NEW YORK (AP) – Jim Steinman, the Grammy-winning composer who wrote Meat Loaf’s best-selling debut album “Bat Out Of Hell,” and hits for Celine Dion, Air Supply and Bonnie Tyler, has died, his brother said. He was 73 years old.
Bill Steinman told The Associated Press that his brother died of kidney failure on Monday and was ill for some time. He said Jim Steinman died in Connecticut near his home in Ridgefield.
“I miss him a lot,” said Bill Steinman on Tuesday by phone.
Jim Steinman was born on November 1, 1947 in New York City.
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012 and won Album of the Year at the 1997 Grammy Awards for producing songs on Celine Dion’s “Falling Into You,” which celebrated its 25th anniversary last month and Steinman’s composed power ballad. Now everything comes back to me. “
Steinman wrote the music for Meat Loaf’s classic album “Bat Out of Hell,” which was released in 1977 and is one of the best-selling albums of all time. It has reached 14 times platinum status from the RIAA, equivalent to sales of 14 million albums in the US alone.
Steinman also wrote Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell II: Back to Hell” album in 1993, another commercial and multi-platinum hit with the international hit “I Would Do Anything for Love (but I won’t do that.” ). “” He also worked on the 2006 “Bat from Hell III: The Monster is Going”, which concluded the “Bat from Hell” trilogy.
He also composed the rock musical “Bat Out of Hell: The Musical”, which premiered in 2017 at the Manchester Opera House in Manchester, England.
Steinman was responsible for Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which topped the Billboard charts in 1983 and earned Tyler a Grammy nomination. When Tyler’s song was number 1, another Steinman production – Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” – reached number 2, giving Steinman the top 2 spots on the table.
“There’s no other songwriter like him,” said an emotional Meat Loaf with tears in his eyes at Steinman’s induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. “Here I get emotional …
“I can never pay it back,” he continued. “He was such an influence, the greatest influence on my life, and I learned so much from him that I could never repay Mr. Jim Steinman. ”
Meat Loaf and Steinman have teamed up again for Meat Loaf’s latest album, Braver Than We Are. The songs were written over a period of 50 years and contain several that were originally intended for “Bat Out of Hell”.
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed in any way without permission.