What I learned from Meat Loaf.

I hadn’t thought about Roberta Wagadorn in years. But I remember calling her place as if it were yesterday.

“Hello, can I speak to Roberta please? Yes. It’s Clarke. Clarke Smith. Yes I can wait Mrs. Wagadorn.”

A minute after, Roberta came on the line. We made small talk. It was uncomfortable but she finally said “yes.”

Two days later, on a sultry August night in Edmonton, I borrowed my mom’s baby-blue Ford Maverick and picked up Roberta—a bewitching raven as winsome as a heatwave—for our first date.

Oh, yeah. I was nervous I’ll tell you—I knew not just any song would do for this drive—I needed to call in the big guns.

Rooting through the glove box, I grabbed the 8-track of Bat Out of Hell. 

In those days quality 8 tracks were scarce as hen’s teeth. Loading Bat, I clicked ahead to Paradise, and turned the volume up to ear-splitting levels.

On the sidewalk, women clutched their pearls. Men—old enough to have college aged sons —slammed their front doors and high-tailed inside to living rooms filled with the music of Percy Faith and Martin Denny.

Remember, this was Edmonton.

Driving mom’s car, I sang along with Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday) at the top of my adolescent lungs. He electrified me, he energized me, he made me—and millions of other randy teenagers—ready to date!

When (you knew this was coming) Meat Loaf died earlier this year, he took a little part of me with him.

After all, when I was a teenager Bat Out of Hell was one of the 23 soundtracks for my life.

In his 2007 book This is Your Brain on Music, Psychology Professor Daniel Levitin said retrieving memories isn’t easy for our brain. But music helps, because it provides rhythm and rhyme and sometimes alliteration helps unlock memories with cues. Simply put, words set to music are easier to remember.

Levitin adds making happy memories is important for good mental health.

This may be why Covid has been hard. For the last two years I’ve made no new happy memories. None. Zip. Tabula rasa. I can only replay old memories so many times.

Anyway, we were talking about Meat Loaf.

Here’s the title track from the album Bat Out of Hell.

What I learned from Meat Loaf?

At the risk of sounding like Errol Morris there are 8 lessons baked into Bat Out Of Hell.

1. Be different. Being different is hard because it means well, being different. Meat Loaf and co-creator Jim Steinman developed the album from a musical and the performances were (granted) over the top. It took two years to find a record company willing to release it. But when the album came out, Bat Out of Hell sold 43 million records.

To this day, it continues to sell over 200,000 copies a year.

2. Be exciting. Except for mashed potatoes, egg salad sandwiches on a hot summer day, or taking the trash out, there’s something exciting to say about (almost) everything. You may have to dig for it, but it’s there, somewhere.

Remember, in Paradise By The Dashboard Light, they were just parked by the lake.

3. Tension is magic. Without it, things get flat, fast. Imagine if in Paradise the girl sang:

“Stop right there!

 I gotta know right now!

Stop right there.”

and Meat Loaf replied:

“Okay.”

Song over.

4. Don’t underestimate the power of words. Words create pictures.

5. Go big. Don’t scrimp on production values, if you can help it. IE: Avoid stock anything.

6. Hug Metaphors often. A baseball announcer can be a metaphor for um, ah, you know what.

7. Be vulnerable. We’re all human, far from perfect.

8. Be Entertaining. People let their guard down and let you in when you are entertaining.

Time goes by.

Through the grapevine, I heard Roberta passed away. 

Now it’s me who sits like a coot on the porch watching the chickens peck. 

Some nights a car will swing by with Paradise cranked on the stereo. But instead of retreating indoors, I am steadfast.

I form a gentle fist in one hand, raise my thumb and think about a lovely girl named Roberta Wagadorn, and a plangent singer called Meat Loaf.

Where ever you are now, God Bless you both.

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Clarke Smith is CD, chief creative problem-solver at Clarke, a boutique creative branding and design agency in Toronto. Small, but mighty. Visit clarkeagency.ca