As improbable as it seems, Neil Diamond actually talks like he sings.
The iconic songwriter with the bone-dry voice and flowing black hair has outlasted eight presidents and countless pop stars while peddling bombastic, melody-drenched songs that reach to the rafters.
His stage presence and chest-baring costumes may seem the stuff of over-the-top Vegas shows, but Diamond really does drop words like “magical” and “tremendous” during interviews.
“The crowds have been fantastic,” he said over the phone last month from a tour stop in Phoenix. “This whole tour’s been fantastic for me. It’s one for the books. The audiences have been better than ever, and they’re loving the new songs.”
The new songs come from “Home Before Dark,” Diamond’s second collaboration with super-producer Rick Rubin. As he did with Johnny Cash’s stripped-down “American” series or Metallica’s “Death Magnetic,” Rubin took a simple, intimate approach to rendering Diamond’s music that has resulted in some of the best reviews — and sales — of Diamond’s long career.
“Home Before Dark” debuted at No. 1 in May on the Billboard chart, an impressive first for an artist who has been releasing music for over 45 years.
“It makes me a current artist and I like that,” said Diamond, who turns 68 next month. “I don’t want to become a nostalgia artist. I want new music all the time, and I want the audience to be able to accept it.”
That seems almost beside the point with Diamond’s insatiable fans. His Wednesday show at the Pepsi Center is the third leg of a North American tour that’s been extended due to demand, according to promoter AEG Live. His world tour has played to nearly a million people across nine countries since kicking off in May.
Sure, folks are turning out to hear dog-eared hits like “Sweet Caroline,” “Cracklin’ Rosie” and “Solitary Man.” But if all they really wanted were boozy sing-alongs, they could easily catch a Diamond cover band like Super Diamond (who themselves sell out theaters) or hit any karaoke bar worth its mic.
“Really, I want something even simpler than that for the new songs,” Diamond said. “I want people to take it to their hearts, and I want it to affect people. Whether it becomes a ‘Sweet Caroline’ or not is irrelevant. I can’t control that. It just happens. But I want people to get to know these new songs.”
“Home Before Dark” offers a remarkably personal, “more exposed Diamond than listeners have ever heard,” according to an review. “Lost in his hirsute, denim-ness in the ’70s was the fact that Diamond wasn’t always an arena rocking demigod with perfectly coifed hair,” wrote Tim Newby in All About Jazz.
The warm reception has encouraged Diamond to include an unusual number of new songs in the set.
“We do three from ‘Home Before Dark,’ two from (2005’s) ’12 Songs’ and one from the album before that (2001’s ‘Three Chord Opera’),” Diamond said. “The response has been tremendous, otherwise I couldn’t keep them in. If the audience didn’t want to hear them or went out to get a beer or something, I’d pull them. I’m always playing with the set.”
Diamond comes by his old- school showmanship honestly. His career started in the Brill Building-era of the early ’60s and he has made as much of a mark in songwriting as solo work, providing hits and albums tracks for Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Waylon Jennings, Chris Isaak and dozens more in nearly every musical genre.
This broad approach has also made him a punching bag for critics, many of whom attack his work as painfully schmaltzy or, at the very least, irritatingly boring. Earnest album titles like “The Feel of Neil Diamond” and “Touching You, Touching Me” certainly don’t help.
They do, however, point to the visceral connection Diamond has with his audience — whom he trusts implicitly.
“You never do know what’s going to work until you put it in front of an audience,” he said. “They’ll tell you right away.”
But does someone who has sold more than 125 million albums still feel the need to challenge himself? Wouldn’t it be wiser for him to quit while he’s ahead?
Not likely. Diamond’s already making plans to meet with Rubin next month for a third collaborative album, the concept of which will differ from the last couple.
At the moment, he has no clue how.
“New music is always a surprise to me because I never know what’s going to come out or what I’m going to write,” he said. “The challenges are to keep the old music vibrant — keep it alive — and to write new music that’s just as vibrant and alive. That’s hard enough to do over a long period of time and it’s a challenge I’d be very happy to keep doing.”
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
