Neil Diamond 094
Look closer for ten song lyrics: “You got the way to make me happy” (Cracklin’ Rosie); “Took a drag from my last cigarette”(If You Know What I Mean); “It was the 3rd of June” (Desirée); “Where it began, I can’t begin to know when” (Sweet Caroline); “Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play” (September Morn); “God of my day, day, day, Lord of my night, night, night” (Soolaimón); “You are the sun, I am the moon” (Play Me); “Brothers, I said, Brothers” (Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show); “She got the way to groove me” (Cherry, Cherry); and “Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of bein’ a king, and then became one” (I Am . . . I Said.)
The Story:
Neil Leslie Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. He has sold more than 56.5 million records in the US alone, making him one of the best-selling musicians in history.
Diamond has written and recorded ten singles that reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts: “Cracklin’ Rosie”, “Song Sung Blue”, “Longfellow Serenade”, “I’ve Been This Way Before”, “If You Know What I Mean”, “Desirée”, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” (co-written with Alan and Marilyn Bergman, performed with Barbra Streisand), “America”, “Yesterday’s Songs”, and “Heartlight (co-written with Carole Bayer Sager and Burt Bacharach). Thirty-eight songs by Diamond have reached the top 10 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, including “Sweet Caroline”. On screen, he starred in the 1980 musical drama The Jazz Singer.
Diamond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. He received a Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. In 2011, he was an honoree at the Kennedy Center Honors, and he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.
Early life and education
Diamond was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish family. All four of his grandparents were immigrants: his father’s side came from Poland, while his mother’s side were born in Kyiv, modern-day Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire. His parents were Rose (née Rapoport; 1918–2019) and Akeeba “Kieve” Diamond (1917–1985), a dry-goods merchant. Diamond grew up in several homes in Brooklyn, and also spent four years in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while his father was stationed there in the army.
In Brooklyn, he attended Erasmus Hall High School for two years, where he was a member of the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club, alongside his classmate Barbra Streisand. Diamond recalled that they were not close friends at the time, saying, “We were two poor kids in Brooklyn. We hung out in the front of Erasmus High and smoked cigarettes.” Their class also included chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer. After his family moved to Brighton Beach in 1956, Diamond attended Abraham Lincoln High School where he joined the fencing team. Also on the team was his best friend, future Olympic fencer Herb Cohen.
For his 16th birthday, Diamond received his first guitar. While still in high school at the age of 16, he spent several weeks at Surprise Lake Camp, a camp for Jewish children in upstate New York. During his time there, folk singer Pete Seeger performed a small concert. Witnessing Seeger perform and seeing the other children sing their own songs for him had a profound impact on Diamond. It made him realize that he could write his own songs too. He recalled, “And the next thing, I got a guitar when we got back to Brooklyn, started to take lessons and almost immediately began to write songs”. He noted that his passion for songwriting became his “first real interest” while growing up, as it allowed him to express his youthful “frustrations”.
Diamond found that composing poems for the girls to whom he was attracted in school often won their hearts. His male classmates noticed this and started asking him to write poems for them as well, which they would sing to similar success. After graduating from high school, he spent the summer working as a waiter in the Catskills resort area, where he first met Jaye Posner, who would later become his wife.
Diamond then attended New York University as a pre-med major on a fencing scholarship, again on the fencing team with Herb Cohen. He was a member of the 1960 NCAA men’s championship fencing team. Often bored in class, he found writing song lyrics more to his liking. He began cutting classes and taking the train up to Tin Pan Alley, where he tried to get some of his songs heard by local music publishers. In his senior year, when he was ten units short of graduation, Sunbeam Music Publishing offered him a 16-week job writing songs for $50 a week (equivalent to about $540 per week in 2025), and he dropped out of college to accept it.
-credit Wikipedia
The artwork:
First print of this illustration will be sold to benefit a non-profit. For information, email lisafromlsu@gmail.com
Digital print on Archival Matte paper – illustration done in graphite and Prisma Colors: Crimson Red for “Red, Red Wine”; Violet; Copenhagen Blue for “Song Sung Blue”; Sunburst Yellow for how Neil uses the word, “Sun”; and Yellow Ochre.
Derivative Work references: face and hair to Neil’s left side: Biography Photo by Michael Ochs Archives – neil-diamond-80s-5c5327804cedfd0001f91689; hair to Neil’s right side is mirror image from Paul Popper-c681323b9a9e6e5237df37a64e272308; shirt, guitar and hands from artofit_org – e8dcb786fa32d3db960494c66bd85e2e; watch from images – upomo_com.
What you get:
11 x 14 Print Package with Authenticity Sheet
signed and numbered (run of 80)
Calculated at time of purchase:
Shipping (Domestic Priority Mail)
Sales Tax (0.0675)
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