Bringing Back Berlin
If you were anything like me and spent most of your high school years all gothy, cloaked in black velvet and generally depressed all the time, then you need no introduction to Lou Reed. But for those of you who spent your high school years happy and getting laid instead of getting high and not getting laid, then here’s what you need to know: Lou Reed was the first of what you would call indie rock today. He sang the songs that made you feel like he really understood just how shitty your life was.
Lou Reed started his career as the singer-song writer of the legendary band The Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground had very little success in their day, but their songs of bondage, transvestites and open obsession with drugs made them one of the most influential in later years. The are the type of band that current loser bands you hate pretend to like so they could cite them as a inspiration to get some indie rock cred. Lou Reed started a solo career in 1971 and he had his biggest hit with Walk On The Wild Side, which was a song about transsexuals, male prostitutes and blowjobs. All of this is to say that Lou Reed is a bad ass. Berlin is the new concert documentary by director Julian Schnabel who recently directed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s also the title of Lou Reed’s third solo album.
When Berlin was originally released it was a commercial and critical failure. The critics and fans alike were expecting something more like his last album Transformer, which was an upbeat glam-rock classic. What they got was Berlin, a rock opera about a woman named Caroline and her lover, who were addicted to drugs and spiraled down to the depths of depression. Lou shelved Berlin, and for over thirty-three years he never performed it live. Apparently, staging Berlin was talked about for thirty or so years until it finally became a reality in December 2006.
The story within Berlin is almost a tragic play unfolding through a sea of music and honestly crafted words. In the movie they bring the emotions through as simply as possible. Lou Reed is on stage with his guitar in hand; he sways and croons into a mic as the Brooklyn Youth Chorus elevate the audio beauty to a higher consciousness. Julian Schnabel inter-cuts the concert footage with footage of Caroline played by Emmanuelle Seigner; and the effect is spectral and haunting. Lou Reed, unlike many aging rock stars, still manages to sound like he did when he was young. Which is not say too much, because he always sang like an old man speaking open word poetry during bingo night at the church. The familiarity of it though takes me back to a younger version of myself.
Lou sings Caroline Says I and I’m back, listening to it again for the first time, while laying my head on my first girlfriend’s lap. It was a moment of perfection for only the duration of the song. You see the old man he is now on stage, but what comes out is still the musician you knew. He perhaps even sounds better, as the rearrangement of some of the songs just breath new life into something heard over and over before. If you feel the same way as I do about Lou Reed, then Berlin is something to be enjoyed by yourself in the dark, in your room, when you need to feel something. If you don’t know Lou Reed, you may appreciate the music but I fear that you just won’t feel the earth move beneath your feet.
