"If you don't go over the top, you can't see what's on the other side"

Take a good look at the picture, because you're staring into the eyes of a modern musical genius. Few people have heard of Jim Steinman himself, but everybody knows his work - some of the most famous examples being Bat Out Of Hell, Total Eclipse of the Heart, It's All Coming Back To Me Now, Whistle Down The Wind and Holding Out For A Hero. But in a world where the performers are seen as more important than the creators, songwriters like Steinman are largely overlooked. (Ask your average Boyzone fan who wrote No Matter What and you'll probably see what I mean.)

I'm hoping to eventually expand this page greatly, starting with sections on Jim's best known musicals, Whistle Down The Wind and Tanz der Vampire. For now, read the short biography below, check out the lyrics page and visit some of the great sites in the links section.

Jim (full name James Richard Steinman) was born in New York on November 1st 1948. He wrote many songs before coming to the public's attention, most notably the musicals The Dream Engine and Neverland, but it wasn't until 1977 that he began to get noticed by a wider audience. This was the year that the album Bat Out Of Hell was released, with Steinman's bombastic, Wagnerian rock songs performed by Meat Loaf. It was unconventional, to say the least, and as Jim said in 1999, "If there's a market out there for ten-minute, Wagnerian, explosive anthems sung by a 350 pound guy with a huge voice, then we got that market covered." But Bat Out Of Hell eventually became a surprise success and, although many people would claim that Jim never got the credit or recognition he deserved for writing the seven songs on the album, some people became as interested in the songwriter as they were in the singer. The publicity surrounding the album enabled Steinman to explain the kinds of effects he hoped to achieve with his music, and what he was setting out to do. He described his style at the time as "feverish, strong, romantic, violent, rebellious, fun and heroic."

Four years after Bat Out Of Hell came Bad For Good, Jim's first (and so far only) solo album, which consisted of ten tracks. Seven of these would later turn up in slightly altered forms on other artists' albums. Other notable achievements of the 1980s included Total Eclipse of the Heart, the Steinman song that produced a smash hit for Bonnie Tyler in 1983 (from the album Faster Than The Speed Of Night), and Original Sin, an album by Jim's group Pandora's Box.

His songwriting credits are far too numerous to list here, but Jim's songs were featured on two more Bonnie Tyler albums, he contributed two songs to the soundtrack of the movie Streets of Fire, and worked as a producer both on his own work and on other people's (for example, he produced I Want To Spend My Lifetime Loving You from the Mask Of Zorro soundtrack and River Deep Mountain High on Celine Dion's album Falling Into You). His songs have been performed by artists as diverse as Boyzone and the Sisters of Mercy. In 1993, following Meat Loaf's less well-received Jim-written Dead Ringer of 1981, Bat Out Of Hell II was released. As well as spawning the single I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), which became the biggest selling single of 1993, it re-established Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf as a gloriously excessive combination.

More recently, Jim has written the lyrics to go with Andrew Lloyd Webber's music for Whistle Down The Wind, which opened in London in 1998. He also wrote the music to Tanz der Vampire, which opened in Vienna in 1997 and moved to Stuttgart in 2000. At the time of writing, an English version is planned to hit Broadway sometime soon, and Jim is also working on a musical version of Batman.

This is a very condensed version of Jim's life! There are more detailed biographies on the sites listed in the links section and of course, if you want to find out about Jim, read interviews with him! I hope you enjoy my tribute to the talented Mr. Steinman, I know it's small at the moment but it's going to grow into something bigger, better and more Steinmanesque.

 "I'd play piano hard enough to get a particular effect at the end of the night: I'd hold my hands up and they'd bleed down onto the keyboard"

It is not my intention to infringe on any copyrights on any part of my website. If I am doing so, please e-mail me and I will take the appropriate action.

This website is completely unofficial and is not associated in any way with Jim Steinman himself.