Lou Reed’s 1973 album Berlin is a con­cept album relat­ing the tale of a doomed woman named Car­o­line liv­ing in the epony­mous city. The term “con­cept album,” then and now, invokes imme­di­ate con­de­scen­sion from fans and crit­ics alike, call­ing to mind the pro­gres­sive rock excesses of 1970s mega­bands The Who (Tommy and Quadrophe­nia) and Yes (Tales from Topo­graphic Oceans). The poet and arty down­town Man­hat­tan­ite Reed might have bet­ter served him­self by refer­ring to Berlin as some­thing more fancy-sounding, per­haps a “song cycle.”

Reed’s pre­vi­ous album Trans­former was a great com­mer­cial suc­cess, debut­ing the endur­ing hits Satel­lite of Love, Per­fect Day, and Walk on the Wild Side. To fol­low it up with some­thing like Berlin may have been loaded with artis­tic integrity, but was ask­ing for trou­ble in terms of mak­ing a liv­ing. I recall read­ing that enough mate­r­ial was recorded for it to be a double-lp, but it was edited down to a sin­gle disc before release (I can’t find a source for this fac­toid online, but I believe it was related in the liner notes of his 1992 ret­ro­spec­tive boxed set Between Thought and Expres­sion). Pro­duced by Bob Ezrin (whose con­cept album cre­den­tials also include Pink Floyd’s The Wall), it was a com­mer­cial dis­as­ter at the time. So, cursed from the begin­ning, the full stu­dio ver­sion has appar­ently never been released.

“Car­o­line says / While bit­ing her lip / Life is meant to be more than this”

In ret­ro­spect, Reed now seems to have been com­pelled to flee from com­mer­cial suc­cess, or at the very least was bound and deter­mined not to repeat him­self. Reed’s other infa­mous com­mer­cial dis­as­ter Metal Machine Music was another delib­er­ate provo­ca­tion: even the most open minded musi­col­o­gist might char­i­ta­bly char­ac­ter­ize it as ear­split­ting noise. But Berlin is dif­fer­ent, hated more for its tone and sub­ject mat­ter than its sound. Sev­eral of the songs are lovely, but wow is the com­plete work depress­ing, full of anger, venom, resent­ment, death, despair, and guilt. The song “The Kids” is espe­cially har­row­ing, end­ing with a tape of chil­dren wailing.

Over time, the album was even­tu­ally redis­cov­ered. One of those reap­prais­ing Berlin was no less than artist and film­maker Julian Schn­abel. So it came to be, that 33 years after its release, Schn­abel pro­posed to Reed that Berlin really ought to be a film. Schn­abel is obvi­ously attracted to artists ded­i­cated to their work with utter con­vic­tion: rev­o­lu­tion­ary New York Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in the epony­mous biopic, the gay poet Reinaldo Are­nas in Castro-era Cuba in Before Night Falls, and the par­a­lyzed writer Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Div­ing Bell and the But­ter­fly (read The Dork Report review). Berlin’s DVD bonus fea­tures include a brief con­ver­sa­tion with Reed and Schn­abel on Elvis Costello’s show Spec­ta­cle, in which Schn­abel describes his attrac­tion to the cin­ema from the per­spec­tive of a painter: he rev­er­ently refers to the canvas-like movie screen as “The Rectangle.”

Some­thing that only peo­ple who’ve seem him live would know is that Reed is a great gui­tar player. He’s also vis­i­bly in sur­pris­ingly good shape for a for­mer junkie (sorry, but it’s true). Does he prac­tice yoga? Reed in per­for­mance is supremely cool and detached, but some star­tlingly real emo­tion comes through in his vocal deliv­ery; he spits out the lines “they took her chil­dren away” from the song “The Kids” with real venom.

Antony dances the rock minuet

Orig­i­nal gui­tarist Steve Hunter rejoined Reed for the Berlin tour, and can barely con­tain his plea­sure, despite the grim sub­ject mat­ter. Bob Ezrin con­ducts with great enthu­si­asm, but oddly, he seems to be fac­ing the drum­mer, away from the choir and wood­winds. One of my favorite bassists, Fer­nando Saun­ders, doesn’t really get to shine, but per­haps it was my sound sys­tem that couldn’t do him jus­tice. Julian Schnabel’s daugh­ter Lola directed film clips pro­jected dur­ing the per­for­mance, star­ring Emmanuelle Seigner as Caroline.

So Reed finally got a chance to present Berlin live, as a whole. Now the once-denigrated work has become a world tour, a the­atri­cal fea­ture film, a live album, and a DVD. Reed is now con­sid­ered a New York deity, not the erratic heroin addict he was back in the day. His career is far from over and there’s plenty of time for more drama, but could this be his ulti­mate revenge?

The encore includes a spe­cial treat, a lovely ver­sion of Rock Min­uet sung by Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the John­sons) in his oth­er­worldly voice. Rock Min­uet was not from the orig­i­nal album, but a spe­cial request from Schn­abel, who rightly felt it belonged. But it’s fol­lowed by a bum­mer: a desul­tory per­for­mance of the Vel­vet Under­ground stan­dard Sweet Jane. It’s a let­down that after the emo­tion­ally intense pro­ceed­ings, that Reed seems truly bored here and just walks through a song he’s prob­a­bly played hun­dreds if not thou­sands of times.

Offi­cial movie site: www.berlinthefilm.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.