I wasn’t ready for Berlin when it came out in 1973. I don’t think anyone was ready for something like this.

It came out in 1973 when I was 15 but I didn’t discover it until a few years later, after I discovered The Velvet Underground, The Doors and Dylan through my friend Paul, who was way ahead of me when it came to music that wasn’t in the pop charts.

Looking back, it’s easy to see why it shocked and disappointed people who had loved Transformer, with its colourful slices of New York life like Walk On The Wild Side and Satellite Of Love.

There are no hit singles on Berlin, a bleak and harrowing song cycle about a drug-fuelled couple (Jim and Caroline) whose abusive relationship reaches a suicidal conclusion when their children are taken away.

It’s the very definition of uneasy listening: the sound of the crying child in Kids is almost too painful to listen.

Producer Bob Ezrin gave the album an appropriately austere sound, introducing Reed’s new guitar pairing of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, adding Jack Bruce on bass, Steve Winwood on Hammond organ, the Brecker Brothers on trumpet and sax, and Bowie’s new recruit Aynsley Dunbar alternating on drums with Procol Harum’s BJ Wilson.

At the time Rolling Stone magazine was not alone in hating it, calling it a “a disaster.” Half a century later, it stands testament to Lou Reed’s genius, widely regarded as his masterpiece.

I can’t pick out an individual track. Listening to Berlin is like reading a novel: it needs to be listened to with careful attention from start to finish in order to appreciate it fully.