They should call this album "Holly Holy Hollywood."
Aside from his Brill Building tribute a few years back, Neil Diamond has never shown a lot of interest in interpretive singing. His long and extraordinary career has been built on his talents as a singer-songwriter.Two years ago, Diamond surprised his fans and the music business with an album of original country material called "Tennessee Moon." The album went to No. 3 on the country charts and produced some of the best reviews Diamond's received in many years.
A return to Nashville would seem obvious, right? Wrong. Diamond's latest double disc set is called "The Movie Album: As Time Goes By." The collection consists entirely of famous movie tunes stretching from "Puttin' On the Ritz" and "The Way You Look Tonight" to "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" and "My Heart Will Go On."
The idea for a Diamond movie album originated with Columbia Records President Don Ienner, who suggested it to Diamond and found him readily receptive.
The original notion was to do an album of Oscar winners, but Diamond had his own wish list of standards that he wanted, some of which hadn't even been nominated for Academy Awards. At 57, Diamond is at a point where he wants to pick his projects carefully.
"As I've gotten later in my career, there are some things I want to do before it's too late," he said by phone recently.
Throughout his career, Diamond has never hesitated to do the unexpected. Way back in 1969, that nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn came up with a gospel rouser called "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show." In 1970, a decade and a half before Paul Simon, he tapped into African tribal music for "Soolaimon." In the mid-'70s the folkish rocker of "Cherry Cherry" turned to writing full-blown orchestral music for the soundtrack to "Jonathan Livingston Seagull."
Still, the notion of Diamond's gritty pipes tackling "Unchained Melody" and "Secret Love," accompanied by famed film composer Elmer Bernstein and an 80-piece orchestra, must have felt like puttin' on more than a little ritz.
Diamond admits he had some doubts himself.
"Basically, I was happy that I could sing these things and do it with an orchestra. I hadn't done that since 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull,' and so I was concerned about finding my place with the orchestra.
"In the beginning, it was a matter of finding favorites and trying them out. I wanted to try some of them out and see how it felt with the orchestra. Eventually, 'As Time Goes By' became a real starting point."
The success of the early demos encouraged both the singer and his label.
"At some point, we played a bunch of songs for Columbia, and they wanted more. I was a little shocked but flattered that they wanted to release it as a double album."
Diamond says there was no conscious design to sample a broad swath of film history, but that's how it turned out.
There are three Cole Porter tunes: "I've Got You Under My Skin," "True Love" and "In the Still of the Night." The Beatles are represented by "And I Love Her," Elvis by "Can't Help Falling In Love." The one song Diamond was set on from the beginning was "When You Wish Upon a Star" from "Pinocchio."
" 'When You Wish Upon a Star' came out the same year I was born, and that's probably one of my real favorites. Of course, you could probably never do it better than Jiminy Cricket."
One of the hazards of singing classic movie tunes is that you invite comparison with truly seminal performers. "The Movie Album" includes songs associated with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.
"At this point in my life, I know who I am," Diamond says. "I'm not going to do Sinatra or Presley impressions. . . . I wanted to stick with the songs as they were written but do them in a way that was suitable for myself. I do think a lot of them are different. Different singers have different attributes. The one that I felt nervous about was the Sinatra medley. I didn't want to encroach on Sinatra because he was the king of that swing thing. We did 'I've Got You Under My Skin' as a ballad, and it just felt right for me to do it that way."
In the movie business, a hit usually spells sequel, and Diamond isn't ruling one out.
"There's a lot of good movie music that we haven't gotten to. I haven't even scratched the surface. I could easily go back there again. I'll have to think about where I'd like to go from here. I could see doing an interpretative album every other one."