A DIAMOND IN THE SMOOTH

 Richard (of RBB) mentioned in his most recent post that he would be playing violin at a wedding this weekend.

"I'm off to a wedding tomorrow. In Martinborough. I'm playing background music on my violin. The guy getting married is the same guy who replaced me with Neil Diamond (recorded music) when I was playing backgrounds a little while back. I guess it could be a short gig."

The background to that comment is found in a post he wrote back in February but to save you the trouble of going to find that and the misfortune of having to read the entire post I've put a screenshot of the relevant part here:

Of course The Curmudgeon made a joke about this and put the following comment on his post:

Anyway, moving on, I kind of like Neil Diamond or at least his songwriting. The earliest I heard were his songs penned for The Monkees like 'I'm a believer' which were very good.

I bought 'Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show' album when I was in the 6th form at school. It was OK but then, in those days the other LPs I bought were by Cat Stevens, Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones and Family so old Neil's album wasn't totally overshadowed except maybe by Harry Nilsson and The Beatles Abbey Road.

I listened to the odd Neil Diamond song on the radio over the next couple of years and some were pretty good but not good enough to inspire me to purchase the albums but, maybe I should have bought 'Stones' which, while having a couple of songs penned by him also had some excellent songs by other songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Tom Paxton, Leonard Cohen and Randy Newman.

It wasn't until I bought 'Hot August Night' in my second year of university in 1972 that I 'rediscovered' Diamond.  

On the double, live album many of his earlier songs were redone in an over-the-top gospel way, I guess using the 'Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show' as a theme. I liked this though which probably reflects my liking of religious spectacle even though I'd renounced my catholicism and any belief in deities years earlier.

Now it wasn't great - I even admitted that to myself at the time, but it was memorable. It also was a bit of an insight into Diamond's inner demons that he was battling with. Sure, drug experimentation, introspection and depression was the norm back in the 'counter-culture' days of the late 60s and early 70s as seen in the music, poetry, literature and films of .... well any of them who were producing those at the time. Diamond wasn't slow in coming forward in that and put some of it into his music - 'Song Sung Blue' for example or 'Solitary Man'. I didn't follow Diamond's music after that and as such am just not familiar with his music from the early 70s on and didn't go to any of his concerts when he performed in New Zealand.

I do remember this little story though, told to me in the 1990s. A friend of mine was once the general manager of a major hotel that often hosted celebrity music, fashion and political 'stars'. She told me that one night, in the early hours of the morning she was awakened, in her penthouse apartment by a staff member and told of an on-going incident she needed to check out. The 'incident' was old Neil stumbling and bumbling about in the alley beside the hotel creating mess and mayhem. She went down, spoke to him and gently ushered him away and back to his room. It turned out that he was in one of his episodes and I'm just glad that it was my caring and very professional friend who quietly dealt to the situation and not some (in later times I guess) self-serving, social media influenced cell-phone-camera carrying idiot.

While Neil Diamond's music no longer inspires or interests me I say "all power to you son - you are still going strong and have left those demons behind".

I don't like all kinds of music but do appreciate the skill and commitment that goes into a lot that I don't follow.

I'll leave you with this.