In his long career, Lou Reed has been more influential than successful, one of the founding fathers of garage rock, noise rock, art rock, and punk rock, unafraid to make intelligent, challenging music that did more than push the envelope—he tore up the envelope and set it on fire. By the time the Velvet Underground was starting to earn recognition for its revolutionary role in creating a new paradigm for rock ‘n’roll, Reed was already making solo albums. His post-Velvet albums have ranged from haphazard to brilliant, from commercially successful to commercial disasters. Recently, his most controversial albums—Metal Machine Music and Berlin—have come under renewed scrutiny, finally recognized for their genius.

Since its release and commercial failure in 1973, Reed has said little about Berlin, but again, anyone approaching the album without preconceptions should be able to recognize the album’s primal power and dark beauty. Like many, at first I was repelled by the raw, cynical emotion of Berlin. In the feel good era of Tapestry, Sweet Baby James, and the first Eagles album, Berlin came on like a speed freak tossing a cup of piss into the dreamy psychedelic punch bowl at a hippie slumber party. The first time I listened to it, I was unable to get through the first side of the record. I was going to toss it out. Then a friend of mine sat me down and asked me to give a careful listen to “The Kids.” I couldn’t believe my ears. Reed’s matter-of-fact portrayal of infidelity, jealousy, and rage was delivered so minimally and with such authority that I was immobilized. The track slowly builds to a quiet fury with Jack Bruce’s zooming bass and a tinkling acoustic guitar the only accompaniment until the end of the song. Then the sound of screaming children crying “mommy, mommmmyyyy…” crashes out of the mix—it’s still hard to listen to today. And that’s not even the most powerful song on the album.

I thanked my friend for opening my ears to Berlin’s ability to dredge up the primordial emotional muck of our lives, and went on to give the rest of the album a careful listen. Oddly enough, Reed doesn’t play electric guitar on the record. Steve Hunter, who almost stole the show with his guitar work on the version of “Sweet Jane” that opens Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, is the main guitar player. The session band features Jack Bruce, Steve Winwood, Aynsley Dunbar, Tony Levin, the Brecker Brothers on sax and trumpet, a string section, and an overdubbed choir made up of producer Bob Ezrin, Dennis Ferrante, Steve Hyden, Elizabeth Marca, Dick Wagner, and Reed. Hearing the choral parts made me realize that Reed could indeed sing “properly” if he wanted to; his sing-speak vocals were a choice, a device to make his songs more visceral and dramatic.

The studio version of Berlin may be Reed’s best album, one of the forgotten masterpieces of modern music. Its unrelenting vision of drugged-out hedonism, violence, envy, and narcissism run amok will remain timely for years to come. Critics have called it the most depressing album of all time, but it’s also a bracingly honest portrait of people trapped by their basest instincts.

After the cacophonous opening of drunken voices and birthday party music, Allan MacMillan’s cocktail piano supports a gentle, melancholy vocal from Reed as he sings “Berlin” to set the scene for the carnage to come. “Men of Good Fortune” is a bitter, envy-soaked ballad, a nihilistic meditation on the struggle between the rich and poor that’s all tension and no release. “Caroline Says I” is the opening emotional salvo. Caroline tells her lover/husband that she’ll do whatever she pleases with whoever she pleases. Reed plays the part of a lover in denial, although the bitter truth comes through in his vocals. “How Do You Think It Feels” is one of the best melodies Reed’s ever composed; it’s one of the great drug songs of the era. “Feels” strips the glamour away from drug use in its portrayal of a meth user crashing after a long run. Hunter’s screaming guitar and the sideshow horn section convey the tooth-grinding, lip-chewing, sweaty terror of withdrawal.

“Caroline Says II” shows the marriage/relationship falling apart. Reed sings, “Caroline says, as she gets up off the floor, ‘Why is it that you beat me?’” The woman who threw her infidelities in her lover’s face is now bewildered when he loses control. The song’s slow, understated music and Reed’s sympathetic vocal lead into “The Kids”, possibly the most acidic track. The husband calls his wife a “miserable, rotten slut” and delights in the pain she’s feeling as her children are taken away by the German equivalent of Child Protective Services.

“The Bed” finds the husband/lover going through the wreckage of the apartment after his wife has killed herself. Its quiet drama is in keeping with his shocked realization of mortality. In the background, the chorus wails softly like the ghosts of the damned. He tries to be sad, but Reed sings the part with a mix of relief and shocked resignation as the haunted voices of the dead swirl through the mix. “Sad Song” finds the surviving spouse torn between nostalgia, rage, and depression. “Somebody else would have broken both of her arms,” he sings between the chanted lament, “sad song, sad song.” The strings and pedal steel rising in the background sound both liberating and mocking as the album fades out.

In December 2006, Reed performed Berlin live for five nights at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn while director Julian Schnabel filmed the results (released in 2008). In addition to the released recording, Berlin: Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse, there is a DVD of the concert available, but you don’t need the visuals to have a visceral experience. Reed’s voice is older and less tuneful than it was in 1973, but his singing on the live version has a subtle wallop that’s missing on the studio version. He also plays guitar with an intensity befitting the subject matter and rearranges the order of the songs. With a live orchestra led by Bob Ezrin and Hal Willner, Steve Hunter on second guitar, and a chorus that includes Antony from Antony and the Johnsons, Reed resurrects his masterwork.

“Berlin” is fittingly gloomy and minimal, and Reed’s vocal is barely a whisper. “Lady Day” is tougher than the studio version, with Reed rephrasing the lyric and dropping a prickly guitar solo into the arrangement that increases the song’s tension. “Men of Good Fortune” has more dynamic rage, from a whisper to a scream, with the guitar expressing the wrath that was only implied in 1973. “Oh, Jim” moves up in the sequence with an extended, almost tranquil guitar and drum intro; then Reed comes in with a bitter vocal and a long outro that recalls the mellower side of his work with the Velvets. On “Caroline Says II”, Reed sounds close to tears, and the performance is understated with a touch of gospel in the backing vocals. “The Kids” is also subdued, with cello and forlorn flute adding to the hopeless feeling of the song. It’s more tragic than the reading on the ’73 album. Reed delivers the last verse in a surprisingly hushed voice.

“Caroline Says I” follows “Oh, Jim”, sounding bright and breezy—it’s a jarring juxtaposition. Reed sounds almost jaunty, with none of the anger or confusion of the original. “How Do You Think It Feels” gets a spontaneous ovation from the crowd. Putting the big drug song next to the suicide song gives both tunes an extra element of drama. Reed’s “Feels” solo is full of distorted bent notes and growling passion, and the live version ends with a squall of guitar noise that has the crowd on its feet. Reed croons “The Bed” with tenderness and a weary resignation that the ’73 version lacked. Hunter duplicates the guitar line he played on the studio version of “Sad Song” and Reed sings quietly, putting all of his emotion into the long, noisy solo he plays during the coda.

For the encores, Reed plays “Candy Says” on electric guitar with Antony Hegarty supplying most of the vocals. When Hegarty sings, “What do you think I’d see / If I could walk away from me?” it’s a beautiful, chilling moment. Reed drops another grinding, noisy solo into “Rock Minuet”, a bleak tale of anonymous sex and murder. It’s not a bad tune, but its explicit violence lacks the power of Berlin’s subtlety. The album ends with what may
be Reed’s best pop tune, “Sweet Jane.” Hunter plays some of the lines he used on Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal and Reed sounds positively exuberant; it incongruently ends the live Berlin on an invigorating high note. Berlin: Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse is interesting, but the studio version has a hermetically sealed power befitting its themes of alienation and helplessness. Berlin really is a record more than a performance.

Watch: “Caroline Says II” [at youtube.com]

Tags: Lou Reed, Berlin, Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse, The Velvet Underground, Antony Hegarty 

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