We go back to Raven’s bedroom as Falco tries to beat information out of Zahara, convinced that she must know where his daughter is. Oddly, he says, “You think I didn’t suspect you were one of them?” That raises the question of why on earth he would hire her. Sloane pushes him away from Zahara and so he also turns his anger on Sloane. Zahara then produces a gun and fires a warning shot. She and Sloane leave together, much to Falco’s bewilderment.

Then we go back to the Lost’s headquarters to find Strat and Raven. He repeats his pick-up line: “On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses,” but this time Raven has an answer: “Will he offer me his mouth?” So, it becomes the “hot summer night” speech to take us into “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night),” still word-for-word the same as on Bat out of Hell. The rest of the Lost file in, discovering that their leader lives, and Strat announces, “Nothing’s changed!” while Tink murmurs, “EVERYthing’s changed.”

Ledoux, Liebeswoosh, Blake, Mordema, Jagwire, Strat, and Raven all take turns in the lead as the Lost sings the song, which to be honest doesn’t seem like it makes a lot of sense in the musical. They’re happy to see Strat back, clearly, but it just doesn’t make much sense that this is what they’re singing.

The clearly Phil Spector-inspired opening from the Bat out of Hell recording is matched almost exactly, except that it’s noticeably faster. And then the first verse, sung by Giovanni Spano (Ledoux), then Amy Di Bartolomeo (Liebeswoosh), then Patrick Sullivan (Blake), and finally Emily Benjamin (Mordema) continues the same way, except that some of the guitars are downgraded to horns and the church bell rhythms are missing. The second verse, sung by Dom Hartley-Harris (Jagwire) and Andrew Polec (Strat) has the horns a bit more prominent than the first. Then Raven sings the chorus before the final fade-out is rather shorter than the Meat Loaf version, with Polec and Christina Bennington (Raven) together singing the title while the rest of the Lost combine for “must have been while you were kissing me.”

The vocals are generally good, and this is the best that Dom Hartley-Harris or Christina Bennington sounds anywhere on the album. The former gets the longest uninterrupted sequence in the lead and the latter really stands out in a very loud closing section.

This is one of the least-changed recordings in this musical, but it’s also one I find rather disappointing. It just feels so much smaller than that wall of sound that Rundgren gave the original, and the increased tempo is not a positive, either. It’s still great, because it would take some serious effort to turn a song this good into anything else, but it just seems like it could have been quite a bit better pretty easily, and that’s disappointing.

It’s also the first time in this show that it starts really feeling like a “jukebox musical,” with this song seemingly having no relevance to what the characters are doing or feeling but rather it just being an excuse to have an exuberant group performance of one of the best-loved Bat out of Hell songs. If it were just Raven and Strat, there would be at least some sense to it, but it really doesn’t fit here as the Lost’s celebration of Strat’s return. Admittedly, I can’t come up with a Steinman song that seems like an absolutely ideal fit here, but “Bad for Good” is pretty close. “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” might fit as well, and I could even see using it in this scene and making that part of what enrages Tink–watching what’s supposed to be his and Strat’s special song get performed by all of the Lost together, a symbol of his status getting reduced to that of a typical gang member.

Ranking the Versions

1. Meat Loaf-Bat out of Hell (original)
2. Jim Steinman’s Bat out of Hell: The Musical
3. Andrew Polec-The Bat Unplugged EP
   • Like the rest of this release, it’s an acoustic guitar and vocal rendition of the song. It works pretty well and Polec sings it well, but it’s just better when it’s bigger.