Brooklyn, New York, 1947. A tiny six-year-old boy stood on a wooden stage at PS181’s talent show. Neil Diamond could barely reach the microphone, even standing on his tiptoes. His...
The Trouador, West [music] Hollywood, August 25th, 1970. A 23-year-old British pianist named Elton John was bombing on stage. The club was half empty. People were talking through his songs,...
FBI headquarters, Washington, DC. 1967. J. Edgar Hoover sat in his office reading a classified file labeled 10044438, the monkeys communist infiltration. His agents had been monitoring a TV band...
Memphis, Tennessee, 1970. Elvis Presley sat in his recording studio at American Sound, holding sheet music for two songs by a Brooklyn songwriter named Neil Diamond. His producer suggested safer...
Los Angeles, 1971. [music] Neil Diamond sat alone in the recording studio at 3:00 a.m. attempting take number 47 [music] of the same song. His voice was raw from hours...
Neil Diamond wrote a gentle ballad about young love. Innocent, [music] sweet, designed for teenage fans and their parents. 1994. Director Quentyn Tarantino took that exact song and made it...
Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco. November 25th, 1976. The Last Waltz, the band’s farewell concert. The guest list read like a rock and roll hall of fame. Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton,...
August 1969, a phone call that should have been every songwriter’s dream, felt more like a death sentence. Elvis Presley, the king himself, wanted to record Neil Diamond’s song. But...
The Long Beach Arena in June 1973 was hosting the International Karate Championships, the largest martial arts tournament in America and arguably the largest in the world. 3,000 people filled...
NBC Studios, Burbank, California, March 1974. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was the biggest talk show in America, pulling in 10 million viewers on an average night, sometimes more....