ThThee ObseObservrveerr || 0011 .. 11 0.0. 1177 || THE NEW REVIEWTHE NEW REVIEW 99
Lou Reed at Cafe
Figaro, Greenwich
Village, New York
in 1982.
Photograph by
Waring Abbot/
Getty Images“People would say, ‘Lou, is
that autobiographical?’ ... Jesus.
Autobiographical?
If only they knew!”
The working notion was for Berlin
to be a double album, complete with
an elaborate booklet fi lled with lyrics,
accompanying text, and photographs
illustrating the record’s grim story.
Setting aside the darkness of Berlin’s
narrative, record companies shiver
whenever the notions of double albums
and elaborate booklets are mentioned.
They are expensive to produce, and
therefore the album needs to be priced
higher, which tends to diminish
sales. Reed had only just established
himself as a commercial artist, so this
expansive concept for Berlin was by no
means an easy sell to his label.
Besides that, according to Kronstad,
conceiving what the album should
be turned out to be much easier than
writing it.
“Lou had become abusive on our
last US tour, when I got him on to the
stage as clean as I could ... He gave
me a black eye the second time he hit
me,” Kronstad wrote. “Then I gave
him a black eye, too, and that stopped
him from using his fi sts. Everybody
knew he was abusive – abusive with
his drinking, his drugs, his emotions- with me. He was incredibly self-
destructive then.”
The problem Reed had fi nishing the
songs for the album, she sarcastically
explained, “might have had something
to do with all the fucking drugs and
drinking he was doing. With Lou,
people that he love become part of him,
so I got to be part of that incredible
self-destructiveness.”
Things had gotten so bad that
Kronstad fl ew to Santo Domingo to
get a 24-hour divorce from Reed.
The legal standing of such a divorce
is complicated, but Kronstad’s action
is more signifi cant as an indication of
how desperate she had become in her
marriage.
She was frightened and she wanted
out. Kronstad remained in their
apartment, on which she held the
lease, and Reed moved out.
“I don’t know where,” she said.
Then, one night, Reed called her from
a local restaurant that had been one
of their favourites, the Duck Joint, on
First Avenue between 73rd and 74th
Streets. “He was, like, ‘Can you meet
me here?’” Kronstad said. “I was in a
pretty good mood because I’d basically
gotten my name back and I was no
longer legally attached to him. So I
went. He was there with two other
people; I don’t remember who they
were. They were having a wonderful
time, and he was so positive... He said,
‘I’ve stopped. I’ve quit it. I won’t do
that stuff. I’ll play it straight. We can
do this. I need you. Can I just come
over and talk about it?’” Kronstad let
herself believe him. “I had invested a
great deal of my life in him, so I guess
there was a part of me that wanted to
be convinced.”
But even when Reed fi nally did
complete writing the album’s 10 songs,
things didn’t get easier. “I remember
the morning I woke up and found him‘I found him in the
living room next to a
bottle of Johnnie
Walker Red. It was
8.30 in the morning’
Continued overleaf (^)