He went from one unsuccessful record contract to another, from the most obscure to a one-single deal with Columbia. Almost immediately, he started writing songs and performing them with a neighbor. Diamond was born in Brooklyn to immigrant parents in 1941 and got a guitar for his 16th birthday. But my disappointment in the show was based on remembering where Diamond had come from. His fan club newsletter picked it up, and for 2 1/2 years, we got letters denouncing me, the last of which came from Vanuatu in the South Pacific. I couldn't leave her if I tried.ĮD WARD: Probably the strongest negative reaction I've ever gotten to anything I've written was when I panned a Neil Diamond show during my stint at Austin's daily newspaper. Now I'm a believer, not a trace of doubt in my mind. NEIL DIAMOND: (Singing) I thought love was only true in fairy tales, meant for someone else but not for me. 1 hit "I'm A Believer," but it was Diamond himself who made most of his own songs famous - songs like "Sweet Caroline," "Solitary Man," "Cherry, Cherry" and "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon."Īs a lot of his contemporaries fell off the charts, he moved from teen pop to adult pop, including his duet with Barbra Streisand and his hits from his remake of "The Jazz Singer." Before we get to the interview, let's hear the piece about him that our former rock historian, the late Ed Ward, recorded in 2011 after a compilation of his songs was released. Neil Diamond started out writing songs for a music publishing company in the hopes that someone would record them. In 2018, Diamond revealed he'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. His life is the subject of the current Broadway musical "A Beautiful Noise," which features his songs. We're going back into our archive to listen to our 2005 interview with Neil Diamond.
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