The tribes are gathering. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally 2022 officially roared into existence this morning. That can only mean one thing: a new ‘Bikers From Hell’ DMR Blog post.

People liked last year's 'Bikers From Hell' post, so another seemed in order. As I stated in that blog entry, bikers, barbarism and hard rock/metal have been intertwined for a good half-century.

I'm taking a look at the record album covers connected with Meat Loaf's 'Bat Out of Hell' albums partly because Meat Loaf-- Marvin Lee Aday of Dallas, Texas--died this last January. Another factor was his long-standing adjacency to hard rock/heavy metal. The overriding factor in my decision was that Meat Loaf is connected to some truly awesome biker-centric album covers. In my opinion, those covers blow away the (great) Frazetta cover I featured last year. Biker art for the ages.

I've never been a big Meat Loaf fan, but he was an interesting dude. Born in Dallas, he may--or may not--have had some interesting encounters on the day of JFK's assassination. From there, he ended up in the rock musical Hair and then had a role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show as Eddie the Biker. His rock/soul band from that period, Stoney and Meatloaf, opened for the likes of the Stooges and Alice Cooper. Cooper had nothing but praise for Meat Loaf upon Aday's passing earlier this year.

Meat Loaf performed almost half of the lead vocals for Ted Nugent's Free For All in 1976, filling in for Derek St. Holmes. Then he recorded Bat Out of Hell.

Bat Out of Hell's cover was painted by the inimitable Richard Corben. Was Corben aware of Meat Loaf's previous role as Eddie the Biker? I haven't been able to answer that question one way or another, but Corben's cover laid down a template that others would follow. That album would go on to sell over forty million copies.

Meat Loaf would use the talents of Bob Kulick on that album and tour. Bob was on the short list of original guitarists for KISS. He would later play on Paul Stanley's solo album. Bob's brother, Bruce, ended up being the lead guitarist for KISS for almost a decade. Like I said, hard rock/metal adjacency.

The biker imagery wasn't restricted to just the official 'Bat Out of Hell' albums--of which there were eventually three. Meat Loaf's Dead Ringer (1980) featured the same blonde barbarian Biker From Hell, only rendered this time by the immortal Bernie Wrightson.

We see no more barbarian bikers until 1993's Bat Out of Hell II, with a great cover by Michael Whelan. The final appearance of the Biker From Hell was on the cover of 2006's Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose featuring a competent cover by Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell.

Check out the cover gallery below. As a value-added DMR bonus, I've thrown in the (surprisingly good) cover of Bat Out of Hell: The Musical.