Legend has it Bob Dylan bumped into Neil Diamond on Malibu Beach.
After some small talk, Dylan said that he loved Diamond’s Song Sung Blue. Diamond — perhaps embarrassed that one of the greatest songwriters would compliment a tune with the lyrics “Song sung blue; every garden grows one” — fell quiet.
Moments passed before Diamond denied writing it. Dylan, who penned lines such as “There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief,” insisted it was Diamond’s song. Diamond continued to deny authorship, and they soon parted.
Such is the fate of Neil Diamond, trumped by Bob Dylan even if it was genuine praise.
It’s easy to mock Diamond. He’s worn a sequin suit more than once, and he recorded You Don’t Bring Me Flowers with Barbara Streisand, music that, when its sound waves carry far enough into space, will someday agitate the wrong aliens.
It’s also easy to forget Diamond started his career as a critically successful singer-songwriter, pumping out clever radio hits such I’m a Believer; Cherry, Cherry; and Solitary Man. UB40 stole his Red, Red Wine and twice made it a number-one hit.
Diamond could also reach deeper than many realized. Take his I Am, My Said.
“I am, I said/to no one there. And no one heard/not even the chair.” It’s not exactly Dylanesque, the lazy rhyming couplet.
But listen closely and you hear Diamond — whose commercial success had him leaving behind his Brooklyn roots for a mansion in Los Angeles — trying to find himself and perhaps seeking spiritual solace.
The Hebrew “Ehyeh asher ehyeh” translates to “I will be what I will be,” or, as most English translations of Exodus 3:12 offer, “I am that I am.” God declared that to Moses. Diamond says it to himself and learns nobody is listening — not God, not even his chair.
Diamond looked for answers just as he started to lose his way in the mid-1970s. He devolved into the syrupy pop musician for which he’s best known. On the Vegas scale, he’s not quite Elvis but also not quite Tom Jones. He’s stuck in a middle ground, a position that Bill Murray’s character noted in What About Bob: “There are two types of people in the world. Those who like Neil Diamond and those who don’t.”
On Saturday, a new type of people emerged: A city that loves Diamond. He was the ideal showstopper during the first game the Red Sox had played at Fenway Park since a deadly bombing marred the Boston Marathon five days earlier.
Since 2002, the Red Sox have played his Sweet Caroline during the eighth inning of home games, dividing fans, as Bill Murray would appreciate, into those who love the song and those who don’t. As an infant, I danced to it in my crib, but by 2005, I was ready to take batting practice on the Fenway sound system as soon as the first three notes played.
But Sweet Caroline was just what Boston needed Saturday. After a rough week, we needed to forget the horror of the marathon and a deadly chase of the bombing suspects and lose all inhibitions — including those not washed away by pricey Fenway beer.
Neil Diamond took us to that place.
From my standing-room spot above the Green Monster, he was a dot, but to those who saw him up close or on the large scoreboard, Diamond looked like one of us. No glitzy suit. No Streisand. Instead, a beer belly shaped the contour of an ordinary blue T-shirt and black coat. He had a white beard. He wore a Red Sox cap.
Because of feedback between his live vocal and his voice on the recording of the song, Diamond at first seemed like a confused college professor dealing with a faulty karaoke machine after a long day of classes.
But after a few verses, the showman emerged. He swept his hand upward for us to sing along. With affected phrasing and gesturing, it was clear that Diamond was leading us through the words of a tune that some people love and some people hate but everybody knows. On this day, everyone sang Sweet Caroline and felt better for it.
We’ll always live with that heartbreaking marathon. But for nearly five minutes, Neil Diamond carried Boston away on a giant wave of corn-dog, feel-good happiness.
Bob Dylan couldn’t do that.
Published April 23, 2013
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