Polished Diamond
Singer Neil Diamond brings his honeymoon tour to Vancouver.
Neil Diamond
May 7, 8 p.m. | Rogers Arena
Tickets: $19.99 - $149.50 plus charges at Ticketmaster
Neil Diamond’s song Sweet Caroline is the ultimate feel-good tune, a guilty pleasure that never fails to inspire joy inside all who hear it. At parties, weddings and jukejoints, its exquisite hook has a remarkable power to trigger the urge to sing, dance and wave your arms in the air. To music fans, it’s a timeless classic. To the man who wrote it 45 years ago, with a photo of Caroline Kennedy in mind, it was a flash of brilliance that changed his life.
“It’s one of the most important songs I’ve ever written,” said the 74-year-old soft-rock superstar during a teleconference interview with several journalists from across North America.
Although the phoner was set up to promote Diamond’s new album, Melody Road, and tour, a question about everyone’s favourite Diamond song prompted fascinating insight from the suave New Yorker.
“I believe there was something very mystical about that song,” Diamond said, reflecting on his circumstances in 1969. “It came about and was written in a very odd way. It came out of a necessity of the moment. It came out at a point in my career when I desperately needed to have a song become a big, pop hit.”
At the time, he had changed labels, and his latest album, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show, was struggling on the charts. He worried that his hit-making streak had come to an end. The night before the last in a series of recording sessions in Memphis, Sweet Caroline came to him.
“It just fell into my lap, this little, simple song. It was wonderful,” he said. “I think that song was handed to me by some being or, I don’t want to sound a little screwy, but some spiritual thing came and said, ‘ Do this and make this chord change here, even though you’ve never, ever played that chord before and you don’t even know what that chord is called.
“I remember writing it, I remember playing it: It’s stuck in my consciousness and it changed my professional life,” Diamond continued. “The record company put it out and worked it, and it went to the top, I think. It didn’t matter. I was back, my career was back. I only had to follow it, and following it came Holly Holy and Brother Love and Cracklin’ Rosie and Song Sung Blue and a bunch of the new generation of hits. I owe it to that song.”
These days, it’s one of the favourite singalong songs during Diamond’s concerts. New album or not, there are certain songs he knows every audience expects to hear. Finding a balance between the golden oldies and the new material is always a challenge.
“This show will probably have more songs in it than any show I’ve ever done because I don’t want to take out I Am I Said or Sweet Caroline or Holly Holy,” Diamond said. “There are 15 or 20 like those (but) I also want to make sure that I — excuse me — do a fair share of the new songs and keep the audience involved, as well. It’s going to have a lot of songs, and it’s going to be a big show.”
The latest project, his 32nd offering, Melody Road is described as Diamond’s honeymoon album, full of romantic love songs written after his third marriage in 2012.
Lushly produced by Don Was and Jacknife Lee, the arrangements are brimming with strings and horns, a return to form after the spare, introspective singer-songwriter approach of 2008’s Home Before Dark.
“I wanted to fill out the record,” says Diamond, a Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer since 2011. “I wanted to hear horns and electric instruments again, to do them in my own way but to bring them back into my records. That was one of the goals I set out for myself on the Melody Road album.”
As for the romance in his life, Diamond doesn’t deny that it’s had an effect on his songwriting.
“There’s a lot of romance and there’s a lot of enthusiasm and there’s a lot of hope for the future in this album,” said Diamond.
“This is important and there’s no question that my own personal life and personal experience is what gives rise to this. I got married three years ago so a lot of these thoughts and attitudes are on paper and in the record.
“It’s a very hopeful place and I feel very good about that. I hope it reflects itself in the show because that’s the story I want to tell: That life holds all kinds of wonderful, mysterious surprises and where I’m at now is a great surprise for me. I want to reflect that in the shows.”
To mark his 74th birthday, which was Jan. 24, Diamond intends to perform at least 74 shows this year, including the one that brings him to Rogers Arena in Vancouver on May 7. His mission is to make music while he can.
“I always have that thing that hurries me up and says ‘Don’t wait around and don’t waste time because it’s fleeting and if you have any songs that are still inside yourself, you better get to work.’
“As I get to be older, it’s a more insistent whisper in my ear. That’s one of the things that motivates me now. The time is limited and I’m touring now because I’m in good voice. I don’t know if I’m going to be in good voice five years from now. I’m just taking advantage of every moment that I have to make music.
“I think that’s my purpose here: to make music and to share my music with people.”