Diamond Uncut

Reporter: Sonia Kruger
Producer: Penelope Cross

Sonia Kruger: Neil you’ve got a nickname – your guitar-playing technique has earned you the nickname ‘The Basher’.

Neil Diamond: That’s right

Sonia Kruger: Why?

Neil Diamond: Well because I am not a delicate player. Although there are songs that you want to be delicate with. There are songs that you want to be delicate with but if you give me a guitar I’m immediately going to start.

Sonia Kruger: And that’s bashing.

Neil Diamond: There’s no subtlety but its fun and that’s what I usually do to my guitars

Sonia Kruger: Hi, how are you?

Neil Diamond: Hi Sonia – welcome to Malibu!

Sonia Kruger: Wow this is amazing.

Neil Diamond: I wish it were sunny today, you know it’s usually sunny out here in Malibu but this is good too, it’s rare and it’s great.

Sonia Kruger: Why Malibu Neil?

Neil Diamond: There are not too many distractions here. I can actually do some work.

Sonia Kruger: How does it make you feel when you’re up on stage?

Neil Diamond: I’m trying to find words for it because there may not be words for it. Well, it’s a good start but I’m not sure it tells the whole story. Validation, yes, that’s a good word but that doesn’t tell the story either.

Sonia Kruger: What do you think is the key to writing a good song?

Neil Diamond: Well I think you have to love music … It starts with a spark, it starts with a melodic idea or a feel or a few words that you really love and that move you but then you have to take that and expand upon the idea. You’ve got to put words to it by the way that rhyme so you know in 150 words or less you have to be able to tell the entire story or move somebody, first yourself.

There was always music in my house, there was always dancing. My parents were always dancing, they loved, loved, loved it. Any chance they had they would dance. As a matter of fact, on Saturday nights they would get dressed up and go to a wedding. It didn’t have to be the wedding of anybody they knew, they would just go into a dance area at a wedding and when the band played they would dance

Sonia Kruger: That’s hysterical Neil, your parents used to crash weddings for fun.

Neil Diamond: They crashed for fun, yeah – they meant no harm.

Sonia Kruger: Was the song ‘Solitary Man’ a reflection of you?

Neil Diamond: It was. I didn’t know it when I wrote it. People asked me about it when it first came out: ‘are you a solitary man’ but at the time I didn’t really know there was a relationship between the writer and the creation but of course there is. Um, I have tended to go my way through most of my life. I don’t belong to any clubs.

Sonia Kruger: I can hear somebody in the background that wants our attention.

Neil Diamond: Poker’s crying – he wants me.

Sonia Kruger: Oh Poker!

Neil Diamond: Pokie.

Sonia Kruger: So he’s your rescue dog?

Neil Diamond: Yes he rescued me just a year or so ago.

Sonia Kruger: He looks like he’s having a pretty good time. Poker! Come here. Poker!

Neil Diamond: He’s playing.

Sonia Kruger: You’re funny. They’re great company aren’t they?

Neil Diamond: He’s great company, he’s a good pal.

Sonia Kruger: Oh you’ve got a fire.

Neil Diamond: We’ve got a fire and what I do is I take a stone and a piece of quartz and I hit it and it sparks. I actually start the fire, but I’ve found a modern convenience and it works just as well I think. I guess not but theoretically, there’s a fire.

Sonia Kruger: Is it gas?
Neil Diamond: Well you’d better not get too close Sonia. You know they say it works.

Sonia Kruger: The stone would be a better option.

Neil Diamond: Sonia don’t get too close, I’m serious!

Sonia Kruger: I can smell the gas, so it’s definitely….

Neil Diamond: Yeah, well you’ll have to take it from me.

Sonia Kruger: This will go on the bloopers’ reel!

You’ve worn some pretty colourful stuff on stage over the years. When you look back and you see some of those outfits, do you sort of go, ‘oh, that’s interesting?’

Neil Diamond: I do, I really do because some of them look really far out but I went through a stage where the brighter, the sparklier, the better. We were playing huge theatres and venues and I felt it was important to be seen and also I wanted to express a certain amount of fun in what I was doing.

Sonia Kruger: Now, we do need to talk about this costume.

Neil Diamond: Ah ha. Well you know this was pretty typical of what I was wearing although it’s hard to imagine but this is pretty subdued compared to many of the costumes that I wore but you know.

Sonia Kruger: This is the original from The Jazz Singer isn’t it?

Neil Diamond: Yes it is and we’ve kept it and taken good care of it just because it has some meaning … but it is the one that I wore in the movie and it still looks pretty good.

Sonia Kruger: It does and are you saying that this is one of the least flamboyant costumes?

Neil Diamond: Yeah this is pretty conservative I think.

Sonia Kruger; There’s a famous line from a movie that says there are two types of people in the world, those who like Neil Diamond and those who don’t. Which one are you?

Neil Diamond: That’s a good question, there are times that I like myself and there are times that I don’t like myself, I go back and forth. But basically, I’m just I see myself as an ordinary guy and no big deal. I’m a dad and that has grounded me.

Sonia Kruger: Are you a solitary man now Neil? Are you single?

Neil Diamond: I am single, yes.

Sonia Kruger: And what’s that like?

Neil Diamond: It’s lonely at times but I’m busy with my work, I have friends, I have my kids and I’ve been very active in just living every day.

Sonia Kruger: How did your career affect your early relationships?

Neil Diamond: My early relationships … all of my relationships in a way have been affected by my career because music is an all-embracing kind of profession. You just don’t do it part-time, you must, it must be a total immersion and so it affected relationships and sometimes for the good and sometimes not for the good.

Sonia Kruger: You’ve been married twice. If you hadn’t been Neil Diamond, if you’d been Neil Smith, do you think those marriages would have survived?

Neil Diamond: Probably, probably. But it’s very difficult for a woman to take second place to a man’s real passion and it’s always been that way. You know I asked my mum once, why I wasn’t able to have a relationship with a woman that was lifetime in duration-lasting and she said because you put your music first and no woman can stand that for very long and I think that’s probably true.

Sonia Kruger: And who’s this over here?

Neil Diamond: This is a picture of my kids, these are my four – Micah and Marjorie and Jesse and Elyn and they’re quite a bunch and I love them dearly.

Sonia Kruger: Do you think music is the secret to eternal youth Neil?

Neil Diamond: Well I think maybe love is the secret to eternal youth but maybe music is the secret to love I think you don’t stop until, at least for me, until the man upstairs says ‘stop’. So I’m going to do what I do as long as that guy up there says I can do it. ‘Cause that’s my job, that’s what I’m here for. And I’m going to do it as best I can.

It’s on now?

Sonia Kruger: Stand back.

Neil Diamond: No

Sonia Kruger: Neil I think you lit it!

Neil Diamond: Gold!