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Rating: The masterful and evocative setting of the Roman Amphitheater in Cagliari was the ideal backdrop for the final stop of Lou Reed's European Tour. The event is well-known: the rock and roll animal staged a monumental production for his most ambitious, intricate, and probably finest album: “Berlin.”
It’s pointless to delve into the debate over whether this tour is for Uncle Lou a spontaneous and deserved tribute to one of his most controversial and overlooked works by the general public, or an annoying and self-indulgent celebration, unable to capture the pure energy of a work born in unrepeatable times and circumstances: reviewing a concert leaves no room for conceptual reflections, but it is the analysis of the chemistry between audience and stage that must take the lead role. And that chemistry worked brilliantly under the starry, clear sky of Cagliari, thanks also to an audience chronically starved for events of such magnitude.
Accompanied by about thirty valiant elements (including the New Children Choir and members of the London Metropolitan Orchestra), Lou masterfully represented his work, with the help of fitting footage on a screen in the background and an effective play of lights: terminal flashes of Mitteleuropean decadence, reinforced when, with his dry baritone, good Lou dripped the famous incipit.
“Lady Day” and “Men of Good Fortune” immediately brought the show into its expressionist heart, through a massive and compact sound, excited and changeable in dissecting the slow and funerary narration of the original work, perhaps insisting a bit too much on dilating the refrains, but with an underlying brilliance still sharp. The first part of “Caroline Says” also climbed into a vertiginous finale, anchored in the extensive use of horns, with a notable rhythm and blues flavor. This same treatment certainly benefited the classic “How Do You Think It Feels?” (particularly the famous intro), stretched to the point of spasm, while in the rendition of “Oh Jim” there were perhaps some cracks, especially in the “Metal Machine Music” interlude where Lou made the feedback of his six-string vibrate among the evocative Roman ruins for over a minute: but these are inconsequential nuances.
The second part of “Caroline Says” and “The Kids” turned the story towards its tragic ending, amidst poetic images of sudden brutality and majestic lyrical flashes, while the acoustic guitars and violins earned their deserved space. Heartbreaking as always, “The Bed” was, despite a hobbling Lou in execution, supported by the children's choir: but it remains one of those pieces capable of reaching unattainable peaks for thousands of artists, and with verses like “This is the place where she cut her wrist /that odd and fateful night” a shiver ran down your spine. The choral finale of “Sad Song” then synthesized the grandeur of the work, offering a vibrant echo of all the elusive voices of human existence.
This is Lou Reed today, an adorable old grouch capable of challenging himself in encores, even playing around a bit too much (witness the unfortunate warbles entrusted to Fernando Saunders in “Satellite of Love”), but for whom the three chords of “Sweet Jane” (enhanced by the singing of backup singer Sharon Jones) or narrating once again his stories of ordinary metropolitan depravity on the most famous bass line in rock history – enlivened moreover by the insistent solos of Steve Hunter, protagonist as always – were enough to leave a mark and make us dream of being, in the end, in another era.
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