Songfacts®:

• Berlin is a dark rock opera about the demise of a relationship between two drug-addled bohemians. This song tells of the mother having her children taken from her by the authorities. It doesn't get any better for the mother, who in the next song, "The Bed," kills herself on the bed where the children were conceived.
• Producer Bob Ezrin used his own kids, David and Josh, for the sounds of the children crying and shouting for their mom. Urban legend has it that Ezrin told the boys their mother had died to get them so upset, but that seems cruel and unlikely. Rob Bowman wrote in the loner notes to the Between Thought and Expression box set: "According to Ezrin, the story is that he went home and told his seven-year-old son David that he was doing a play in the studio and he needed some kids' voices to sound scared because their mom was being taken away. The first few attempts didn't sound terrifying enough but on a third, unprompted, his two-year-old joined in and just started screaming. The two children screamed so loud that they distorted the tape."
  
  Ezrin's children can also be heard on another one of his productions: the 1976 Kiss song "God Of Thunder."
• The UK group The Waterboys took their name from a line in this song: "And I am the water boy, the real game's not over here."