Lou Reed performs Berlin, Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam

The album that so disgusted one reviewer he wanted to physically attack Lou Reed remains his eerie solo pinnacle. Recorded in the wake of the bitter dissolution of his marriage to Bettye Kronstadt, Berlin (1973) was a devastated, beautiful record, made by a 29-year-old so strung out on drink and drugs that he looked like his own ghost. Its song-cycle about a violent relationship ending in the woman's suicide retains its icy fascination in concert, as the 65-year-old Reed offers an authentic reflection on the decadent early Seventies life that made him.

With Julian Schnabel providing a background film and a choir and brass section in tow, this concert isn't modest. There are early highlights, such as the way Reed drawls, "Ah, honey - it was paradise" and the Weimar glam-oompah trombone on "Lady Day". But indulgent rock guitar codas, seemingly added to justify this live performance, are the last thing such a spare work needs.

Then "Caroline Says II" begins, and we enter a lost world. With Schnabel's warm film of a doomed, bohemian Seventies blonde playing behind him, Reed begins his remorseless, musically pretty description of a woman so frozen that "her friends call her Alaska". "What is in her mind?" he wonders. Caroline is Berlin's heroine; Reed stays on the sidelines, "just a tired man", raising his voice against "that miserable slut" on "The Kids" but making you feel the children should not be taken from her, a hell-red light on Reed as they are. As their cries and screaming fill the arena, an emotional landscape rock rarely sees is revealed. Reed takes us deeper as "The Bed" finds Caroline dead, wrists slashed. His response? "Oh, oh - what a feeling!"

"Anyone else would've broken both her arms," he sings on "Sad Song", which otherwise becomes a falsely triumphant, epic end. This is redeemed by the searing, joyous playing of Steve Hunter, Berlin's guitarist in 1973, which even yields the first recorded public instance of a smile from Reed.

The Dutch crowd are standing and roaring by this point, and the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" adds to the fervour as Hunter plays in rapture and Reed sings. The choir on "Satellite of Love" is pure, lovely hokum, "Walk on the Wild Side" a parting gift. But Berlin is the wonder, a devastating reminder of what rock can be.

UK dates for Lou Reed's Berlin are 29 June (Manchester) and 30 June (London); see www.loureed.org