The Untold Truth Of Neil Diamond

Only a handful of musicians have sold more records than Neil Diamond. He ranks with Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and Madonna in terms of commercial, unit-moving success. That's because he's been actively performing and recording since the mid-1960s. While he started off as a pop songwriter, Diamond realized he had a knack for singing his own songs. Millions agreed, making classics out of Diamond's many hit songs, like "Sweet Caroline," Solitary Man," "Cracklin' Rosie," "America," and "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon."

While he hasn't had a chart-topper in a while, Neil Diamond has continued to release albums in multiple styles of music and relentlessly tour to perform his beloved catalog for several generations of fans. He's in his late 70s now, and winding down a long, lucrative, and unlikely career, so here's a look into the colorful life of the man who's got the way to move you and groove you, the king of soft rock, the "Jewish Elvis" himself, Neil Diamond.

"Tin Pan Alley" is a legendary institution in the history of American music. It's a nickname for an area of New York where a number of record labels and music publishers had their offices in the early to mid-20th century. These folks hired songwriters to sit in offices all day and churn out songs. Although he needed just 10 credits to graduate college, Neil Diamond dropped out of school, headed to Tin Pan Alley, and got a 16-week gig at $50 each week with Sunbeam Music. When his contract ended it wasn't renewed, but based on the strength of his voice on the demos of songs he'd written, Columbia Records hired him to make a record. Unfortunately, it didn't really go anywhere, so Diamond bounced around various music publishers for seven years, barely getting by. "I had very few things that were recorded even," Diamond told Rolling Stone. "I'd spent a lot of time on lyrics, and they were looking for hooks and I didn't really understand the nature of that." He'd sell a song occasionally, forcing himself to severely ration his funds. For "a year," he says, he spent 35 cents a day on food — 23 cents for a sandwich, 10 cents for a Coke, and two cents for a piece of candy.

Eventually, Diamond got the knack for songwriting, and the attention of the music industry. By 1966, he was on his way to superstardom.

Never mind the subjective nature of judging the man's music; we can all admit that "Neil Diamond" is a marvelous name. It's a fantastic name for a legendary singer who holds court before giant arenas full of people, bringing down the house with classic hit after classic hit while wearing very sparkly clothes. In other words, "Neil Diamond" perfectly describes Neil Diamond. It's one of the great performer names, right up there with Lady Gaga and Snoop Dogg. And yet, surprisingly, "Neil Diamond" isn't a stage name at all. Like Prince, Cher, and Madonna, this pop star chose to hit the scene with the name his momma gave him. But he almost didn't. In a 2014 Ask Me Anything session on Reddit, Diamond revealed that he considered some stage names early in his career. "Neil Diamond may sound cool now," he said but at the time, "it was just my name and pretty boring." He said he "chickened out for personal reasons" and didn't use the two finalists he'd chosen: Noah Kaminsky ("which had biblical underpinnings and great character") and Ice Charry ("which I thought was pure rock & roll"). A guy named Charry singing "Cherry, Cherry!" How very (very) ... lame.

Neil Diamond scored a #1 hit single in 1978 with "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," a gut-wrenching song about divorce. Working with Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Diamond initially co-wrote "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" as a 45-second track for use in a TV project that ultimately changed course. So, he made it into a full-length song and released it. In November 1977, Louisville, Kentucky, disc jockey Gary Guthrie got a listen. "I had heard Diamond sing this song and noticed the response it evoked in my wife and other women," Guthrie said. "But I kept thinking there was something missing." When Barbra Streisand released her version of the song in early 1978, it struck Guthrie that it ought to be a duet. So he spliced the two versions together and played his ad hoc duet on the air, where it became a smash. The mix got some attention in radio industry publications, and so other stations started playing it, too. The fake duet got so popular that Diamond and Streisand recorded an "official" version together.

And in a weird coincidence, it turned out Streisand and Diamond had some history already. Not from the music industry or a fizzled romance: They went to Erasmus Hall High School together. "I didn't know Barbra at all," Neil told Larry King, although both of them sang in the school chorus at the same time.

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was nothing short of a pop culture phenomenon. The 1982 movie about a little boy named Elliott and the lost, gentle alien he befriends became the top-grossing film of all time, moved millions in merchandise, and caused sales of Reese's Pieces to skyrocket. An official soundtrack album hit stores, too, featuring John Williams' score, along with narrative storybook-style segments provided by Michael Jackson, who also sings on a song called "Someone in the Dark."

So E.T. was on a lot of people's minds, including those of Neil Diamond and songwriters Carole Bayer Sager and Burt Bacharach. The three all saw E.T. together and were so inspired they composed a song called "Heartlight," evoking images of the little alien man's empathy-powered, glowing chest. E.T. fever propelled the song to #5 on the pop chart (Diamond's last top 40 hit to date). One problem: copyright infringement. The song is so obviously about E.T. (sample lyrics: "he's lookin' for home" and "come back again, I want you to stay next time" and "turn on your heartlight") that it angered the film's rights-holders, Universal. According to Burt Bacharach, Song by Song, Diamond and his cohorts had to pay the studio $25,000 to cash in on E.T. and avoid further legal action.

Over the course of five decades in the music business, Neil Diamond has scored a number of hit singles. And he's been married almost as many times as he topped the charts. (Hey, if you're going to make a name for yourself as one of the 20th century's most successful and resonant writers of love songs, you're going to have to love and lose those loves a few times.)

In 1963, while in his early 20s, Diamond married high-school girlfriend Jayne Posner, with whom he had two daughters, Marjorie and Elyn. After their divorce was finalized in 1969, Diamond got hitched to production assistant Marcia Murphey. They had two sons (Jesse and Micah) and remained married until 1994. Diamond moved on to date his then-manager, Rae Farley. They never walked down the aisle, leaving Diamond unencumbered when he fell in love with video producer (and now manager) Katie McNeil, whom he met when she worked on his documentary Hot August Nights/NYC. Love finds a way, even when there's a 29-year age difference between spouses.

After 21 platinum albums, thousands of concerts, and a couple dozen entries into the Great American Songbook, Diamond announced in January 2018 — on the eve of his 77th birthday and toward the end of his 50th Anniversary Tour — that he was walking away from touring. Diamond revealed that a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, a degenerative neurological condition, would force him to stop performing live. "It is with great reluctance and disappointment that I announce my retirement from concert touring," Diamond said in a statement. "I have been so honored to bring my shows to the public for the past 50 years." However, his statement also demands a careful read, as he said he retired from touring, not singing live. Six days after his announcement, Diamond sang "Sweet Caroline" for firefighters working to put out a wildfire near his home in Colorado. There's also the possibility of a travel-free, Las Vegas-style residency sometime in the future. 

And two years after his announcement, Diamond made good on his promise to sing again in Sin City. At a Diamond tribute show in March 2020 to benefit the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Billy Ray Cyrus sang Diamond's "I'm a Believer," and Chris Isaak turned out "Solitary Man." And that's when Diamond, who was only supposed to attend and watch the show, took the mic to sing "Cracklin' Rose," "Love on the Rocks," and "Sweet Caroline." Good times never seemed so good.