Neil Diamond

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Neil Diamond, born on the 24th of January 1941, once stretched his food budget to just 35 cents a day. Decades later, the American singer-songwriter had sold more than 56.5 million records in the United States alone. That total places him among the best-selling musicians in history. How did a struggling young songwriter reach it? What happened when a contract threatened to trap his music? And how did one of his songs take on a life of its own, ringing out in stadiums in several countries?

  82074

• 2. Brooklyn Roots

  ›

  All four of Neil Diamond's grandparents were immigrants. On his father's side they came from Poland, and on his mother's side they were born in Kyiv, then part of the Russian Empire. Diamond was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish family. His parents were Rose, born Rapoport, and Akeeba, known as Kieve, a dry-goods merchant. The family lived in several Brooklyn homes, and they also spent four years in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while Kieve was stationed there in the army.

  At Erasmus Hall High School, Diamond sang in the Freshman Chorus and the Choral Club beside a classmate named Barbra Streisand. He later recalled that they were not close friends. "We were two poor kids in Brooklyn. We hung out in the front of Erasmus High and smoked cigarettes." Their class also included the chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer. Diamond stayed at Erasmus for two years. In 1956 the family moved to Brighton Beach, and he switched to Abraham Lincoln High School, where he joined the fencing team. His best friend on that team was Herb Cohen, a future Olympic fencer.

  For his 16th birthday Diamond received his first guitar. Still in high school at 16, he spent several weeks at Surprise Lake Camp, a camp for Jewish children in upstate New York. The folk singer Pete Seeger gave a small concert there, and the children sang their own songs for him. The scene changed Diamond's thinking, because it made him realize that he could write songs too. "And the next thing, I got a guitar when we got back to Brooklyn, started to take lessons and almost immediately began to write songs," he recalled. Songwriting became his "first real interest", a way to express his youthful "frustrations".

  Poems turned out to be useful at school. Diamond found that verses written for girls he liked often won their hearts. His male classmates noticed, and soon they were asking him for poems of their own, which they sang with similar success.

  After graduation Diamond spent a summer as a waiter in the Catskills resort area, where he first met Jaye Posner, his future wife. He then enrolled at New York University as a pre-med major on a fencing scholarship, again alongside Herb Cohen. He was a member of the 1960 NCAA men's championship fencing team. Classes bored him, and writing lyrics suited him better. He began cutting class and taking the train to Tin Pan Alley, hoping local music publishers would hear his songs. In his senior year, ten units short of graduation, Sunbeam Music Publishing offered him a 16-week job writing songs for $50 a week. He dropped out of college to take it. When the 16 weeks ended, Sunbeam did not rehire him.

  1213142425

• 3. Hits and Lawsuits

  ›

  Two 1962 singles credited to "Neil and Jack" were Diamond's first records. The act was an Everly Brothers-style duet with his high school friend Jack Packer. Their releases were "You Are My Love at Last" with "What Will I Do", and "I'm Afraid" with "Till You've Tried Love". Both records were unsuccessful. Even so, Cashbox and Billboard gave all four sides positive reviews, and later in 1962 Diamond signed with Columbia Records as a solo performer. In July 1963 Columbia released "Clown Town" backed with "At Night". Billboard praised "Clown Town" and Cashbox liked both sides, but it still failed to chart. Columbia dropped him.

  For the next seven years Diamond wrote in and out of publishing houses. He worked wherever he could, including on buses, and he used an upright piano above the Birdland Club in New York City. His lyrics were wordy, which kept him moving from place to place. "I'd spent a lot of time on lyrics, and they were looking for hooks, and I didn't really understand the nature of that," he said. He could sell only about one song a week, barely enough to survive. "I never really chose songwriting," he says. "It just absorbed me and became more and more important in my life."

  The privacy above the Birdland Club let him focus without distractions. "Something new began to happen. I wasn't under the gun, and suddenly interesting songs began to happen, songs that had things none of the others did." Among them were "Cherry, Cherry" and "Solitary Man". "Solitary Man" remains one of his personal favorites. It was about his early years as a songwriter, though he failed to realize that at the time. He described it as "an outgrowth of my despair".

  Diamond spent his early career in the Brill Building, and in November 1965 he had his first success as a songwriter. "Sunday and Me" became a Top 20 hit for Jay and the Americans. Bigger results followed when the Monkees recorded "I'm a Believer", "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)" and "Love to Love". Diamond had written and recorded these songs for himself, but the Monkees' versions were released first. The unintended consequence was that he began to gain fame as a songwriter. "I'm a Believer" became a gold record within two days of its release. It stayed at the top of the charts for seven weeks. It was named the Popular Music Song of the Year in 1966.

  Other singers reached for his early songs as well. "And the Grass Won't Pay No Mind" was covered by Elvis Presley and by Mark Lindsay, the former lead singer of Paul Revere & the Raiders. Lulu, Cliff Richard and the English hard-rock band Deep Purple also recorded his work.

  In 1966 Diamond signed with Bert Berns's Bang Records, then a subsidiary of Atlantic. His first release there was "Solitary Man", the first record under his own name to make the charts and his first true hit as a solo artist. "Cherry, Cherry" and "Kentucky Woman" followed. In 1967 he appeared on the detective drama Mannix as the featured performer in a small underground club called The Bad Scene, where a fight interrupted his singing. His early concerts opened for bands such as Herman's Hermits and the Who. He was shocked to watch Pete Townshend swing his guitar like a club and throw it against walls and off the stage until the neck broke.

  By 1968 Diamond felt restricted at Bang. He wanted to record more ambitious, introspective music, such as "Brooklyn Roads". Berns wanted "Kentucky Woman" released as a single, but Diamond no longer wanted to write simple pop songs. He proposed "Shilo", about an imaginary childhood friend. Bang decided it was not commercial enough, so it became an LP track on Just for You. Diamond was also unhappy about his royalties. He discovered a loophole showing that his contract did not bind him exclusively to either WEB IV or Tallyrand, and he tried to sign with another label. A series of lawsuits followed, and they coincided with a slump in his record sales. A magistrate refused WEB IV's request for a temporary injunction to stop him from joining another company during the dispute. The fight lasted until February 1977, when Diamond won in court and bought the rights to his Bang-era master tapes.

  In March 1968 he signed with Uni Records, a label named after Universal Pictures. Its owner, MCA Inc., later folded its labels into MCA Records, which is now part of Universal Music after the 1999 merger with PolyGram. His first Uni/MCA album, Velvet Gloves and Spit, arrived in late 1968 with Tom Catalano producing, and it did not chart. The early 1969 follow-up, Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, was recorded at American Sound Studios in Memphis with Tommy Cogbill and Chips Moman producing.

  5795171620

• 4. Greek Theater Nights

  ›

  In mid 1969 Diamond moved to Los Angeles, and his sound mellowed. "Holly Holy" arrived in 1969, "Cracklin' Rosie" in 1970 and "Song Sung Blue" in 1972. The last two both reached No. 1 on the Hot 100. In 1971 came "I Am...I Said", a Top 5 hit in both the US and the UK. It was his most intensely personal effort to date and took over four months to complete.

  In 1971 Diamond played seven sold-out concerts at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. The outdoor venue, known for showcasing the best current entertainers, installed a stereo sound system for the first time. Diamond brought a 35-piece string orchestra and six backing singers. After the first night, a leading newspaper called it "the finest concert in Greek Theater history."

  He returned in August 1972 for ten shows at the 5000-seat theater, and tickets sold out rapidly once the dates were announced. This time he added a quadraphonic sound system to create full surround sound. The show on the 24th of August 1972 was recorded and released as the live double album Hot August Night. "We went all out to really knock 'em dead in LA," Diamond recalled. Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called the album "the ultimate Neil Diamond record... showing Diamond the icon in full glory." It was remastered in 2000 with additional selections. In Australia, said at the time to have the most Neil Diamond fans per capita of any country, the album ranked No. 1 for 29 weeks and stayed in the top 20 bestsellers for two years.

  In the fall of 1972 Diamond performed for 20 consecutive nights at the Winter Garden Theater in New York City. The theater had not staged a one-man show since Al Jolson in the 1930s. The Broadway house held roughly 1,600 people, and it offered an intimate setting that was uncommon then. Every performance reportedly sold out. The run made Diamond the first rock-era star to headline on Broadway. The New York Times review noted that his one-man show "seemed, on the face of it, to be a brash idea", since the form was tied to talents like Judy Garland and Danny Kaye. It concluded that he had the musical track record and the "performance macho" to bring it off.

  In the 1970s he began wearing colorful beaded shirts in concert. The reason was practical: everyone in the audience could see him without binoculars. Bill Whitten designed and made the shirts for him from the 1970s until approximately 2007.

  313233218

• 5. Seagull and Silence

  ›

  After the Winter Garden run, Diamond announced that he needed a break, and he gave no live performances until 1976. He spent those four years on the score for Hall Bartlett's film version of Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and on two albums, Serenade and Beautiful Noise. "I knew I'd come back, but I wasn't sure when," he said years later. "I spent one year on each of those albums...I'd been on the road six years. I had a son 2½ and I felt he needed me more than the audience did. So for four years I devoted myself to my son Jesse." He also wanted a private life in which he could be anonymous.

  In 1973 Diamond returned to Columbia Records on a contract that paid a million dollars in advance per album. His first project there was the Jonathan Livingston Seagull soundtrack, released as a solo album. The film drew hostile reviews and did poorly at the box office, and the album grossed more than the film did. Richard Bach, author of the best-selling source story, disowned the film. He and Diamond each sued Bartlett, for different reasons. Bach felt the film omitted too much of his novella, while Diamond felt it had butchered his score. "After 'Jonathan,'" Diamond declared, "I vowed never to get involved in a movie again unless I had complete control."

  Bartlett answered Diamond's lawsuit angrily. He said the music had become "too slick...and it's not as much from his heart as it used to be." He added, "Neil is extraordinarily talented. Often his arrogance is just a cover for the lonely and insecure person underneath." Despite the controversy, the soundtrack peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard albums chart. It won Diamond a Golden Globe for Best Original Score and a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture. He often included a Jonathan Livingston Seagull suite in his live shows afterward.

  In 1974 came Serenade, which produced the singles "Longfellow Serenade" and "I've Been This Way Before". Diamond had intended the second song for the Seagull score but finished it too late. That same year he sang a duet with Shirley Bassey on her TV special. Beautiful Noise followed in 1976, produced by Robbie Robertson of The Band. On Thanksgiving 1976, Diamond appeared at The Band's farewell concert, The Last Waltz. He performed "Dry Your Eyes", which he wrote jointly with Robertson, and then joined the cast onstage for Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released".

  The return to live work began in Australia in 1976 with "The 'Thank You Australia' Concert", broadcast to 36 television outlets nationwide. He also played the Greek Theater again that year in Love at the Greek. The album and video of that show include a version of "Song Sung Blue" with duets featuring Helen Reddy and Henry Winkler.

  On the 2nd of July 1976 the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas paid Diamond $650,000 to open its new $10 million Theater for the Performing Arts. The show ran through the 5th of July and drew sold-out crowds to the 7,500-seat theater. A who's who of Hollywood attended opening night, from Elizabeth Taylor to Chevy Chase. Diamond walked out to a standing ovation and opened with a story about an ex-girlfriend who dumped him before he became successful. His lead-in to the first song was, "You may have dumped me a bit too soon, baby, because look who's standing here tonight."

  On the 2nd of July 1977 he played Woburn Abbey to an audience of 55,000 British fans. Film director William Friedkin taped the concert and interviews, using six cameras to capture the performance.

  3538394037

• 6. Streisand and the Screen

  ›

  In 1977 Diamond released I'm Glad You're Here with Me Tonight, which included "You Don't Bring Me Flowers". He composed the music and wrote the lyrics with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman. Barbra Streisand covered the song on her album Songbird. The success of radio mash-ups of the two versions spurred a Diamond-Streisand duet. It hit No. 1 in 1978, his third song to top the Hot 100. The pair appeared unannounced at the 1980 Grammy awards, where they performed it for a surprised and rapturous audience.

  In 1979 Diamond collapsed on stage in San Francisco. Surgeons operated for 12 hours to remove a tumor on his spine. He said he had been losing feeling in his right leg "for a number of years but ignored it". When he collapsed, he had no strength in either leg. During the long rehabilitation, before principal photography began on The Jazz Singer, he was so convinced he would die that he wrote farewell letters to friends.

  A planned film version of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" with Diamond and Streisand fell through. Instead, in 1980, Diamond starred in a remake of the Al Jolson classic The Jazz Singer, alongside Laurence Olivier and Lucie Arnaz. Reviews were poor, yet the soundtrack spawned three top-10 singles: "Love on the Rocks", "Hello Again" and "America". Diamond had never acted professionally. "I didn't think I could handle it," he said later, describing himself as "a fish out of water". He became the first-ever winner of a Worst Actor Razzie Award, though the same role earned him a Golden Globe nomination. Critic David Wild noted how open the film was about his religion: "Who else but this Jewish Elvis could go multi-platinum with an album that featured a version of 'the Kol Nidre?'" Diamond told the Los Angeles Times, "For me, this was the ultimate bar mitzvah."

  Of the three singles, "America" carries the most emotional weight for him. "'America' was the story of my grandparents," he told an interviewer. "It's my gift to them, and it's very real for me... In a way, it speaks to the immigrant in all of us." He performed it in full during the film's finale, and an abbreviated version played over the opening titles. It is the song he was proudest of, partly because of how it was later used.

  National news shows played it as the hostages were shown returning home after the Iran hostage crisis ended. It was played on the air for the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. He was asked to perform it live at a tribute to the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and at the Vietnam Vets Welcome Home concert. A national poll once named it the most recognized song about America, ahead of "God Bless America". In 1988 it became the theme song of Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign. Earlier in 2001, former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali asked Diamond to perform it. Two weeks after the attacks of the 11th of September 2001, it became the anthem of his world tour. That night he changed the closing lyric from "They're coming to America" to "Stand up for America!"

  1034484647

• 7. Sweet Caroline

  ›

  It took Neil Diamond just one hour in a Memphis hotel to write and compose "Sweet Caroline" in 1969. It was his first major hit after his slump. The song's inspiration has two different answers. In 2007 Diamond said he wrote it for Caroline Kennedy after seeing her on the cover of Life in an equestrian riding outfit. In 2014, on the Today show, he said it was written for his then wife, Marcia. He could not find a good rhyme for "Marcia", so he used the name Caroline. Elvis Presley also interpreted the song.

  The 1990s brought a resurgence in Diamond's popularity, and "Sweet Caroline" became a popular sing-along at sporting events. Boston College played it at football and basketball games, and college events in other states followed. It was played at a Hong Kong Sevens rugby tournament and at a soccer match in Northern Ireland. The Sydney Swans of the Australian Football League play it at every home game. In 1997 the Boston Red Sox began playing it at every home game, between the top and bottom of the 8th inning at Fenway Park.

  Other teams adopted it as their own. The New York Rangers played it whenever they were winning at the end of the third period. The Pittsburgh Panthers football team played it after the third quarter of home games, with the crowd cheering, "Let's go Pitt". The Carolina Panthers played it at the end of every home game they won. The Davidson College pep band played it in the second half of every Davidson Wildcats men's basketball home game.

  On the 8th of April 2008, during the traditional eighth-inning singalong at Fenway Park, a big-screen broadcast revealed that Diamond would play there live on the 23rd of August 2008. It was the first official confirmation of any 2008 concert dates in the US. Later that month, on the 28th of April 2008, he appeared on the roof of the Jimmy Kimmel building to sing the song. Kimmel had been performing it dressed as Diamond and was "arrested" for impersonating the singer.

  On the 20th of April 2013, Diamond made an unannounced appearance at Fenway Park to sing it during the 7th inning. It was the first game at Fenway since the Boston Marathon bombing. On the 18th of June 2022 he sang it again in the 7th-inning stretch. This time he was joined by Will Swenson, who portrayed Diamond in the musical A Beautiful Noise.

  In 2000 Diamond surprised the tribute band Super Diamond by appearing onstage with them before their show at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. In the 2001 comedy film Saving Silverman, the main characters play in a Diamond cover band, and Diamond made an extended cameo as himself. He wrote a new song for the film, "I Believe in Happy Endings", and sat in with Super Diamond at the premiere party.

  England football fans have sung the song since Tony Parry, the Wembley DJ, played it after England beat Germany at Wembley in Euro 2020. "Three Lions" co-writer Frank Skinner said, "I thought Sweet Caroline went slightly better than Three Lions in the post-match sing-song."

  In 2019 the Library of Congress selected the 1969 recording for preservation in the National Recording Registry, calling it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

  2930557093

• 8. Later Years and Honors

  ›

  Billboard ranked Diamond the most profitable solo performer of 1986, even though his last single on the Billboard Pop Singles chart came that year. His 17th studio album, Headed for the Future, reached number 20 on the Billboard 200. Three weeks later he starred in Hello Again, his first television special in nine years, performing comedy sketches and a duo medley with Carol Burnett. In January 1987 he sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl. In 1988 the British band UB40 took its reggae version of his ballad "Red Red Wine" to the top of the Billboard Pop Singles chart. Like the Monkees' version of "I'm a Believer", it became better known than Diamond's original.

  Ten of his singles reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts, among them "If You Know What I Mean", "Desirée", "Yesterday's Songs" and "Heartlight". Thirty-eight of his songs reached the top 10 on the Adult Contemporary chart. "Heartlight", co-written with Carole Bayer Sager and Burt Bacharach, was inspired by the 1982 blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The film's title character is never mentioned in the lyrics. Even so, Universal Pictures, which released the film and was the parent company of MCA Records, briefly threatened legal action against Diamond and Columbia Records.

  In the 1990s Diamond made six studio albums, covering classic songs from the movies and from famous Brill Building-era songwriters. He also released two Christmas albums, and the first peaked at No. 8 on Billboard's album chart. In 1992 he performed on President George H. W. Bush's final Christmas in Washington NBC special. In 1993 he opened the Mark of the Quad Cities, now the Vibrant Arena at The MARK, with two shows on the 27th and the 28th of May, each for 10,000 people.

  The album 12 Songs, produced by Rick Rubin, was released on the 8th of November 2005. It debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard chart, and Erlewine called it "inarguably Neil Diamond's best set of songs in a long, long time." It is also remembered as one of the last albums that Sony BMG released with Extended Copy Protection software embedded in the disc. In 2008 Diamond mentored the remaining contestants on American Idol. His album Home Before Dark, released on the 6th of May 2008, topped the album charts in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. On the 29th of June 2008 he played to an estimated 108,000 fans at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England, but technical problems, including the sound cutting out, marred the concert.

  Later that summer he allowed cameras to record his entire four-night run at Madison Square Garden. The resulting DVD, Hot August Night/NYC, was released in the US in 2009 and debuted at No. 2 on the charts. On the same day, CBS aired an edited version that won its ratings hour with 13 million viewers, and Sony ordered more copies to meet demand. On the 25th of August 2008 he performed at Ohio State University while suffering from laryngitis. The result disappointed him as well as his fans, and he offered refunds to anyone who applied by the 5th of September.

  Honors accumulated alongside the tours. Diamond entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and received a Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He joined the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and was named MusiCares Person of the Year on the 6th of February 2009. On the 14th of March 2011 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. That December he was a Kennedy Center Honors honoree, and on the 10th of August 2012 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award followed in 2018.

  In January 2014 Diamond signed with the Capitol Music Group unit of Universal Music Group, which also owned his Uni/MCA catalog. Universal took over his Columbia and Bang catalogs too, so all of his recorded output was consolidated for the first time. His album Melody Road, produced by Don Was and Jacknife Lee, came out on the 21st of October 2014 after its date slipped from the 30th of September. In September 2014 he gave a surprise concert at his alma mater, Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, announced on Twitter that same afternoon. The 2015 Melody Road World Tour used social media heavily. He streamed shows on Periscope and displayed fans' tweets with the hashtag #tweetcaroline on two large screens. The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote that it "wasn't your grandfather's Neil Diamond concert."

  Diamond's final concert tour, the 50 Year Anniversary World Tour, began in Fresno, California, in April 2017. In January 2018 he announced that he would stop touring after a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, and the final Australia and New Zealand dates were cancelled. His official website said he was not retiring from music and would continue his writing, recording and development of new projects. On the 28th of July 2018 he and his wife, Katie, visited the Incident Command post in Basalt, Colorado, near his home. He thanked firefighters and their families for their work against the Lake Christine Fire, which scorched 12000 acres, and he played a solo acoustic guitar concert in their honor. On the 22nd of March 2020 he posted a YouTube video of "Sweet Caroline" with altered lyrics about washing hands, in response to social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  In April 2021 the New York Times reported that A Beautiful Noise, a musical based on Diamond's life and featuring his songs, would open at the Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston in the summer of 2022, with a Broadway opening planned after the month-long run. In 2022 Universal Music Group acquired his songwriting catalog and the rights to his Bang, Columbia and Capitol recordings. The deal included 110 unreleased tracks, an unreleased album and archival videos.

  Diamond has been married three times. In 1963 he married his high-school sweetheart, Jaye Posner, and they had two daughters before separating in 1967 and divorcing in 1969. That year he wed production assistant Marcia Murphey. They had two sons and divorced after 25 years of marriage. In 2012 he married Katie McNeil, who manages him and produced the documentary Neil Diamond: Hot August Nights NYC.

  On the 8th of May 2026, Wild at Heart was released. It is the third and final album of material that Diamond recorded with Rick Rubin as producer.

  5861626784