The 1993 song Ian Anderson wanted on his tombstone: “The epitaph”
Nothing that Ian Anderson ever made was intended to be one of the most simple songs in the world.
Jethro Tull were making music designed to challenge the audience, and even if Anderson did have a few moments where he could rein things in, it was only a matter of time before he started working on something even more extravagant. But even for a band that was as off-the-wall as Jethro Tull could be, Anderson felt that there were more gargantuan places for them to go whenever they made a record.
Then again, the band had already started off sounding like one of the biggest bands in the prog sphere. The genre didn’t yet have a name, but when listening to the way that they interacted with each other, they were clearly from the same school that people like King Crimson and Pink Floyd went to. Which means that half of their music wasn’t the kind that you would find on your average radio station.
They weren’t afraid to show off their influences from the classical world or incorporate songs that lasted more than three minutes, but the idea of them combining their strengths to make a song that lasted an entire album was definitely thinking outside the box. They wanted to use vinyl to its fullest potential back in the day, and that also meant keeping a keen ear out for someone who was looking to go as big as they were.
And while Anderson wasn’t going to have the same kind of range to reach the same level as someone like Freddie Mercury, he could at least appreciate what someone like Meat Loaf was doing on his albums. Him and Jim Steinman were creating songs that sounded like they were destined for Broadway whenever they played them, and when looking at the way that they both played off each other on Bat Out of Hell, Anderson was knocked out by what he heard on the title track.
At the same time, the biggest test of an artist’s longevity is wondering if they can do the whole thing over again and Meatloaf was more than up to the challenge when working on the album’s sequel years after the fact. He had become even more dramatic in the meantime, and when listening to a tune like ‘I Would Do Anything for Love’, Anderson was almost taken aback at hearing what someone could do with this kind of premise.
Even when taken with the cheesy Michael Bay-directed video, Anderson felt that the lyrics were so personal that he would have made it an epitaph on his tombstone if he could, saying, “I’m not saying I enjoy the whole album or most of Meat Loaf’s work, but that is a very good track. As soon as I heard it, I told my wife, ‘Damn, I wish I’d written that,’ which is probably the biggest compliment anyone in my position can pay to somebody else. In fact, I think that should be the epitaph on my gravestone.”
Meatloaf didn’t get to see those kinds of heights again, but given the kind of material that Anderson was used to working with, you could see what made it hit home with him. A lot of Jethro Tull’s best songs were about going above and beyond to get the best sound possible, and if they could make something as extravagant as Thick as a Brick and get away clean, they could definitely do the same thing when it came to one of the best ballads of all time.
The song is absolutely transcendent, heartbreaking, and more than a little bit goofy in retrospect, but there’s a part of that goofiness that’s actually quite endearing. No one would have had the cajones to actually make a song like this if they didn’t have the voice to pull it off, and Meat Loaf seemed poised to make a comeback the minute that he came out swinging on those first notes.
