POP MUSIC REVIEW : More Beautiful Sound a la Diamond

You can say this about Neil Diamond--he’s a heckuva salesman. Eight sold-out performances at the 18,000-seat Forum in the middle of the worst recession in a decade is not exactly chopped liver.

Diamond’s opening night program Wednesday was a perfect illustration of just what a class act this guy really is.

The physical presentation was first rate, with the floor of the arena dominated by an enormous, rotating circular stage. Overhead, a forest of lights created spectacular, laser-driven arrays of brilliant colors.

At the center of it all, Diamond was a nonstop whirl of energy--singing, preaching, dancing, flirting, interacting with his listeners with a rare sense of genuine involvement.

The rapturously enthusiastic audience loved every minute.

The music lived up to the presentation. The old stuff was better than the newer songs, but Diamond is a classic example of a singer who can get a lyrical reading out of the phone book.

If his voice became a bit gravelly and unfocused in the latter part of the program, who cared? Diamond generously gave more than two hours of music without a break.

He spent a fair part of the set touring his own personal memory lane via songs like “Song Sung Blue,” “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” “Beautiful Noise” and “I’m a Believer” (to name only a few of more than two dozen numbers performed), and that was good.

Almost as appealing was his lovely, low-key reading of the Bernstein/Sondheim “One Hand, One Heart” from “West Side Story,” and several songs from his scores for “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” and “The Jazz Singer.” “America,” from the latter, climaxed with the appearance of four enormous American flags.

But singing a slew of pieces from his current album, “Lovescape,” was less good.

At his best, Diamond is a songwriter whose rich understanding of drama, balance and pacing is matched by a talent for writing irresistibly catchy choruses. Too many of the newer songs, however, went for melodrama, at the cost of both the vigor and the immediate accessibility of his earlier work.

The audience seemed to sense the difference. What had been a free and easy interaction between performer and listeners during Diamond’s earliest songs faded away to respectful but unenthusiastic applause for the current numbers.

Still, it’s hard to fault an artist who is so willing--so determined --to reach out and share an event. As with Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash, a Diamond concert is a special event for its audience members. To his great credit, he recognized that fact and appeared to give everything he had. If Diamond ever decides to market cars instead of music, Lee Iacocca could be in serious trouble.