POP MUSIC REVIEW : Neil Diamond Gives a Reason to Believe

Neil Diamond really is a believer.

Not in anything thorny or controversial, mind you. But in an era when belief in anything is hard to find, anyone who expounds ideals with heroic zeal and wholehearted conviction is going to find a willing audience.

It’s obvious that a lot of people find something believable in Diamond, and he showed why on Monday at the San Diego Sports Arena, the closest to Los Angeles he’ll play before his record-breaking nine-night stand at the Forum in June.

On the surface, Diamond’s two-hour concert was freighted with nearly every phony, deadening device that big-time show biz has to offer: lasers, unrelievedly sentimental songs, stentorian vocal stylings, bombastic patriotic display.

But at the core was a singer who brought such unabashed, unflagging ardor and energy to his music of high romance and optimistic zeal that it was all . . . believable.

Somehow, Diamond made his big, leathery baritone sound convincingly heroic, but not pompous. Don’t ask for analysis: This feat was as mystifying as the Utah fusion-in-a-bottle experiment. Somehow, the lasers and lavish showers of light served as appropriate, skillfully applied backdrops for an already commanding performer rather than as a cover for a lack of compelling human presence. And these titanic trappings didn’t prevent Diamond from showing an unassuming, down-to-earth delight in being face to face with his fans.

When Diamond put his force behind middle-of-the-road schmaltz, he made it bearable, even palatable. When he dug into his older backlog of catchy, rock-oriented nuggets--including a long hit-parade sequence that included “I’m a Believer,” “Red Red Wine” and “Sweet Caroline”--the show became a pure delight.

It almost didn’t matter that there is a huge gulf between Diamond’s romanticized vision of things and the vexatious, doubt-filled, irony-laden reality of things that the best pop songwriters often try to capture.

Over the course of a career, that’s a serious flaw. But over the course of two hours, Diamond made it a pleasure to suspend disbelief.