Fifty years on, why Lou Reed's Berlin remains one of the bleakest albums ever made

The 10-song cycle about an abusive marriage was a commercial flop but earned a cult following

Released 50 years ago, Lou Reed's 1973 album Berlin developed a cult following. AFP

It takes a lot to feel sympathy for major record label executives.

But spare a moment for the suits at RCA Records when the late Lou Reed presented Berlin in 1973.

On the back of big-selling 1971 album Transformer, home to the gorgeous orchestral ballad Perfect Day and snarky rocker Vicious, Berlin was meant to cement Reed’s place, alongside David Bowie, as the face of a new rock sound both polished and adventurous.

A healthy budget was assigned and Reed decamped to London's Morgan Studios with Canadian producer Bob Ezrin (considered a safe pair of hands after his work with Alice Cooper and Aerosmith) to create an album RCA Records planned as the ideal follow up to Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, released by the label six months before Berlin.

“The expectation was that I was going to do something very commercial with him. Sort of Alice Cooper-ish, real mainstream,” Ezrin recalled in a 2006 interview with The New York Times.

“In reality I had become mesmerised by the poetry and by the art of Lou.

“Maybe I lost sight of my mandate. Honestly, I can look back and say I probably didn’t do what I was hired to do.”

While a 10-song cycle about an abusive marriage was, perhaps, not on the label’s ideal playlist, it represented a creative breakthrough for Reed.

Ezrin was right in noting Berlin’s literary aspirations.

While visceral, Reed’s lyricism at the time was often limited to rough character sketches and vignettes.

The creative control provided by Transformer's success allowed him to lean fully into his love of contemporary poetry, particularly the work of gritty writers Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski.

Hence in Berlin we follow the tragic tale of Caroline and Jim, a combustible couple living on society’s margins.

They induce the worst in each other. Harsh words escalate to domestic violence and eventual dissolution of their marriage.

The authorities take the children away from Caroline and she eventually takes her own life in despair.

Narrated from Jim’s point of view, Berlin's bleak subject matter is tempered through its ornate and breathtakingly beautiful instrumentation and arrangements.

While named after the German capital, the album is also loosely inspired by the city.

Reed reportedly described Berlin’s divided status at the time, a suitable metaphor for his disintegrating characters.

Another reason for the geographic header could be the album’s musical nod to European cabaret shows.

When the mournful piano segues into the opening title track, you imagine Reed appearing from behind a velvet curtain to begin the proceedings.

"In Berlin, by the wall/ You were five foot 10 inches tall/ It was very nice," Reed says in trademark conversational tone and cadence.

"We were in a small cafe/ You could hear the guitars play/It was very nice, it was paradise.”

The next two songs are character profiles.

Lady Day introduces us to Caroline, a failed club singer living in a squalid hotel down the street with “greenish walls”.

You don’t need the lyrics to realise she is in bad shape: the percussion is pensive and the piano is stabbing and staggered.

In Men of Good Fortune, we encounter Jim at a dive-bar brooding about his lot in life: “Men of good fortune often cause empires to fall / While men of poor beginnings often can't do anything at all.”

That reflective mood, supported by an almost jazzy backdrop of shuffling drums and piano, is occasionally disturbed by brawny guitar riffs.

It hints at Jim’s simmering rage and a nihilism that would go on to pique the interest of Caroline.

Caroline Says 1 – the first of a two-part suite – blends a barrelling rock arrangement with some sweeping strings.

The lyrics detail the toxic dynamic of the relationship.

Caroline emotionally abuses Jim, demanding “she wants a man, not just a boy,” while he takes this in his stride because he “thought I could take it all”.

As the emotional tension ratchets up, so does the tempo.

Songs such as How Do You Think It Feels and Oh Jim take on a more muscular rock sound and potent flourishes of brass.

It all leads us to the devastating trio of tracks concluding Berlin.

The Kids surveys the mental breakdown Carolyn experiences after her children are removed by the authorities.

The eeriness of the guitar belies the emptiness of the home as Reed croons in lullaby fashion: “They're taking her children away / Because they said she was not a good mother.”

The Bed boasts another achingly beautify vocal melody as Reed describes, almost in journalistic fashion, Carolyn’s suicide.

Ironically, some relief is found in the finale Sad Song.

Featuring a lovely choral arrangement, the lyrics has Jim reflecting on his time with Carolyn as they move from tender affection (“She looks like Mary, Queen of Scots / She seemed very regal to me") to despair about the inevitability of it all.

Released to relative fanfare, Berlin was savaged by the mainstream music press, with magazine Rolling Stone, in a notorious review, declaring the album "a disaster".

Despite its poor sales, Reed would stubbornly showcase the songs in concerts (albeit in a more stripped-down rock format) and new generations of artists would go on to be drawn to Berlin’s experimental and ambient soundscapes and challenging wordplay.

Gloomy singers Nick Cave and Patti Smith cited Berlin's storytelling elements as an influence in their own work.

American filmmaker Julian Schnabel loved the album so much he directed the 2008 concert film Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse, in which Reed performed the album in its entirety.

Fifty years on, the potency of Berlin has never dimmed.