Rolling With Changes

During Neil Diamond's 30-year-plus tenure with Columbia Records, by his count, he has seen the president of the label change nine times. The singer/songwriter has weathered the turbulence due in part to his own staff that he's had in place for 30 years. Diamond approves of the label's current executive team. "I've spoken to [Columbia Records president] Steve Barnett and [Sony Music Label Group chairman] Rob Stringer a number of times, and I like them a lot," he says. "They are really passionate people and want to show what they can do. So far, they've come up to it and exceeded. I'm very hopeful. I have a very good vibe and very good feeling about the future with them."

It was Clive Davis who originally signed Diamond to Columbia in the early '70s.

"He was self-contained and very successful," Davis says of Diamond. "Not only was he a great songwriter, but the uniqueness was that he was an incredible entertainer, so the combination of the two made him very special."

At the time, Davis wasn't into bidding wars, but he wanted Diamond.

"It was a case of an artist at the top of his form," Davis says. The bidding for Diamond's services was narrowed down to Davis at Columbia and the artist-friendly environs of Warner Bros. Columbia won.

"He and I forged a personal relationship, and we matched what Warner was offering, which was $400,000 an album, including recording costs," Davis says. "Obviously, in this day and age, that's a small deal. [At the time], it wasn't a deal to break the bank, so to speak, but it did show that faith that this was an artist that would become a platinum seller and a major artist."

As fate would have it, Davis left Columbia before Diamond delivered his first album for the label.

"If it had to happen, it was probably a good time to happen because [Davis] didn't want me doing 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull,' " Diamond says. "He wanted a Neil Diamond album, but I had no idea what a Neil Diamond album was supposed to be. I kind of liked the [uniqueness] of 'Jonathan Seagull,' but I had no idea what I was going to do. I couldn't figure out who the character was. I had a Hare Krishna guy move in for a year. I ate their food, read their books, listened to their tapes and found the key, the word, the idea, to the first song. I thanked him and sent him off to India where he wanted to go to get closer to who he was, and I began to write this album."

The album went on to become one of Diamond's biggest hits, reaching No. 2 on the album chart and hitting the double-platinum mark for sales of 2 million. ••••