Falco and his militia burst through the bar walls to attack the Lost. It’s not explicitly mentioned but presumably Tink arrives with them. Falco fires a gun into the air and then, attention on him, announces his deal with Tink; but Strat and Raven don’t go along with it, surprising no one except apparently Tink. There is a scuffle (exactly who is participating is unclear) and somehow Tink is shot.

Strat immediately runs to his fallen friend, pushing Raven away and telling her to get away from him. Falco is stunned and claims it was an accident.

Tink asks Strat, “Am I dying?”

Strat responds, through his tears, “You’ll be fine, Tink.”

Tink tries to explain himself, saying he just wanted to grow up so that Strat would treat him like the other members of the Lost.

Strat says, “But you’re not like the others, Tink. You’re my soul mate.”

Their exchange continues for a bit longer before ending with Tink asking, “Am I still your best friend?”

“Always and forever!” Strat replies.

“You telling me the truth?”

“When did I ever lie to you?”

“All the time.”

They sing the first four lines of the chorus to “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” accompanied by some synthesizer flute sounds and something that sounds rather like a music box, and then Tink dies. And with his death, the song begins.

It’s a rather melodramatic scene that has some odd moments.

Raven’s reaction to Strat telling her to get away from him, while it can be explained away as a dumb teenager response, strikes me as an odd lack of recognition of the pain Strat must feel at his friend’s death. She goes so far as to, seemingly, go back home with Falco, just because Strat, upset at Tink’s death, yells, “Get away from me?” That seems even more crazy than their love at first sight pairing was.

Falco, the man who was literally electrocuting Jagwire while holding the rest of the Lost prisoner in torture chambers and has a private military that largely seems to be occupied with fighting a war against the Lost, is shocked into a stunned silence at killing Tink, someone he respected so little that he couldn’t be bothered to get his name right even once. He brought a gun to a fight, is this monstrous person, and yet is so weakly human that he feels guilt here? I think the idea is that Sloane leaving before made a major change in Falco, a change we saw reflected in “What Part of My Body Hurts the Most,” but his cruelty in dealing with Tink and the fact that Sloane might have returned make it difficult to accept such a sudden change in demeanor here.

The song begins with its recognizable bass line (one of the few such bass lines in Steinman’s oeuvre). A piano joins in, and then Strat’s voice. It’s all a bit slower than the Steinman or Meat Loaf version of the song, trying to fit its position here as a dirge.

Jagwire takes the lead as the piano becomes more prominent, then Ledoux gets a couple of lines, then Blake. Strat joins in with the Lost as a chorus for the end of the first verse and then the horns play something close to the guitar line from the earlier versions of the song as he begins the chorus. The other three again sing a couple of lines each to finish the chorus, still accompanied the same way.

Zahara then takes the lead for the bridge, which has far quieter piano than the earlier versions, no longer cascading their way down behind the vocals to much as walking slowly down. The female Lost members all finish the bridge with her and then everyone joins together for the pre-chorus.

The horns again become more prominent, probably even more so than the guitars ever were in the earlier versions, and Strat handles most of the leads through another version of the chorus. The song ends there.

I don’t like this version of the song much. It’s still a beautiful melody and it has some great lyrics, but the excising of the second verse and addition of a partial chorus at the beginning makes it far more repetitive even at a much shorter run time. The horns are not just a downgrade from guitars, but they give it an aggressive sort of volume that doesn’t match the mood it’s looking for. The slower tempo is clearly an attempt to fit the mood, but this song is just too uplifting for that to work.

The first time I listened to the cast album of Bat out of Hell: The Musical, I was apprehensive. It took a few songs for me to be “in” on it. But once I was, seeing that “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” was coming up right near the end got me excited–I expected it to be a true highlight and a real celebration of rock and roll as probably the last positive moment of the show. (It was ending with “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” and “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” which sounded to me like it was obviously going to be a someone trying to get back together but being unable in the end–I was wrong.) While I understand what it’s trying to do here, I don’t think it works here in any way, and it’s still an incredible disappointment to me.

To be clear, I would still listen to this happily if there were no other recordings of this song. But the reality is that there are already two great ones.

Ranking the Versions

1. Meat Loaf-Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell
2. Jim Steinman-Bad for Good
   • This is hair-splitting of hair-splitting for me.
3. Jim Steinman’s Bat out of Hell: The Musical