Steinman, Jim

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    Jim Steinman’s Gothic Rock Cottage Is For Sale With Most of His Belongings

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    Jim Steinman spent years transforming his Connecticut house into a kind of rock ‘n’ roll museum. Now his friends are trying to sell it — with his belongings intact.Jim Steinman, who died last year at 73, left behind one of the most distinctive catalogs of music in history, filled with chart-topping hits written for the likes of Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler and Celine Dion. With songs ranging from the restless (“All Revved Up With No Place To Go”) to the wrenching (“For Crying Out Loud”), Mr. Steinman spent decades establishing himself as a sophisticated songwriter with the spirit of a teenager.“As far as Jim was concerned, life was about being forever young, and lusting after this and yearning after that,” said David Sonenberg, Mr. Steinman’s longtime friend, manager and now the executor of his estate. “He was going to be 17 forever, and in some ways he was.”But perhaps nothing evokes Mr. Steinman’s legacy like the Connecticut house where he lived alone for some 20 years — a majestic museum of the self, attached to a quaint cottage in the woods of Ridgefield. He spent years expanding and reimagining the house, transforming it into an embodiment of his own eccentric, complicated personality.Jim Steinman, left, and Meat Loaf together in New York in 1978. A year earlier, their collaborative album “Bat Out of Hell,” with songs by Mr. Steinman and vocals by Meat Loaf, sold millions of copies and made them both stars.Michael Putland/Getty Images“The house — it’s a trip, it’s extraordinary, it’s one of a kind,” Mr. Sonenberg said. “People would walk in and their heads would spin.”Mr. Steinman, a lifelong bachelor who had been in declining health for years, left no instructions about what he wanted done with the house after his death. Now his longtime friends are putting the property up for sale — with a provision: It is being sold “as-is,” which in real estate lingo normally means “in terrible condition.” In this case, it means that the sale includes nearly all of Mr. Steinman’s personal belongings, which remain in the house: the gothic furniture, spooky artwork, wall-mounted records, grand piano, even closets full of clothing.“We are going to try to keep Jim’s vision and legacy intact,” said Jacqueline Dillon, Mr. Steinman’s longtime creative assistant and close friend. “Jim has been a pop-culture fixture for 50 years.”Their hope is to sell the house — which, despite its 6,000-odd square feet, has just two bedrooms — to a musician, artist or writer, or someone seeking a creative retreat or performance space. The asking price is $5,555,569 — the $69 is a tribute to Mr. Steinman’s beloved Amherst College, where he graduated with the class of 1969 — and the annual property taxes are around $32,000.The house, with more than 6,000 square feet and two bedrooms, sits on a wooded 1.5-acre lot in Ridgefield, Conn. Mr. Steinman, a reclusive lifelong bachelor, lived there alone.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesMs. Dillon described Mr. Steinman — by all accounts a reclusive, nocturnal introvert — as “super-shy, but always so kind, and with a lightning-quick wit.” She met him three decades ago at a concert, she said, and was soon recruited to launch his website, jimsteinman.com, to connect with fans and to monitor press mentions.She is now helping to oversee the house sale. “This is not a sale where there is a comparable,” she said.As with many of Mr. Steinman’s grandest achievements, the house almost never happened. It was Mr. Sonenberg who found it nearly 30 years ago. Driving through Ridgefield, he spotted the home on a secluded lot of about 1.5 acres and thought it would be perfect for his friend.“The house was so charming,” said Mr. Sonenberg, whose own artistic dreams were dashed after he met Mr. Steinman in the 1970s. “I wrote a song called ‘Pear Tree in the Shade,’” he said. “Jim wrote a song called ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart.’”Mr. Steinman, who started writing musicals for Joseph Papp at the Public Theater before conquering the pop charts with songs for Meat Loaf’s 1977 smash album “Bat Out of Hell,” was seeking a place to hide away and work. After years of delays, he and Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday) were completing production on “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell,” which (to no one’s expectation but their own) would become one of the best-selling albums of the 1990s.A floor plan of Mr. Steinman’s house in Ridgefield, Conn. William Pitt Sotheby’s International RealtyMr. Sonenberg suggested that Mr. Steinman buy the Ridgefield house: “I said, ‘It’s perfect — you’re by yourself, you never have any guests.’ And he said no, it was too small.”Around that time, while Mr. Steinman was working with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the musical “Whistle Down the Wind,” he visited Lloyd Webber’s manor house, Sydmonton Court, in Hampshire, England, and “was just blown away,” Mr. Sonenberg said.So Mr. Steinman decided to buy the Ridgefield cottage, paying about $425,000, and convert it into a soaring sanctuary, a creation as epic as his music.“It is really special, almost otherworldly,” said Laura Freed Ancona, the listing agent, of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty. “Yes, it was a roof over Jim’s head. But it was also a creative space for him.”Ms. Ancona said the plan now is to start with private and group showings, and to reach out to various arts and cultural organizations, looking for a potential buyer. “We want to cast as wide a net as possible,” she said.The house, Mr. Sonenberg said, could be sold to a school or institution and used for a combination of living, office and performance space.The bedroom includes a desk, sitting area and aquarium. The art on one wall, “Inferno” by Joseph Grazi, shows taxidermic bats flying into the maw of an alligator skull.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesMr. Steinman, who grew up primarily in Hewlett Harbor, on Long Island, moved to Manhattan after graduating from Amherst and was hired by Mr. Papp, who was captivated by songs Mr. Steinman had written for his senior project, a rock musical called “The Dream Engine.” It later morphed into “Neverland,” inspired by Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. (A few years after getting the Public Theater gig, Mr. Steinman, always pitching, wrote a letter to Mr. Papp asserting that “writing and conceiving serious strong musical dramatic works” was something “I really think I can do better than anyone I’ve ever come across or heard about.”)Back then, “his taste in décor was zero,” said Frederick Baron, a college friend, who remembered visiting Mr. Steinman in a spartan apartment with bare walls and a refrigerator holding only leftover pizza and spaghetti.“He lived the life of the mind,” Mr. Baron said. “He had this extraordinary level of creativity. He was truly brilliant. All of his life energy was in that keyboard.”After Mr. Steinman started making serious money, he bought a two-bedroom apartment in a postwar co-op overlooking Central Park. That’s where he met Bonnie Tyler, who would top the charts in 1983 with the Steinman-penned “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” She and her manager were welcomed with a trail of M&Ms leading to his door.Mr. Steinman later used that home mostly as an office and for wine storage, and moved into a rented house in the woods of Putnam County, N.Y., with a bunch of cats.“Jim was a homebody, and being in the city was quite busy for him,” Ms. Dillon said. “He was always being asked to go to people’s shows. Leaving the city removed him from having to do a lot of things. He didn’t go to big events. He let his art do the talking.”He called the Ridgefield cottage “the house that ‘Bat II’ built,” Ms. Dillon said. “Jim used the expression ‘cottage to compound.’” The album opened with the hit “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” with an accompanying video depicting Meat Loaf as a “Beauty and the Beast”-like recluse living alone in a gothic mansion.To expand the house, Mr. Steinman hired Rob Bramhall, a Boston-based architect, eventually spending about $6 million. Mr. Bramhall worked on the project for the better part of a decade, more than doubling the house’s size. After their initial meeting, Mr. Bramhall sent Mr. Steinman a book by the influential California architect Bernard Maybeck, he said, and “Jim knew I got his sensibility.”The style was English Cotswolds. “Jim wanted the gables, from left to right, to become slightly larger,” he said. “I remember doing skull-and-crossbones for the faucets in the powder room off the great room. Some of the wall light fixtures were made from aircraft parts.”Mr. Steinman, who composed primarily using a keyboard and a tape recorder, was living in a postwar co-op near Central Park West when he borrowed this boom box from his friends, the actors Larry Dilg and Mimi Kennedy.Mimi KennedyAlthough Mr. Bramhall met with Mr. Steinman in Manhattan and helped him select and place the artwork, “Jim never saw the house until it was done,” he said. “It was a fun and interesting project. I haven’t done anything like it since.”The original part of the house — bright and sunny — includes a large living room with Mr. Steinman’s many gold and platinum albums on the wall, open to an equally large kitchen with a dining nook. There’s a laundry room and a sunroom, although Mr. Steinman preferred the dark.“That end of the house represented normalcy to him,” Ms. Dillon said.In the dining room, the table is set with Mr. Steinman’s china, in the Royal Copenhagen Fairy Tale pattern — not that he ever used it. He preferred to eat off disposable tableware, specifically blue Solo cups and Chinet plates.In the den, or “viewing room,” he enjoyed watching singing competitions like “American Idol,” and critiquing the judges. He also watched cooking shows, Yankees games and “Jeopardy!”“He could listen to music, watch a TV show and type a letter” all at once, Ms. Dillon said. “His mind never stopped working.”The “Ring Room,” unadorned but for four statues on the walls, marks the transition from the original building to the addition.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesThe “good room” — not to be confused with the great room — holds one of his wheelchairs, which he needed after suffering a series of strokes. Of course, “it was a crazy wheelchair, like a Batmobile,” Mr. Sonenberg said.Mr. Steinman referred to the unused guest room as the “Wendy Bedroom,” after the heroine of “Peter Pan.” The plush bear on the bed hails from the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, in London, which owns the intellectual property rights to “Peter Pan” and denied Mr. Steinman’s request to stage a rock musical based on the story, deeming the script — which opened with killer nuns — unsuitable for children.The addition, all custom made and filled with elaborate and peculiar art and artifacts, starts with the Ring Room, a small, oval space unfurnished save for sculptures on the walls, which are a color Mr. Steinman called obsidian blue. (Obsidian was the name he gave to Neverland’s city.) The ceiling is dotted with LED stars.“And that leads you from this sweet cottage into this other universe, which is modeled after Steinman’s vision,” Mr. Sonenberg said. “Jim was the most bizarre guy, but he was the sweetest and funniest and most generous. He was the only genius I ever met.”The primary suite is at the end of a wardrobe hallway, where the vast closets still hold Mr. Steinman’s many clothes, few of which he wore, although candy wrappers remain in some of the pockets. So many garments are crammed on the racks that “you would think you were in Bonwit Teller,” Mr. Sonenberg said.Jim Steinman in Manhattan in 1981. He became a star after writing the songs for Meat Loaf’s smash 1977 album “Bat Out of Hell,” and hit it big again with the 1993 sequel, “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell.”Gary Gershoff/Getty ImagesParallel to the wardrobe hallway is a long corridor leading to the great room, lined with patent leather panels and used by visitors — most recently, those working on “Bat Out of Hell: The Musical,” which is touring in Britain and is slated to open in Las Vegas in September.The enormous bedroom includes a desk, sitting area and aquarium. The art on one wall, “Inferno” by Joseph Grazi, depicts taxidermic bats flying into the maw of an alligator skull. Much of the idiosyncratic art Mr. Steinman collected was by artists from Bayreuth, Germany, the longtime home and final resting place of his idol, the composer Richard Wagner, whose operas enthralled him from childhood. The room is also adorned with items collected from fans and, on the bed, a heart pillow in tribute to the surgeon who extended Mr. Steinman’s life.Beyond the bedroom is the house’s focal point, the great room, centered around a stainless steel sculpture resembling a cluster of giant quartz crystals — an allusion to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Mr. Steinman’s 2013 honorary doctorate from Amherst is on display. A bust of Wagner sits atop a Yamaha piano, although Mr. Steinman composed mostly on keyboards. “He had this uncanny ability to play all the parts on the piano,” Ms. Dillon said. “It almost sounded like a full band.”Stairs ascend to a gallery overlooking the room. One chair is occupied by a skeleton mid-shriek. Another flight leads to the room at the top, with a skylight and reading chair.Mr. Steinman often used the tiny kitchenette off the great room, stocked with fresh fruit and cans of Progresso soup. He was a fan of hot sauce, sweet soda and chewy candy. “When I visited him for the first time in his home, he had these containers of gummy bears from the pick-n-mix selection at Dean & DeLuca for $12.99 a pound,” Ms. Dillon said. “Every month, we would get a bill.”The custom-designed wheelchair, which Mr. Steinman required as his health declined, was his version of a Batmobile.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesThe detached two-story garage has plumbing and electricity, and could possibly be an accessory dwelling unit. Mr. Steinman used it for storage — he didn’t drive or have a license. Despite his love of motorcycles (and songs about them), he likely never rode one. Instead, he filled the garage with copies of his programs and Playbills. “He liked stuff,” Ms. Dillon said.The question is: Will anyone want Jim Steinman’s stuff? Ms. Ancona is hoping that the property, like Mr. Steinman’s music, will inspire someone looking for something beautiful and a little strange.“Every house needs its own approach, whether it’s a $500,000 home or a $5 million home,” she said. “You really have to find your audience.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      A Gothic Rock Cottage Fit for a Bat Out of Hell

      by

      Jim Steinman spent years transforming his Connecticut house into a kind of rock ‘n’ roll museum. Now his friends are trying to sell it — with his belongings intact.Jim Steinman, who died last year at 73, left behind one of the most distinctive catalogs of music in history, filled with chart-topping hits written for the likes of Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler and Celine Dion. With songs ranging from the restless (“All Revved Up With No Place To Go”) to the wrenching (“For Crying Out Loud”), Mr. Steinman spent decades establishing himself as a sophisticated songwriter with the spirit of a teenager.“As far as Jim was concerned, life was about being forever young, and lusting after this and yearning after that,” said David Sonenberg, Mr. Steinman’s longtime friend, manager and now the executor of his estate. “He was going to be 17 forever, and in some ways he was.”But perhaps nothing evokes Mr. Steinman’s legacy like the Connecticut house where he lived alone for some 20 years — a majestic museum of the self, attached to a quaint cottage in the woods of Ridgefield. He spent years expanding and reimagining the house, transforming it into an embodiment of his own eccentric, complicated personality.Jim Steinman, left, and Meat Loaf together in New York in 1978. A year earlier, their collaborative album “Bat Out of Hell,” with songs by Mr. Steinman and vocals by Meat Loaf, sold millions of copies and made them both stars.Michael Putland/Getty Images“The house — it’s a trip, it’s extraordinary, it’s one of a kind,” Mr. Sonenberg said. “People would walk in and their heads would spin.”Mr. Steinman, a lifelong bachelor who had been in declining health for years, left no instructions about what he wanted done with the house after his death. Now his longtime friends are putting the property up for sale — with a provision: It is being sold “as-is,” which in real estate lingo normally means “in terrible condition.” In this case, it means that the sale includes nearly all of Mr. Steinman’s personal belongings, which remain in the house: the gothic furniture, spooky artwork, wall-mounted records, grand piano, even closets full of clothing.“We are going to try to keep Jim’s vision and legacy intact,” said Jacqueline Dillon, Mr. Steinman’s longtime creative assistant and close friend. “Jim has been a pop-culture fixture for 50 years.”Their hope is to sell the house — which, despite its 6,000-odd square feet, has just two bedrooms — to a musician, artist or writer, or someone seeking a creative retreat or performance space. The asking price is $5,555,569 — the $69 is a tribute to Mr. Steinman’s beloved Amherst College, where he graduated with the class of 1969 — and the annual property taxes are around $32,000.The house, with more than 6,000 square feet and two bedrooms, sits on a wooded 1.5-acre lot in Ridgefield, Conn. Mr. Steinman, a reclusive lifelong bachelor, lived there alone.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesMs. Dillon described Mr. Steinman — by all accounts a reclusive, nocturnal introvert — as “super-shy, but always so kind, and with a lightning-quick wit.” She met him three decades ago at a concert, she said, and was soon recruited to launch his website, jimsteinman.com, to connect with fans and to monitor press mentions.She is now helping to oversee the house sale. “This is not a sale where there is a comparable,” she said.As with many of Mr. Steinman’s grandest achievements, the house almost never happened. It was Mr. Sonenberg who found it nearly 30 years ago. Driving through Ridgefield, he spotted the home on a secluded lot of about 1.5 acres and thought it would be perfect for his friend.“The house was so charming,” said Mr. Sonenberg, whose own artistic dreams were dashed after he met Mr. Steinman in the 1970s. “I wrote a song called ‘Pear Tree in the Shade,’” he said. “Jim wrote a song called ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart.’”Mr. Steinman, who started writing musicals for Joseph Papp at the Public Theater before conquering the pop charts with songs for Meat Loaf’s 1977 smash album “Bat Out of Hell,” was seeking a place to hide away and work. After years of delays, he and Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday) were completing production on “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell,” which (to no one’s expectation but their own) would become one of the best-selling albums of the 1990s.A floor plan of Mr. Steinman’s house in Ridgefield, Conn. William Pitt Sotheby’s International RealtyMr. Sonenberg suggested that Mr. Steinman buy the Ridgefield house: “I said, ‘It’s perfect — you’re by yourself, you never have any guests.’ And he said no, it was too small.”Around that time, while Mr. Steinman was working with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the musical “Whistle Down the Wind,” he visited Lloyd Webber’s manor house, Sydmonton Court, in Hampshire, England, and “was just blown away,” Mr. Sonenberg said.So Mr. Steinman decided to buy the Ridgefield cottage, paying about $425,000, and convert it into a soaring sanctuary, a creation as epic as his music.“It is really special, almost otherworldly,” said Laura Freed Ancona, the listing agent, of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty. “Yes, it was a roof over Jim’s head. But it was also a creative space for him.”Ms. Ancona said the plan now is to start with private and group showings, and to reach out to various arts and cultural organizations, looking for a potential buyer. “We want to cast as wide a net as possible,” she said.The house, Mr. Sonenberg said, could be sold to a school or institution and used for a combination of living, office and performance space.The bedroom includes a desk, sitting area and aquarium. The art on one wall, “Inferno” by Joseph Grazi, shows taxidermic bats flying into the maw of an alligator skull.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesMr. Steinman, who grew up primarily in Hewlett Harbor, on Long Island, moved to Manhattan after graduating from Amherst and was hired by Mr. Papp, who was captivated by songs Mr. Steinman had written for his senior project, a rock musical called “The Dream Engine.” It later morphed into “Neverland,” inspired by Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. (A few years after getting the Public Theater gig, Mr. Steinman, always pitching, wrote a letter to Mr. Papp asserting that “writing and conceiving serious strong musical dramatic works” was something “I really think I can do better than anyone I’ve ever come across or heard about.”)Back then, “his taste in décor was zero,” said Frederick Baron, a college friend, who remembered visiting Mr. Steinman in a spartan apartment with bare walls and a refrigerator holding only leftover pizza and spaghetti.“He lived the life of the mind,” Mr. Baron said. “He had this extraordinary level of creativity. He was truly brilliant. All of his life energy was in that keyboard.”After Mr. Steinman started making serious money, he bought a two-bedroom apartment in a postwar co-op overlooking Central Park. That’s where he met Bonnie Tyler, who would top the charts in 1983 with the Steinman-penned “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” She and her manager were welcomed with a trail of M&Ms leading to his door.Mr. Steinman later used that home mostly as an office and for wine storage, and moved into a rented house in the woods of Putnam County, N.Y., with a bunch of cats.“Jim was a homebody, and being in the city was quite busy for him,” Ms. Dillon said. “He was always being asked to go to people’s shows. Leaving the city removed him from having to do a lot of things. He didn’t go to big events. He let his art do the talking.”He called the Ridgefield cottage “the house that ‘Bat II’ built,” Ms. Dillon said. “Jim used the expression ‘cottage to compound.’” The album opened with the hit “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” with an accompanying video depicting Meat Loaf as a “Beauty and the Beast”-like recluse living alone in a gothic mansion.To expand the house, Mr. Steinman hired Rob Bramhall, a Boston-based architect, eventually spending about $6 million. Mr. Bramhall worked on the project for the better part of a decade, more than doubling the house’s size. After their initial meeting, Mr. Bramhall sent Mr. Steinman a book by the influential California architect Bernard Maybeck, he said, and “Jim knew I got his sensibility.”The style was English Cotswolds. “Jim wanted the gables, from left to right, to become slightly larger,” he said. “I remember doing skull-and-crossbones for the faucets in the powder room off the great room. Some of the wall light fixtures were made from aircraft parts.”Mr. Steinman, who composed primarily using a keyboard and a tape recorder, was living in a postwar co-op near Central Park West when he borrowed this boom box from his friends, the actors Larry Dilg and Mimi Kennedy.Mimi KennedyAlthough Mr. Bramhall met with Mr. Steinman in Manhattan and helped him select and place the artwork, “Jim never saw the house until it was done,” he said. “It was a fun and interesting project. I haven’t done anything like it since.”The original part of the house — bright and sunny — includes a large living room with Mr. Steinman’s many gold and platinum albums on the wall, open to an equally large kitchen with a dining nook. There’s a laundry room and a sunroom, although Mr. Steinman preferred the dark.“That end of the house represented normalcy to him,” Ms. Dillon said.In the dining room, the table is set with Mr. Steinman’s china, in the Royal Copenhagen Fairy Tale pattern — not that he ever used it. He preferred to eat off disposable tableware, specifically blue Solo cups and Chinet plates.In the den, or “viewing room,” he enjoyed watching singing competitions like “American Idol,” and critiquing the judges. He also watched cooking shows, Yankees games and “Jeopardy!”“He could listen to music, watch a TV show and type a letter” all at once, Ms. Dillon said. “His mind never stopped working.”The “Ring Room,” unadorned but for four statues on the walls, marks the transition from the original building to the addition.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesThe “good room” — not to be confused with the great room — holds one of his wheelchairs, which he needed after suffering a series of strokes. Of course, “it was a crazy wheelchair, like a Batmobile,” Mr. Sonenberg said.Mr. Steinman referred to the unused guest room as the “Wendy Bedroom,” after the heroine of “Peter Pan.” The plush bear on the bed hails from the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, in London, which owns the intellectual property rights to “Peter Pan” and denied Mr. Steinman’s request to stage a rock musical based on the story, deeming the script — which opened with killer nuns — unsuitable for children.The addition, all custom made and filled with elaborate and peculiar art and artifacts, starts with the Ring Room, a small, oval space unfurnished save for sculptures on the walls, which are a color Mr. Steinman called obsidian blue. (Obsidian was the name he gave to Neverland’s city.) The ceiling is dotted with LED stars.“And that leads you from this sweet cottage into this other universe, which is modeled after Steinman’s vision,” Mr. Sonenberg said. “Jim was the most bizarre guy, but he was the sweetest and funniest and most generous. He was the only genius I ever met.”The primary suite is at the end of a wardrobe hallway, where the vast closets still hold Mr. Steinman’s many clothes, few of which he wore, although candy wrappers remain in some of the pockets. So many garments are crammed on the racks that “you would think you were in Bonwit Teller,” Mr. Sonenberg said.Jim Steinman in Manhattan in 1981. He became a star after writing the songs for Meat Loaf’s smash 1977 album “Bat Out of Hell,” and hit it big again with the 1993 sequel, “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell.”Gary Gershoff/Getty ImagesParallel to the wardrobe hallway is a long corridor leading to the great room, lined with patent leather panels and used by visitors — most recently, those working on “Bat Out of Hell: The Musical,” which is touring in Britain and is slated to open in Las Vegas in September.The enormous bedroom includes a desk, sitting area and aquarium. The art on one wall, “Inferno” by Joseph Grazi, depicts taxidermic bats flying into the maw of an alligator skull. Much of the idiosyncratic art Mr. Steinman collected was by artists from Bayreuth, Germany, the longtime home and final resting place of his idol, the composer Richard Wagner, whose operas enthralled him from childhood. The room is also adorned with items collected from fans and, on the bed, a heart pillow in tribute to the surgeon who extended Mr. Steinman’s life.Beyond the bedroom is the house’s focal point, the great room, centered around a stainless steel sculpture resembling a cluster of giant quartz crystals — an allusion to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Mr. Steinman’s 2013 honorary doctorate from Amherst is on display. A bust of Wagner sits atop a Yamaha piano, although Mr. Steinman composed mostly on keyboards. “He had this uncanny ability to play all the parts on the piano,” Ms. Dillon said. “It almost sounded like a full band.”Stairs ascend to a gallery overlooking the room. One chair is occupied by a skeleton mid-shriek. Another flight leads to the room at the top, with a skylight and reading chair.Mr. Steinman often used the tiny kitchenette off the great room, stocked with fresh fruit and cans of Progresso soup. He was a fan of hot sauce, sweet soda and chewy candy. “When I visited him for the first time in his home, he had these containers of gummy bears from the pick-n-mix selection at Dean & DeLuca for $12.99 a pound,” Ms. Dillon said. “Every month, we would get a bill.”The custom-designed wheelchair, which Mr. Steinman required as his health declined, was his version of a Batmobile.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesThe detached two-story garage has plumbing and electricity, and could possibly be an accessory dwelling unit. Mr. Steinman used it for storage — he didn’t drive or have a license. Despite his love of motorcycles (and songs about them), he likely never rode one. Instead, he filled the garage with copies of his programs and Playbills. “He liked stuff,” Ms. Dillon said.The question is: Will anyone want Jim Steinman’s stuff? Ms. Ancona is hoping that the property, like Mr. Steinman’s music, will inspire someone looking for something beautiful and a little strange.“Every house needs its own approach, whether it’s a $500,000 home or a $5 million home,” she said. “You really have to find your audience.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      How Meat Loaf Made a Cult Favorite: ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’

      by

      The eight-and-a-half minute tale of sexual awakening features drums by the E Street Band’s Max Weinberg and vocals from Ellen Foley, who help recount how the unlikely song came together.The singer Meat Loaf, who died on Thursday, was a rock ’n’ roll anomaly: a portly force of nature whose theatrical musicality made him an unlikely but undeniable radio staple, and a standout presence in films like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Fight Club.”Of his vital contributions to the American karaoke canon, the most potent may be “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” the eight-and-a-half minute opus to nascent sexuality that appeared on his multiplatinum 1977 debut, “Bat Out of Hell.” The story of a teenage couple about to consummate their relationship in a car, the song is built around a boisterous call-and-response duet between Meat Loaf and the singer Ellen Foley. The sexual act itself is narrated by the famous New York Yankees shortstop and play-by-play announcer Phil Rizzuto, over a rollicking barroom groove. (Sample dialogue: “Here’s the play at the plate — Holy cow, I think he’s gonna make it!”)“Meat got to act in that song, and he loved acting,” the bassist Kasim Sulton, who performed on “Bat Out of Hell,” said in a phone interview. “He did that with every song, but especially in ‘Paradise’ because it was indelibly linked to his whole life. He loved performing that song more than I could possibly tell you.”Like many of Meat Loaf’s best-known songs, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” was written by the composer Jim Steinman. Lifelong collaborators, the two met in New York City when Meat Loaf auditioned for Steinman’s 1973 musical “More Than You Deserve.” Not long after, Meat Loaf was cast as John Belushi’s understudy in a “National Lampoon” road show, and he found Steinman a job as a piano player on the tour.It was on that tour that “Paradise,” and many of the songs that would turn up on “Bat Out of Hell,” first took shape. “We were driving around the country in a little blue van, and wherever we would play the ‘National Lampoon’ show, Jim would find a piano,” Ellen Foley said in a phone interview. “I don’t want to be a shrink, but I think it was probably him working out his own teenage desires that he hadn’t done in real life, but was able to experience in this hyper-emotional material. He just wanted to create something that nobody had ever heard before.”In a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone, Meat Loaf discussed his uncredited contributions to Steinman’s writing process. “My input was more arrangement, methods, a word or two here and there,” he said. “My job was to make the songs focused, the same way you’d get a character focused. Every song was a character. I’d get Jim to add a word, change the melody.”Back in New York, the three were joined by the singer Rory Dodd, who met Meat Loaf in 1975 while working on the Broadway musical “Rockabye Hamlet.” “We would rehearse every day, singing the same songs and working out the arrangements,” Dodd said in an interview. As a quartet, they performed these songs at clubs across the city as Meat Loaf and Steinman went looking for a record deal.That was slow coming, as most record executives didn’t quite understand what they were hearing. But they picked up some admirers along the way. Max Weinberg, the drummer for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, recounted being told about Meat Loaf and Steinman by a mutual friend, and watching them perform in a rehearsal studio on 57th Street. “Right there, in this little 8-by-10 room, Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley delivered ‘Paradise’ full-bore,” he said. “I had a lot of experience with Broadway-type presentation, so the idea of going into a studio and listening to a show being put together — immediately, I got the theatricality of it.”One of those admirers was the artist Todd Rundgren, who, under the mistaken impression that Meat Loaf and Steinman had a record deal, agreed to produce “Bat Out of Hell.” (When the truth came out, he also agreed to fund the recording himself.) In the fall of 1975, the musicians convened at Bearsville Studio in Woodstock, N.Y., where they were joined by members of Rundgren’s band Utopia, as well as Weinberg and Roy Bittan, the piano player for the E Street Band.Sulton said the group “all had a hand” in how the songs were arranged. “My first time hearing ‘Paradise,’ I remember thinking ‘it’s obvious what the song is,’” he said. “It’s kind of a boogie-woogie shuffle, and then there’s the Phil Spector part, and then there’s a bit of ‘Thunder Road.’ The song laid itself out for us in its entirety with just Jim playing the piano, and Meat Loaf singing it live.”After rehearsals, the band recorded “Paradise” in sections, without vocals. Weinberg said Steinman pushed him to play “like an out-of-control teenager.” “Teenage drumming is overplaying and very histrionic; it’s like a spice, because it’s not something you want to do all the time,” he said. “But he would tell me to hit those things so hard they fall over, and you can hear it in ‘Paradise.’ By the end of it, I’m just slamming away at the cymbals.”Foley’s singing parts were recorded in one take. “I did my part individually, but I had Meat come into the room so that I could act, and sing at him,” she said. “We were both in character; he was that poor, frightened, horny guy.” Dodd, who was one of the few people in the room when Meat Loaf recorded his own vocals, said Meat Loaf also performed in character as he sang. The initial recording was originally longer, clocking in at around 11 minutes; Dodd said about three minutes of background vocals at the song’s outro were cut out.Even with a completed album, Meat Loaf and Steinman had difficulty finding a record deal. Dodd recalled the record executive Clive Davis telling Steinman “that he had to learn how to write rock ’n’ roll.” But the album was eventually accepted and released by the executive Steve Popovich’s Cleveland International Records, and it slowly gained traction upon its 1977 release. Its popularity was boosted by a promotional video clip for “Paradise,” in which Meat Loaf and the singer Karla DeVito — lip syncing over Foley’s vocals — performed onstage.In the 2011 book “I Want My MTV,” Meat Loaf said he secured the video placements before midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” “That is still the number one selling album in the history of Holland, and I never played there,” he said. “It’s all because of the ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ video.”DeVito, who replaced Foley for the initial “Bat Out of Hell” tour, said audiences “went nuts” when the band got to “Paradise.” For these shows, she was given free rein to create the character of what she called “the girl in white” — the innocent counterpart to Meat Loaf’s lascivious singer. “He just wanted to put on the best show possible every night,” she said. Over the years, performances of the song would sprawl to the 20-minute mark because “Meat would milk it for all it was worth,” Sulton said.Even as his health waned, Meat Loaf was intent on performing live. DeVito said that less than a month before his death, he called her about staging a tour. “I’m thinking, ‘How are we going to do this?’” she recalled. “He said, ‘I really don’t like the way I’m walking, anyway. So we’ll come out in a car, and then we’ll roll out, and when it gets to the kissing part in “Paradise,” everything will go black, and they’ll play the video.’ He really did not stop thinking, and this is the thing that kills me about losing him — he was always inspired to do more.”Weinberg said Meat Loaf, ultimately, was a truly devoted performer. “Whatever he did, he committed to it,” he said. “And in committing to it, he made it real for you.” More

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      Jim Steinman, ‘Bat Out of Hell’ Songwriter, Dies at 73

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      The rocker Meat Loaf’s interpretations of Mr. Steinman’s songs became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time.Jim Steinman, who wrote all the songs on “Bat Out of Hell,” Meat Loaf’s operatic, teenage-angst-filled 1977 debut album, which remains one of the most successful records of all time, died on Monday in Danbury, Conn. He was 73.His longtime manager, David Sonenberg, announced the death. He said that Mr. Steinman had a stroke four years ago and that his health had recently been declining.Mr. Steinman had a wide-ranging résumé that included writing Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 No. 1 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and serving as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lyricist on “Whistle Down the Wind” (1996). But his career-defining achievement was “Bat Out of Hell,” a record that no major label wanted but that has now sold tens of millions of copies.Although the various lists of the top sellers differ in how they compile the rankings and categorize albums, “Bat Out of Hell” routinely lands near the top of any such list, along with albums like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and the Eagles’ “Their Greatest Hits” and “Hotel California.”Appearing at a time when disco and punk were in vogue, “Bat Out of Hell” was defiantly different. It contained only seven songs, all of them heavy on drama and influenced by the opera music Mr. Steinman had loved since he was a boy.In an era of three-minute songs, the title track, which opens the record and is about a motorcycle crash, is a mini-opera in itself, clocking in at 9 minutes 48 seconds. Another track, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” is almost eight and a half minutes long and includes a segment in which Phil Rizzuto, the Yankee broadcaster and former star shortstop, narrates a sexual tug of war between Meat Loaf’s horny male character and a resistant female, a part sung by Ellen Foley.“Bat Out of Hell” sold slowly at first but eventually took off, propelled by Meat Loaf’s exhaustive touring and some favorable radio play in a few markets. It was one of Mr. Steinman’s earliest successes, and it had recently come full circle in a sense: “Bat Out of Hell: The Musical,” a stage production written by Mr. Steinman, opened in Manchester, England, in 2017. Its story, a sort of post-apocalyptic “Peter Pan,” was something Mr. Steinman had envisioned almost 50 years ago.“This was meant to be a musical,” Meat Loaf told The New York Times in 2019, when the show had a brief run at New York City Center in Manhattan. “I made it a rock show. Jimmy turned it around and made a musical. That’s what he wanted it to be.”Meat Loaf and Mr. Steinman collaborated again on “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell,” a 1993 album that yielded another Meat Loaf hit, “I’d Do Anything for Love (but I Won’t Do That).” Among many other songs, Mr. Steinman also wrote “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” a Top 10 hit for Celine Dion in 1996.His works tended to be vivid in their imagery and heavy on drama. “Most people don’t like extremes,” he once said. “Extremes scare them. I start at ‘extreme’ and go from there.”Some detractors called his songs schlocky, but not Meat Loaf.“Every Jim Steinman song is alive,” he told The Lancashire Telegraph of England in 2016, when “Bat Out of Hell: The Musical” was preparing to open. “It’s not just pen on a piece of paper. It lives, it walks around, it haunts you, and it’ll eat at your heart and soul.”Andrew Polec, at the mic stand, in a special performance of Mr. Steinman’s “Bat Out of Hell: The Musical” at the London Coliseum in 2016. The show officially opened in Manchester the next year.Dave J Hogan/Getty ImagesJames Richard Steinman was born on Nov. 1, 1947, in Hewlett, N.Y., on Long Island. His father, Louis, owned a steel distribution warehouse — first in Brooklyn, then in California — and his mother, Eleanor, was a Latin teacher. He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, where, he said, he was such a borderline student that people were betting money on whether he would graduate.“When I did graduate,” he told an audience at the college in 2013, when he returned there to accept an honorary doctorate, “I got a huge standing ovation from about 80 percent of the people, who had bet on me graduating.”In 1969, while at Amherst, he created a musical called “The Dream Engine,” which drew attention beyond Amherst; Joseph Papp of the New York Shakespeare Festival, he said, came to see it. After Mr. Steinman had graduated, Mr. Papp commissioned him to help write a musical called “More Than You Deserve,” which ran at the Public Theater in 1974. That introduced him to Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday), who was in the cast.While Meat Loaf went from that project to a role in the cult film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Mr. Steinman contributed music to another show at the Public, “Kid Champion,” which starred Christopher Walken. Then Mr. Steinman and Meat Loaf found themselves together again on a National Lampoon touring show.Mr. Steinman had by then begun playing around with his idea for the post-apocalyptic “Peter Pan,” writing several songs for it. When he couldn’t secure the rights to the elements of the “Peter Pan” story that he wanted, he channeled those songs into “Bat Out of Hell,” recruiting his friend to bring them to life.Todd Rundgren eventually agreed to produce the record, but no big label wanted it; Mr. Sonenberg often joked that he thought people were creating new record labels just for the purpose of rejecting “Bat Out of Hell.” Eventually Cleveland International Records, a small label distributed by CBS, took a chance.Mr. Steinman, who lived in Ridgefield, Conn., is survived by a brother, Bill.Meat Loaf and Mr. Steinman had their differences over the years, including legal ones, but they continued to work together. Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose,” released in 2006, wasn’t a pure collaboration like the previous two “Bat Out of Hell” albums, but it did include some Steinman songs. “Braver Than We Are,” Meat Loaf’s 2016 album, again consisted of Steinman songs.Mr. Steinman also wrote the score for “Tanz der Vampire,” a parody musical based on the 1967 Roman Polanski film “The Fearless Vampire Killers.” The show had its premiere in Vienna in 1997 and has enjoyed success in Europe. But a 2002 Broadway version, “Dance of the Vampires,” with Mr. Steinman providing the lyrics and contributing to the book, lasted less than two months.“The overall effect is of a desperately protracted skit from a summer replacement variety show of the late 1960s,” Ben Brantley wrote in The Times, “the kind on which second-tier celebrities showed up to make fun of themselves.”“Bat Out of Hell: The Musical” seemed on track to do better, but a United States tour was aborted in 2019 in a financing dispute. Mr. Sonenberg said the project was expected to get back on track once the Covid-19 pandemic lifts. More