So, if
record companies hated the album, and it is unconventional to the form of rock
n' roll . . . why did the album do so well with listeners and become so
successful?
Rock n’ roll, at the
heart of its popularity's correlation with social and cultural changes in the
lives on young adults (Kotarba 398), is all about appealing to teenagers/young
adults and the angst/rebellion/self-finding nature of the audience. In 1977
during "Bat Out of Hell"'s release, the now-defined Baby-Boomer
generation was in their youth. Following suit from Elvis listeners in the 50s,
the rock n' rollers of the Boomer generation were engaged with rock n' roll for
its opposition to cultural norms. The
“rules” implied by the denial of the album by studios is directly against the
concept of rock n’ roll and its cultural significance to its audience (young
adults). To clarify, it's not very rock n' roll of a producer to deny an album
for existing outside of some sort of 'standards', when the whole point of rock
was to break standards and do something new: like Elvis, the Beatles, etc.
beforehand.
That is not to say, however, that young adults were somehow
aware of the albums unpopularity with producers: they were not, based on the
speculation of the previous paragraph, listening to Meat Loaf out of spite
towards "the man". This process happened much more subconsciously, in
a way that producers could not have fathomed or foreseen.
While deliberating between arguments surrounding critical
approaches to rock and classical music genres, Stephen Davies considers how the
two are inseparable, rather than sticking to an idea that they are much, much
different. The argument rests in the idea of Formalism v. Expressiveness, which
critics have defined as the different between rock (expressive) and classical
(formal) music. Where classical defenders render that classical music is just
as expressive as rock music, rock defenders argue that rock’s lack of form is
the only true way to achieve real expressiveness, “Formal complexity can never
make up for an absence of expressive qualities” (Baugh from Davies 198).
Davies, however, approaches the concern through the lens of the grey area;
name-dropping Rock Opera as a key player in this grey area which is ignored by
those in disputes of taste. Davies asserts that music of any genre cannot be
listened to without the recognition of form – melodies, tonalities, meter,
harmonic patterns and scales are all ways which music is identified,
cognitively, as music. And this stands for rock, classical, and everything in
between.
Davies,
through name-dropping rock-opera, raises that rock-opera is submitting to both
the classical formalism and rock n' roll's expression. I think that listeners
of "Bat Out of Hell" would agree that this is the case -- Meat Loaf’s
“Bat Out of Hell” serves tracks that are dripping in guitar riffs, revving
motorcycles (All Revved Up With No Place to Go), deeply theatric piano melodies
(For Crying Out Loud, Two Outta Three Aint Bad) and some that are both (Bat Out
of Hell). Needless to say, that each track is both expressive and formally
sound, defying predetermined genre norms of both rock and classical genres.
Thus, "Bat Out of Hell" appealed to the Boomer
generation in the sense that, in addition to its lyrical take on rebellion, it
was also defiant and rebellious in form. "Bat Out of Hell" brought
something new to the table that played to the dramatic, defiant nature of
Boomers and their love for Rock n' Roll in their youth.