Neil Diamond is riding high with a huge world tour, a successful album and a humanitarian award.The day I interviewed Neil Diamond, he was sitting in a little room to the side of a studio, and a makeup artist was smacking him in the face with a powder puff. He was wearing a white wife-beater T-shirt and looked like he wanted to flee.
It was November, and Diamond had just come off the first two legs of his biggest world tour yet -- with 64 shows in 50 cities and nine countries already under his belt. In a moment, he would step in front of a camera to begin a round of 70 or so interviews -- beamed via satellite to local television stations -- to talk up the remaining 20 dates, where he'd thrill diehard fans with such nuggets as "Cherry Cherry," "Song Sung Blue" and "Sweet Caroline."
Ours was the only in-person interview he -- or someone in his camp -- had agreed to do. The singer-songwriter (who turned 68 on January 24) stepped into the studio, a man ready for his close-up. He had slipped a black button-down shirt over his T-shirt, and suddenly he looked like Neil Diamond -- the same Neil Diamond who next week will be feted by The Recording Academy as its "2009 MusiCares Person of the Year," joining an elite club that includes Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Sting, Bono and Quincy Jones.
He's working on a follow-up to last year's CD, the Rick Rubin-produced "Home Before Dark" -- which earned Diamond his first-ever No. 1 debut on the Billboard Top 200 album chart. That album came after 2005's "12 Songs," also produced by Rubin, which re-invigorated his recording career. As for live performance, he's rarely had problems filling arenas -- but he remembers when he did
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