green light to probe his tumultuous personal history. Interviews with Reed in 1973 when he was about to make Berlin depict him as pallid, puffy, whisky-sodden and remote. His marriage to his first wife was collapsing as he made the album. (He is now married to Laurie Anderson, a performance artist and musician.) It is hard to ignore autobiographical echoes in Berlin , with its themes of sexual jealousy, self-destruction and emotional breakdown. Yet Reed rejects any links between his private life and his work. "That's right," he says in a dangerous sing-song voice, like a Hollywood serial killer. So does he think there is a kind of Berlin Wall separating his life from his art? "Very clever," he allows (we are on volatile ground). "I ... write. It should all be very real. And I've done it long enough now that I am what I am." A gnomic pause brings the shutters down on the topic. I mention something he said in one of those interviews in 1973. Reed initially is horrified ("You're going to ask me to comment on a so-called interview from 30 years ago?") but the quote itself amuses him. "I would like to live to a ripe old age," his younger self told Bangs, "and raise watermelons in Wyoming." "That's not a bad goal," he laughs. He thinks for a bit, and then updates it. "I would love to have a tai chi meditation ranch somewhere in upstate New York with a couple of Harleys