08/17/2025
On this day in 1978, the Meat Loaf (and Ellen Foley) single “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at #82 (August 12)
This song is a dead-set classic; arguably the greatest rock duet of all time by Loaf and Ellen Foley.
Typically epic music score and clever lyrics by Jim Steinman, and there’s some big names on this one too, with Springsteen’s E-Street Band members Roy Bittan (keyboards and piano) and Max Weinberg (drums), and the song produced by the brilliant Todd Rundgren, who also played guitar and contributed backing vocals to the track.
The baseball play-by-play section was a stroke of genius, and written specifically for ex-New York Yankees shortstop (and announcer when he retired) Phil Rizzuto, who does a great job on the recording.
Meat Loaf convinced his label to give him $30,000 to produce films of live-on-soundstage performances of three of the songs from “Bat Out of Hell” including "Paradise by the Dashboard Light".
Ellen Foley declined to be on the “Bat Out Of Hell tour”, and subsequently Karla DeVito assumed live performance responsibilities, so the music video was created by syncing the video of DeVito's performance to the audio of Foley's vocals.
The 35mm prints of these film clips were then distributed to movie theaters to play before midnight screenings of cult classic musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, (in which Meat Loaf appeared as Eddie) which generated some hype.
The song went to #1 in the Netherlands, #2 in Belgium, #11 in Canada, and #39 in the US.
And it’s still a popular party favourite around the world to this day…
Click on the link below to watch:
https://youtu.be/C11MzbEcHlw
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