Berlin Lou Reed

‘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 and arrangements overloaded with guitars, keyboards, horns, strings, and any other kitchen sink that was handy. And while Reed had often been accused of focusing on the dark side of life, he and producer Bob 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-guitarsbassdrums 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 are powerful, bitter stuff. It’s hard not to be impressed by ‘Berlin’, given the sheer scope of the project. – Mark Deming, AllMusic