Sheela Clary

I started writing complaint letters when I was 10. The first aimed low, being addressed to President Ronald Reagan, and concerning nuclear weapons. I’d just come from church, where “The priest said the bishops wanted to have a say in deciding what to do. He also said the bishops had to do something in order to say what they wanted to say. What do they have to do to have a say in the debate?” Inexplicably, I received no response to this urgent question.

The next complaint, a few years later, went to The Berkshire Eagle, to whose editors I pointed out the hypocrisy of then-Vice President Dan Quayle. This letter actually made a decent argument. Quayle had gotten press for criticizing the single mother status of fictional TV character Murphy Brown. In so doing he was actually, I claimed, “vocalizing what a conservative, male-dominated society wants to hear; namely, that it is fine for men to be sexually irresponsible.”

My dad saved these, and copies of most of my other correspondence, too, along with my baby teeth, the verses he wrote commemorating their losses, and my report cards. But my next complaint letter, also to The Eagle, is not among them. Perhaps the subject matter embarrassed him. Perhaps he felt he was doing me a favor, and that my mature, older self would thank him for tossing those of my ideas that lacked either charm or logic.

I remember it well, though. It concerned the August 2, 1991 performance by the artist named Meat Loaf, which I’d just paid $40 to attend in the Lenox theater then called the Berkshire Performing Arts Center. I’d been deeply offended by the performer’s on-stage antics. Paradise in the flesh did not in any way match Paradise in my mind.

I didn’t own all that many cassette tapes, compared to most of my friends, in the summer of 1991, but “Bat Out of Hell” was one of them. When I heard Meat Loaf was playing locally, I was there. To butcher a line from his eight-and-a-half-minute masterpiece, “I was barely 19, and — compared to most of the other female audience members — conservatively dressed.”

But perhaps just like them, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” was my favorite song. At that heady moment it was number one on my most prized possession, a mix tape with the song titles written in green ink. (The one written in pink ink held a distant second place in my affection.) Meat Loaf kicked off the A side, followed by classics such as “Everything I Own,” “The Joker,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and “Can’t Find My Way Home.”

Why, young Sheela, why? Middle-aged Sheela listens to “Paradise” and it’s just so … crass. I go to YouTube and can’t get beyond minute two in the video. I’d avoid playing it in the car with my kids. Also, what does it mean? “Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep, dark night, I can see paradise by the dashboard light.” See what? See her boobs? Crotch? Why and how would they be positioned next to the dashboard light? Aren’t there multiple lights on a dashboard? Which one is he referring to? Is this an insider thing only classic car lovers can understand?

But of course, none of those questions occurred to me then, and my sincere, uncomplicated devotion to over-the-top 80’s era love art was not confined to that one song. I believed in many of the fantastical depictions of young romance from that time. I hoped, no, I knew, that they’d play out for me in real life. One day I’d follow the pattern set by the girls in my favorite movies, and the songs that played would accompany my own romantic life, too: “If You Were Here” in “Sixteen Candles,” “Hungry Eyes” in “Dirty Dancing,” and “In Your Eyes” in “Say Anything.”

Somehow, despite not fitting in with these other songs thematically or stylistically, I think “Paradise” was very much part of this naive fantasy, with a storyline for me to interpret through my own innocent lens.

So, you can see if you’ve ever seen Meat Loaf in concert, or watched his music videos, how his concert performance would have been the opposite of what I’d come for. “Holy cow, he stole a base,” as narrated by real life Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto on my mix tape, did not look at all like sweet, awkward fumbling in the dark. Meat Loaf tore around the stage like a bucking bronco. His sweat sprayed onto my face. He tore at his duet partner like a lion at a gazelle. He ripped her shirt off. I thought he was going to rip her pants off, too.

I described all this in my complaint letter, though I can’t say now what I hoped the editors of The Eagle should have done about it. I guess I wanted someone to pay for transforming what was for me a sweet teenage love song into something that looked in real life much darker.

And yet … I still know now, like I knew back then, every single word of the song. I sang along with a barful of strangers to all eight and a half minutes in Manhattan on New Year’s Eve 1992, and I could perform the karaoke version of it tonight without glancing at the lyrics, playing all three roles myself. I would LOVE to do that, if I could find an open karaoke bar. Some love never dies, like my love for my mix tape. It came apart in the cassette player of my friend’s Plymouth Champ sometime in 1992, I think.

What is it about a song, a poem, a story that speaks to you, that qualifies it to join the soundtrack of your life? It’s not objective beauty, though I do love beautiful words and music. Beethoven’s Ninth. Anything by Emily Dickinson, or Mary Oliver. Brian Doyle’s essay “The Meteorites.” But dammit, I also love “Paradise by the” flippin’ “Dashboard Light.” There’s nothing rational or explicable about it. Notes start out as figments of someone else’s imagination, and then come to live inside mine. Music is such an intimate transfer, when you think about it. Someone else’s voice plays inside me, unbidden, and likely always will.

As it turns out, I read on Wikipedia that Meat Loaf didn’t write “Paradise,” but that’s irrelevant. What I’m trying to say, sitting here thinking about the recently deceased singer, and the song he will always be known for, is that in failing to live up to my unreal expectations, he did no worse than anyone else did back then, and while I only lasted an hour or so at his concert, his unbeautiful, offensive, joyful song has kept me company on my lonely journey for more hours than I could ever count. RIP.

‍