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Review/Pop; It's a Growl or a Roar; It Shakes the Rafters; It's Neil Diamond's Voice

Published: August 17, 1992

Nobody plays the role of pop music's storm-gatherer with more flourish than Neil Diamond. When the star, who opened a six-performance engagement at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, shakes his fist at the sky, the earth rumbles and laser beams split the heavens. As he strode around a revolving stage at the center of the Garden on opening night, the scowling, gray-haired star suggested a pop music Zeus, a middle-aged gladiator and a tent evangelist rolled into one.

The singer's craggy bass-baritone has always been one of pop's more rugged voices and, now that he is 51 years old, that voice has deepened into a growl that shades into a thundering roar. Not a word issues from Mr. Diamond's mouth onstage that isn't weighted with an oratorical self-importance. That bombast is thumpingly underscored by his longtime band, whose thickly textured guitar and synthesizer arrangements propel a "Star Wars" grandiosity with a driving pulse that inflates clumping folk-dance rhythms with arena-rock pretensions.

Mr. Diamond's new show is a more-than-two-hour retrospective without intermission that goes all the way back to his earliest composition, a generic doo-wop ballad called "Ring Them Bells" and all the way up to selections from his newest album, "Lovescape." The bulk of the program concentrates on his hits, which began in 1966 with "Solitary Man." At Thursday's concert most of his biggests hits were included, among them "Sweet Caroline," "Cracklin' Rosie," "I Am . . . I Said," "Song Sung Blue" and his three Top 10 hits from the movie "The Jazz Singer."

Some older songs were refurbished with contemporary touches. His 1968 number "Red Red Wine," which the English reggae group UB40 made into a No. 1 single 20 years later, was updated with a rap interpolation.


Mr. Diamond has never been one for musical subtlety or lyrical precision (what does "Song song blue/ every garden grows one" mean anyway?). But at a time when the commercial pop mainstream is turning its back on melody, Mr. Diamond's songs with their aggressively catchy tunes seem a lot more durable today than they did a decade ago.

The most impressive performance on Thursday was a version of "America," the propulsive immigrant song from "The Jazz Singer," which Mr. Diamond bellowed with an exhortatory fire as American flags unfurled above the stage. As effectively as any other modern pop song, "America" evokes the desperation and idealism that drove millions to settle in the United States at the turn of the century.

With its nearly three decades of material, the concert revealed how many flavors Mr. Diamond has stirred into his music over the years. Besides folk and rock, they include gospel ("Cherry, Cherry"), country ("Sweet Caroline") and in songs like "Play Me" and "I Am . . . I Said" touches of Beethoven, a composer with whom Mr. Diamond has said he identifies.

That identification is not totally far-fetched. The emphatic phrases of Mr. Diamond's grander melodies have a tension and insistent authority that echo Beethoven's symphonic themes. And the relentless percussive exclamations and fanfares of synthesized brass in his band arrangements aspire toward a Beethovenlike symphonic gravity. Of course, the structure of Mr. Diamond's music completely lacks the rigor of a 19th-century symphony. But the spirit is similar. The embattled ego forges on toward a heroic triumph.

Photo: Neil Diamond at Madison Square Garden on Thursday. (Monica Almeida/The New York Times)