Bat Out of Hell (song) - Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics

The song opens with an instrumental section lasting nearly two minutes, predominantly featuring piano and guitar. The lyrics begin to set the scene of evil, guns, knives and "blood shot streets."

The song then focuses upon a "pure" girl, which Sounds magazine commented is "always an important symbol".

Oh baby you're the only thing in this whole world

That's pure and good and right

And wherever you are and wherever you go

There's always gonna be some light

Steinman says that Rundgren vetoed two of his ideas. The first idea involved this section (the second concerns a later part of the song).

In the soft section, I wanted to have a boy’s choir... Todd wanted to do it with the existing vocal backup section and then speed up the tape and use other technical tricks to get the boy’s choir sound. I said that we needed a real boy’s choir but he insisted. But it didn’t work out so we weren’t able to use it. You see, I’d heard this symphony by Mahler and I really wanted a boy’s choir. There’s nothing more beautiful than the sound of 20 boy sopranos singing.