Jim Steinman was born November 1, 1947 in Hewlett, New York. He fell in love with music of all sorts as a child, drawn equally to rock and opera. While attending Amherst college he created The Dream Engine, a musical that got the attention of famous NY theater producer Joseph Papp. He began working for Papp after college, and by the early 70s he saw some of his songs being recorded. While developing a musical based on Peter Pan, he found his musical soulmate in Meat Loaf, a big-throated unapologetically theatrical singer whose grandiose sensibilities matched Steinman’s bent for swelling arrangements and timeless themes of love and loss. Their first album together, 1977’s Bat Out of Hell, would eventually sell over 50 million copies worldwide on the strength of iconic tracks like “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”. Jim Steinman issued his only solo album, Bad for Good, in 1981 and though it failed to garner much attention, he pulled off the remarkable accomplishment of writing a pair of songs, Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” that in 1983 held down the number 1 and 2 spots, respectively, on the pop charts. He would also provide chart hits for Bonnie Tyler (“Holding Out for a Hero”) and The Sisters of Mercy (“More”). After years of estrangement, he reunited with Meat Loaf for 1993’s Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell which sold well over ten million copies largely on the strength of the hit single “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. He wrote the Celine Dion’s 1996 smash “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”, which was originally considered but ultimately not recorded for Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell. Jim Steinman also continually tried his hand at musical theater, writing with Andrew Lloyd Webber for the 1996 show Whistle Down the Wind, and winning awards for his songs for Dance of the Vampire, a 1997 stage adaptation of Roman Polanski’s film The Fearless Vampire Killers. A suffered two strokes during the 2000s and he passed away on April 19, 2021 from kidney failure.
