Berlin is not a record for schmoozing and sun. It’s a concept record best savored in solitary, in the fetal position, while slurping on a bottle of wine. The doomed love story of addicts Jim and Caroline, Berlin‘s 10 songs cycle through the couple’s initial drug-euphoric enchantment, their violent betrayals, their fatal collapse. 
But when the album first came out in 1973, as the startlingly somber follow-up to Reed’s Bowie-produced glam-rock triumph Transformer (“Walk on the Wild Side”), Berlin was largely dismissed as a creative and commercial flop, an indulgent fallout from Reed’s messy first divorce.
Things change: 30 years later, pieces of the Berlin Wall are for sale on the Internet, and Lou’s German-junkie ode has been recast as a masterpiece. Reed had never performed Berlin live in full until 2006, with a landmark five-day stretch at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. Director/artist Julian Schnabel brought cameras to commit the performance to celluloid; the record’s original producer, Bob Ezrin, was enlisted to oversee. Redemption all around.