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Berlin

by

Lou Reed

 
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Berlin
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Avg: 4.0 (113 ratings)

A controversial, well-written and elaborately produced LP about a love affair gone terribly wrong

  • We Say...

    Review by Barry Walters

    We're living in a musical world that Lou Reed helped create, a world that, through his influence as solo artist and leader of the Velvet Underground, has experienced glam, punk, goth, grunge and more. And so it's almost inconceivable in today's America that a well-written and elaborately produced LP about a love affair gone terribly wrong would be met with near-universal scorn. But that's just what happened in 1973, when Lou Reed followed his 1972 glam-rock breakthrough Transformer with this dramatic downer.

    Unlike Reed's subsequent Metal Machine Music, Berlin wasn't meant as an anti-commercial gesture: Earlier that year, Cabaret made bisexuality in pre-WWII Germany an Oscar-approved subject, and Pink Floyd topped the charts with its madness-minded Dark Side of the Moon. Fresh from his Alice Cooper hit streak, producer Bob Ezrin joins Traffic's Steve Winwood, Cream's Jack Bruce and a slew of equally skilled session players who here merge glam with burlesque — a mix that would soon beget The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But Reed's tale of a relationship destroyed by depression, drug addiction, sexual compulsion and spousal abuse proved itself far more daunting for listeners just starting to process Watergate's shocks.

    After the title track sets a scene with sound effects and piano bar tinkling, "Lady Day" alternates musical themes reminiscent of Germany's Weimar Republic era with organ-heavy sturm und drang. The Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill connection goes even deeper during "Men of Good Fortune," when Reed juxtaposes observations of upper and lower classes, undercutting both with the distancing refrain, "I just don't care at all." It's with this detachment that his narrator Jim views his relationship with Caroline: She routinely cheats on him; he beats her black and blue, and it all goes downhill from there.

    With "Walk on the Wild Side," Reed proved it was possible to sneak even pill-popping, trick-turning transsexuals into the early '70s mainstream with the right playful hook. Here the album's catchiest phrase raises the toughest question: "All of her friends call her Alaska," he sings of his anti-heroine in "Caroline Says II." "When she takes speed, they laugh and ask her, 'What is in her mind?'" Berlin challenges because Reed never reveals how he feels about his characters. Why are they so destructive? He holds a mirror where the answer would usually sit.

  • They Say...

    Review by Mark Deming, All Music Guide

    Transformer and "Walk on the Wild Side" were both major hits in 1972, to the surprise of both Lou Reed and the music industry, and with Reed suddenly a hot commodity, he used his newly won clout to make the most ambitious album of his career, Berlin. Berlin was the musical equivalent of a drug-addled kid set loose in a candy store; the album's songs, which form a loose story line about a doomed romance between two chemically fueled bohemians, were fleshed out with a huge, boomy production (Bob Ezrin at his most grandiose) and arrangements overloaded with guitars, keyboards, horns, strings, and any other kitchen sink that was handy (the session band included Jack Bruce, Steve Winwood, Aynsley Dunbar, and Tony Levin). And while Reed had often been accused of focusing on the dark side of life, he and Ezrin approached Berlin as their opportunity to make The Most Depressing Album of All Time, and they hardly missed a trick. This all seemed a bit much for an artist who made such superb use of the two-guitars/bass/drums lineup with the Velvet Underground, especially since Reed doesn't even play electric guitar on the album; the sheer size of Berlin ultimately overpowers both Reed and his material. But if Berlin is largely a failure of ambition, that sets it apart from the vast majority of Reed's lesser works; Lou's vocals are both precise and impassioned, and though a few of the songs are little more than sketches, the best -- "How Do You Think It Feels," "Oh, Jim," "The Kids," and "Sad Song" -- are powerful, bitter stuff. It's hard not to be impressed by Berlin, given the sheer scope of the project, but while it earns an A for effort, the actual execution merits more of a B-.

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