LOU REED’S BERLIN directed by Julian Schnabel (USA, 2008)
What’s the saddest record you own?
Some contenders from my collection would be Leonard Cohen’s Songs From A Room, Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night, Richard Buckner’s Devotion And Doubt, Joy Division’s Closer, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s I See A Darkness and Gorecki’s Symphony No 3.
Top of the list, though, would have to be Lou Reed’s Berlin.
I bought this on vinyl when I was 17, and to this day there’s not an album that can touch it for unremitting bleakness.
The songs are fearlessly uncompromising, covering topics like domestic violence, suicide, drug abuse and distraught kids in broken homes.
Reed writes of personal grief without filter and drags you into a world of pain with no attempt to make this suffering seem glamorous or cool. Continue reading
From the age of 17 onwards I have been fascinated by Franz Kafka’s world – both in his fiction and his life as an insurance clerk in Prague. When I first read his novels and short stories I was a frustrated clerk myself, working for the Inland Revenue in London and imagining myself as a struggling writer in my free time.
