Berlin

The idea came from the producer. Bob Ezrin told Reed that his songs had great beginnings but never endings, and wanted to know what happened to the couple in "Berlin", a song on Reed's first solo album. Reed wrote nine songs to complete the plot, according to Far Out. The record follows Jim and Caroline through domestic violence, the loss of her children and her suicide. Reed told the Guardian in 2007 that its theme was Othello, and that he had wanted the divided city to stand for human discord although he had never visited it. Several songs rework older material: Berlin first appeared on his debut album, Oh, Jim uses a Velvet Underground outtake called Oh, Gin, and Caroline Says II rewrites Stephanie Says.

The players include Steve Winwood on organ and harmonium, Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner on guitars, Jack Bruce on bass and Aynsley Dunbar on drums, with Michael Brecker and Randy Brecker on saxophone and trumpet. Ezrin played piano and Mellotron and arranged the album. The crying of children on The Kids was Ezrin's recording, according to the Guardian. Original 8-track and cassette copies carried an untitled one-minute piano solo by Allan Macmillan between Berlin and Lady Day, which no vinyl or CD has ever included.

RCA cut the record down from a longer double album. It reached 7 in Britain and 98 in the United States. Rolling Stone's Stephen Davis called it a disaster in December 1973, and in Creem Robert Christgau thought the story lousy and the music only competent. Reed told his biographer Victor Bockris that it was the big disappointment of his life. He and Ezrin had planned a stage version at the time but could not find backing. In 2006 Reed finally staged it at St. Ann's Warehouse with Hunter, Ezrin and Hal Willner, and Julian Schnabel's film of the shows came out in 2008. In 2007, when the Guardian told him that Rolling Stone's new write-up had called the album a triumph, Reed replied that he had always loved it. It stood at 344 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums in 2003 and 2012.