The Emergence After The Sabbatical

Painting by Dr. Karin Thieme©

© Dr. Karin Thieme* (8/2000)

When Neil Diamond had reached the pinnacle of superstardom with his 1972 tours in the USA and Europe, epitomized in the recording of "Hot August Night" at the Los Angeles Greek Theatre and his 20 sold out one-man shows at the Winter Garden on Broadway, he forced himself to stop touring and dedicate himself more to a private family life. But being the workaholic he is, during the 40 months of absence from the stage Neil wrote and recorded the songs for the "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" score and the "Serenade" album as well as composing the songs for the 1976 "Beautiful Noise" album. With the sabbatical nearing its end in 1975, the itch to hit the road again became too strong. From the first anouncements that he and the NDRRT would be out on tour in early 1976, it proved that his popularity has remained totally undented even after such a long concert break.

Backed by the Sacramento warm-up and a campus concert at Brigham Young University in Provo/Utah, Neil Diamond hit the stage again with a month long tour to Australia and New Zealand from mid-February to mid-March of 1976. Being one of the most popular recording artists in Australia - maybe the most popular record artist there at all -, he had four albums in the Top 15 Down Under at the same time, "Hot August Night" staying in the Top 10 album charts for more than three consecutive years. Four months before the first show was staged, hundreds of people sent in blank cheques to the tour promotors and local box offices to order their tickets. Neil Diamond was going to take Australia and New Zealand by storm, easily outselling such acts as Paul McCartney, Elton John or John Denver, not to mention Billy Graham! Even heavy rain storms couldn't prevent people attending Neil's open air concerts as proved by his third and final concert at the Melbourne Myer Music Bowl where he performed for a crowd of 22.000 plus the well-known tree people, or the 35.000 huddled under umbrellas and rain coats on Auckland's Western Springs Ground. The New Zealand Herald reported in its February 14th issue that the NDRRT's beautiful noise even made Christchurch city officials wonder if the level had to be reduced to meet their standards, an idea which caused a lot of bad jokes about the sensitive-eared Christchurch City Council.

Still as sensual as on "Hot August Night", the audiences saw a fit, trim and slender Neil who frankly admitted at a New Zealand press conference that only cortisone and vitamin injections kept him going during the Winter Garden performances. "My body couldn't handle touring anymore", he said, "I know I was going to have to stop, and it took me six months to get my body back into shape." During the 40 months of absence from the stage, Neil Diamond also tried to achieve not only being a complete songwriter or performer, but also being a complete person, and to re-establish relationships with family and friends, to find the person Neil Diamond behind the celebrity. During his warm-up in Sacramento, he told Robert Hilburn in a February Los Angeles Times interview about the scary experiences of leaving: "My son [i.e. Jesse] was in very bad shape while I was touring. He was a very fragile child and his daddy was going out every weekend. I was haunted by the memory of him when I would leave ... I just felt I couldn't have the joy of performing unless I took care of business first. The relationship is fantastic now. I've had three years to spend with him: fishing, reading books, drawing together, playing music together, teaching him, learning with him." He continued: "I'm three years older, I'm three years more mature and wiser, and music is a reflection of a person. As a person develops and matures, so does his music. I'm not consciously trying to change the music, but I am trying to change Neil Diamond." His early songs had been boppy and rhythmic, he now was much more meditative.

Despite the stage persona having been finally shaped in 1972, the world tour of 1976/77 showed a more and more polished Diamond. Listening to some of the Australian concerts of the 1976 tour today, you feel a certain likeness to Neil's 1972 concerts as recorded on "Hot August Night". He then had a certain rawness in his performance, combined with his extraordinary Diamondism of music, personality and sexuality. But the rougher edges were smoothed as Neil kept on performing after his sabbatical. Within the short span of only six months, even Neil's stage outfits changed from a certain down-to-earth style embroidered silk shirts worn with tight brown flared leather pants to the more stylish Las Vegas red, yellow, black and white satin suits to the glitzy Greek Theatre sequined shirts and tight black cloth pants, sometimes too tight to sit on his on-stage stool or to bend down to his adoring fans. But one trademark never changed: Neil always used to wear a custom-made broad glittery belt because - as he once put it - "sometimes you have to be seen in a large arena".

Neil usually dynamically entered the stage and immediately struck that familiar pose by presenting his rear view to the audience, casually strolling along in a sometimes peacock-like manner. Or as an Australian critic once put it: "He moves his tall, slender frame on stage with the grace of a panther impressing its mate." By then, his gestures were very elaborate with the cat-like moves of his long legs and the elegant use of his hands. By wearing his hair a little shorter and not that bushy anymore as pictured on the "Hot August Night" cover, his prominent facial features became more obvious, too, displaying those wonderful dark brown velvet eyes and much more often a typical broad boyish smile. Neil loved to communicate with his audiences, displaying a witty personality. He laughed, he joked, but he was always in control. As soon as an audience was responding to him, he was flying.

In his one-hour long interview on Australian national television on the 7th of March in 1976, Neil Diamond told Michael Schildberger: "I see an audience more as an individual, I don't see it in numbers. It doesn't matter. Once you pass a thousand people, you cannot deal with numbers." He also confessed that he has "butterflies" before each show, that the term "superstar" is an invention and it doesn't relate to what he is as a person, and that he wanted to be accepted just for the nature and the quality of his work.

Neil Diamond's statements had been underlined impressively during his "Thank you, Australia" concert, aired live nation-wide on Australia's Channel Nine on March 9th in 1976. Before Neil entered the stage on the Sydney Sports Ground, the TV audience saw a channelled performer backstage, highly concentrated, collected but nervous, stepping back and forward and taking a last deep breath, when Dennis St. John's drumbeats finally released his tension and he powerfully walked down the aisle to hit the stage, waving to some spectators standing close by. From the first step on stage the audience embraced him with thunderous applause, flashlights and paper streamers, and he wrapped them all with his beautiful noise, his warmth and charisma, his outstanding stamina and power from the first tone to the final encore.

That night in Sydney, Neil Diamond gave one of the most outstanding performances of his life, an exhilarating, almost unhuman display of energy for an audience demanding his heart and his soul. The more the audience asked of him, the more he was willing to give them. Reminiscing the funky stage clothes of the 1972 Greek Theatre and Winter Garden concert series, the Sydney stage outfit underlined Neil's tall and slender build in a perfect and extravagant way: a canary yellow silk shirt, embroidered and  rhine stoned on the chest and sleeves, flared, skin-tight chocolate-brown leather pants to match with brown boots, and a custom-made broad glittery belt. After the first songs, the initial nervousness was gone and Neil was starting to fly. His strong and rich baritone filled the moonlit Sydney night, blended by the clear and almost transcendental sound of his Ovation guitar and his usually tight backup band. Stan Miller's excellent sound-setup reproduced a record-like quality even outdoors. Neil's communication with the audience was awesome, he talked to the audience instead of talking at them.

It was really "far out - what the people of Sydney can do when they get together"! "38000 of us here tonight" to finally build "the largest mixed choir in the history of man" for an exhilarating rendition of "Song Sung Blue". "Last Picasso? Yeah, Last Picasso!" started a frenzy when Neil danced along the stage, elegantly swaying his hips, looking hot and sexy in his tight leather pants. He grooved his way from the beginning of his career over a span of ten years, from "Solitary Man" and "Cherry Cherry" to a "Longfellow Serenade". The 25 minute long "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" segment formed a special highlight of each performance and for the television audience it was visually underlined by a computer-animated bird gracing a pastel coloured sky.

Besides the two live commercials for the main sponsors of the broadcast (Pioneer HiFi Systems and Cadbury Chocolate), Neil told the audience about the great excitement of the entire Australian tour, his love for fencing and poetry as a modern day Cyrano de Bergerac, Mozart's "help" in writing "Song Sung Blue". He advised his audience not to "mess around with the Sydney Opera House" when he introduced his "mighty mobeous" stage as the inexpensive version of the famous concert hall. The whole concert's atmosphere was completely relaxed. When Neil finished with "I've Been This Way Before" and started to leave the stage, he turned on the steps and went back into a thunderstorm of a standing ovation and flashlight fireworks. With misty eyes he thanked Australia for having been fantastic, almost unable to hide his strong emotions during this exhilarating moment. Neil Diamond often referred to the 1976 tour Down Under as one of the most extraordinary experiences he had ever had: "I couldn't even begin to describe what it was like. It was beyond pandemonium, it was beyond anything. It was insanity, after a while, and it was just beautiful".

Some of the insanity is also reflected in Rick Barrett's report on Neil's concerts at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne, when the journalist refers to the quote of two doctors attending the performances:

"Superstar Neil Diamond is in grave danger of burning himself out. Two Melbourne doctors who saw him sing non-stop for two hours last night say he is placing an 'incredible' physical and emotional strain on himself. 'The man is inhuman', one doctor said. 'He thrashes his vocal cords all night. Every trace of colour drains from his face. But he keeps coming back for more.' ... To the 40.000 people who saw Diamond's first two Melbourne concerts, he is not so much inhuman as superhuman. He sings with such strength-sapping intensity that some numbers leave him ghostly pale and gasping for breath. But the audience can't get enough of him. Even after singing 20 of his greatest songs, ... he obliged the screaming crowd with an encore - a bracket of numbers from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. All the superlatives apply to Diamond: fabulous, stupendous, incredible, fantastic."

During his tour Down Under, Neil also took the chance to give one of the most revealing interviews in his career for the one-hour long "A Current Affair Special: Neil Diamond with Michael Schildberger", aired live on Network Nine Australia on the 7th of March in 1976. Before he staged this interview, Neil invited Michael and his crew to accompany him on tour for several days to get a closer look at the star and the person Neil Diamond. Never before had Neil given an interview like this. Obviously fighting his nervousness and a certain insecurity about what was going to happen, Neil was chain-smoking during the whole show. During the run of the interview he also admitted to Michael Schildberger that smoking was his biggest vice besides tending to overwork. With usually two packs of cigarettes a day, Neil was addicted to smoking, although he obviously was fully aware of the dangers to his health and singing career, as he admitted to Michael. Only in the early 1990s he finally stopped smoking cigarettes and focused his smoking habits on cigars. The interviewer was as nervous as Neil. My special thank you goes to Michael Schildberger who gave me the opportunity to "interview" him in an one-hour telephone talk on the 9th of March in 2000 about his experiences with Neil Diamond and his memories in connection with "The Current Affair Special". It was really by chance that Michael and I talked on exactly on the same day as Neil's "Thank you, Australia" concert was staged 25 years ago!

To quote Michael: "I can remember vividly that just before we were about to start [i.e. the interview], he [i.e. ND] was very nervous. He was just as uptight as much as I was. (Laughs) I just didn't expect a star of that magnitude to be so nervous. What I liked about the interview was one little incident which really made him quite emotional and showed him to be human. It was when I asked him about his son and what he will take back home for him. He talked about the pencil case with the little secret compartment. And he was just so involved in that, he was so excited, I mean it was a nothing gift in terms of expense. But it was just something that he felt that his son will enjoy. And he was very proud he managed to get that."

Michael continued: "He had of course his manager and his team with him, but he tried to isolate himself ... so that he could talk like a human being to those people who would put this programme together. We also had spent some time with him to get to know him. We went to three of his concerts and we stayed backstage so that we could get to know him as an individual. And he really wanted this to happen, that was his idea. We went out to coffee for example after the show to talk to him just that so he could understand that he was perceived as such a big figure. I saw, there was a human element. And that was something he wanted us to know."

And then Michael gives another little story to underline the human aspect behind the superstar image of Neil Diamond. "After all this has happen, this particular interview, a few months later, he invited us to Las Vegas to Aladdin. Now, he asked us also to bring with us a deserving person from Australia. And we chose an Aboriginal woman, her name was Mom Shirl, and she looked after underprivileged young Aboriginal children. She had a dozen children that she looked after. I think she never travelled overseas before. And we went to the Aladdin on the day of the opening. The band was already rehearsing on the stage. He was in a room tucked away somewhere. This was about three o'clock in the afternoon. And he is due on stage within a few minutes to join the rehearsal. The managers and everybody said that now they didn't believe that this was the right time to go and see him. Then I said, well, that's what he has requested because I said we will see him after the show and he said "no, we might get lost and there will be too many people", so let's come and see him before. So I passed that message on and I was taken into that nearly unfurnished room with just a couple of chairs and we sat and chatted and he was quite relaxed. And then he said "Well, whom did you bring?" I explained to him who it was and he said "Well ". We had a television crew there so we could film a short interview, and as we talked I thought he might want to go out and meet Mom Shirl. So he did. Now put that in the context of the big show; he sat down and chatted with this Aboriginal lady for quite some time. He heard all about the kids and then he said "Well, next time I come to Australia, they must come and sit in the front row and I'll provide the tickets". And she had already a tear in her eye. Then he said - he called one of his by-standers, one of his officials - and said "Go and get me a dozen copies of Beautiful Noise", his latest album, and then he individually signed and autographed each one of the covers with the name of the child. To me that was just unbelievable, seeing the pressure that must have been on him at that time knowing that he will perform on an opening night. The band was already waiting for him on stage, but he was quite determined to get this finished and it meant in the end: she had tears in her eyes, he had tears in his eyes ...."

When I asked Michael Schildberger further on during our phone talk if there was anything that did impress him very much about Neil Diamond, he immediately stated: "I suppose it was the power of communication and the warmth of the individual which perhaps I wasn't really expecting. I mean I met and interviewed many big stars, most of them sort of feel that they're doing you a favour and most of them feel that they're doing it because they need to sell tickets for a concert, or whatever it is. I mean in this case it was a very genuine "I liked to do this" and it feels good to be doing it. But there was his considerable bizarre nervousness because he has never done anything like this ever before. He was worried how he would be able to present himself. He thought different views, he had lots of answers to questions, he was never publicly in that position before. So that troubled him, that worried him. When it was over he was, I'm sure, very pleased. He got through it well and he thought that he performed well and it was something quite different for him. "

When our phone talk neared the end, Michael Schildberger stated: "Obviously, he felt good about it [i.e. the TV interview], and it made him look good and feel good." I finally asked Michael if he noticed that Neil was wearing his gold-rimmed tinted glasses during the TV interview and if he might interpret this as another sign of insecurity, Michael answered: "I never thought about that. I don't even remember that. I do have the photographs here and I look at the pictures. - You're right. He is wearing them in the photographs beforehand as well. But I have no idea, maybe I think about it."

Besides the official dates Neil Diamond had to undergo during this tour, he and his entourage also had quite a few funny moments and incidents to remember and about which even local newspapers reported. A few of those should be mentioned in the following. For instance in Perth as well as in Adelaide, Neil was spotted wearing a t-shirt printed: "I am not Neil Diamond. I just look like him!" The Sydney Daily News reported on February 24th about "Trouble over Neil's light up": Neil was joking about the many "non smoking" signs at Sydney's Hordern Pavillion by saying "maybe at the end of the show we will all light up a cigarette and burn the place down" and moments after he invited people to "light up". The pavillion was filled with smoke. Neil's tour promotors afterwards excused the breach of safety regulations by telling the press that "it was just good clean Californian fun". The same paper reported about another incident two days later when a certain Charlie Hayes had climbed the stage in Sydney to sing "Song Sung Blue" with Neil. Charlie pleased the audience with an almost five minute long rendition of Neil's smash hit, while Neil retreated from the spotlight and made himself comfortable sitting on a nearby speaker, until he later joined Charlie for the final verse of the song. Afterwards Neil invited the courageous Charlie backstage for a chat, signing him an autograph and presenting him with a gold cigarette lighter.

Also the Perth Sunday Times reported in its February 27th issue about two other incidents: First of all Neil learned that "a cricket wicket is holier than 'Holly Holy'". When Neil arrived on the WACA ground riding a powerful motorcycle before anyone else was there for the rehearsal, "the machine was bearing down on the sacred central wicket when ground curator Roy Abbott came for the rescue: I stopped him a few feet from the wicket. I didn't realise who it was, only that it was an American and that he would not understand about wickets. So I explained and he said he was sorry. Later, after I found out it was Neil Diamond, he asked me for advice about siting the stage and seating."

But also a number of other people had unexpected meetings with the playful superstar. One was Beth Thompson, a Perth high school teacher who took her students to swimming classes at the Bicton jetty. The teacher reports: "A launch was moored at the end of the jetty and there was a bit of a party on board. I didn't know who was aboard and conducted lessons from the jetty. One of the men came and sat next to me. Then another one sat on the other side and said: 'My name is Neil - we've been trying to figure out a way to push you in the water'. Eventually the other man threw me in and everyone had a good laugh. They were taking photographs. Neil thanked me for being a good sport and asked us all to have lunch with him on board the launch. I declined because a bus was due to pick us up - but the kids gave me hell when they found out it was Neil Diamond."

Neil's first tour Down Under had broken all records by that time. It crossed the $ 2 million mark for 13 dates in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. His popularity in Australia was so immense that when he arrived there, the red carpet was rolled out to greet him like a State visitor and his press conference was broadcast live on television. Here again he showed his great nervousness when he tried to light a cigarette on its wrong end! In an 1977 satellite interview with Don Lane on Australian national television, Neil admitted that the success of his first tour Down Under made him finally sign the contract for his first Las Vegas appearance at the opening of the Alladan concert hall. Without Australia, Las Vegas would never have been possible. And after Down Under and Las Vegas, Neil Diamond played at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, he triumphantly returned to the Greek Theatre, he did Woburn Abbey during his 1977 European tour, and finally ended up to be one of - if not - the world's leading performer until today.

After all the success, the royal treatment, the excitement and insanity, it took Neil Diamond another 16 years to tour Australia again. He once stated in an interview that the Australian experience had such an influence on him, that he didn't dare to visit the country again for a long time as this experience could never repeat itself. But the audience Down Under hasn't forgotten about him even after 16 years, and his three tours during the 1990s were as successful as the one now a quarter of a century ago.

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