1 VE • H A D • I T-'T O HE RE BEIN’-WH ER. E-LOVE’S -À SMALL WOR D PART-TIME-THING - p a p e r -ring DON’ TART- MAN TART- NEIL 1 DIAMOND [ BY ALAN LIGHT ONGWRITING of human emotion, from loneliness to joy, has always been from m ortality to romance. about discovery In the notes to his 2008 album H om e for Neil Diamond. Before Dark, the singer addressed the two Of course, be is sides of his personality, which he divides one o f the w orld’s into the songwriter and the performer. m most popular per­ With the album’s release, he wrote, “I’m formers, with over 125 million albums relieved to shed the introspective, iso­ sold. Already a member of the Songwrit­ lated person ... and eager to take on my ers Hall of Fame, he has been a dominant other identity: extroverted, fun-loving, force on the pop charts for two genera­ and open to life.” tions: Thirty-six of his songs have hit the His work with Rubin—three Top Top Forty. More than four decades into Ten albums, including his first- a legendary career, ever Number One he remains one EACH ALBUM w ith Home Before of the top tour­ D a r k — capped MEANS AS MUCH ing acts around a remarkable re­ the globe. AS MY FIRST naissance for this “I secretly be­ true renaissance lieve that there’s RECORD man whose life has some sort of lucky taken him from an star that I travel under,” he told R o llin g itinerant childhood to television and movie Stone on hearing the news of his Rock and screens and some of the world’s greatest Roll Hall of Fame induction. “I’ve always concert halls. Neil Diamond was born in been grateful for it, and I’ve always felt Brooklyn, New York, and grew up there in a sense of responsibility to my audience, different neighborhoods as his family relo­ and I always w ill.” cated frequently when his father opened Beyond the sales and statistics, various dry-goods stores. though, for Diamond, every song still “What I remember most about offers a chance for revelation. From his my childhood,” Diamond said in 1971, early days in the Brill Building to his “was the constant moving from school recent collaborations with producer Rick to school. Under the circumstances, Rubin, he has consistently turned to his making friends was impossible. I was songs as a way to explore the full spectrum pretty much an outsider most of the O a 2 S - i0-3¥,ìà-0K0RAl-i0-iH9n-IH-3A01-n,0HA-H I9-3KÓ-.KIAVH -SKOfl- N ili - S.JU-AV O NX I time. I was never accepted. That’s why I took to writing so passionately.” He attended New York University on a fencing scholarship but was getting drawn deeper and deeper into music, especially into lyric writing. “I was bored by school, and writing lyrics in class was interesting,” he once said. “I never really chose songwriting. It just absorbed me and became more and more impor­ tant in my life as the years passed.” After a failed first single with Columbia Records, Diamond became a w riter at the fabled Brill Building. His true arrival came when the Monkees scored a Number One smash with his song “I’m a Believer” in 1966. The band had sev­ eral m ore hits w ith Diamond songs, including “A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You” -^though Diamond wrote all of these songs to record himself. After signing a solo deal with Bang Records, Dia­ mond began tak­ ing the pop world by storm. “Solitary Man” was his first hit, followed by “Cherry, Cherry,” “Kentucky Wom- t h 1 s page N eil Diamond gets bis start, an,” and many others. In his 2006 history of the Brill Build- 1963 (top); marquee man, 1967. o p p o s it e y)Jway S M agic in the A ir, Ken Emerson notes “how inven- p a g e In the studio, mid-seventies. | | | | an(j variej [Diamond’s] initial singles were, running the gamut from folk to Latin to blues and nearly garage rock, plus a few pop ballads.” (One notable difference between Dia­ mond and the other Brill Building writers is that he always worked on guitar, whereas virtually everyone else wrote on the piano.) In 1970, Diamond moved from New York to California, after signing with M CA Records. His sound was transforming with songs like “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “Sweet Caroline (Good Times Never Seemed So Good),” and “Song Sung Blue” taking on a less punchy, country-flavored feel. “Cracklin’ Rosie” was his first Number One. Meanwhile, Diamond was establishing himself as a consummate stage performer and drawing larger and larger audiences. He was growing into a new sense of himself through his confidence in concert. “In a sense, I discovered myself onstage, discovered myself as a person,” he once said. “And that's all I’ve done ever since. Everything I’ve done onstage since my very early years is development, an enlargement of that whole thing.” The 1972 live double-album H o t A u g u st N ig h t is generally considered the definitive document of Neil Diamond onstage. In 1973,, Diamond returned to Columbia Records, where he remains to this day. His first release was the soundtrack to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but around that time, he also announced that he was taking a hiatus from performing, which wound up lasting more than three years. When he returned to touring in 1976, he said, “I had secretly hoped . .. that I would never have to come back and perform. I was exhausted. But then I got itchy about wanting to be in front of an audience again. I wanted to test myself again.” That same year, he released the sweeping Beautiful Noise, produced by the Band’s Robbie Robertson. On Thanksgiving SMUKWp SEPTEMBER sm* '10 The Public l Death l of Private l Lynn } McClure \ By Itim C ahU l IN CONCERT :«TS fa* jm Fi i 0* s a l e here m t m m o « n i 0 a h ^ io > « ^CarifltL’frlT . BAG lAB TAgATK E NIC AGO CHECKMATES, LTD. iyr i ff U e d , HOT S BLUE ■ night, 1976, he appeared at the Band’s farewell f concert, The Last Waltz, and his performance of THIS “Dry Your Eyes” was featured in Martin Scorseses documentary page In L o s of the evening. (Asked how he felt about playing the show, he Angeles, late-seventies; Las Vegas, 1977. said, “I don’t "fit in. But you could put me in any show and I o p p o s it e page A t M ad ison wouldn’t fit in.”) Square Garden, 2001. After “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” gave him another Number One hit, Diamond turned his attention to the silver screen, starring in the 1980 remake of the A 1 Jolson classic T h e Jazz Singer, opposite Sir Laurence Olivier. The soundtrack included the Top Ten singles “Love on the Rocks,” “Hello Again,” and “America.” Over the past few decades, Diamond has continued his reign as an international touring sensation. Meanwhile, an as direct as he’s ever been with his lyrics, which give them an ex­ array of artists keep covering his work: In the eighties, the tra poignancy and... a simple profundity.” British reggae band UB40 had a worldwide smash with his W ith Home Before Darl(, he pushed himself even harder. composition from almost twenty years earlier, “Red Red Wine.” “That first 1 2 Songs album was more of a testing of the wa­ The same year the UB40 song reached Number One in the ters and a getting to know you’ album,” he said. “This one is U.S., “America” served as the theme song for Michael Dukakis’s W e know each other and respect each other, and let’s try and 1988 presidential campaign. knock people’s socks off,’ and that’s what we went for.” On the Iwtn 1994, Urge Overkills ominous cover of Diamond’s “Girl, album’s disarmingly honest “Act Like a Man,” he laid it all on the You’ll Be a Woman Soon” was an unforgettable highlight of the table: “Songwritin’/It’s just a little bitfrightenin’/Like playing multiplatinum soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. w ith lightnin’ .” As Diamond became ever more iconic, he even demonstrated Diamond’s 2008 tour, the most ambitious stage productionofhis the ability to laugh at his own image, appearing on S a tu rd a y career, took him to thirty-seven North American cities and to Eng­ N ig h t L iv e opposite a Diamond-impersonating W ill Ferrell, and land’s massive Glastonbury Festival. The show was documented accepting a role with the H o t A u ­ playing himself in gust Night/NTC the 2001 comedy DVD, which not Saving Silverman. only went double In 2001, John­ platinum but also ny Cash won a aired as a wildly Grammy for his successful T V spe­ version of “Solitary cial on C B S. Man,” a song that Diamond was provided the title honored as the to the third vol­ 2009 MusiCares ume of his historic Person o f the Tear, American Record­ and fans from Tim ings series. (The McGraw to Cold- song also served as play, from the Jonas the title for a 201® Brothers to Jenni­ film starring Mi­ fer Hudson, turned chael Douglas and out to celebrate his Susan Sarandon.) career and char­ M eanwhile, “Sw eet ity work.