The Albums That Matter: Berlin

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Berlin

Lou Reed

1973

Berlin is probably one of those albums that it more interesting to discuss than it is to actually listen to. The music isn't bad, but I've never been the biggest fan of Lou Reed's solo work. Honestly, I really only downloaded this album and couple other ones in 2013 because Lou Reed died, and there was such an outpouring of critical affection that I just had to hear for myself. This is a recipe for disappointment. No way an album like Berlin is going to stand up to the postmortem adoration. Still, there's a decent amount to unpack for this album.

First and foremost, it is basically a rock opera, though surprisingly it doesn't seem to be advertised as such all that often, from what I can tell. The songs tell a tale of a fraught relationship between characters Jim and Caroline, a cycle of domestic abuse, infidelity, violence, and ultimately suicide. It is unflinching, and brutally unpoetic. Reed has explained that Jim is a stand-in for himself, and Caroline for his now-ex-wife Bettye Kronstad, which is pretty scary. If the music isn't necessarily as compelling as it could be, then Berlin at least gives me an insight into who Lou Reed was, and it ain't pretty. If "Sad Song" is meant to be autobiographical, then a line like "Somebody else would have broken both of her arms," used as some limp justification for all the shit he's done, comes off as fucking horrifying.

I know, I know, we can't take it literal. If I were writing a rock opera about a declining relationship, I probably would be just as exaggeratedly self-critical, so I can appreciate all this for what it is. I can appreciate the drama that props up the typical Lou Reed musical fare.

Berlin was produced by a guy named Bob Erzin. I did not recognize the name, but I definitely recognized some of the same artistic flare from another album—The Wall. Sure enough, it looks like he co-produced that album too. (I am so proud of myself for making the connection just based on the music alone, but there's no way to prove now that I'm not bullshitting.) He layers on the orchestral flourishes thick on Berlin, and it really helps for some of the songs ("Caroline Says I," "Sad Song," and so on).

I can also appreciate the ballsiness it must have taken to release such an album in this particular context. Lou Reed had just released Transformer seven months prior, a.k.a. the album with "Walk on the Wild Side" (a.k.a. the only Lou Reed song that has made it into the WMGK Classic Rock Canon). The suits wanted Reed to capitalize on his new cultural stature and create an album that would generate some more of that sweet profit. Instead, he made Berlin, a depressing album that features plenty of death and misogyny but not much in the way of a hit radio single. I love the "fuck you" of such a gesture. Fuck expectations, Lou Reed made the album he wanted to make, and even if it's not my personal favorite album of all time, I can definitely appreciate that.

Critics certainly didn't appreciate it at the time. Rolling Stone infamously called it a "disaster" in its review. This is only noteworthy due to the fact that the critical perception has changed dramatically in the decades since (true, possibly even more so because Lou Reed is dead now). I know that I didn't like Berlin when I first heard it six and a half years ago, but my opinion toward it has softened significantly in the years since. Berlin is one of those albums that proves that forming an opinion after the first, fifth, or maybe even twentieth listen of an album is a dangerous fucking game. There's always more to uncover, even for an album has unsubtle as Berlin.

Berlin is not the album that is going to turn me from Lou Reed skeptic to Lou Reed adorer, but man, did I enjoy thinking about this album throughout this week.


If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "How Do You Think It Feels"




Stray Observations

• I suppose you can't blame Reed for being economical with his songwriting. He tends to use older songs of his and repurpose them for the current album. I recognized "Caroline Says II" as a redo of the old Velvet Underground song "Stephanie Says" (pumped up with more domestic violence). "Oh Jim" is apparently a VU song as well, previously called "Oh Gin." Seems cheap on the surface, but they're his songs, so you really can't blame him. (Come to think of it, I bet Patrick Stickles admires this about Lou Reed, and his similar tendencies to reuse songs on subsequent albums feel like an homage to his hero.)
• The title track is the worst one on here, but I acknowledge that it exists to set the scene (and yes, this is also a repurposing of an old song, this time "Berlin" from his first solo album—Reed figured that there was enough story in that song that he could make it into an entire album, and so he did).
• As we already discussed, there's a lot in songs like "Sad Song" that sounds like The Wall, but for me, the opening of that song is always gonna remind me now of the Record Club pick The Order of Nature.
• Naturally, Berlin received the full orchestral treatment when the critical resurgence occurred. There's a concert film and live album documenting the experience. I'm kind of surprised that there hasn't been a Broadway musical yet.
• ALBUM COVER: I wish every Wikipedia page had a section for "album art," but alas, sometimes I have to go hunting. Some random review on some random ass blog mentioned that the art was by "Pacific Eye and Ear." Internet hunting led me to find out that Pacific Eye and Ear was an artist studio created back in the day by a guy named Ernie Cefalu, who did a bunch of other album covers. Googling him lead me to his goddamn Facebook page, where he wrote that "I remember talking with Lou on the phone shortly after he received a finished package. He was tearing-up as he thanked me for the 'most beautiful album cover he ever had.'" Is it beautiful? I dunno, sure. There's the lyrics to the title track, there's Reed playing guitar, there's a man and a woman who I guess are Jim and Caroline, there's broken glass that maybe Caroline used to kill herself. "Beautiful"? Maybe not, but I could definitely see being intrigued if I had picked this one up off a shelf as a teenager.
• ALBUM NAME: It's worth mentioning here that Lou Reed had never been to Berlin before releasing this album.
• CHARTS: It hit #7 on the UK charts but could only manage #98 on the US Billboard 200. It peaked on 12/1/1973 (exactly fifteen years before I was born), when Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was #1. (There is some top shelf material up there on the chart on that date.) (Also, obviously, no songs hit the Billboard Hot 100. There are no hit singles on this album.)
• Let's talk about "The Kids." This shit is brutal, due to subject matter and to the sounds of actual children crying. If the character Jim is doing his damnedest to prove that Caroline is an unfit mother, then having the children taken away by social services is the most succinct way to do it. I've heard children cry like that before when they are removed from the home—it's as brutal on the album as it is in real life.
• Let's talk more about "The Kids." Bob Erzin had his own kids perform on the track. It is unknown how Erzin got the reaction out of them, but according to one urban legend, he told them that their mother had been killed in a car crash. That just has to be bullshit, no father could possibly be that cruel.
• Let's talk even more about "The Kids." I'm typing this at five in the morning, listening to the album as I do so. I'm typing as fast as I can before Willow wakes up. You better believe that "The Kids" tricked me into thinking that she was awake.
• A few of the songs mention a third character called "The Waterboy." I lose the plot when he is brought up—he is apparently either Caroline's lover, or an alter ego of Jim? I can't really make heads or tails of it (no one said rock operas ever made sense). There's a band out of Scotland called the Waterboys, who took their name from this character. I've heard so many good things about them and have been meaning to check them out for so long, so this revelation might finally get me to do it.
• Took me an embarrassingly long time to find this tweet.
• Add this to my growing collection of blog posts that I banged out at five in the morning because I didn't know what else to write and I'm still hanging onto the idea of blogging every single day, even if it kills me.
• The drums as the beginning of "Oh Jim" are good; the sudden switch to shitty acoustic blues halfway through "Oh Jim" is bad. Sorry, couldn't leave ya hanging on my "Oh Jim" hot takes!!!!!!!!!!!!

NEXT TIME: The Best Little Secrets Are Kept by Louis XIV