Lou Reed’s Berlin

In 1973, fresh from the mainstream success of “Transformer,” legendary musician Lou Reed defied expectations by releasing an album that would confound critics and listeners alike. “Berlin,” a startlingly bleak, uncompromising concept record about the toxic relationship between two addicts on a downward spiral, was initially met with hostility—only to gradually be reclaimed as a singular work of haunting power and poetry. Over the following decades, Reed rarely revisited material from the album—until 2006, when he performed it in its soul-shaking entirety for a special five-night engagement at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. Imaginatively staged and filmed by another luminary of the New York demimonde—artist-filmmaker Julian Schnabel, who has referred to “Berlin” as the soundtrack to his life—this concert performance is made all the more poignant by the sight of the weathered, wizened Reed at last seeing his forgotten masterwork receive its due.