Jim Steinman, the Grammy-winning composer who wrote Meat Loaf’s bestselling Bat Out Of Hell debut album as well as hits for Celine Dion, Air Supply and Bonnie Tyler, has died, his brother said. He was 73.
Bill Steinman told the Associated Press that his brother died on Monday from kidney failure and was ill for some time. He said Jim Steinman died in Connecticut near his home in Ridgefield.
“I miss him a great deal already,” Bill Steinman said by phone on Tuesday.
Jim Steinman was born on 1 November 1947 in New York City.
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012 and won album of the year at the 1997 Grammy Awards for producing songs on Celine Dion’s Falling Into You, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last month and featured the Steinman-penned power ballad It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.
Steinman wrote the music for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, released in 1977 and one of the top-selling albums of all-time. It has reached 14-time platinum status by the RIAA, which is equivalent to selling 14m albums in the US alone.
Steinman also wrote Meat Loaf’s 1993 album, Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell, another commercial and multi-platinum success. It featured the international hit I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That). Steinman also penned hits such as Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart and Air Supply’s Making Love Out of Nothing at All.
He was also behind the lyrics for lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Whistle Down the Wind which opened on the West End in 1998.
