Neil Diamond “Heartlight”
Neil Diamond was never symbolic like Bob Dylan. He was never poetic like Leonard Cohen or insurgent like Neil Young. In 1976, when Robbie Robertson invited him to perform at “The Last Waltz,” his bandmate, Levon Helm, protested. Dylan, the most familiar and admired performer from that Thanksgiving concert, simply rolled his eyes in Diamond’s general direction.
Nevertheless, Neil Diamond did his job. While other stars were asked to play several songs that night, Diamond performed just one -- “Dry Your Eyes.” Hiding behind sunglasses, an acoustic guitar and his famously wide collar, he took the stage and gathered himself. He strummed his guitar until Robbie, Levon, Richard and Rick joined in. And, within seconds, something became clear — Neil Diamond didn’t need The Band. He owned that song. He owned that stage. He had that voice. You could almost see Robbie nodding in validation as if to say to Levon, “See -- I told you so.”
Until he was ironically cool, Neil Diamond was never cool. He was popular and beloved and respected, but certainly not “cool.” Over the course of fifty years, he would be commercially lionized and critically ravaged. It would be decades before he was reclaimed by Quentin Tarantino, celebrated by Will Ferrell and Jack Black and lovingly coronated by Rick Rubin. More recently, he would be name-checked and appropriated by indie kids and hipsters. Neil Diamond has been so many things. He has been “The Jazz Singer.” He has been called “The Jewish Elvis.” But, back in the beginning, in the late 1960s, Neil Diamond was The Contemporary Adult. He signified a modern and sensitive masculinity. He was the grandson of immigrants. He was a young man whose dream was not the dream of his father. His dream was to write songs. It was a dream that swallowed him whole.
Neil Diamond, The Contemporary Adult, was introspective. He was urban. He was sensitive. He was simple and true. His music could feel powerful, but it was never iconoclastic. His songs could ache but they would never leave a bruise. He sang with a full throat and all of his body. He dressed for style, fitted into his slender pants and tailored shirts. A hint of his chest was exposed but his eyes were frequently closed or shaded to cover up his rapture. The very cut of his jib -- his slender form and big, blown dry hair -- indicated 1970s modernity. But, it was that voice -- a deep, warm, raspy tone, that sounds like leather and cologne and tobacco -- that defined him. It is the sort of voice, like Johnny Cash’s, that is rooted in the present, here and now. It has weight and meaning. You can’t drift away from it. It’s not a classical voice. It’s not virtuosic. It’s not weird or artful. It’s plainly the voice of a contemporary man. “Solitary Man,” “I Am...I Said,” and “Song Sung Blue” all affirmed as much, revealing tonal veracity in his naked voice and deftly simple structures.
Almost from his earliest days in the Brill Building, Neil Diamond’s skill as a songwriter was evident. Aside from Carole King and possibly Paul Simon, no other artist from that time and place can boast a comparable songbook. But the magic of Neil Diamond was in the pairing of those simple tunes with a voice that communicated deep feeling and deep acceptance. You might leave a Neil Diamond song ecstatically happy (“Sweet Caroline” or “Cherry Cherry”) or you might leave it blue (“You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”). However, in either case, you left it knowing that you were going to be OK. There is something about that voice and those songs that took on the feelings for you, carrying some of the load and providing reassurance. It’s an almost singular gift.
Along the way, that voice and those songs helped that Contemporary Adult become an unlikely Rock Star. Neil Young is famously shy, unsure of himself as a musician and ambivalent about attention. However, he simply loves to perform. It’s a contradiction that is explained only by his love of music and the ecstasy that takes him over when singing. His hips and arms move without skill or thought but rather with the same force that moved Elvis. He cannot stop it. Allegedly, there was a long period wherein Neil Diamond was uncomfortable with fans singing along or staring at him while he performed. The job of songwriter and singer came easily to him. But the role of star seemed antithetical for the Jewish kid from New York who moved to L.A. and saw what “real stars” looked like. And yet, all of that cognitive dissonance washed away on those “Hot August Nights.”
As the 1970s wore on and the high idealism of the counterculture began to feel like a hangover, Neil Diamond was critically important. In his role as America’s Contemporary Adult, he represented an acceptable middle path forward -- smart and sensitive, but strong. The weight of that role was heavy. Diamond toured hundreds of days many years, leaving him far from his young family. More importantly, the constant touring and promotion cast him in the role of Rock Star, rather than that of singer-songwriter. Over time, Diamond became practiced in fame. But it was hard fought, and frequently did not feel like victory. As a result, in the middle of the decade, he took some time off. And, for several years, Neil Diamond receded. Between 1975 and 1977 he did not have any top ten hits. Meanwhile, America was growing sadder. The end of the Vietnam landed with a national thud. There was Watergate. There was the flaccid gentility of the Carter administration. There was an oil crisis. The country seemed to be suffering through a malaise, half stoned on downers.
While America was fully bummed out, our Contemporary Adult sat home, on the sidelines of stardom. Meanwhile, his music got swept into a big tent, alongside The Carpenters, Bread, Jim Croce, James Taylor, Dionne Warwick and The Commodores. This new genre, which both matched the national sadness and opiated its anxiety was called “Adult Contemporary.” This form was not meant to communicate truth and presence, but rather gentle reassurance. So, when he emerged from his brief hibernation, it was entirely logical for Neil Diamond to embrace his new home on Adult Contemporary radio. He had, in part, invented it. However, that shift -- from Contemporary Adult to Adult Contemporary -- would mark the beginning of a pronounced and sustained creative decline for the singer-songwriter.
This slump would not have been immediately evident in 1978, when Neil Diamond serenaded Barbara Streisand on their chart-topping duet, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.” After Neil Diamond originally released that ballad as a solo artist and Streisand covered it a year later, radio DJs and an entire nation demanded that the two return to the studio to turn their respective versions into a duet. It was the song that America needed in 1978 -- profoundly sad, beautiful and restorative. Neil and Barbara ate our feelings.
This slump was not especially evident from 1979 to 1981, either. Diamond floated from “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” into “Forever in Blue Jeans,” another hit, if a lesser song. And then, in 1980 and 81, while Diamond flopped on screen in “The Jazz Singer,” he was simultaneously racking up hits from the film’s inordinately popular soundtrack. In retrospect, it seems certain that Neil Diamond, the actor, was not marginally capable of carrying a great film. That being said, he was perhaps the only man who could play that role in that movie. Critics thumbed their nose. Movie-goers generally stayed away. And, all the while, millions of Americans sang “Love on the Rocks” and pumped their fists to “America.”
All the while, a quiet, tectonic struggle was being waged between The Contemporary Adult and Adult Contemporary. And while he may have been losing his footing artistically, we all still very much needed Neil Diamond. 1982, however, proved to be the year in which the movement swallowed its leader. The first sign of this inversion occurred when Diamond began writing with newlyweds, Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager. Both husband and wife (but especially husband) were known for their delicately ornate pop sensibilities. Bacharach had ostensibly invented a form of pleasant and well-crafted, but soulless, Soul music in tandem with Dionne Warwick during the 1960s and 70s. Alongside the downer bubblebath tone of The Carpenters, the sound of Adult Contemporary tracks directly to Bacharach. He was, without question, an inordinately gifted songwriter, with a knack for achieving cheap luxury through ornate piano and string arrangements. And he had achieved success with deep voiced singers like Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. So, at the time, the alliance between Bacharach and Diamond made perfect sense. In retrospect, however, we should have seen the distress signal.
With the assistance of Bacharach and Sager, Neil Diamond released “Heartlight” in the summer of 1982. The album’s title and first single were inspired by E.T'.’s glowing heart in the blockbuster Steven Spielberg film from that same year. The song was not written for the film. It did not appear in the film. But, like most of America, Diamond and his songwriting partners were moved by the film and it’s wide-eyed sentimentality. Whereas the film waded carefully into cloying, Hallmark territory, though, Neil Diamond dove right in. With the tailwind of the film in popular culture, “Heartlight” (the song) raced to number five on the Pop charts and number one on the Adult Contemporary charts. For months on end, listeners could tune into their easy listening stations and, for three minutes, get choked up at the sound of a familiar and comforting voice imagining the dream and the loss of a young boy. Like many Bacharach songs, it is a delicate and pretty song, with light piano, sweeping strings and a sturdy chorus. In the hands of any other singer, it would feel unbearably manipulative. With the age and comfort of Diamond’s voice, it sounds slick and lightweight, but also intimate.
Six of the eleven tracks on “Heartlight” were co-written by Diamond, Bacharach and Sager. And, with the exception of the title song, they are the least interesting on the album. In 1982, Bacharach’s palette consisted largely of a gently tickled synthetic piano, a windswept synthetic piano and a warm, blanketed keyboard. Beneath these permutations are barely mid-tempos. And above them, are ornate strings and lovely back-up singers. It all has the effect of a Bob Ross painting — fast, cheap, very competent and, kind of nice. As songs, on their own merit, they are all well executed. But, paired with Diamond’s voice, they strip the singer of his presence, sensitivity and strength and replace it with something brittle and wistful. It’s harder to believe this version of Neil Diamond. Those tight pants and shirts suddenly looked cut-rate and old. It sounded like a costume. Several of these songs -- “In Ensanada,” “Hurricane” and "Lost Among the Stars" -- concern themselves with the dreamlike reverie of love. However, they are so similar in style and pace as to be almost indistinguishable. Cumulatively, they threaten to make Neil Diamond’s unmistakable voice something that fades into the background.
Elsewhere, on “Guilty,” the writers fail to muster either passion or sincerity, while sharing the song’s title with two truly great tracks from the same decade -- one written by Randy Newman and one by Barry Gibb. Whereas Newman’s lyrically describes profound shame and humility and Gibb’s captures the exuberance of a love that feels forbidden, Diamond’s track sounds like a cliche retold to the point of meaninglessness.
The best of the Diamond, Bacharach & Sager songs may be “Front Page Story,” a track that evokes the quaint Pop theatricality of early Brill Building music. If reduced to just the singer and the song, it would stand a chance. But, burdened with dated keyboards, one too many back-up singers and strings, it sounds like a frothy cappuccino made from Sanka.
The two songs written by Tom Hensley and Alan Lindgren, and not by Neil Diamond, stand out in that they are darker and have more pulse. There are actual electric guitars on both and the singer sounds more emboldened. The second of those tracks, “Star Flight,” both echoes the album’s title and resembles what could have been a very good movie song for a very bad movie. Unlike the Bacharach and Sager songs, this pair has some blood running through it. But, like the rest of the album, they also sound like a man who was once contemporary but now past his prime.
“I’m Alive,”the second single from the album, was co-written by future mega-ballad icon, David Foster. True to its name, the song is an upbeat, almost metronomic sing-along. It’s catchy and quick and inspires images of 80s Jazzercise classes or water aerobics in a south Florida retirement community. On an album that is otherwise soporific, “I’m Alive” has a startling quality, sounding both like smelling salts for the singer and a pep talk for his aging audience. It is a perfectly good song but only a mediocre Neil Diamond song. It also marked the end of Diamond’s run on the Pop charts. He would still play on the Adult Contemporary charts now and again, but “I’m Alive” apparently was his Top 40 death knell.
After “Heartlight,” Neil Diamond stumbled a bit throughout the 1980s and 90s. However, he never fell out of favor with his substantial, and deeply loyal base. Every couple of years, he would try something new -- more rocking, more Country, more retro. Very few of his experiments worked, but he soldiered on. After all, he was a songwriter. So, he wrote songs. He was also a searcher. So, he searched. In the early 2000s, though, he stopped searching quite so desperately. It was around 2004 when he was found by Rick Rubin, one of music’s all time great searchers. Together, the pair released two albums, mostly written and performed by Diamond and produced by Rubin. The first, “Twelve Songs,” received almost universal critical acclaim and debuted at number four on the album charts. The follow-up, “Home Before Dark,” was less beloved, but debuted at number one in America. Both albums prominently feature the weight and humanity of the singer’s naked voice, a style that Rubin is perhaps best known for. The arrangements are simple -- almost elemental -- compared to the work of Bacharach. None of the songs from these two albums sniffed the charts. These were not Pop songs. These were not Adult Contemporary songs. They were striking revelations from a contemporary, post-middle-aged man, who once made Adult Contemporary music after he was our Contemporary Adult.