True meaning behind song ‘I’d Do Anything For Love’ (Continued…)
Songwriter Jim Steinman – who lifted the famous lyric from a 1983 song by Bonnie Tyler – acknowledged some fans would find it ambiguous.
But he insisted the meaning of “that” is fully revealed in each verse.
He said in 1993: “It sort of is a little puzzle and I guess it goes by – but they’re all great things. ‘I won’t stop doing beautiful things and I won’t do bad things.’ It’s very noble.
“I’m very proud of that song because it’s very much like out of the world of Excalibur. To me, it’s like Sir Lancelot or something – very noble and chivalrous.
“That’s my favorite song on the record – it’s very ambitious.”
Meat Loaf himself explained exactly what “that” means in a VH1 Storytellers special, using a blackboard and pointer on stage in 1998.
In 2014, he added: “It’s the line before every chorus.
“There’s nine of them, I think. The problem lies because Jimmy likes to write, so you forget what the line was before you get to ‘I won’t do that’.
“When we were recording it, Jim brings up the thing — he says, ‘People aren’t gonna know what that is’.
“I said, ‘Of course they are. How can they not know?’ He goes, ‘They’re not gonna’.”
