The thing is….Bat Out of Hell barely made it to the light of day. It was rejected by all the major record labels. Clive Davis – the biggest record industry executive of the day – said in his memoir that he just didn’t get it, casting aspersions at Jim Steinman’s song-writing, indicating the music was too theatrical, and that Meat Loaf didn’t look like a star.

The record was picked up by tiny boutique label Cleveland International, and was released in 1977. The uptake? Crickets. In the radio silence, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner asked Meat Loaf to join their bands. But in a 2016 conversation with Variety, Meat Loaf noted that he and Jim Steinman weren’t about to quit. They believed in the music. They believed in themselves.

Months after release, a concert video of the title track was aired on the British program the Old Grey Whistle Test. In the U.S., the Meat Loaf connection to “Rocky Horror” paid off when he convinced producer Lou Adler to use a video for “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” as a trailer for the cult movie.

The rest is history. Today Bat Out of Hell is still one of the Top 10 selling albums of all time, with 40+ million sales. More than 520 weeks (that’s 10 years if you’re counting) in the Top 200 in the UK. “You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth” and “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” …anthems that cross generations of singing rabble rousers in Friday night glows of house parties.

Dawson Creek. Fort Nelson. Watson Lake. Teslin. Whitehorse. Burwash Landing. Beaver Creek. Delta Junction. Fairbanks. Denali. Anchorage. Juneau. Then all the way back….

I wore out two Bat Out of Hell tapes on my Walkman on a 1982 washboard gravel, bone-rattling trip from Saskatoon to the end of the Alaska highway…and beyond. For Crying Out Loud if you saw one tree you saw them all. Two Out Of Three…mountain views wouldn’t have been bad. Paradise was NOT by the dashboard lights….they only worked half the time anyway until you banged the suburban’s dashboard in the right place with your hand. The 8 flat tires, took the “$%^&” Word(s) Right Out Of My Mouth when I was asked once again to “get the jack and the tire iron.”

When you’re 14 you don’t realize the spiritual significance of driving across a portion of the continent largely unencumbered by the precociousness of humanity, and needing a MILEPOST book just to make sure you didn’t perish for lack of gas in the middle of a painter’s landscape. And nowhere became everywhere as I got older. Meat Loaf and I had a daily journey together for 5 weeks in 1982, but the journey has reared itself in a memory pop-up every day since then.

None of this in my life…in the life of multi-generational sing-alongs…in music trivia night the world over…would have happened if not for one word: PERSEVERANCE. Niccolo Machiavelli said “there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

Change creates discomfort. Upset stomach? Take a Tums. Headache? Take a Tylenol. In our discomfort we seek easiest avenues to make the discomfort go away.

“We’ve done that before and it failed.” “It won’t work.” “It’s too much change at once.” We have created standard-fare business language to ensure Titanic-like resistance to maneuvering to re-shuffle the way we think about the world when new ideas are introduced into systems and orders. We are bent toward cherished and protected common beliefs in our group think….our “corporate culture” Our biases kick in: confirmation bias where we search for an absorb information in a way that confirms or supports our prior beliefs and values; the Dunning-Kruger effect where we over-estimate our knowledge and ability – particularly in areas where we have little to no experience.

Let’s say you carry a little “change” around in your pocket. Value ideas. Like new ways forward. Appreciative of the value of disruptive magic to be found in discomfort that is always just steps away from the comfortable….if we choose to see it. We call these people “Mavericks.” “Rebels.” “Weird.” “Conflict-focused.” Typically shown the severance door with far more proclivity because “You just don’t fit in.”

But with real-world implications. Here’s just one: urban planning policy that looks through a rear-view mirror to deeply appreciate and value colour-coded silos of sweet spot-sized single-family housing. Then society complains about lack of affordable housing options. Protectionism of what was for the wealthier who wield power, not what needs to be for the vulnerable or for future generations just trying to make a go of it. A dynamic that needs to embrace more than a few mavericks if we really want to address root causes of things with solutions, vs paper over our problems with superficial ineffectiveness.

A few “rebels” succeed. Where? Well, there’s a few billionaires running around with their over-sized pots of gold and phallic-shaped missions to nowhere for no reason created by moats around their new ideas (…there’s room for prioritization of a little more philanthropy with all that rebel success). Smaller companies are known to be innovators. Then they get bought out by the larger companies…who can’t innovate themselves because of their rigid structuring. Creators – from musicians to artists to NFT sailors on new digital seas – seem to control their own narrative into poverty – unless they bend to large label standard fare of songs constructed by bubble-gum AI chord progressions our conformist ears prefer to hear, or the “mainstream” suddenly decides you are so weird you are cool…for a moment of fame.

We need to embrace more mavericks and rebels. They make the world spin differently, and better. Funny thing is, it’s a light switch. It costs nothing to lift the lid off the constraints that tie us down to the greydom of Dilbert cubicle drudgery and the shuffle of the commute in our masses. We just need 50% +1 in our midst to tip the scales in favour of those who want to re-imagine pathways to better futures.

Marvin Lee Aday (Mr. Loaf) left us with a legacy of daring to be different and the value of perseverance…if we choose to walk toward that bright, shiny light of soulfulness. Treat yourself…turn out the lights one night, put some headphones on, and get lost in musical poetry listening to 8:50 of For Crying Out Loud on the Bat Out of Hell album.