Two Fresh Flowers

The seventh-inning stretch theme songs at MLB stadiums usually make little sense: I love going to the Orioles’ Camden Yards in Baltimore (a top five ballpark) but cover my ears when the late John Denver’s very silly “Thank God, I’m a Country Boy” blasts over the loudspeakers. In general the crowd, full or sparse, is still thrilled and it’s not in keeping with the friendliness there to brook any dissent. I take the opportunity to find a deserted corner and smoke an illegal cigarette. Likewise—and even more annoying—is the ritual playing of Neil Diamond’s insufferably treacly “Sweet Caroline” at Fenway Park. The song has nothing to do with baseball, or the Red Sox, and, at least to me, is a small blot on the organization’s reputation.

Diamond is one of the top-selling pop artists of all-time—130 million records worldwide—and his smash hits, including songs still played on radio stations, supermarkets and drugstores, like “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “America,” “Song Sung Blue” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” are among the very worst in the past half-century. This isn’t a unique observation: while I find Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun,”  Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s “Ebony and Ivory” and the Eagles’ “Hotel California” vicious aural assaults, Diamond’s in a different class, owing to his machine-like release of hit after hit. I didn’t know this until last week, but Diamond’s a member of Jann Wenner’s clubby Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which adds credence to the correct opinion that the Hall is meaningless. Wenner was removed from the Hall’s Board for “denigrating comments” about black and female artists. Couldn’t care less, but the Hall is several rungs worse than “insensitive” in my estimation.

What’s vanished almost entirely from any conversation about Diamond—which I never have—is that he wrote and sang, after influenced by Pete Seeger and Tin Pan Alley, two great folk-rock songs of the 1960s, the meditative “Solitary Man,” a brooding tune that if you just read the lyrics, you might think it was recorded by the Byrds or Lovin’ Spoonful. He had another around then: “Cherry Cherry,” and also wrote the catchy chart-buster “I’m a Believer” for the Monkees. I’ve got “Solitary Man” and “Cherry Cherry” on a compilation CD and when they pop up on my boombox, I stop and wonder if he could’ve, with a few breaks, become a far different and preferable performer. But those songs didn’t sell, so it was “Cracklin’ Rose” time for Diamond, which expanded to Broadway shows and Last Vegas, as well as becoming a punchline for listeners with discerning taste. (That’s condescending, I’d guess, but when it comes to popular music, it’s allowed.)

I won’t soon forget a Bob Dylan concert I attended (with select press seats) in 1978, shortly before he became born-again, whether for real or just another gimmick is immaterial at this point. I’d seen Dylan on his “comeback tour” with The Band in ’74 and then Rolling Thunder’s “Night of the Hurricane” in December of ’75, and despite quibbles I’ve noted before both shows were thrilling. In ’78, however, in the sixth row, it was an off-putting Dylan: I dug him singing “Tangled Up in Blue” as if he were a cantor, but the five costume changes was too much. After he came on with sequins and a hideously ruffled shirt mid-show, I told my companion, “Dylan’s doing a Neil Diamond, let’s split.” He wasn’t rough and rowdy or a riverboat gambler, just a Diamond/Barry Manilow-imitator. I could appreciate his “shedding one more layer of skin,” but it wasn’t for me.

I’m indifferent to The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s tribute to The Band’s farewell Thanksgiving Show in 1976, which represented mid-1970s self-indulgence perhaps on a par with the Eagles, but the weird—which is usually positive—inclusion of Diamond on the bill, singing a song he co-wrote with mostly objectionable Robbie Robertson (a so-so songwriter but great guitarist, especially when touring Europe with Dylan in 1966) and joining the coked-out stars with a concert-ending rendition of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” is a footnote in the annals of Bad Rock ‘n’ Roll moments.

One last thought: before he became a swami Cat Stevens recorded two songs that far outstrip anything on his must-have “epistle to hippy” LP Tea for the Tillerman. In my high school (and those around the country) it was mostly chicks who knew the lyrics by heart, along with Carole King’s insufferable Tapestry, while guys went for the Stones, Allman Brothers and King Crimson. The Cat’s “Matthew and Son” (1966) was catchy, and even better was his 1967 chart-dud “The First Cut is the Deepest,” which Rod Stewart popularized.

—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023