The album cover was scary, exciting, and somehow loud. A motorcycle, adorned with a cow skull in the front and white exhaust or possibly flame behind it, soared through the air. A demon bat screeched in the distance. The rider, a muscled-man with distinct Valkyrie undertones, hangs on for dear life in a pose I wouldn’t understand the undertones behind until much, much later.
It’s Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, and it’s sitting on the dining room table. My dad is carefully studying the back, just like he has roughly twice a week for as long as I can remember. He is wearing headphones that cover 60 percent of his head. They are connected to a knockoff Japanese stereo through a cord thicker than the one that kept our telephone attached to its receiver.
I am 8 years old and ready to depart to the TV room for Friday night’s TGIF lineup — Family Matters, Full House, Step-by-Step, the works. But first I’ve got to finish chores, which means clearing the dishes from the table. Dad didn’t really drink back then. Didn’t smoke, either. His deliverance came 46 minutes, 25 seconds at a time, beginning with the title track and slipping through operatic anthems, power ballads and the song he’d play all eight-plus minutes of at my sister’s wedding; Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
