Lou Reed: Berlin
Director:
Julian Schnabel
Year: 2007
Rating: 8.0
I hadn't realized before that when Berlin was released
in 1973 the critics drove over it like three day old road kill and the general
audience didn't buy it either. Not that Lou Reed ever really sold well for
most of his career but this was coming off of Transformer which probably
had his most popular song ever Walk on the Wild Side. I wasn't into Lou Reed
back then - more a CSNY, Joni Mitchell kind of guy - but when I finally heard
the album 20 years or so later I was blown away. It is brilliant with a bunch
of great songs - Lady Day, Man of Good Fortune, Caroline Says I, How Do You
Think It Feels, Caroline Says II and Sad Song - with slashing guitar work
and lyrics so full of pain that you ached. Reed took us on a dark journey
into drugs, despair, physical abuse, misogyny and suicide. This was not a
Christmas album. It is a razor blade across your arm. Where it came from
within Reed I don't know but I had never heard anything like it before. Listening
to it again for the first time in years I still thought to myself - holy
shit.
So in 2007 he is persuaded by Julian Schnabel to perform the whole album
and film it. It is great. He finishes the film with three songs not on the
album - Candy Says, Rock Minuet which is about as perverse as a song can
get but sends the suicidal audience with a song to cheer them up - Sweet
Jane:
But, anyone who has a heart
Wouldn't want to turn around and break it
And anyone who ever played the part
He wouldn't want to turn around and fake it
My very brief contact with Lou Reed. Back around 2000 I was handing out flyers
to the New York Asian Film Festival that we were putting on. The New York
Film Forum was showing an Asian film that day so I thought I would go hand
them out in the line. Everyone politely accepting one - till I get to Lou
Reed in a black leather jacket of course - and I reach out to give him one.
He says "fuck off" and as I walked away I thought wow - Lou Reed just told
me to fuck off! How great is that.
