Back to Berlin - Lou Reed's dark masterpiece gets a belated staging

VANITYFAIR.COM: Thirty-three years have elapsed since Lou Reed released Berlin, his glorious downer of a concept album about two junkie expatriates screwing, fighting, and (in one case) dying in the shadow of the Iron Curtain. "I had never been to Berlin," says Reed. "It was all imagination. I liked the idea of the divided city as a metaphor for a divided relationship—not to get too pretentious." The album disappointed those, including Reed's label bosses at RCA, who were looking for a radio-friendly follow-up to Transformer and "Walk on the Wild Side," but it has matured into a classic. In 1974, Reed had dinner with Andy Warhol and V.F.'s Bob Colacello (then working for Warhol at Interview) to discuss turning Berlin into a Broadway musical, but nothing came of the idea. Now, however, with the Berlin Wall long gone, Warhol long dead, and RCA long since slurped up by a German-Japanese conglomerate, Berlin is getting staged at last—at St. Ann's Warehouse, in Brooklyn, from December 14 to 17, and at the Sydney Opera House from January 18 to 20. Rock purists, exhale: there won't be any Juilliard castoffs mouthing the lyrics to "Men of Good Fortune" while wriggling in and out of Twyla Tharpian contortions. Just a band including original album guitarist Steve Hunter, a choir led by Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons, a stage set by Julian Schnabel, a "film or video visualization" by Schnabel's daughter Lola, a new arrangement by producer Bob Ezrin, and the Rock 'n' Roll Animal himself, who recently returned from a recording session in Germany's now-trendy capital with the avant-garde orchestra Zeitkratzer. Their version of his 1975 noise experiment, Metal Machine Music, is due out early next year. Can a club remix of Sally Can't Dance be far behind?

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