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'Rock And Roll Dreams' was the follow-up smash to 1993's biggest-selling single 'I'd Do Anything For Love'... Meat, born Marvin Lee Aday, has not only sold tens of millions of records but has also made his mark in the last 25 years as an actor.
Although it's true that this was the official follow-up to his Number One, his former record company had re-released 'Bat Out Of Hell' in the interim, thus making Mr Loaf the first act to have simultaneous Top 10 singles since, er, Dina Carroll the week before. One of the B-sides on that single was the original 1991 version of this song by Jim Steinman (who fortunately used a session singer rather than doing it himself). Curiously, it's that original that I remember hearing more of than this technically bigger hit.
The original always sounded a bit like a Meat Loaf record without Meat Loaf, and apparently that's pretty much what it was, with Steinman forced to record the follow-up to Bat Out Of Hell without his lead singer. A dozen years later most of this was recycled into Bat Out Of Hell II, which is logical (and very lucrative) but it feels a little bit pointless: although Steinman is famous for his massive productions he has a fairly limited palette of ways to be massive and so there aren't a lot of new things to be brought to this version, except maybe a slightly bigger budget. Well, that and Loaf's voice which I've never been keen on anyway. And I'm not a huge fan of songs about how good music is anyway, because they always seem to be preaching to the converted too much. In fairness, though, it's exactly what people who buy a Meat Loaf record produced by Jim Steinman would be looking for.
Also appearing on: Now 26, 32, 33, 65
Available on: Massive Hits! - Rock
He has been known to call himself that. I know he gets irritated if anybody refers to him as Meatloaf without the same.
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