Forest National, Brussels

The Brussels equivalent of Wembley Arena was nearly full for what had been billed as a “European premiere”: Lou Reed performing his 1973 album Berlin in its entirety.

Fans with longer memories might have heard many of these songs in concert before. During Reed’s glam-metal phase, in the mid1970s, his allegedly “forgotten” masterpiece, Berlin – a grimly themed song cycle describing the sexual, narcotic and, eventually, suicidal events of Caroline and Jim’s abusive relationship – made up half his set, and it turned up againon a couple of live albums. Butthere was no string-and-horn section or children’s choir lurking behind a white gauze curtain.

Now a tautly muscled, deeply lined 65-year-old in a red T-shirt, Reed maintained an air of intense concentration throughout this first night of a European tour. His head bowed as he intoned the words; the fact that Reed was, as usual, ignoring the audience seemed justified by the complexity of the presentation.

Reed has recalled Berlin’s original producer, Bob Ezrin, the maverick producer Hal Willner and 25 musicians and singers to recreate arrangements even more thoughtfully orchestrated than the originals. Nor was this a gilding exercise. At the point at which you expected to hear the junior choir at full tilt – the harrowing moment, on The Kids, when Caroline’s children are heard howling as they are taken away from their junkie mother – Reed kept things minimal and understated, musing darkly over the guitarist Steve Hunter’s strummed acoustic, with the little guys only a shadowy presence behind them.

The music was consistently well done, but it was this dramatic edge – the sense the concert was centred on Reed playing the cruel, obsessive Jim – that made the performance so gripping. This is why he is still one of rock’s greats. With apologies to Sir Mick, nobody does sympathy for the devil better.

There were a few distracting details to note: the busy set designed by Julian Schnabel; Sharon Jones’s show-off vocals. But for the most part, the evening belonged to Reed. He is unlikely to give a better one than this.

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