Hot August Night

Diamond, Neil

album cover

You're the Words, He's the Tune, Play Him

A soft rocker whose strong suit is bombast, Neil Diamond cuts a maddening figure through pop music: He's responsible for some of the most infectious odes to joy ever to grace an AM radio ("Cherry Cherry," "I'm a Believer"), and the mastermind behind a boatload of bloated, pretentious, manipulative tuneage ("I Am . . . I Said").

Can't have one without the other. But you can focus on a moment before the songwriter and guitarist became mired in unmitigated sap: This 1972 concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, which finds Diamond's alter ego, "Brother Love," gathering the diffuse strands of his musical personality into an exuberant, roof-rattling revue, amazingly, avoids schmaltz.

Diamond was already an expert in the studio; Tap Root Manuscript and his other acclaimed recordings are built around crisp acoustic guitar, with layers of harmony vocal and just the right specks of instrumental "seasoning"—you don't have to love the songs to respect the craft behind them. For Diamond, putting those songs across live was another matter: He'd been touring with a typical small rock combo, and began to realize that some of his material—epic-sounding songs like "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" and "Sweet Caroline"—could benefit from a thicker sound. So he augmented the arrangements, wrote snazzy horn charts, and added grand orchestral swells and fanfares. Remarkably, the extra musicians don't goop things up. They match the pomp of Diamond's big-tent themes, and jolt everything with palpable electricity, making this the rare live album that improves, in some cases dramatically, on the studio versions.

Genre: Pop, Rock
Released: 1972, MCA
Key Tracks: "Cherry Cherry," "Red Red Wine," "Kentucky Woman," "Holly Holy"
Catalog Choice: Tap Root Manuscript; Beautiful Noise
Next Stop: John Mayer: Room for Squares
After That: Maroon Five: Songs About Jane
Book Pages: 221–222