Paul Thomas: Flashback to rock's greatest holy trinity

In his song 57 Channels (and Nothin On) Bruce Springsteen articulates the frequently heard grumble that the more television we have access to, the less there is that's actually worth watching.

Although not a big TV viewer, I question that view. The technological advances in what's now referred to as home entertainment haven't just delivered more of the same. Somewhere on those 57 channels there's something for practically everyone.

Take J2. J2 is the TV equivalent of a classic hits radio station and those of us of a certain age can be guaranteed a jolt of some kind whenever we check in - perhaps a reminder that what we fondly regard as rock'n'roll's golden age spawned just as much dross as the benighted decades since.

There's nothing like watching the Moody Blues perform Nights in White Satin to make a man feel A, his age and B, embarrassed about some of the claims he's made on behalf of his generation over the years.

This is pop/rock at its most bloated and pompous: the vast orchestra, the flautist, the reverential vocal that approaches a jumble of undergrad banalities as if it was a Shakespearian soliloquy.

But J2 also offers (although Sky does a lamentable job of drawing our attention to it) the outstanding Classic Albums series that looks at the making of such fabled records as U2's The Joshua Tree and Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell.

Derided by some critics as the apogee of Bogan rock, a collection of overblown anthems performed by a demented freak, Bat out of Hell (1977) was actually a one-off original that arose from a convergence of two distinct strands in American popular music and the fortuitous collaboration of three of rock's most engaging figures.

As the programme relates, the album's eventual huge commercial success and iconic status followed several years of hostile rejection by an industry paralysed by its adherence to last year's formulae.

The songs were written by Jim Steinman, a precocious youth who'd gained a toehold on Broadway by virtue of a three-hour rock opera he'd written while still at high school. The young Steinman looked like a Jewish version of the Doors' Jim Morrison; in middle age, with his flowing white locks and moon face and in leathers and shades, he looks like an eccentric old trout who's just bought herself a Harley Davidson.

He met Meat Loaf on a Broadway show. By the time he'd got used to calling him "Meat", Steinman realised he'd found the perfect vehicle for his epic narratives that managed to be simultaneously obsessive and ironic. According to their producer Todd Rundgren, Meat Loaf was to Steinman what Christian was to Cyrano de Bergerac.

Steinman's method was to take the preoccupations of the alienated suburban teenager and push them as far as they'd go and no one could carry a song closer to the edge of reason than Meat Loaf. Paradise by the Dashboard Light, perhaps the ultimate expression of their synergy, "took car sex to the extreme where it ruins people's lives."

It took them a year and countless rejections to find a producer but they struck gold with the legendary Rundgren who was drawn to the project by its almost wilful originality. He produced it using his own money, turning a collection of rambling show tunes into a funny, feverish and perhaps even heroic rock'n'roll concept album.

However, Warner Brothers, which owned Rundgren's label, declined to bring out the album and other record companies followed their lead. As Steinman ruefully observed, "If there's a market out there for explosive Wagnerian anthems sung by a 350 pound behemoth with a huge voice, we've got it covered."

Eventually an industry veteran signed the record after listening to the first 20 seconds of You Took the Words Right out of my Mouth, describing it as the greatest intro he'd ever heard.

They toured relentlessly to promote the album, an ordeal Meat Loaf claims almost killed him although he looks far healthier now than he did then. The momentum built and built ("We knocked the Bee Gees out of number one in Australia") and worldwide sales now exceed 30 million.

For those seeking more elevated fare, over on the History Channel there's a documentary on the poet Byron. Except it isn't very elevated, more like literary history as brought to you by Channel E! The programme dwells at such length on Byron's debauchery and pushes the poet/rock star analogy so hard, you'd swear his greatest achievement was to live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.

We're all aware that Byron was mad, bad and dangerous to know - although the author of that remark, Lady Caroline Lamb, was herself a malevolent fruitcake - but he was also a great poet, not that you'd know it from watching this documentary.

After Byron's death, his friends burned his memoirs but he left behind a substantial body of work that surely warrants as much examination as his love-life.

The programme details his exploitation of his wife but she knew what she was letting herself in for. As Byron, who was nothing if not self-aware, said as she rested her head on his chest, "You should have a softer pillow than my heart."