READ ABOUT: THE WHO BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN JIM STEINMAN ...LATEST WRITING: 18-Jan
Do you love me? Will you love me forever? Do you need me? Will you never leave me? Will you make me so happy for the rest of my life? Will you take me away and will you make me your wife? I gotta know right now, before we go any further, do you love me? Will you love me forever?"
Jim Steinman: Paradise by the Dashboardlight ("Bat out of Hell", 1977)

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About Jim Steinman's song: Left in the dark (page 2/2)

At this point the song has suddenly transcended the adultery theme and touches on a core issue of Jim Steinman's songwriting. Readers familiar with his best selling record, Bat out of Hell (in corporation with Meat Loaf), will know that the conception of love as something you don't need to confirm verbally is extremely important to Steinman. For Bat out of Hell can almost be seen as a concept album about the three words, "I love you" - i. e. about the experience of saying those words (For crying out loud) or of not being able to say them (Two out of three ain't bad), of having them put into one's mouth (Paradise by the Dashboardlight) or of having them taken out of one's mouth by a kiss (You took the words right out of my mouth).

Obviously, the last situation reflects Steinman's experience of the generosity of true love: A sensual communion set free from the obligations and reasoning of everyday life. And from this standpoint he polemizes against the hypocrisy and suppression of "love" as an institution to which you commit yourself by the utterance of certain words. The natural metaphorical expression of this antagonism is "darkness" versus "light". Steinman's hedonistic hero (Meat Loaf) sings: "Like a bat out of hell I'll be gone when the morning comes". His female counterpart (Bonnie Tylor, in 1983) tells her lover that they have to move "faster than the speed of light, faster than the speed of night". And, as indicated above, even the deceived husbond needs some tangible love more than he needs his wife's answers and explanations - he wants to be "left in the dark again".

The battle being fought out in Steinman's songwriting is not least a battle between the darkness of the flesh and the light of the word. The reluctance to utter the words "I love you" - so marvellously staged in Paradise by the Dashboardlight - seems to express a general skepticism about language. Now, as pointed out by philosophical rebels like Nietzsche and Albert Camus, one of the most serious accusations you can raise against language is that speaking implies the possibility of lying. This is an obvious reason for worshipping the silence of pure sensualism and unreflective behavior. And this is exactly what the narrator of Left in the dark does when he has stated that there's no need to talk. The following lines really deliver the essence of Jim Steinman's point of view:

And there are no lies on your body, so take off your dress
I just want to get at the truth


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READ ABOUT: THE WHO BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN JIM STEINMAN ...LATEST WRITING: 18-Jan