Meat Loaf paid tribute to his longtime collaborator Jim Steinman with a short post to Facebook.
“Coming here soon, my brother Jimmy. Fly Jimmy fly,” the singer wrote. His words were accompanied by a selection of photographs of the two from throughout their career (see below).
Steinman died on Monday at age 73. the songwriter and producer’s partnership with Meat Loaf — born Michael Lee Aday — spanned more than 40 years, beginning with the singer’s 1977 debut album, Bat Out of Hell, which Steinman wrote entirely. The high-octane, theatrical album spawned several FM rock staples, including “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night”) and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” and was certified 14x platinum by the RIAA.
Steinman wrote the majority or entirety of three other Meat loaf albums: 1981’s Dead Ringer, 1993’s Bat Out of Hell: Back Into Hell and 2016’s Braver Than We Are. The Bat Out of Hell sequel topped the Billboard 200, went 5x platinum and spawned the No. 1 hit “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” catapulting Meat Loaf back to stardom among a new generation of listeners.
Steinman met his rock ‘n’ roll muse in 1973 while writing music and lyrics for the musical More Than You Deserve, which co-starred a young, pre-Meat Loaf Aday.
“From the minute he walked in, I was stunned,” Steinman said of Meat Loaf’s audition in a 2003 interview. “I thought he was astonishing. He’s just one of those people who walks in and it’s the equivalent of an enormous cat pissing on the door. Just stakes territory immediately.”
Steinman also scored many hits outside of his work with Meat Loaf, including Bonnie Tyler‘s 1983 classic “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” In her own Facebook post, Tyler remembered Steinman as a “true genius.”
“Jim wrote and produced some of the most iconic rock songs of all time and I was massively privileged to have been given some of them by him,” Tyler wrote. “I made two albums with Jim, despite my record company initially thinking he wouldn’t want to work with me, thankfully they were wrong.”
The singer went on to describe her former collaborator as “a funny, kind, supportive, and deeply caring human being.” “I will always be grateful to him for the opportunity to work with him and also to know him too,” Tyler confessed.
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