‘Berlin’: The classic song Lou Reed released on two albums
In August 1970, Lou Reed left his foundational group, The Velvet Underground, to fend for themselves. He returned to Long Island, where he worked at his father’s tax accounting firm as a typist, purportedly earning just $40 a week. Understandably, he didn’t take much to the weekly grind and returned to music in 1971 after signing a solo recording contract with RCA.
Reed’s first project as a solo artist was his uneven eponymous debut of May 1972. Despite its gaudy sleeve design and poor commercial response, the album was a listenable convergence of loose ends from the Underground, such as ‘I Can’t Stand It’ and ‘Lisa Says’ and newly developed concepts.
Slotted inconspicuously at the end of the first side is one of the album’s more intriguing moments, ‘Berlin’. Rick Wakeman’s piano introduces the refined song with dynamic tempo changes, textural depth and some more immersive lyrics courtesy of Reed. In a foreshadowing of David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, it hints at a love story “by the wall” but leaves much unsaid.
Later that year, Bowie famously repaid his artistic debt to the Velvet Underground masterminds by offering his and Mick Ronson’s production skills to Transformer. With hits like ‘Perfect Day’ and ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, it was a bonafide slam dunk, warding off debt collectors for the foreseeable.
When Reed sobered from this success to humour a follow-up, his producer Bob Ezrin had a suggestion. Although Reed had conceived ‘Berlin’ as a one-off track, Ezrin heard it as just a fragment of a broader narrative. Hooked on the idea, Reed challenged himself to imagine the full story and flesh out a concept album to be named Berlin.
Reed’s characteristically macabre rock opera arrived on October 5th, 1973. Kicking off proceedings was a re-recorded version of ‘Berlin’ with a more stripped-back, dive bar ambience and Allan Macmillan on the keys. Here, we’re introduced to Ezrin’s less refined approach to production, which compliments the story’s tone throughout the album.
As the rest of the album ensues, highlight tracks like ‘Lady Day’, ‘Men of Good Fortune’ and ‘Caroline Says II’ pin out a rather bleak tapestry. We learn that the lovers “by the wall” are Caroline and Jim, two drug addicts in an abusive, moribund relationship. In ‘The Kids’, child services come to take their screaming children away, leading to Caroline’s tragic suicide in ‘The Bed’ and Jim’s pained moment of reflection in ‘Sad Song’.
Listen to Lou Reed’s masterpiece rock opera, Berlin, below.
