Meatloaf- Bat Out Of Hell II- Back Into Hell vinyl LP- first pressing. Rare.

	£		33
	$		44

For sale on behalf of a friend, who states;
"Meat Loaf- Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell. A genuine first UK pressing, bearing the 1-1-1 matrix, issued on the Virgin label. This is an indisputably nice copy.
I always like to give a little history to any of my albums that I'm parting with, but the story behind this one is complex and spread out over fifteen-odd years.
The original Bat Out Of Hell album and tour were hugely successful and, naturally, the management and record company were pressing for a sequel. They asked Jim Steinman (the pen behind it all) to stop touring to concentrate on writing it. With  "Renegade Angel", as it was originally titled, Steinman intended it to be "......even more heroic and more epic and a little more operatic and passionate", and an extension of the first album, because "....it always seemed incomplete because I conceived it like a film, and what would you do without Die Hard 2?". Well, that's Jim Steinman for you. Meatloaf just said "We called it Bat Out Of Hell II because that would help it sell s*@!loads." Make your own mind up about that bit.  Anyway, between 1978 and 1993, the lyric book was stolen, Meatloaf lost his voice, and Steinman used many of the other tracks on two other albums; "Back For Good", which he recorded himself, and "Original Sin" by a female group called Pandora's Box. By the late '80s, the album that hadn't happened was the industry joke.
At the very end of the decade, after many disputes, Steinman and Meatloaf performed bat Out Of Hell together at the latter's home. Steinman allowed Meatloaf to have some of the songs, the rest to follow once Meatloaf changed management. The album was recorded at Ocean Way and Power Station studios between 1990 and 1993 using many of the original Bat Out Of Hell team, was a worldwide smash including hitting number one in the US and Australia, and spent eleven weeks in the UK Album chart at pole position, and apparently has spent the equivalent of about nine YEARS in the UK charts, being one of the world's biggest selling albums of the decade and having sold over 43 MILLION copies worldwide. That's one copy for every two hundred people on the face of the planet. Needless to say, the record industry were laughing on the other side of their faces.
1993 was however a year of huge decline for sales of  vinyl around the world, with sales of LPs in America being somewhere in the region of 300,000 copies of all new albums being on record, as compared to something in the region of 300 million compact discs. That's about one vinyl record for every thousand compact discs (Source- RIAA) sold. In the UK, the rot wasn't QUITE as far advanced, but we weren't far behind, so given the figures above and the fact that vinyl sales in the UK were at an all-time low in the mid '90s, this is indeed a rare beast.
This particular copy was played no more than four or five times when it was new. It was a gift from a friend who knew that I loved vinyl (as I still do), but knew not that I didn't like Meatloaf (which I still don't). Or, more accurately, Jim Steinman. Hence the reason for sale. It's spent far, far too long sat at the back of my record cupboard awaiting appreciation, and I want someone to enjoy it. I haven't cleaned it as everybody has their own regime but, on the small test-section that I have cleaned, it plays with a minimum of surface noise and static pop. It was only ever played on a dual 505 mk ii with an Ortofon VMS 30E elliptical stylus tracking at 1.75 grammes, and has been assessed today on an Acoustic Research "The Turntable" with a Linn Basik Plus arm and an A&R P77 cartridge at 1.5 grammes, using Kef 105.4 speakers driven by a Technics super A class amplifier, in an attempt to make as honest an assessment as possible.
If you want more photos, or have any questions, please feel free to contact me. The postage quote is UK mainland only, so if you're bidding from abroad please let me know BEFORE you bid so that I can get a quote for you. You can pick up if you wish, and you're welcome to come and audition it. I try to be as honest as I possibly can; I know the standards that I would expect were I the buyer, and refuse to give less. The photographs are in natural sunlight, then indoors, with and without flash, at eight megapixels, in the interests of giving you the most accurate images possible.
Best of luck in the auction!"