Hands. Touching Hands. Reaching out. Touching Me. Touching you.
Okay, so my phone interview with legendary singer-songwriter-performer Neil Diamond didn't quite go down like that.
But the 64-year-old Brooklyn native, down the line from his home in Los Angeles, tried to make our 20 minute chat as cozy as possible.
"I'm sitting here at my desk and I have the speaker phone on, if that's all right. I like to sit back and have a conversation," he says.
Suits me, and who am I to argue with the voice of God?
Critical consensus is that Diamond has delivered his best studio album in three decades with the stripped-down and introspective 12 Songs, which hit record stores last week.
"I've definitely heard the buzz," says Diamond. "I like the part about 'best work.' I'm not sure I like the part about 'in three decades.' The compliment I think is genuine. There are certain pitfalls in that compliment that you can like or dislike. But I do love the idea that the serious critics are picking up on this album."
He says it is very different from anything he's done before, but perhaps closer to his early days when the musical ensembles were very small partly because the money wasn't there for larger ones.
"This album kind of harkens back, though (12 Songs) is much more mature, much more reflective. My first couple of albums were not mature at all. They were all about let's get out and rock and roll, and baby I love you, etc., etc., told in lots of different ways."
Maybe so, but Diamond's so-called golden period of the late '60s, early '70s produced such classic songs as Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon, Red, Red Wine, Cherry, Cherry, I'm A Believer, Solitary Man, Thank The Lord For The Nighttime, Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show, Cracklin' Rosie, Sweet Caroline, Song Sung Blue, I Am ...I Said, etc.
Diamond says the conduit allowing him to get really personal on 12 Songs was producer Rick Rubin, whose credits span hip-hop, hard rock and fellow music legends like Tom Petty, Donovan, Mick Jagger and, most importantly, Johnny Cash's American Recordings series.
"I felt very safe and very comfortable in (Rubin's) hands as a producer, and wasn't distracted about what these songs would sound like on record. I trusted his instincts, and I just followed along. Not that I didn't have my comments and suggestions along the way, but I was able to write these songs because of the trust I put in Rick and I'm very glad that I did."
Other than honing the songwriting on 12 Songs, Rubin demanded that Diamond play guitar instead of piano on the record and be accompanied only by a core group of musicians, including guitarist Mike Campbell and pianist-organist Benmont Tench from Tom Petty's Heartbreakers.
"Rick pushed very hard on my playing the guitar as I was performing the song," says Diamond, a twice-divorced father of four. "It was a little new for me, because right after the intial burst of my career, I stopped playing on record because I felt there were really wonderful, talented guitar players who could do it better. I was just a measly songwriter using the guitar in a secondary way.
"Rick and I battled about this. He wanted very much for me to be playing guitar with each performance. He felt that it created a chemistry that he liked, that was right for the song, and for the album."
He concedes that Rubin won practically every time, which makes sense since Diamond had hired him for his expertise.
"It wouldn't have made sense for me to be shooting down his ideas, while I was in the studio, while I was writing," Diamond says, "because what's the point of having him produce the album if I'm not going to follow his path, so to speak."
Diamond describes the 12 Songs studio sessions as "long and arduous," but a learning experience.
"I felt this was an opportunity to get a fresh perspective on my music and that I'd darn well better write some songs that were worthy of that. So it was new for me."
It was Rubin who approached Diamond, who was already "pretty impressed" with the work he'd done with Cash.
"I think he got to the essence of Cash and to his music and I hoped that he would be able to do the same thing with me," says Diamond. "I guess I was ready. I wasn't self-conscious about it at all. It was just what comes out musically and what comes out lyrically.
"If it's wonderful or insightful or exciting or just plain good, you just let it happen. My job is to finish that initial burst of creativity. Finish it off and make it into something worthwhile."
Diamond began the songwriting for 12 songs after coming off a major 2001/02 tour -- he began touring a few weeks after 9/11 -- and had hoped to take some time off.
Instead, he found himself in his cabin in the Rockies in the middle of a blizzard with a pencil, a notebook and his guitar.
"I was driven, in a sense, to start writing. I'd been on the road for two years. I had an album out (Three Chord Opera) a year before I started that, so it would have been about three years since I seriously sat down to write.
"It was a chance for me to examine another side of myself. I would have preferred a little more off time, but when it comes and you start to want to do it, you don't put it off 'til later."
