Neil Diamond - Beloved Singer, Songwriter, Poet (Record Review by Bob Racine)

After decades in the limelight and so many other voices that have come and in some cases gone, Neil Diamond continues to be my favorite among pop singers.  Not only do his lyrics endure; his charisma remains special to me.

There is something home grown and husky about his voice, something native to people in a struggle between their needy child and their searching adult.  He is not a swooning crooner in the grand tradition of well tailored male vocalists.  His is not a velvety voice that dallies over some cocktail soaked obsession.  He does not go with champagne, nor can I imagine him in a tuxedo or even standard coat and tie.  To my recollection he has never appeared as a guest on a TV program thusly garbed.  Speaking only in the raw grass roots vernacular – ain’t for isn’t, don’t for doesn’t, you got for you have, lovin’ for loving, etc. – he belongs to the loner and seeker in all of us. 

What is so vital for me in his work is his gift for poetic expression.  He is rarely ever prosaic.  And he is never vulgar or coarse!  And yet he projects ever so well.  His words feel to me like more than shared sentiments; they are declarations, sung not for the benefit of some special cult but for all listeners – for the world. 

Like just about any pop songwriter and singer he explores the subject of romantic love, but he has never been silly or trite with it.  There is a sizeable heart that beats behind every word and great artistry in the way he frames the subject.  And oh-h-h-h, what orchestral accompaniment he inspires and commands!  I experience him as a healer – not the sensational sawdust trail type, not some wizard.  He heals the spirit by linking himself up with the pains and tribulations to which we are all subject.  Each song, whether sad or celebrative, feels completely lived in, and he invites us all into it with him.

Even when he is singing about the most heartbreaking love experiences, you can hear a note of wistful hope lurking just below the crying surface.  In “Love on the Rocks” he tells us that when a relationship has ended, “Suddenly you find you’re out there walking in a storm”.  And then he murmurs in his forlorn state, “Now all I want is a smile”. The person talking is not hateful nor is he/she contemplating suicide or slow self-destruction.  I suppose the one melody that best embodies this kind of cheerfulness-amidst-upset is “Songs Sung Blue”.  Instead of singing the weary blues, maybe dragging us through a dirge, in both songs he makes the subject somewhat bright and hopeful. 

“Songs sung blue, everybody knows one.  Songs sung blue, every garden grows one.  Me and you are subject to the blues now and then.  But when you take the blues and make a song, you sing ’em out again, you sing ’em out again. 

“Songs sung blue, weepin’ like a willow.  Songs sung blue, sleepin’ on my pillow.  Funny thing but you can sing it with a cry in your voice, and before you know it get to feelin’ good.  You simply got no choice”.

How much of a personal testimony this is I cannot be sure, but I know he has had sadness come his way, and probably composition is the way he deals with the pain. 

Each song, in whatever mood, is a major undertaking.  They come from deep down, and they never sound like a retread of something old and borrowed.  Diamond owns his music; he is its caretaker as well as its creator and deliverer.  I have never heard a rendition of a Diamond song attempted by another singer that I thought really worked well.  His music belongs exclusively to him.  Hearing his words apart from his vocalizing is for me a letdown.  And the opposite is true: he never gives renditions of other composer’s pieces. 

For songs about lostness, misdirection and loneliness, none in my estimation could surpass “I am, I said, I am, I cried. . . and no one heard at all not even the chair”.  And he has come out more recently with “Can anybody hear me?  Is anybody out there”. 

No one has ever portrayed intimate love as this veteran has.  I must take a moment here to share something quite personal.  Diamond was an unseen guest at the wedding of Ruby and me those thirty-five years ago.  (Yes, he has been at it that long and much longer!)  We played the recording of his sweet ballad “Hello Again”, consisting of the words of a husband out of town calling the beloved wife at home.  It accompanied a filmstrip in which we paid tribute to other married couples in our congregation, their photos projected on a screen. 

“Hello again, hello!  Just called to say hello!  I couldn’t sleep at all tonight.  And I know it’s late, but I couldn’t wait.  Hello, my friend, hello.  Just called to let you know I think about you every night, while I’m here alone and you’re there at home.  Hello!

“Maybe it’s been crazy and maybe I’m to blame, but I put my heart above my head.  We’ve been through it all, you love me just the same, and when you’re not there, I just need to hear:  Hello, my friend, hello.  It’s good to need you so.  It’s good to love you like I do and to feel this way, when I hear you say hello.”

The words are simple, but the ambiance he creates for them is itself a small wonder.  Also included as part of the marital festivities was the quite popular number “Play Me.”  We danced to this, bride and groom.  “You are the sun; I am the moon.  You are the words I am the tune, Play me!”  Fond memories!

There are a multitude of romantic ballads of his that are pure fun, just as ingeniously written as the darker stuff.  One of my very favorites is “Forever in Blue Jeans”.  “Money talks, but it don’t sing and dance and it don’t walk.  As long as I can have you here with me, I’d much rather be together in blue jeans” .  And then there is “Cracklin’ Rosie” – “You make me sing like a guitar humming, so hang on to me til the song keeps running out.”  There’s the number that seemed to launch him, “Sweet Caroline”.  The person speaking is amazed that over Spring and Summer he and his heartthrob, namely the Caroline of the title, have arrived at such a high in their courtship, and he rejoices.  “Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you. . .How can I hurt when holding you?  Who can be sure if Neil is speaking of a real woman in his life; all I know is that it is not unlike him throughout his repertoire to praise the simple affections of a woman and to celebrate the fun she gives him.  

Some of Neil’s work reflects his upbringing and his family heritage.   He captures the essence of what it feels like to be a somewhat neglected child on the streets of Brooklyn.  He does this in two early songs – “Brooklyn Roads” and “Shilo”.  In the first he is threatened with a whipping if he doesn’t go find his brother before dinner.  In his hurting solitude he “looks out on the wind”.  The latter is the name he gives to an imaginary female playmate.  “Shilo, when I was young, I used to call your name.  When no one else would come, Shilo, you always came. . .I wanted to fly.  She made me feel like I could”. 

In 1980 he made the movie “The Jazz Singer”, a remake of Al Jolson’s erstwhile release updated.  (The screenplay was very poorly written, but all the music in it has its own independent wealth.)  The highlight of the picture is “America”.  It seems that in spite of his less than thrilling childhood he took great pride in his Jewish descent.  “Far!  We’ve been travelin’ far, without a home but not without a star”.  The immigrants longing to be free!  The melody he created with this as a tribute to his ancestors is a most thrilling full throated celebration accompanied by a throbbing full orchestra rhythm.    

I find him also to be a very spiritual person, or maybe mystical would be a better term.  Perhaps others do not see him this way, but if you study his collection with any thoroughness, you will meet up with a most bizarre and uncommon invention entitled “Soolaimon”.  The word is a native African term that means roughly “hello” – a “hello” in the sanctified language of one addressing deity, the deity being female.  He greets the day, and he does so in an ecstatic manner.  He begins with “Come see, come say.  Ride on the night.  Sun become day, day shall provide”.  Then he elevates his voice to a high octave and begins to shiver and quiver and quake:  “God of my want, want, want, God of my need, need, need, leading me on, on, on to the Woman, she dance with the sun.  God of my day, Lord of my night, seek for the way.  Take me home”.  Strange to our western ears but not exactly obscurantist!  He makes sense enough, and he carries us right along on the groundswell.  A brilliant rendition!

But of course his most notable expression of the mystical is his album from the soundtrack of the motion picture “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”, based upon the book by Richard Bach.  He does not appear in it, nor does any other human, but his voice is heard interwoven with glorious orchestral scoring accompanying breathless seaside imagery.  He sets the tone with his opening melody “Be.”  In reference to the outcast bird he begins “Lost!  On a painted sky, where the clouds are hung for the poet’s eye, you may know him, if you may know him. . .There on a distant shore, by the wings of dreams, through an open door, you may find him, if you may”.  The thrust of the song is an urging of our spirits: 

“Be, as a page that aches for a word which speaks on a theme that is timeless, and the one God will make for your day.  Be, as a song in search of a voice that is silent, and the one God will make for your way. . .And we dance to a whispered voice, overheard by the soul, undertook by the heart.  You may know it, if you may know it, while the sand would become the stone, which begat the spark turned to living bone.  Holy, holy!  Sanctus, sanctus!”  This album, which I have heard dozens of times always puts me in a kind of trance, especially when I am at the shore and I play it on my iPod.  Only an intuitive soul belonging to a gifted lyricist could have composed poetry like this.

Hearing Diamond sing always gives me joy, whatever he sings about.  Even at his darkest he lifts my spirit; he comforts; he excites; he makes me feel complete.  He is an exceptionally gifted entertainer – and poet.

Just a note: All the tunes I have mentioned are accessible on cd or download.  Just go to Google and ask for what you want.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Grandma (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

                                1 hr & 19 min, color, 2015

                                     

Lily Tomlin is like a scruffy cat; she has scampered and scratched and snarled her way through a long, exciting and distinguished career of oddball but loveable characters.  She has never had any pretense of glamour; she has created iconic female personalities in her own singular style with her slit-eyed countenance and her pouty lips and has won her shaggy-tailed place in hearts for over three generations of movie, TV and stage audiences.  I am so delighted to learn that the Screen Actors Guild is going to give her its Life Achievement Award next January.  She has earned it many times over.   And her wild, ferocious, snappy portrayal of the title role in “Grandma” caps that career for me, at least on the movie screen.  It is arguably her best work ever.  She is a force just about any teenager or adult would take pleasure in contending with.

                                     

Not that the film is basically comedic.  It is not exactly a wacky farce.  There are howls to be sure, but by and large it is a serious display of raw emotion, filtered though it be through outrageous shenanigans and confrontations that are bracing, often funny and quite heart stirring. 

                                     

The grandmother Tomlin plays is a woman named Elle in her seventies who happens to be a lesbian, and has had the misfortune of losing Vi, her cohabiting partner of almost forty years, by death.  At the opening scene she is giving her college age lover of four months Olivia (Judy Greer) her walking papers.  She does it in a very cold, dismissive tone, and it is obvious that the girl is totally devastated as well as surprised.  Elle is crude, vulgar, foul-mouthed and almost malicious.  It takes little perception to see that the young lover is not really her enemy; this senior citizen is doing battle with internal conditions and outward circumstances that we are yet to have revealed.  What is going on with this woman?  Could nothing but grief provoke this kind of behavior?  It may be difficult to believe that by film’s end she will emerge as a very caring individual.  That is the wonder worked in the perceptive and fluid screenplay by Paul Weitz, who is also the director.

                                     

Three generations of womanhood in one family get entangled with each other.  Elle and her daughter (Marcia Gay Harden) have been on the outs for quite some time, and into the picture creeps the teenage granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner).  The girl pays Elle a visit announcing that she is pregnant and prevails upon Elle for money to pay for the abortion she is scheduled for later that same day, after her boyfriend fails to come up with it.  She is too ashamed and afraid to call on her alarmist mother for help (more about her in a moment), imagining that she will be thrown out of the house.  In addition to other problems that have made Elle’s life a torment she must inform the girl that she is broke, but she sets out with Sage in tow through the streets of LA to find a willing friend from whom she can borrow the money.  Their circuitous journey brings Elle into thunderous confrontations with supposed friends who either refuse to help or are unable to.  Most heartbreaking of them is an appeal to a lover of a half century before.  Sam Elliott portrays him, and he is a forceful presence in the one scene in which he appears.

                                     

The classic image of grandmother-hood has been stripped away before.  I recall the 1979 comedy “Parenthood” in which Diane Weist, a woman in her forties, is informed by her teenage daughter that she is going to give birth out of wedlock sometime in the coming months.  After a spell, when her shock has been sufficiently absorbed, she contemplates what this will mean for herself.  Someone spells it out for her – that she is about to become a grandmother.  Her first reaction is resistance.  She declares that this could not possibly be true.  Me, a grandmother!  Grandmothers are matronly old ladies.  They bake pies and cakes and have their offspring’s offspring visit them as subjects would pay homage to royalty.  They do not visit; they are visited and honored as senior citizens by the larger family.  Her question to herself and all listeners is a challenge: How can I fill that kind of role?  After all, “I was at Woodstock”.    

                                     

That moment was just a warm-up for what Tomlin gives us.  Her Grandma is far from royalty of any kind and is anything but a settled, poised and self-respecting matriarch of wisdom.  She is bitterly candid; she has no trouble with broadside insults; she is not even averse to physical combat.  In one outrageous scene she and Sage pay the father of Sage’s unborn baby a visit and when he tries to deny paternity, she literally beats him up, leaving him crumpled in the floor in agony.  Tact and decorum are foreign to her.  But it does not take long for it to begin to be evident that she is a fighter who will go to bat for someone she loves.  And there is no sign of any patriarch anywhere.  She is a solo flyer who has not always made the best choices for herself.  Her one night stand with a man years before resulted in her own pregnancy, the man disappearing from her life.  She is a poet who in the wake of her lover’s death has lost touch with her muse as well.  Her path is bestrewn with wreckage.   

                                     

The daughter, the mid-generation figure, does not appear until most of the way through the scenario, but within minutes we see enough to understand Sage’s fear of her that has led to her calling upon the grandmother instead.  She is an equally candid, chip-on-the-shoulder individual who despite her handsome face and neat professional appearance looks as if she would have no trouble pecking out somebody’s eyes.  Like mother, like daughter!  Of the three women Sage emerges as the most sane and well-tempered.  She inadvertently turns out to be the catalyst that brings mother and grandmother to belated though cautious terms with each other.  The closing moments of the film are priceless!

                                     

But though the three all come powerfully to life, Tomlin’s Grandma is unmistakably in the driver’s seat all the way.  While Garner and Harden do exceptionally good work, Tomlin is given more leeway in the script for nuance.  Her Grandma’s destiny I never ceased to regard as the most vital for me.  Maybe that is because I myself am a senior citizen faced with aging angst, with nothing left to do to help shape the lives of growing children, even though I do not have her brash, indelicate nature or her regret over past loves and lost labors.  Elle has layers, and they peel back one at a time to show us just how complicated her struggling life really is and how big the heart that beats underneath her uncouthness.  

                                     

This is a real jewel.  It speaks to all of us participants in the ongoing human comedy/drama!      

                                     

It helps, if the viewer is Pro-Choice; the movie is nothing short of that.  The scene in the abortion clinic is almost a story unto itself.   About that I will discreetly say no more.  But if that issue is not an issue for you, you are in for a treat.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.