(Credits: Alamy)
Mon 26 May 2025 18:00, UK
Not many artists can leave this earth with their head held high and their artistic integrity intact. Even fewer can boast to have enjoyed success and not succumbed to it, chasing the high of popularity with every new release of their work. But if there is one thing Lou Reed can be sure of, he never bent over for the masses, he never gave his fans exactly what they wanted just because they wanted it, and he always delivered the songs and records that he truly adored.
It might seem a simple thing to do, but it certainly isn’t. Having found fame within critical circles in the 1960s with The Velvet Underground, the temptation for Reed to chase fame and fortune with his solo career must have been near impossible to resist. When David Bowie attached himself to Reed and proclaimed him one of the greats and a true inspiration, that temptation must have grown considerably. Thankfully, though, Reed stayed true to his vision.
Of course, 1972’s Transformer, made alongside Bowie, was a big hit, and the black and white image of Reed still adorns record shelves across the world, but the music was authentic. Reed was a glam rock pioneer, and his laconic delivery and subverted lyricism were there for all to see on his hit record. The LP would make him a household name in his own right, but when faced with the chance to step things up and try to hit the mainstream zig once again, Reed zagged to his heart’s content.
Berlin will go down as one of the defining albums of the 1979s. Removed from the glittering sweetness of Transformer, the 1974 record was tainted with the reality of life after dark. It’s another set of hyper-stylised reworkings of songs in Reed’s vault. The songs effortlessly capture the dark intensity of the man who wrote them. The sex, drugs and the scummy streets that provide them with both are expertly rendered in this album.
Telling the story of a couple’s struggle with drug addiction, Reed is notably delicate with his subject matter, seeing the affectations of a dark life not as blemishes on their character but as marks of their humanity. However, the album was not one his record label wanted him to make. His audience had been dazzled by the cast of his previous record and were locked into getting another dose of the story, imagining themselves in the chicer-than-chic world of downtown New York.
But Reed wanted to do something different; he wanted to “totally destroy them,” he shared, “This one will show them I’m not kidding.”
Speaking to NME in 1974, Reed opened up about the importance of making an album nobody wanted: “It was a very painful album to make. I had to do Berlin. If I hadn’t got it out of my head, I would have exploded. Everyone was saying, ‘Don’t do it, you’ll get killed.’ It was insanity coming off after a hit single, but it was all written. Transformer is a fun album, and Berlin isn’t.”
That feeling was reflected in the sales. Transformer sold over 600,000 copies, while Berlin sold about a tenth of that number. However, if anybody expected Reed to comply with expectation, then they hadn’t been paying attention: “Well, I never understood what anybody expected. You know, I have no idea. If it had sold, everybody would have been happy – they would have said I’m a genius. But it didn’t, so I was a schmuck,” he explained to Record Collector.
“Most of the things that I’ve done,” he continued. “I’ve considered so obvious that it doesn’t even qualify as anything you’d notice. It depends who you talk to. You know, everybody is influenced by everybody. I mean, if you go back to some of those really early blues singers, and there will be 13 ways you did me wrong or 17 ways I’m gonna get back at you – and there’s the idea – 17 songs instead of 17 ways.”
The truth is, there was never going to be another way forward for Lou Reed. A hit record was a great thing to have, but it didn’t mean squat if he couldn’t stand tall next to his work and be confident he had delivered something he was proud of. Making music wasn’t about money or fame; it was about expressing himself, whether that expression was pain or got him in trouble. Reed was always a rebel and an immaculate artist to boot.
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