 2 and WTTN because nobody would ever buy me his entire collection when I was a kid so I had to wait till I was old enough to work so I could buy it all myself.

Needless to say when I finally got all his albums I was like a kid in a candy store.

[GenoJLaw]

Well my friend got me into Meat when I was 14/15 when he played me Bat2. So since I heard it in order I'd have to say I'll Do Anything For Love was the first song I herd and Life is a Lemon is my one of my favorite on the Album so I would say that's the one that got me hooked.

[melon]

Took the words

Sent from my SM-G925I using Forum Runner

[Guy]

Bad attitude
Hooked on FCOL

[jcmoorehead]

It would probably have been Anything For Love. I remember the video from when I lived in Turkey and the album would always be on in my dads car and my mam would play it a lot.

Bat Out Of Hell 2 is probably the first album I ever heard fully, it along with We Can't Dance by Genesis and Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds helped form my musical tastes. Very weird in school during the 90s having all these kids listening to whatever pop groups were out and there is me listening to Meat Loaf and Genesis :P

[Wario]

Took.

never was the same

[madagascar]

Anything For Love in 1993.

[GenoJLaw]

Very weird in school during the 90s having all these kids listening to whatever pop groups were out and there is me listening to Meat Loaf :P

Same here. Back in the 90's my main Music taste was Country then I got in to listening to Meat and every kid in school kept trying to tell me what I should be listening too ex: NIN, Green Day, Korn and I'm like no I like my Music to say the least I wasn't to popular in school.

[NightAngel]

Took The Words when it was first released in Australia. I was 11yo.

[proctorloaf]

I Would Do Anything For Love (but I won't do that). I was 8 and I'd run home from Church to watch the video as it was the last song on the Twix Chart for weeks and weeks.

[AndrewG]

It would have been Paradise, either in 1989 or 1990. It had become a hit again in The Netherlands shortly before that and was played a lot at school parties when I was 10/11 at friends' homes with the occasional semi pro DJ. I discovered my dad had the Bat out of Hell record so I got hooked, it was very different even 13 years after release. Paradise sounded like the ultimate song to me, as if 100 popular artists had come together to create a definitive song. I actually did own the Hits out of Hell VHS soon as well with Meat's message in the closing credits saying he'd be back in 1992 with Jim Steinman for Bat out of Hell (part 2). Of course that became 1993 (luckily MTV was huge in absence of the internet). AFL video was watched every day and Bat 2 bought and hardly a day has gone by I don't think of Meat's music. It accelerated my interest in music even more. AFL is probably the only song I learned to play by heart on piano and have never forgotten how to play it after 20 odd years (unlike countless of other songs with which I always need to tinker a bit to remember the chords etc).

[Vickip]

For me it was Paradise By The Dashboard Light on VH1 Storytellers :D

When I found the CD at Best Buy, I really didn't know who Meat was. I had heard of him, but never listened to his music before and was just curious :D
I couldn't stop listening to the CD, and as soon I saw Meat (performing Paradise with Patti), I was hooked on him and him right away.

Storytellers will always be my favorite Meat Loaf concert DVD, and to this day, Paradise is still my favorite Meat Loaf song (even though Giving Tree is a very close second).

[CarylB]

1978, live on The Old Grey Whistle Test, singing Paradise with Karla .. mesmerising, astounding, hooked me on a journey that has lasted 38 years and counting ;) BBC switchboard was jammed that night and they took the remarkable step of inviting him back straight away, when he sang Bat.

[Julie in the rv mirror]

I don't really remember the first song, but I think it was Two Out of Three- I'm pretty sure they played it on the radio back in the early 80's. I do know that BOOH was the first album I heard (which got me hooked); my older brother went away to the Air Force, and I had the run of his record collection. :drool: ;) I was mad when he came home and took his records back, and I had to buy my own copy. :lol: (I still have it.)

[mtaylor315]

The first time I heard a Meat Loaf song was much later than most of these posts. There was a free CD given away with a British newspaper in 2006. The radio edit of Bat out of Hell was on that CD and I became obsessed. I picked up Bat III a month or two later & used all the money that came my way to pick up every other album I could find (I was 13/14 at the time).

[glockenspiel]

Not sure, but would have been something from 'Hits Out Of Hell', put on by a friend whilst we played cards ,, would later purchase 'Bat Out Of Hell' on vinyl (in vinyl's 'dying days', long before it's recent revival) - and was wowed by the artwork & full-size photography, before anything else .....

[ashkent7]

My dad was always a big Meat fan and although I don't remember it, the first song that I became attached to was Modern Girl...apparently aged 4/5 I used to sit in the car singing "gimme the future" over and over.

I mainly listened because of my dad until Bat2, and I remember him bringing the LP in my room and putting it on - telling me how when he first played it he thought it was running at the wrong speed because of the motorbike guitar intro - and then he proceeded to play the bridge of Lemon, pointing out the shove it up your ass line in particular - which as an 11 year old was right up my street.

So the first ever that I connected with in anyway. The others all just kind of fell in around because I remember random things about a load of albums and songs. Like when Midnight had been transferred from LP to tape for the car and it was just too long for a side of the tape so Fallen Angel ended prematurely. The same thing happened with Blind Before I Stop - A Man and A Woman ended at the line "They meet again in old New York" and I never actually heard the end of that song until about ten years later and I still always expect it to end at that line even now.

And I remember really not understanding much of what was going on in the songs of Bat until I was well in my teens (The last thing I see is my heart still beating, breaking out of my body and flying away like a bat out of hell - the horrific carnage that that describes was lost on me probably longer than what was going on during the play by play of paradise).

[BostonAngel]

Not sure exactly which song was the first; Bat Out of Hell, Paradise, 2 Out Of 3 or For Cryi ng Out Loud. It was one of those songs from Bat 1 when it first came out in 1977. I fell in love with his music

[loaferman61]

I heard the "Bat" album before it broke big in the US. Some friends had gotten a copy on a trip to visit family in the Northeast where "2 Out of 3" was getting some airplay. So I'm pretty sure it was "2 Out of 3' and I was hooked right then and there. I immediately went looking for the 8 track which was scarce around here, but found one and played it to death. I think I still have that old 8 track someplace.

[chairboys]

First song - Dead Ringer For Love on Tops of the Pops. They seemed to play the slow climber every blooming week.
Hooked forever when Hits out of Hell was released.

[Sue K]

a bit of Anything when "some guy" was being interviewed on the Howard Stern radio show in 1993... The guy being interviewed caught my attention by mentioning he'd been in a stage production of Hair (my generation .. ;) ... lol ...) ... I found him funny and interesting... a good interview and the clip of the tune I found interesting as well... The guy turned out to be Meat Loaf... and then I saw the video on MTV... and pretty much... hooked for life ... :D

[rockfenris2005]

The first song was "Bat out of Hell" itself. But it was "Anything for love" that really, really grabbed me.

[samurai7]

The first tracks I clearly remember hearing were two out of three and I'm gonna love her for both of us. My older sister had bought the hits out of hell record. It wasn't too long after that I would sneak into her room to play it when she was out hehe

[rockfenris2005]

There was always something POWERFUL for me whenever I'd find out about... I mean, the process of discovery. At first you just think it's Bat & Bat 2. Then I saw "Hits out of Hell" and couldn't recognize half of these songs. What was "Read 'em and weep"? And where did that come from? Then you come across the cover art for "Dead ringer" and wow. I remember sitting on the floor and listening to that album on headphones. Right as "Welcome" came out, I'd basically figured out what all of the albums were, then I waited eight years for a new one. Hearing CHSIB the opening track for the first time gave me chills. It gives me chills now hearing it because it takes me back to hearing it that first time, because it had been ages for me. "This is the moment we've been waiting for" had some real resonance haha. When I turned eighteen, the restaurant I was eating at JUST SO happened to be playing CHSIB the album, and everyone around me swears they had NOTHING to do with it.

[LucyK!]

Technically mine was a tiny snippet of For Crying Out Loud, probably around 1990.

I was about 4, I knew how to work our cassette player and my Mum had a home-made cassette that she'd written on in blue marker pen. One side was the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing (which I was trying to play!) and I remember the other side was a long word which I couldn't read yet...I put that side of the cassette in the player and what I now know to be the huge orchestral part of FCOL came blasting out of the speakers....and it terrified me! I think the volume must have been turned up, I jumped out of my skin, turned it off and never played that side of the cassette again.

Then, one day in 1993, this guy came on the TV...!

[rockfenris2005]

And then it was a matter of loaf or death, as you say. Yup. I get it.

[Adje]

My brother bought Bat when it came out. And the best memory I have is from Took the Words. I was 5 and my brother didn't want me to play the album so I remember taping it outside his door with a microphone and tape recorder and playing it on my cassette deck over and over again.

[Evil Ernie]

The first ML song I 'heard of' was AFL. I didn't actually hear it yet, but everyone in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL was talking about Meat Loaf

I noticed that our household had a cassette tape of BOH, so I put that on so I hear what this guy was all about.

So the first ML that I heard was the BOH title track. Our teacher would let us bring our own music to put on and she was delighted when I brought that. For some reason everyone hated that album. I got teased about liking a song that a line like 'I'm crying icicles instead of tears.'

Just goes to show that some people (especially at a young age) will only like what everyone else likes.

[Nige78]

Bat Out Of Hell circa 1989/90. I was on a school basketball team and one of the other players brought the album on cassette to listen to on the bus on the way to a game.

I was immediately hooked and loved it. Borrowed the tape, copied it (Sorry Meat Loaf! I've since bought many copies!) and listened to it til the tape broke.

I have been a huge fan since. No idea why it took me so long to find this site though.

As a funny aside I thought I might get into trouble with my parents because of the front cover! Seems silly now.

[eddy<meat-loaf>rocky]

the first meat loaf song i heard was when i was 5 years old in 1995 and it was two out of three ant bad and i remember when it came on the radio they cut some of it out and it just went of into a radio jingle and i never new why but now i do lol

[PanicLord]

Well I'm pretty sure the album was Hits Out Of Hell that my dad used to have in his car. When it was just me and him I'd get him to crank the stereo up way past what we were normally allowed :) Technically I suppose that means the first song I heard was Bat Out Of Hell, but the one that had the biggest impact on me, that I made my dad endlessly rewind and replay, and that is still my favourite song now, is I'm Gonna Love Her For Both Of Us.

For me, the song grabs you right from the first pounding piano note, and then never lets go. It's an epic fantasy on a grand scale and goes way over the top. I love the way it seems like an argument between the main character and another guy who has the girl of his dreams but doesn't know what to do with her.

I love the way I can imagine the events of the song as if they were a movie, a brave knight racing along rocky mountain paths on a huge white horse, through thunder and lightning and rain (that pounding piano). Across the drawbridge into the castle, and jumping from the horse he (I) run into an ornate drawing room with a roaring log fire, and the man I have come to rescue the girl from is casually leaning against the fireplace. When he sees me come in, he smashes his whiskey glass into the fire and pulls down a sword, similar to the one I have in my hand.

We fight (and sing, obviously!) Our way through the castle and up the tower steps towards the girl, who I can hear calling my name in the distance.

We eventually reach the girl's room at the top of the tower, but exhausted from the fight we both stagger in and slump down at either end.

As the man glares at me and the girl reaches out to me, I start to repeat "I'm Gonna Love Her For Both Of Us" over and over, quietly at first but then growing louder and stronger as I recover my breath and my strength.

Finally I burst up on to my feet, and as the man, still glaring, defeated, watches on, I grab the girl, crying out triumphantly at first, then whispering on her ear, "I'm Gonna Love Her For Both Of Us". I keep repeating the line as I head out of the castle with my girl into the night.

Just writing it still gives me chills!

Honestly no song had ever had that kind of impact on me before and probably still hasn't. Many of Jim's and Meat's songs are of course similarly moving or fantasy related but this one gets me every time to this day.

This song is the reason I really got into Meat and Jim, and the latest cd of the album is in my car, cranked up loud.