‘It was written for a Nosferatu musical’: how Bonnie Tyler made Total Eclipse of the Heart

Photograph: David Redfern/Redferns

Bonnie Tyler, singer

I’d just signed to Sony and wanted to change from country rock to rock. I’d seen Meat Loaf on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test doing Bat Out of Hell, so I told Muff Winwood at Sony that I wanted to work with Jim Steinman, who wrote for and produced Meat Loaf. Muff looked at me like I was barmy and told me that Jim would never do it. “I just want you to ask him,” I said.

Jim liked my voice, so three weeks later my manager and I went to his apartment overlooking Central Park in New York. We came home on a high – we’d met Jim Steinman! – and three weeks later he sent for us again. He played the grand piano while Rory Dodd sang Total Eclipse of the Heart to me. I understood immediately what an incredible song it was.

We were escorted us from the airport to the BBC by a gang of bikers

Rory Dodd

We recorded it at Power Station in New York. Jim liked to put down a basic rhythm track, do nine takes of the song, choose the best one and then put the kitchen sink on there, like Phil Spector used to. He gave me a cassette to listen to in my hotel and we both preferred take two.

He told me he had started writing the song for a prospective musical version of Nosferatu years before, but never finished it. Around the time we were recording, Meat Loaf had lost his voice, and after it was a hit he always used to say: “Dang. That song should have been mine!” I poured my heart out singing it. We shot the video in a frightening gothic former asylum in Surrey. The guard dogs wouldn’t set foot in the rooms downstairs where they used to give people electric shock treatment.

I loved every minute of working with Jim and was devastated when he died. Recently a friend unearthed a letter I’d written to her from New York back then. It says: “I recorded an incredible song today. The trouble is, it’s so long, I don’t think anybody will ever play it.” Total Eclipse of the Heart had to be shortened from seven to four minutes, but everybody loved it so much they played the full album version anyway.

Rory Dodd, singer

I’d met Meat Loaf in New York when I was 20 and we were in a show on Broadway. He was this huge behemoth in a cowboy hat and said “Nobody sings higher than me.” And I said: “Well, I guess I do.” And he went: “You’ve got to meet Jimmy!” I sang on Bat Out of Hell and so many other Steinman records for years after. I was singing on the Old Grey Whistle Test performance that Bonnie saw. Bat Out of Hell had become a juggernaut and we had a biker gang escort from the airport to the BBC studio.

Jimmy had nicknamed me Icehead because I was from a fishing village in Canada. He’d call up and go: “Hey, Icy! I wrote a song. Ya wanna come and sing it?” He would usually get me to do a vocal to demonstrate a song to the artist, but he wrote Total Eclipse of the Heart as a duet for Bonnie and myself. He liked the role reversal of a female voice doing the gruff part and a man doing the pure angelic tenor.

Jim was a wonderful pianist but playing Eclipse for Bonnie in his apartment was the only time I’ve ever seen him play for somebody. He liked to be in the control room on the other side of the glass. We had a tremendous relationship. He’d go: “Is there a higher part?” And I’d go: “Only where dogs can hear, Jim.” He’d go, “Woof woof” and ask me to sing higher. He was like a vampire: he liked to work at night. I’d been singing for 10 hours when he asked me to do my lead part of the duet for Eclipse. So I’m singing, “Turn around bright eyes …” at 2am. It hurt that my name wasn’t on Eclipse, along with Bonnie’s, but I’d give anything to answer a call and hear those words again: “Hey, Icy. I wrote a song. Ya wanna come and sing it?”

• Total Eclipse of the Heart’s video has reached 1bn views on YouTube. A 40th anniversary vinyl version of Bonnie Tyler’s album Faster Than the Speed of Night is out now