The $30-Million Paradox : Why does Neil Diamond remain red-hot at the box office even though his album sales are cold?

The last time Jenny Putnam was at an arena, it was to drop off her teen-age daughter to see Bon Jovi--or was it Def Leppard? She says she has trouble these days keeping all the new bands straight.

Putnam recalls shaking her head after the concert when she saw that her daughter had spent almost $50 on T-shirts and other souvenirs.

So, the 43-year-old mother of three had to laugh now as she stood in the lobby of Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum arena, clutching nearly $75 worth of Neil Diamond souvenirs.

“Well, they’re not all mine,” she giggled. “One of the T-shirts and one of the programs is for my neighbor. She was coming with me, but she is in the hospital. That’s the only thing that would keep her away.”

So Putnam--who paid a scalper $50 each for the two $20 tickets--brought along her mother. They had been at the 17,000-seat Coliseum nearly an hour, waiting outside with hundreds of other early arrivals for the doors to open. Now that the pair was inside, there was another wait.

The plane carrying Diamond and the band from Norfolk, Va., had been delayed three hours because of weather problems--and the musicians still needed to do a sound check before the show.

Putnam--standing with several dozen other fans, mostly women and mostly around the same age--considered this delay a stroke of good luck because an usher told them that they could watch some of the sound check through the curtains.

“YOWEEEE,” shrieked a woman near Putnam as Diamond, barely visible from this distance, walked on stage with the band.

At the end of the song, the fans grouped near the curtain broke into applause. Blushing when she saw a reporter noticing her, Putnam giggled again and said, “Well, we’re all just teeny-boppers’ at heart. . . . I just love his songs.”

Diamond, 48, has had a long, spectacular run of pop hits--a career that has evolved from the teen focus of such 1966 singles as “Cherry, Cherry” and then to the broader emphasis of such circa 1970 tunes as “Sweet Caroline” and then, more recently, to the easy-listening emphasis of “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” and “Heartlight.”

But Diamond’s record sales have slipped badly in the years since “Heartlight” in 1982. Some industry observers feel the sales drop is a matter of demographics: The 30 and (way) above crowd that buys tickets to his shows no longer actively buys records. Other insiders also say Diamond’s songs simply aren’t as commercially appealing as they once were.

The most embarrassing moment, commercially, for Diamond occurred in 1984 when the singer had to sue his record company, Columbia, to release his “Primitive” album. Columbia reportedly had argued that the songs were simply not commercial enough.

The album was finally released, but it--like Diamond’s subsequent two LPs--failed to crack the national Top 10. A trade publication recently hinted Diamond might even be dropped by Columbia, but label executives have strongly denied it. Besides, Diamond hasn’t gone stone cold. His last album, “The Best Years of Our Lives,” has passed the 500,000 mark.

None of this, however, has dampened Diamond’s impact at the box office. In fact, Diamond, who opens a record 10-day engagement Wednesday at the Forum in Inglewood, is hotter than ever. The only other artist to sell out an indoor arena for 10 nights during a single U.S. tour is Bruce Springsteen, who did it at the Meadowlands complex in New Jersey in 1981.

And Diamond--who sold out seven Forum shows in 1983--isn’t just selling tickets in Los Angeles. Every stop so far on a 34-city tour that began in December has been sold out. By the time this leg of his 1989 tour ends July 31 in Washington, he’ll have completed 85 sold-out shows. That’s nearly 1.5 million tickets--or about $30 million in box office receipts.

Tour crew members have become so accustomed to seeing fans show up at three or four concerts in a row--often in different cities--that they have begun to borrow a page from the Grateful Dead and referring to the fans as their “Diamond-heads.”

All this underscores the mystery of Diamond: How can someone with such a shaky track record at the stores can have such a mystique with live audiences?

“The songs.”

That’s the answer most often given by three dozen Diamond fans in Cincinnati and at a second show in St. Louis when asked about the veteran singer-songwriter’s extraordinary live appeal.

Charisma, enthusiasm, hard worker and sexy were also mentioned, but songs was far and away the most frequent response about Diamond. Some admirers in Cincinnati and St. Louis described such songs as “Cracklin’ Rosie” as “fun.” Others called the lyrics as “real,” citing “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” and “Love on the Rocks.” A few said the songs provided “comfort” during rough times.

“I like the fact that you can understand the words and sing along with the melodies,” said a woman from Mt. Washington, Ohio.

“I’ve been following him since I was a teen-ager,” noted a woman from Franklin, Ohio. “I remember when he had real long hair and long fringes on his sleeves and that’s the way we all were in those days. I’ve had other favorites, but they were mostly fad people. Somehow, Neil has always been there, always changing, always writing songs that meant something to me.”

Ten days before the start of the Forum engagement, Diamond sat in a hotel suite in Cincinnati and tried to speculate on the reasons why he maintains such a spell on fans.

“It would be nice to have it all figured out because I suppose I could go into the record business myself, sign a dozen other guys and tell them to do the same thing,” Diamond said, lighting a cigarette.

“I think some of it has to do with the fact that the music has been part of people’s lives, if only in the background, for so long and the fact that I have been out there for so long. There’s a tremendous loyalty that fans have. . . .”

But what about John Denver, Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson, just three examples of superstars who have seen their drop in concert lure accompany the slip in record sales?

Diamond stops for a moment and ponders the question.

“I know it’s not just me that they come to see. I know it is the songs, which is why I have cut back this time on the (talk and effects) to do more songs,” he said. “My original heroes weren’t rock singers or any kind of singers. They were songwriters.

“The only reason I got into singing was that songwriting in the early days wasn’t enough to support me. I was never able to earn more than $100 or $200 a week as a staff writer, so I started recording my own songs and I was accepted at it, but I’ve always been foremost a writer in my own mind.”

Diamond is relatively soft-spoken off-stage and even a trace self-depricating in interviews, but there an edge of passion that enters in voice when he talks about writing.

“The truth is I’ve been kind of like a racehorse with blinders on ever since the beginning. . . . There is a crowd on the sideline and I hear them--but I’m looking to that finish line, that goal of writing the best songs I can.

“I’ve always been trying to write lyrics as good as Alan Jay Lerner, trying to write music as beautiful as George Gershwin though I knew they were impossible goals. To me, they were perfection and my basic foundation in music is so limited. . . . I studied guitar for six months and piano for six months. Basically, I’m still using the same three or four chords I started out with. But I still strive to reach that goal.”

Sandy Gallin, Diamond’s manager, also is at a loss to explain the surging box office appeal.

“Everywhere I go, people ask me that--every agent, every manager, every promoter: ‘Why does he keep selling more tickets?’ The thing I always think in my mind, but never say to them is that Rodgers and Hammerstein song: ‘Who can explain it, who can tell you why? / Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.’

“But if someone were to explain it--and here I go again--I guess it is because he wrote all those fantastic songs that he had on hit album after hit album, and because he works so hard on stage. . . . He cares about the songs and the audience feels that. He doesn’t just come out and take a bow.”

Diamond’s two-hour-plus concerts show on this tour touches on music from every portion of his lengthy career, but it is more than simply a parade of hits. There is a subtle theme about survival and hope.

“Hello Again” and “September Morn”--both placed near the start--are expressions of old friends coming together again and, in the context of the show, they set the stage for songs (including “I’m a Believer”) that salute the memory of teen years. There’s also a strong nostalgic undercurrent in such sing-alongs as “Song Sung Blue” and “Forever in Blue Jeans.”

But there is also the poignant, bittersweet memories of such tunes as “If You Know What I Mean” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” which recall times of struggle and disappointment.

However, the key number, thematically, is the newest song: “The Best Years of Our Lives.” Though not a hit, the song works well in concert because it is one time when Diamond urges the audience to think about the future, not just celebrate the past.

“There is an optimism and a certain hope to every one of the songs I’ve written only because I believe that if music can’t give you some kind of hope, move something in you than it misses something,” Diamond said.

“That optimism and hope is also part of me, my own nature. I think basically what I am saying in the song is these aren’t just the best years of our lives, these are the only years of our lives left, so we’d better make them the best years of our lives.”

Diamond may be loved by his fans, but he often has been savagely attacked by critics who argue that his music is shallow and his enthusiastic manner on stage is too gushy.

One reason is that most pop critics are rooted in rock and they often equate the accessibility and smoothness of straight-forward pop music with blandness, and they view Diamond as locked into easy listening pop even though his music was first rooted in rock and the sound system blares in concert with such volume that some of the older fans hold their ears.

The constant barbs are bound to hurt, though Diamond downplays his reaction to the reviews.

“There is some unexplainable part of me (that) will refuse to accept any positive criticism of what I do,” he said, leaning on a sofa in the hospitality room that he sets up in every city for the band.

“Some part of me will simply deny it. Sometimes great reviews and great sales are more frightening than mediocre reviews. I’ll go through this period of, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t know if I’m that good. No, I’m definitely not that good’ . . . and so forth.

Diamond takes more seriously suggestions that the reason the record sales have slowed is that he is no longer as consistent or appealing as a writer.

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “I like them. What other yardstick can I use? You just do it and you try to make it as wonderful as you can possibly make it. The rest is a surprise when you put the album out--whether people like the songs or not. It’s a Christmas package and sometimes it is empty, sometimes it is full of candy canes.”

Diamond, who has two grown children from his first marriage, lives with his second wife, Marsha, and their two children in Holmby Hills. He finds touring grueling and tries to break the ordeal by keeping a “family” together on the road. There have been changes in personnel over the years, but part of his band and immediate crew have been with him a decade or more.

He also tries to combat the isolation and insanity of the road by spending time in the hospitality suite rather than staying in his room the way many stars do. He and the band ride to the shows in a bus rather than in limos and they fly together to the next city in the same chartered jet.

Diamond doesn’t know how long he’ll continue to tour, though he points to Sinatra--who is still touring at age 73--as a model. The lure isn’t just the money--he could live comfortably for the rest of his life on his songwriting royalties.

“The special thing about shows is the approval of the crowd,” he said, lighting another cigarette. “This 10-day sprint or marathon at the Forum is important to me, not that it be 10 days, but that there are enough people out there right now who will say, ‘Keep going, don’t stop, don’t give up.’

“People sometimes ask me why I’m so enthusiastic on stage . . . and the reason is because that’s how I feel. There’s got to be a better word than enthusiasm. I think it comes down to the sense of thankfulness . . . that people still show up . . . that they’re so enthusiastic.

“I understand it when someone like Springsteen actually leaps out into the audience because you want to be so close to those people, actually touch them. You always feel you’re not doing enough, not singing the song well enough because you want to pay them back for all the enthusiasm they bring to the show. Sometimes I feel like Sally Field at the Oscars up there . . . you know, ‘They like me, they really like me.’ There’s always a sense of wonderment.”