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Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad

The New Neo Posted on by

In this video, composer Jim Steinman talks about the genesis of his song “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.” It was suggested by the wife of a friend, and he originally conceived it as a country song:

So here’s Elvis singing “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” in 1956:

And here’s Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”:

Here’s Meat Loaf singing Steinman’s song in 1977, which was a big hit for him:

Jim Steinman, who was a very private person about his personal life that didn’t involve music, died a little over a month ago (April 19). His songs about love – and there are many – are dramatic, and most exhibit an unusual blend of ironic cynicism and humor as well as intensity and pathos. The only quote I’ve ever read from him referring to his private life – and it’s both revealing and concealing – is this:

Responding to an interviewer’s assertion that his songs are tragic, Steinman said he has “never been stomped on literally. Figuratively, I am stomped on every day … anyway, that is the way I feel sometimes. I’ve never had my heart broken the way you are talking about. I’ve never been dumped… but probably because I don’t allow myself to be dumped.”

A bit like the song, although in the song the singer has been dumped once, and then vowed to become the dumper and not the dumpee.

Comments

Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad — 33 Comments

  1. Meat Loaf’s ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ is quite the album. Written by Jim Steinman, produced by Todd Rundgren, and featuring Mr. Loaf’s crazily dramatic vocals.

    It’s currently been certified 14X platinum meaning it has sold at least 14 millions copies.

  3. Art Deco,

    Did I say I liked it? It is alright but it is very unique and was hugely popular.

  4. About sad country songs, you do know the old joke about what you get when you play a country song backward, right? You get your wife back, you get your truck back, you get your dog back.

  5. Meat Loaf, as I guess some here know, was just the worst, the very worst, the dregs. I don’t like being reminded that he ever existed.

  6. I can think of worse things than Meat Loaf. Still, the bulk of the best-selling music produced in any given year is shlock. In 1978, there was a sort of national mass youth culture in network television and Top 40 radio that’s largely dissipated, so someone of a certain vintage should recognize more than a young person today might of their own era. I run down the list of top selling albums from that year, and I see bands I don’t recognize, bands I recognize and cannot match a song with the band, bands I haven’t heard hide-nor-hare of in 40 years, and characters who were understood as camp in real time (Shaun Cassidy). And, of course, there’s stuff I’d forgotten about that I might like to hear again. A subset of that the young in my family might like as its shorn of nostalgia for them.

    Bat out of Hell is number 13 on the Billboard ranking for 1978. That was a weak year, I think. Still, it has on it Billy Joel, Steely Dan, Chuck Mangione, Jackson Browne, Jefferson Starship, Journey, Lynard Skynard, Warren Zevon, Wings, Elvis Costello [!], Steve Miller Band, Little Feat, and Todd Rundgren. (It also has Eddie Money and The O’Jays; the nostalgia can be obtrusive). David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, and Traffic did not have an album out that year. Yes and Weather Report did, but they didn’t sell.

  11. Other trivia about Steinman people don’t know- on Air Supply’s greatest hits album, the one with the original “Making Love Out of Nothing at All”, Steinman is credited with being a female voice who says the line “I’ll do anything for love, but I won’t do that,” which, later was turned into a song for Meat Loaf many years later.

  12. Yancey,

    ‘I’d Do Anything For Love’ (But I Won’t Do That)’ was a massive hit for Meat Loaf that was #1 for multiple weeks. It was off of ‘Bat Out Of Hell II’ which Steinman and Meat Loaf teamed up on again after apparently having a falling out for many years.

    Steinman also wrote ‘It’s All Coming Back To Me Now’ which was a hit for Celine Dion.

  14. The Sex Pistols played their last show in January 1978. The last song they performed was “No Fun.” Nancy Spungen died in the Chelsea Hotel in October of that year, ostensibly stabbed by Sid Vicious, although there remains some doubt. Sid himself would be dead by February 1979.

    I was listening to Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith, Television, James White & the Blacks, the Clash, Bad Brains, etc. The best show I’ve ever seen happened that year — Iggy Pop on tour with David Bowie playing keyboards. I also saw Television, in a show that I recently saw feted as the best they ever did.

    And then there was disco.

  15. And here come the virtue signalers, saying “It’s popular. I hate it!” But what can you do? It’s an open forum.

    Neo: Honestly, I’m a bit astonished to see you go down this path, what with your reputation for your love of the ballet and other forms of high art. I’ve been told I have an eclectic taste in music, but going from ballet to disco to Jim Steinman is way out there — in a good way.

    For the virtue signalers: There’s a reason Bat Out of Hell is the #2 selling album of all time, behind only Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Starting with the hard-hitting title track all the way through the poetic For Crying Out Loud, every track is a masterpiece, and the sequence is beautiful. A real tribute to one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century.

  16. As far as 1978 being a weak year in music, well, first of all Bat Out of Hell came out in 1977. And of the ten best-selling albums of all time, three came out in 1977, one in 1976, and another in 1978. That’s quite a run.

  17. I was 18 years old and staying in a pension in Rotterdam when Bat Out of Hell was popular. The English guy in the room next to mine played it every night – over and over and over. When I left, I thought I would never want to hear anything from that album again but now hearing Paradise by the Dashboard Light brings a smile to my face. When I was young, I used to care very much what my taste in music said about me. Now I don’t really care.

  18. I, for one, love Bat Out of Hell and I don’t care what the snobs say. My wife and I crank the volume up loud in the car when Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad comes on the radio. We really belt it out when we sing a long. Though my favorite Jim Steinman/Meat Loaf collaboration is a song called ‘Nowhere Fast’, originally written for the movie Streets of Fire. There are two versions of it, with different lyrics, one set of lyrics for the movie, sung by a group called Fire, Inc. and the other version by Meat Loaf.

    ‘Nowhere Fast’ is on my running/intervals playlist. My daughter likes it too and likes to listen to it before her soccer games, along with the training music from the various Rocky movies.

    And M J R,

    It was here at Neo’s place that I first discovered literal videos, when she linked to YouTube for ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’s’ literal video. Ah, I think I found it. Lol. Some people have a lot of time on their hands…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsgWUq0fdKk

    “What the ‘effing crap, that angel just felt me up.” ROFL.

  19. And here come the virtue signalers, saying “It’s popular. I hate it!”

    That’s not what I said, but never mind.

    As far as 1978 being a weak year in music, well, first of all Bat Out of Hell came out in 1977.

    It doesn’t appear on the Billboard list of top selling albums for 1977. It appears on their 1978 list. (There are a couple of albums on both, but not his).

  21. What an amazing collection of humans being human. Elvis, Hank Williams, Meatloaf !!

    I pulled up Paradise by the dashboard lights and marveled at the female lead, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C11MzbEcHlw

    I arrived in Friedberg Germany on Christmas Eve 1959 and joined the 32nd Armored Regiment where Elvis was a Sergeant in a Scout Platoon. I made Sergeant just as the Berlin Wall went up and was extended for a total of 31 months in Germany, all of which I loved. Probably the best duty in the US Army that ever existed, assuming that you loved mud..

    It was an era of honest human emotion. It was positive and authentic. It was followed by Motown, which let the world see that the Black community was just like the White one. Humans want to be Human. They want to mate. They want to establish families. They want to love and be loved. They want stability and predictability. They want to be left alone.

    The music of today expresses the confusion of humans today. IMO something good will emerge, but it has not so far.

  22. Meat Loaf never intended to become a singer. He was an actor that played the part of Meat Loaf in the campy 1975 musical Rocky Horror Picture Show.

    After that, he got stuck into doing the cycle of albums and concert tours. He was forever type cast and I don’t think he ever acted again, except as the Meat Loaf character on stage.

    Personally, I liked his work. In particular, I liked Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

  23. I don’t think he ever acted again, except as the Meat Loaf character on stage.

    He had about 80 screen appearances over the period running from 1975 and 2018 where he wasn’t playing himself. He’s done stage too, though he hasn’t been on Broadway since 1976.

  24. Roy,

    Meat Loaf was in a lot of movies and TV shows after the Rocky Horror Picture Show (a film I’ve never been able to watch in it’s entirety or “get”). He hd a major role in Fight Club and was in an underrated Steve Martin movie called Leap of Faith. Lots of orher minor roles.

  25. Fractal Rabbit:

    “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is the best literal video EVER.

  26. Neo,

    It really is. I have to clarify, I had never heard of literal videos until I saw your link to them years ago. So, if I am being objective, it might be because it was the first literal video I ever saw.

  27. Meat Loaf is a great guy.. I met him twice years ago… (the group Blondie on the other hand is not anyone you want to meet, they are very bitter, and so take it out on fans… a big shame)… Meatloaf was on a panel and after it was good hanging out for a while and chatting… sad about his health problems…

    I was a fan of his every since Rocky Horror as we used to do floor show at 8th street playhouse… (you can see us in FAME along with Sal doing the announcements at the start… )

    The stories i could tell… the sadness we all had… we never found out what happened to Cassie… we all think she was killed… you can find us all on the audience participation album though… if you know who we are..

    Don’t Dream it, BE it…

    Both that and shock treatment were abstract stories of the Frankfurt school (Frankenfurter) and the later changes of feminism and the cultural breakdown…

    But Eddie (Meatloaf) and Little Nel Columbia were GREAT..
    [Susan Sarandon was good then, but became a real B*tch later on)

    Whatever happened to saturday night
    When you dressed up sharp and you felt alright
    It don’t seem the same since the cosmic light
    Came into my life and I thought I was divine
    I used to go for a ride with a chick who’d go
    And listen to the music on the radio
    A saxophone was blowing on a rock’n’roll show
    And you climbed in the back and you reallyhad a good time

    My head used to swim from the perfume I smelt
    My hands kind of fumbled with her white
    plastic belt
    I’d taste her baby pink lipstick and that’s
    when I’d melt
    And she whispered in my ear tonight she
    really was mine
    Get back in front and put some hair oil on
    Buddy Holly was singing his very last song
    With your arm around your girl you’d try
    to sing along
    You felt pretty good ’cause you’d really had a good time

    I really love that rock and roll!!!!!

  28. Roy Nathanson.. he was already known as Meatloaf… and the character was Eddie.. not Meat loaf.. and his name is Michael Lee Aday… his band was originally Meat Loaf Soul… and their first gig was 1968.. Rocky horror came in 1975.. and if i remember was shot for 20,000.. it literally created Susan Sarandon who refused to do shock treatment now that she was a star… Barry Bostwick… Tim Curry (remember him from Hunt for Red October?)

    we used to do floorshow first at the Waverly… but then it moved to 8th street.. This is the same waverly mentioned in the song Frank Mills in the movie/play HAIR (Milosh Foreman)…

    The film is most often shown close to Halloween. Today, the film has a large international cult following and has been considered by many as one of the greatest musical films of all time. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2005.

    I met a boy called Frank Mills
    On September twelfth right here
    In front of the Waverly
    But unfortunately I lost his address
    He was last seen with his friend, a drummer
    He resembles George Harrison of The Beatles
    But he wears his hair tied in a small bow at the back
    I love him but it embarrasses me
    To walk down the street with him
    He lives in Brooklyn somewhere
    And he wears his white crash helmet
    He has golden chains on his leather jacket
    And on the back are written the names
    “Mary” and “Mom” and “Hell’s Angels”
    I would gratefully appreciate if you see him tell him
    I’m in the park with my girlfriend and please
    Tell him Angela and I don’t want the two dollars back just him

    so many things i could tell you about that era.. i was neck deep in it..
    club kids came later… rocky floor show… the 9th circle gay bar which the building is gone today… the waverly, the waverly diner… homers.. the pagan movement… herman slater was a friend who ran the magikal childe with his boy toy…Trash and Vaudville on 8th street closed as did the record shop… Sid Vicious committed suicide near there in a hotel. at that time polyamorism had its start and i had my stable…

    ah… such a rich time..
    now i am old waiting to die..

  29. So, for all the people that corrected me, I now know more about Meat Loaf than any other person in the entertainment world.

  30. [Meat Loaf] hd a major role in Fight Club

    Fractal Rabbit:

    OMG. Bob was Meat Loaf!

  31. Fractal and neo,

    Re “Total Eclipse of the Heart” . . .

    MADE MY DAY !! [ s m i l e ]

  32. Bob was Meat Loaf, Huxley! The first time I watched the movie, I sat there thinking, “Now, why does that guy look familiar?” Even when I go out to a theater, I stay and watch credits, many times because if there is a musical score, I enjoy listening to it. When I saw Meat Loaf’s name, my mind was blown.

    And M J R, I’m glad it made you happy!

  33. Hank Williams, however, could always get to me, still can, and Elvis — I’ve got a great recording of him called Million Dollar Quartet that’s basically just Elvis and his early Sun Sessions-era cohorts just screwing around and playing anything that comes into their heads. It’s so casual… but really has some high points, and nothing they play is bad. Reconsider Baby is another great Elvis Presley album, getting into R&B. His voice is just phenomenal.

    Saying “Oh, it’s just a white guy singing like he’s black” is beyond reductive — it represents an error, it’s not functional, it’s just WRONG.

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