Baal: lit. "lord, master," in ancient Syro-Palestinian (Canaanite) myth the young and powerful fertility god whose attributes are the lightening and the rainstorm and the generative forces of nature. He is the main protagonist, the the goddess Anath, his lover and consort, in the mythical texts of Ugarit. He is slain by Mot (Death) and resurrected by Anath, thus being analogous to the other dying and resurrection of fertility-gods of the ancient world, such as Osiris, Tammuz/Adonis and Zagreus/Dionysis. At Ugarit he was also referred to as Aliyin Baal, probably "Baal, the Powerful", and Zevul Baal, "Prince Baal". The latter title was perverted, with pejorative intent, by the Old Testament writers into Beelzebub.

And also:

Baal Shamin:Syrian, lit. "The Lord of the heavens", one of the appellations of baal.

Here Baal is portrayed by Richard Dunne... I can only guess that Steinman had grown too old to play the boy who "was barely Seventeen and barely dressed". Yes this and many other great lines that later became lyrics to songs were originally dialogue in this show. And all the spoken Dialogues from any Steinman Album can be traced to speeches in the show...

The Time was the Far and Distant Future, the place was the coast of Southern California after the Great Earthquake. Baal considered his world outside the city (now named Obsidian) to be Neverland. He kidnapped Wendy to come and live with him in Neverland but Baal's Lieutenant and most trusted friend Tink grew jealous of Wendy and betrayed him. The story was deep and moving but just as moving if not more so were the wonderful songs! Here the world was Introduced to such wonders as All Revved Up and Heaven Can Wait and of course Bat Out Of Hell! There are also wonderful songs that were never recorded elsewhere. In the grand tradition of stealing from himself Steinman re-worked a song from More Than You Deserve and gave it to Baal to sing. Incidentally several of the tunes from unrecorded songs were lifted and can be heard in Steinman's latest musical Tanz Der Vampire!

The show ran its course and Steinman decided that it was too hard to bring Rock Music to the Theater so he instead tried to Bring Theater to the world of Rock. The result was a little album called Bat out of Hell, the first side of which was a mini-soundtrack of Neverland. The Album became the monster hit we all know and the Movie Studios were all set to give Jim an unprecedented budget upwards of 20 million dollars and Huge named directors were vying for the chance to direct the show. Meat was cast as Tink (who had become a mute somewhere between the stage and the Screenplay) and everything was looking monumental... then the whole deal fell through. In 1983 it was again looking promising with Brian DePalma and Steven Spielberg interested in directing. Baal had become Peter in the Screenplay and Meat's falling out with Jim had removed him from the production. But again it fell through...

Hear What Meat has to say about Neverland!

Years later Bat out of Hell II came out with several more songs intended for a new updated version of Neverland and talk was on again of a new motion picture, this time with Meat as Dr. Hook (obviously he had now grown too old to play a Lost Boy). This also fell through. Jim is now hoping to bring the story to Broadway next year (though Barry Keating himself admitted to me that as many times as this show has fallen through he had no certainty to it). So who knows if we will ever see the true production of Jim's Lifelong Opus and the Inspiration for most of the music on most of his albums. But until this comes to pass sit back and enjoy the original Songs as performed on stage back in 1977!