I was listening to Berlin by Lou Reed last night, and something occured to me about the sound of the album, so I checked its credits. Sure enough, the producer is Bob Ezrin, who handled most of Alice Cooper's '70s output, and the band is partly the same as on Alice's solo albums from that period (guitarist Dick Wagner was even an uncredited session muso on some of the Alice Cooper band's stuff). At times Berlin sounds so much like Welcome To My Nightmare it's scary.
Nightmare is one those albums that was Important In My Youth, and Berlin is very familiar to me from a tape I lost when I left my walkman in a phone booth (annoyed grunt). But I never linked them before. They're both concept albums - the doomed relationship of Berlin is quite properly much more coherent than the fever dream of Nightmare - and they both share a bombastic atmosphere that producer Bob Ezrin would later bring to Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Welcome To My Nightmare is drawn from horror movies and horror comics, but periodically edges into real-life horror. Berlin is rooted firmly in the real world, but its horrors are sometimes exaggerated to the extent that they become a little cartoonish. Both deal with domestic violence in a way that's deadly serious yet has an undertone of black humour.
The success of Welcome To My Nightmare made Alice Cooper's solo career viable after his split from a very popular cult band (also called Alice Cooper, which confuses many people). The failure of Berlin almost killed Lou Reed's solo career, which seemed ready to eclipse his own cult band The Velvet Underground after the smash hit of Transformer.
Welcome To My Nightmare and Berlin have both been remastered for CD in recent years. They're worth a listen. Berlin might drive you to the bathroom with the razor blades if you're in the wrong mood, but Nightmare is delirious fun and might prove a good antidote.
If Lord of the Rings wins the Best Picture Oscar I'll eat lasagne. That's a promise.
Posted by pearce at January 27, 2004 11:43 AMI read once that Bob Ezrin was producing "Berlin" at the same time as "The Wall", and ended up using some orchestral recordings (intending for the Floyd) in some of Lou's songs, and that's why they don't sound quite right.
This might be bollocks, since "The Wall" came out 6 years after "Berlin". I think I read it in the booklet in that Lou Reed boxset at the library.
Posted by: davidr at January 27, 2004 11:50 AM