A nostalgic look at my early twenties in which I attempt to determine for whom Meat Loaf was intended.

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During the summer of ’97, while I was still working at the chain restaurant that shall not be named (one of the many that end with an apostrophe and an “s”), I met a man and a woman, Eric and Joanna, who would make me feel something I had never felt before.  They were not a couple; from what I recall, they met at the restaurant that summer as new hires.  I had been working there since my high school days, and I was back for a summer between my sophomore and junior year of college.

Restaurant work at the level just above fast food was chaotic fun, equal measures of drudgery and drama.  The mundane tasks were plentiful:  filling salt and pepper shakers, “marrying” ketchups (pouring half-used bottles into one bottle to make a good one), cleaning syrup and other stains off of the plastic menus, and degreasing the grimy walls.  This was balanced by the fun melee that ensued whenever a rush of customers showed up:  dishes breaking, silverware dropping, cooks yelling, servers jockeying for computer terminals to punch in orders, and everyone mishandling equipment and one another while attempting to stay out of the weeds.

Joanna, Eric and I were servers.  She was a very capable saleswoman, the right amount of personable and flirty.  Eric was one of the guys who never had to write anything down and got it mostly right.  It wouldn’t matter if he made a mistake because nothing seemed to faze him.  I was the worst server.  I faked a friendly tone of voice, one that I copied from one of the many training videos we were forced to watch, that dissipated completely by the end of my shift.  I never remembered the specials, thus I never attempted to push them.  My final pitch before I dropped the check:  “I’m guessing you don’t want dessert, right?” 

Joanna and Eric were in their mid twenties and I had just turned twenty.  Hanging out after work happened occasionally, and when drinks were involved I was typically not invited because I was underage.  Sometimes a bunch of us would reconvene at a shittier restaurant down the street, another chain place that we could look down on (yes, restaurant workers do this, and though I won’t spill the name of where we worked I can tell you that the people who worked at the Olive Garden and Outback would come to our place to look down their noses at us).  All we did was talk shit and spread rumors about the managers, the customers and our coworkers.  We trashed the quality of food at the place we chose, yet we ordered the unique food that our restaurant didn’t carry, as if to say the only reason we’d ever come to this shithole is for the waffle fries.

One night Eric and Joanna invited me to a bar.  “I can’t get into a bar!” I gasped, clutching my pearls.  Actually I had been drunk many times and had made an ass of myself many times over, but that was up at college.  Now in my home town, could I risk the same debauchery?  No, I thought.  Local cops wouldn’t be as lenient as college town cops, I reasoned.

I decided that I would go with them but not drink.  The bar they chose was a quasi-legit converted basement in a residential home that still had the feel of a real bar:  real bartender, real drinks, real dance floor, real jukebox and real pool table.  Eric bought a round – two beers for them and one coke for me – while Joanna selected the music on the jukebox. 

Joana and Eric started a game of pool while I sat on the sidelines, waiting to play the winner.  Eric broke the balls as the first song that Joanna picked began to play.  A guitar riff led into a rollicking pattern from the rhythm section.  A smile of recognition spread across Eric’s face.  They bopped to the music as they played pool, and as the song progressed they grew more interested in singing and dancing than in playing the game.

The song was “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Jim Steinman, performed by Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley, and with baseball commentary from Phil Rizzuto.  I had never heard it before.  I was a nineties kid who only knew the single “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” a Meat Loaf hit with a video that reminded me of the ‘80s Beauty and the Beast TV series that starred Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton.  I thought the song was sorta cool, but I had a hard time figuring out who this music was for.  Was Wagnerian rock supposed to appeal to me?  Was the whole album smothered in symphonic balladry juxtaposed with hard(ly) rock?  Was it an adult contemporary album, something my mom would buy?  Was it chick music? 

Being that I was a music obsessive, I had to find someone who had purchased the album in question, Bat Out of Hell II:  Back Into Hell, and ask them what it was all about.  My guy friends had the same reaction as I did – shoulder shrugs all around.  My girl friends were into the drama and sexiness of the video, but found Meat Loaf incredibly unappealing.  No one took the record company’s bait.

Long before the conservative politics and before his name was Robert Paulson, Meat Loaf released many albums involving Hell and the bats that fly out.  His album covers displayed heavy metal imagery as if he was America’s answer to Iron Maiden, which he obviously wasn’t.  A man with a jokey stage name putting out gothic love songs dressed up as heavy metal?  Pass.

Therefore, considering my lack of context, you must appreciate my confusion as I gingerly sipped my non-alcoholic beverage, sitting on a bar stool near the wall of some guy’s converted basement bar waiting for my turn to play pool.  At that moment, I didn’t realize that the song I was hearing for the first time was a Meat Loaf product.  I heard an old fashioned sounding rock and roll number with oohs and ahhs from backup vocalists, and a man singing lyrics about making out with his girlfriend in his car with no one else around.  The subject matter was all very standard fare for rock and roll, from Chuck Berry to Nickelback.

What blew my mind was the musical theater I was witnessing from my coworkers.  I watched as pool cues became microphones.  I saw them point fingers at one another in mock lustful accusatory jabs.

Then came the height of the mid-song crescendo:  Joanna turned to Eric, placed her upturned hand in his face and sang, “Stop right there!  I gotta know right now …”  You may know the rest, but I didn’t.  I sat in rapture, watching my two minimum-wage comrades pantomime the tale we all recognize in some form:  the battle of the sexes waged in a back seat lit only by dashboard light.  The “let me sleep on its” followed by the “I wanna know right nows.”  Then, Eric as Meat Loaf relented and gave Joanna his answer, that he would love her until the end of time.  By the denouement filled with acrimony and loathing, I was emotionally spent.  They had me feeling something I had never felt before:  a love for musical theater.

As an older adult I bought the original Bat Out of Hell album, which has this tune on it.  (I still ask the question, Who is this for?  Kids like Eric and Joanna, older Generation Xers who fell under its spell as young teens searching for any sexually explicit media?)  I find that I play it for a laugh now and then.  I use “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” to trigger the nostalgia I feel for those days.  What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and play along now that I know the words and understand the show-tune performances.  Maybe I could play Phil Rizzuto?