It had been a while since I last heard "Berlin" in its entirety. I felt as though I was hearing it through a set of fresh ears, and my reaction to the music somewhat shocked me.
I heard an colourless pastiche of emotional decay. A ploddingly staged and unconvincingly acted two act tragedy, where the pain and sadness are presented for the composer's own amusement. I couldn't suspend my disbelief and immerse myself in the sentiments suggested by the lyrics. Maybe listening to it in the car was a mistake, this album demands a certain atmosphere that intercity traffic jams obviously don't provide.
These are the reasons why "Berlin" was, according to legend (I won't try to sort out truth from legend in this brief post), so hated and misunderstood in the 70's. It eventually became viewed as a masterpiece, the most depressing album ever, an album that can devastate one's mood for the remainder of the day more decisively than just about any record ever made. So these criticisms are nothing new, I just never agreed with them.
Sure, I have skipped down this path before, notably in my review of the "Berlin Live at St. Ann's Warehouse", where the music was dragged down to turgid levels of disinterested ineptitude "thanks" to a cringe-worthy and perfunctory Lou Reed performance. But I also think there's something deeper going on here.
I discovered "Berlin" in 1998, which in retrospect was its peak societal impact. Lou Reed was a living legend, still coasting off his reputation as an alternative rock pioneer and the good will generated from the Velvets reunion a few years earlier. Enough time had passed for a thorough re-evaluation of his more "difficult" albums such as this one and "Metal Machine Music". Before social media and the widespread influence of the TMZ-style internet, the culture was ripe for acceptance of art involving flawed celebrities and their horrifying secrets. The unsettling imagery in "Berlin" -- delinquent parents, and their shrieking children, all-consuming sorrow made worse through copious amounts of drugs -- could have been a commentary on Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's relationship. Or more specifically, pre-Twitter and pre-direct windows into thought processes of every major celeb on the planet, it could have been a commentary on how the public perceived their relationship. This week marked the 25th anniversary of Phil Hartmann's murder. In the 90's, the music was heavy and serious and debates over "Jeremy" and the impact of Marilyn Manson's shock/art was widespread. "Berlin" fit right in.
With the passage of another twenty five years, the culture has flipped. Hate and depravity get exposed more quickly, sometimes due to the perpetrators own ill-advised tweets. But "Berlin" had a voyeuristic appeal, all the behaviour it described was taking place in the seedy underground of a divided, isolated city, hidden from public eyes. That situation no longer exists. Berlin the city has been transformed immeasurably as well since 1973.
So what's left of "Berlin" the album, once the debauchery becomes routine? It enters a sort of limbo between unintentionally amusing (in terms of its orchestration and production) and vapid, tossed-off shock rock (in terms of its artistic merit ... "ooh, he mentioned drugs and suicide again, this is deeeep"). It should be crushingly sad, but instead comes across as disingenuous and not to be taken seriously.
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