Lou Reed's Berlin was released in 1973, just after Transformer and just before Sally Can't Dance, two records that to this day remain Reed's most commercially successful. Berlin's legend of failure was born almost immediately (Rolling Stone: "There are certain records that are so patently offensive that one wishes to take some kind of physical vengeance on the artists that perpetrate them"; Robert Christgau: "Will Lou lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it?"). Even Metal Machine Music, released two years later, wouldn't be enough to cleanse the general antagonistic shock of what people at the time took to be Reed's worst album, ever.
Still, in retrospect, it's a funny album to pick on. A loose song cycle (it turned out that many of the Berlin tracks actually dated back to Reed's days in the Velvet Underground, and "Berlin" was a song on Reed's first album) about an unhappy couple, Jim and Caroline, living in the titular city, the record's absurdly depressing but hardly offensive. The characters do drugs, domestic violence, custody battles; eventually, Caroline kills herself. Berlin ends with Jim idly staring at a photograph of the dead mother of his children. Bob Ezrin, who would soon produce Pink Floyd's The Wall and who, at 23, had already produced Alice Cooper, brought a characteristically lush orchestration to the proceedings, but then again, Berlin was clearly a melodrama. Ezrin and Reed had their eyes on a stage adaptation before the record even came out; Berlin's reviews (and sales numbers) ended that project. To listen to Berlin now is to be basically mystified as to what everyone was so upset about, besides maybe its lack of a "Walk on the Wild Side Pt. II".
Reed shrugged it off, and went on to do things worthy of his audience's newfound hatred. Berlin, meanwhile, crept back into style. By the 1980s, Julian Schnabel was getting divorced to it, and by December 2006, the collective entreaties of various arts luminaries around New York finally led Reed to revive his second-most reviled creation for a four-night run at Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse. Ezrin was back, to conduct; Sharon Jones, Antony Hegarty, and the entire Brooklyn Youth Chorus were on hand to provide backing vocals. Schnabel designed the set, and his daughter made a film to be projected against the back of it. The event was stoked by adulatory, apocalyptic press coverage ("Sometimes called the most depressing album ever made…" began one The New York Times paragraph) and an improbably beautiful week of melancholy, late fall weather. I attended on the year's last non-holiday Sunday.
The mood, of course, was reverent, but what I remember best were the evening's various breaks in character: Reed finishing a guitar solo and sighing into the mic, "Oh, back into the land of depression now"; Ezrin, ecstatic by the post-concert exit, excitedly calling Berlin "music to cut your wrists by" even as he couldn't stop grinning. Applause all around. This past July, Schnabel brought out a film of the performances and now, a tidy two years after the concerts, Matador's releasing the soundtrack, officially making a one time 21st Century revival of a 1973 rehabbed classic into a modest cottage industry.
Berlin, the original, is a wonderfully claustrophobic, textured, and wandering suite of unwaveringly dark songs. It has an indelible arc-- from the muted "Berlin", through the false dawn of "Caroline Says Pt II", all the way to the all-time underrated "Sad Song", which is simultaneously one of the most overblown and most moving songs Reed ever wrote. (Ezrin's hand is, uh, visible: "Sad Song" is a sublimely bastardized Pink Floyd song, from the psych solos to the children's chorus at the end, and not the least bit worse for it.) At a trim 10 songs, Berlin casts an undeniable spell: a tiny poison pill, a maudlin little melodrama.
Berlin, the musical/film soundtrack/live album, occupies perhaps an even more specialized niche: a time capsule of a time capsule, a memory engine for those who were there, a document of four woozy nights of goodwill, friendship, and adulation. The undeniable truth about the Berlin performances were that they were fundamentally celebratory-- Reed had fun, Ezrin, Antony, Jones, and the kids had fun, and the audience, as telegraphed by this recording's roaring approval and reverent silences, definitely had fun. The cameos, minimal during the performance, are barely audible here: Sharon Jones battling Reed on "Oh, Jim"; Antony warbling backups on "Caroline Says, Pt. II"; blistering guitar solos from Steve Hunter, who joined Ezrin as the other veteran of the original Berlin sessions, on nearly every song. Reed's line readings aren't sarcastic, but they are crooked-- like every "Don't Look Back"-type performance I've seen in the past few years, it's obvious even as Reed's enjoying the ceremony he's trying to dodge the predictability that comes from playing an old album, in full, without deviation. There are some uniquely embarrassing moments, too: the exceptionally ecstatic audience surge that goes up at the intro to "How Do You Think It Feels" is almost definitely the sound of 800 or so people thinking they're about to hear "Walk on the Wild Side", which starts in more or less the same way.
Alas, that one was not to be. Reed speeds through "Candy Says" (or rather, Antony does), "Rock Minuet", and "Sweet Jane", and then, exeunt. It's exhilarating to hear Berlin back and alive, but then again, it was more exhilarating to see it back and alive: an option now available to whoever cares to pick up Schnabel's DVD. It's a miracle Reed was able to turn one of the most hermetic albums of all time into a communal experience, but Live at St. Ann's was also a one-time-only slight of hand: Berlin will forever be a record best enjoyed alone.
