LOUREED BERLIN
I had a profound experience listening to Berlin when I was a child, because of one particular song, he Kids. It’s actually kind of traumatising. It must have been the early 80s. I remember vividly because it was a Sunday, and me mam, who was a night shit nurse, was upstairs asleep. To entertain me, my dad has us in the kitchen listening to music and this song came on.
It’s very harrowing actually, it’s not a party album. It’s a song about a sex worker who has her children taken of her, and it’s like, “hey’re taking the children away, because they said she was not a good mother.” hen, towards the end, these children start crying for their mother. It instantly haunted me. Apparently, what happened was Lou Reed and the producer, Bob Ezrin, actually told Ezrin’s kids that their mum had died in a car crash and recorded it. It’s very twisted and completely unacceptable. I was scarred for life just listening to it!