Total Eclipse Of The Heart is one of the biggest-selling singles of all time and a mandatory part of any karaoke night. Here, Bonnie Tyler explains how she united with the legendary Jim Steinman for this power ballad masterclass...
At the time Total Eclipse Of The Heart came into my life, I had just been asked to re-sign to RCA for another five years, but my heart wasn’t in the kind of material I was being given. It was still all country rock and I had decided I wanted to go more rock – I was into Meat Loaf because I had seen him on The Old Grey Whistle Test doing Bat Out Of Hell. I saw that performance and I thought, ‘Oh my God, what a song!’
I asked David Aspden – who was a friend from RCA that knew everybody – to manage me and he got me a deal on CBS Records. Muff Winwood was the head of A&R there and I told him I had seen Meat Loaf and that I wanted to sing those kind of big, mega-production songs. He said, ‘Oh come on Bonnie, this is Jim Steinman – he’ll never do it!’ I didn’t know it was Jim Steinman to be honest, I just loved the music. I said, ‘Please at least ask and let him decide.’ So they reached out to Jim, who invited me to New York where he started playing me songs and it was just fantastic. You never know unless you ask!
Three weeks later he finished writing Total Eclipse Of The Heart, which he’d started many years before for Meat Loaf but gave to me. He played it on the piano for me and I was like, ‘My God!’ [Rock vocalist] Rory Dodd was singing it for me while Jim was playing – he wouldn’t give me a demo, I had to learn it with him.
The way that Jim Steinman records is to do nine different takes live with the band. I was still a little shy in those days but I did the song at the Power Station in New York. I was working with two of the E Street Band – there was Max Weinberg on the drums and Roy Bittan on keyboard – plus Meat Loaf’s bass player, Steve Buslowe, and Rick Derringer on lead guitar. I put the track down and then, at the end of the night, after doing nine takes, Jim went home with his reel-to-reel and listened to it. I also had a cassette copy and went back to my hotel to pick which one we would build on. Jim and I actually picked the same one, which happened to be the second take.
We got along very well. There’s a lot more talking and eating than there is recording [with Jim], I can tell you that much. He’s always telling stories. You go there for eight o’clock and you’re lucky if you start before midnight. Sometimes we finished at two or three in the morning and we would have gotten some recording in by then. And plenty of food [laughs]. He is like a vampire. He goes to bed at eight in the morning.
When it was finished it was amazing, but I thought, ‘It’s never gonna get played on the radio’ because it was nearly eight minutes long! It broke Jim’s heart to cut it down to four minutes 50, but radio stations started playing it in America and then it picked up. I think the first plays were in Arizona or something, and then it went massive. I knew I liked it because it made me cry, but I couldn’t believe that it would go to No.1 in America, No.1 in the UK and just about all over the world. It sold six million copies and it’s done a hell of a lot more since. It was No.1 for 12 weeks running years later in France...
I think its success had a lot to do with the video as well as the song – it’s nearly on 600 million views or something like that and going up. I’m not an actress and I don’t like making them, but it is an amazing video looking back on it now. Actually all the videos I’ve done with Jim have been amazing.
Total Eclipse Of The Heart has just been an incredible calling card for me. It’s been used in everything – I’m not even up to date on what! – but you always hear it on Strictly Come Dancing and talent shows. People just love it, no matter where I go people are always singing, ‘Tuuuuurn around!’ to me. It’s an incredible song.
Writer’s Notes
Publishers Lost Boys Music
Writer Jim Steinman
Release Date 19.02.83
Record label Columbia
Total UK sales (OCC) 544,930 [since 2004 only]
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