Songfacts®:

• This is a love song to a then divided city. Written by bass and keyboard player Les Holroyd, "Berlin" appears on the XII album, which was released in the UK on the Polydor label on September 29, 1978. A live version was recorded for A Concert For The People, which was released in July 1982; the people in question were the citizens of Berlin. The band played a massive free concert next to the Berlin Wall on August 30, 1980.
• After the defeat of Germany in the Second World War, the country was in chaos and was eventually split into two halves, the Federal Republic being formed in May 1949, and the Soviet zone, the so-called German Democratic Republic, which came into existence in October the same year, Bonn becoming the capital of West Germany. In 1961, the divided nation was separated visibly by the infamous Berlin Wall, which many people lost their lives attempting to cross "illegally", all of them from East to West. The wall was finally dismantled by the German public in 1989, and the following year, Germany was reunited.
• Although the two bands are chalk and cheese, Saxon have also recorded a song about the fall of the Berlin War, theirs, "For Whom The Bell Tolls," just before the great event. BJH and Saxon have also both recorded songs about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 3