Diamond Cool.
Neil to shine at Wachovia Wednesday

www.zwire.com - 12/01/05

If there's one badge of cool in this cooler than thou world called Pop it's having Rick Rubin want to produce you. Rubin, who made Slayer slam through, drove Jay Z into the blackest Black, and cajoled Cash to crack ever more wisely, is perhaps the barometer of cool. Aloof and alit and aside himself, for the music. Most, he doesn't do something unless it's something well worth doing, and when he does so he does so well.

So many were quite surprised to find that ol' King Cool wanted to knob the console for Neil Diamond, the man now better known for spangling arena shows full of fawning certain-age women than for anything even remotely considered cool.

But you don't get Diamond's life unless you've got a core of cool upon which to draw. Rubin knows this, and a reluctant legion of apologists know it too. Neil might've long been worshipped hot, but he had player cool. All he needed was a chance to play it cool all over again.
With 12 Songs he has. And then some.

The strip of the titling says it all, so do Diamond's divining liner notes: "Nothing [is] superfluous[these are] songs done so simply and truthfully that only the heart of them remain[s]."

Utter heart. The "Oh Mary" in "Oh Mary" swings slow and low, like a lullaby blown by, from and to none other than Leonard Cohen, before it breaks into Diamond's patented rasp; "Hell Yeah," the My Waywarding of self-myth, walks the fine line Cash trod in his American Recordings, and gravels up the same chilling gruff; "Man of God" swirls from the back pew of an absolving Temple, where road show revivalists cross souls with their Maker, while the closing triptych of "Create Me," "Face Me," and "We" plea quietly for ever more plea to kingdom come.
(A 13th and 14th Bonus will have to be bought to be believed.)
Backed by Mike (Heartbreaker) Campbell and Smokey (Beck/Waits/Cash) Hormel on stringery, and Benmont (another Heartbreaking sessioneer) Tench on ivories, plus guest star turns from the likes of Jonny Polonsky, Billy Preston and get this-Brian Wilson, 12 Songs is 12 steps back into the lode Diamond mined lo those many full blue moons ago. Dark, delving and bittersweetly deep.

It's a lode that has now become Legend:
A product of Gershwin's Brooklyn, and part of a high school student body that featured first Barbra Streisand, then Carole King and Neil Sedaka, Diamond left the Big Bad Apple's bulkiest borough for pre-med studies at NYU on, of all things, a fencing scholarship. But lab coats weren't for Neil, and, just ten credits shy of degree, he shed his white for a shine at the big time. In this case, a $50 per week songwriting gig with a Brill Building fly-by-night outfit called Sunbeam.

Soon tired of selling his songs for (ahem) a song, Diamond rented a box above Birdland, installed a desk and a pay phone, called it an office, and began working for himself.

He'd never work for anyone else again.

A Greenwich Village coffeehouse klatch got him gabbed by Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, the composing couple behind such chewy chart-toppers as "Da Doo Run Run" and "Be My Baby," which in turn led to an inking with Bert Berns's Bang Records (later the home of Van Morrison). Diamond's initial output (the now classics "Solitary Man" and "Cherry Cherry" were among the tracks) showed great promise, but, unfortunately, very little else.

In enter The Monkees. Diamond penned "I'm a Believer" for Don Kirschner's puppet act, and the boy toys strung it all the way to the Top, giving Diamond enough room to polish up his act and polish off his ghosts.

And a polishing he would need to go. Believe it or not there was once a nervous Neil (one club owner forbade him to speak between songs), but, as the universe has come to learn, it was a nervousness that masked a determining nerve. Nervous, nervy Neil was dead-settled to score on his own terms.

And score he did. In the summer of 69 Diamond close-upped with Touching You Touching Me, and gave birth to his first gold single, "Sweet Caroline."

From then on the hits just kept coming. "Cracklin' Rosie," "Song Sung Blue," "Solitary Man" (rereleased to number one). In '72 Diamond became the first "rocker" (and first musician since Jolson) to headline on Broadway, selling out twenty nights at the famed Winter Garden Theatre. Mr. Triumphant almost lost it with the dreadful Jonathan Livingston Seagull affiliation, but he bounced back with the "Longfellow" of Serenade.

Then at once, in '74, Diamond disappeared. The fame was beginning to rock his noggin and he wisely decided to see a head doc. Two years later he returned with the Robbie Robertson produced Beautiful Noise, and shared the stage with the whole of the Last Waltz clique (cool incarnate).
Thus began a time when everything came in one color, and that color was platinum. Love at the Greek (1977) begat "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" (with Babs Streisand) which begat "September Morn." Then came The Jazz Singer, yet another attempt at juking up with the Jolsons.
A critical flop and box-office non-contender, The Jazz Singer (which put Diamond opposite, of all people, Sir Laurence Olivier) nevertheless did yield three Top 10 hits-"Love on the Rocks," "America," and "Hello Again" -and made of all that platinum a lofty multi.

'Twas a long, long way from his troubadouring Tipperary.

After '81 no new gems dropped from Diamond's kingly ring, but Neil still would not remove himself. Throughout the decade he toured, and toured, and toured some more, setting scads of box-office records around the world. Diamond managed to keep his fan base loyal and intact, but the critics (being critics) remained critical. And it wasn't until UB40 made a monster out of his "Red, Red Wine" that those fickle barometers of taste began to dust off their old Diamond collection.

Some twenty years on and now the dust has again become a stellar storm.12 Songs, which at its #4 debut makes for Diamond's strongest start ever, is also, according to the Columbia Records fact sheet, the 14th Neil Diamond album to reach the Top 10, the 20th to hit Top 20, the 31st to make Top 50 and the 45th to break into the Billboard Top 200. This puts our dear hero at #6 on the all-time list of male vocalists with the most Top 200 albums. Only Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, James Brown, and Willie Nelson got the man beat.

Those are magic numbers, among magical company, digits and figures large enough to make Neil Diamond indisputable. Like the carbon from which hes composed, hes of the elements. Intrinsic. So drop the irony and step away from the kitsch, it's high time to give Diamond his Cool.