By Ralph Greco, Jr.
Jim Steinman broke my cherry. Let me explain…
I would turn 17 in October 1978, so I wasn’t yet driving. And even if I had been, I know I would never have dared steer myself over to big bad Passaic, New Jersey, a mere 10 minutes from the safe streets of Clifton, where I lived. Those mean streets of the next town over scared me, while in actuality, they weren’t so mean, just slightly more urban than where I lived (see: sheltered) in what could have been another planet as far as my tree-lined, almost completely suburban neighborhood was concerned.
During that junior year of high school, I had befriended a bodaciously voluptuous (or is that voluptuously bodacious?) sandy-haired blonde named Denise (not her real name). She was a wild chick — sorry, we called girls ‘chicks’ back then, don’t #metoo me, OK? — very advanced as far as social graces were concerned, and with more than a bit of a rep. Transferring to my high school in her junior year, Denise found herself among a student population she didn’t much know and who didn’t much take to her. Denise also had a body most girls were jealous of — and most guys were scared to even look at — and was well out of my league, not that I had a league at that point. But Denise liked me, not like as in like, but as a friend, and I liked her back (sure, I lusted after her as well, but again, I was totally ignorant of anything even hinting at romance or sex at that point).
In high school, as would be for most of my life, I made no real distinction between the jocks, the brains, the burnouts; if somebody was nice and made time for me, I would make time for them, no matter what other people thought of them or what group they were supposed to fit into. Denise was nice to me, so I was nice to her.
And, as mostly everyone in my class did, Denise and I loved the first Meat Loaf album Bat Out Of Hell. So, when she asked me if I wanted to take the extra ticket she had for the big man playing the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, you can bet I jumped at the offer. And since she was 17 and had her license, Denise was going to drive us to the concert.
The night of the show, I walked to the bottom of my dead-end street. At the corner, as was typical during any warm night around my burb, I found a group of guys hanging in and around their bikes. After a round of “What’s up?” and “Hey, Ralph, how you doing?”, the trio asked me why I was waiting at the end of our street. I offered that I had a friend coming to pick me up to see Meatloaf this very night.
Figuring I’d add a little bragging into the mix, I mentioned my friend was a girl.
Imagine, if you can, a less mature Bevis and Butthead response to the possibility of a girl actually soon to be in the vicinity. These four guys, all about a year younger than me, even more ignorant in the ways of females than me, which is saying a lot, began ribbing me immediately. I did my best to explain that this was not a date, blah blah blah, and as the time stretched with no sight of Denise, the guys took the opportunity to assure me that I was being stood up, even for my non-date date.
I never doubted that Denise would show. Less because of my wonderfulness, but the fact that she had been rabid about seeing Meat Loaf. Remember, this was well before the time of cell phones, texting, or calling somebody checking in on where they were and when they might arrive. Back then, you simply had to have patience and faith. So, I stood on the corner, looked east on the four-lane Allwood Road that sliced through my part of town and swallowed my company’s good-natured jabs knowing I’d be vindicated soon enough.
The girl did not disappoint.
As befitting her larger-than-life personality, Denise came rumbling down the busy road in a ‘cherry’ cherry-red 1969 Camaro, still the sweetest car of my dreams. Catching sight of me at the corner, she pulled the car to the curb and my friends’ jaws collectively dropped south. For my benefit or just part and parcel of her usual style, Denise threw the car into park, then all but leaned across the passenger seat from her driver’s side (I think one might call the move “flumping”) lifting her considerable upper-half-of-a-shelf out the passenger window.
“Hey guys!” she said in the way of a greeting.
I said “Hi,” managed the two steps into her car as Denise leaned back and opened the door for me. My friends didn’t say a word. I’m not sure if they managed to utter a sound for the rest of the night.
Off to meet Meat we went.
Walking into a concert venue like the Capitol for the first time was a revelation. When it first opened in 1921, it was a vaudeville house and over the decades had morphed into a movie theater. By the early 70s, it became a 3000+ seat concert venue, supporting on its rather big stage bands with a ‘cult’ status, or as-of-yet-not having-broken-through-to-the-mainstream-rock-stardom. By the time I stepped through its thick glass doors, the place was well into its rock run.
As I walked through the crowded lobby with Denise, jostling for position around half-stoned and some fully stoned high-schoolers, lots of whom I knew by sight at least, we came to walk down a tunneled hallway at the east end of the theatre and into the auditorium proper. I had been assaulted with the smell of marijuana as I walked down the hallway, but in the house then, a cloud engulfed me. Through even more kids filling the isles and jockeying over seats, I followed Denise’s swinging wide hips as she all but spun and twirled us to our seats, pretty much dead center of the orchestra, about 20 rows back from the stage.
The Meat Loaf show was a fantastically loud barrage of over-the-top Wagnerian interplay with undertones of Peter Pan. I’ll never forget it. It began with the big band taking their respective instruments or setting themselves behind microphone stands under dim stage lighting. A spotlight followed Meat Loaf’s writer, Svengali, and piano player Jim Steinman, as he seemingly just appeared, strolling to the lip of stage left. As the man set himself like a statue to the cheers of the audience, a low steady bass drum beat began. Steinman looked every bit the wild rock-and-roll bad ass in his black jeans, black T-shirt, black leather jacket, long silver-white hair cascading down his shoulders, wearing mirror Aviator shades and white gloves. He stood stock still for God knows how long, reflecting us all back on ourselves, then lifted and turned his hands shoulder height and proceeded to pluck his fingers from his gloves, only to reveal another pair of gloves under those. Fantastic rock drama tinged with a visual pun. How could this night get any better?
Walking round to the baby grand piano sitting on stage behind him, Steinman then sat…and proceeded to beat down on the keys in a wild cacophony. Somehow the band followed him and rumbled right into the breakneck opening of the song “Bat Out Of Hell,” as Steinman pounded out the main riff.
A minute later out walked (more like stalked) a tuxedoed 300-pound + Meat Loaf.
I was transported, transfixed, betwixt, enamored, enraptured, and this was only in the first five minutes. Meat Loaf, especially back then, was one of the most dynamic performers one might ever be lucky to see. God, what an eye-opener for me this show was! The songs, all penned by Steinman, betraying teenage angst, a busty girl rollicking ever too dangerously close to me, I as much tried to take in the show before me as the one happening around me in that down-on-its heels, marijuana-reeking theatre deep in Passaic.
My first-ever rock show would be one I would measure all the rest coming in my future by. Very few have even come close.
Learning that Jim Steinman died really knocked me back on my heels. Maybe I’ve been pining more than I usual for my past (which would be saying a lot since I live in the past so much, I’ve rented furniture there), and feel such a profound sadness over the state of streaming concerts and virtual ‘performances’ taking the place of live concerts.
Very few other songwriters mean as much to me as Steinman does. Through his work with Mr. Loaf (and we must remember not just Meat Loaf’s first album, but the fantastic Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, Steinman’s hits for others, like Bonnie Tyler, and his theatrical musical output he created Sturm und Drang never heard in rock. And while surely, I was an impressionable youth in 1978, so the music of that time; concerts I saw, radio I listened to, albums I bought are indelibly stamped in my heart and brain, this does not make that music any less powerful or great.
Jim Steinman mastered a surely singular kind of songwriting that sets him head’s above even other greats, men and women I surely love. Theatrical without being musical dreck, rock and roll steeped as much in a 50s sensibility as at-the-moment modern, and completely unapologetic, Steinman, like all those I consider great, wrote by his own rules. And with Meat Loaf fronting his creations, the team was unstoppable during a time when I really felt music mattered.
RIP Mr. Steinman.
