Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll

by Ben Fong-Torres

  In Toronto, there was a rash of reunion rumors. By show time, scalpers outside were happily selling their tickets for $ 50 and $ 60 apiece, while inside, film crews from as far away as London had their cameras hoisted and ready. From the first show in Texas, there had been talk that the once-again-friendly Beatles might do a friendly number together. In New York, where Lennon lives, similar talk persists. And in London, "Yesterday," the single, leads a pack of two dozen Beatles reissues invading the pop charts.

  McCartney is pleased about "Yesterday." "It happens to coincide, luckily for us. It's bringing it to people's ears. That's the main thing, really. 'cause if you're not in with a single or record, people just tend to forget." He is not wary of an acetate Beatlemania leading to even more fervent calls for a reunion.

  "We maybe could be together for a thing, but it always feels to me like it would be a bit limp." In response to an American promoter's offer of between $ 30 and $ 50 million for one Beatles concert, McCartney told a reporter that he would not participate in a reunion purely for money. Now, in Toronto, he is qualifying that remark.

  "The truth is very ordinary. The truth is just that since we split up, we've not seen much of each other. We visit occasionally, we're still friends, but we don't feel like getting up and playing again. You can't tell that to people. You say that and they say, `How about this money, then?' `Or how about this?' And you end up having to think of reasons why you don't feel like it. And, of course, any one of them taken on its own isn't really true, but I was just stuck for an answer, so I said I wouldn't do it just for the money anyway. And I saw John last time, he says, 'I agreed with that.' But there's a million other points in there. A whole million angles.

  "I tell you, before this tour, I was tempted to ring everyone up and say, 'Look, is it true we're not going to get back together, 'cause we all pretty much feel like we're not. And as long as I could get everyone to say, `No, we're definitely not,' then I could say `It's a definite no-no.' But I know my feeling, and I think the others' feeling, in a way, is we don't want to close the door to anything in the future. We might like it someday.

  `Again, talking to John before the tour, I'm saying to him, `Well, are you coming to the show at Madison Square?' `Well,' he says, `Everyone's kind of asking me, `Am I going?" Should I go?' And I'm saying, `Oh, god, that's a drag, isn't it. You just can't even come out and see our show.' So there are these other involvements. If anyone comes, they feel like they've got to get up. Then they get up, we've got to be good. Can't just get up and be crummy 'cause then they say, `The Beatles really blew it on the Wings tour,' or something. So, but you see how long I've taken just to answer this question. God, it goes on forever. So you can see why I just wanted to say no." And yet, McCartney just cannot close the door.

  "We've left it," he says, "if John feels like coming out that evening, great, we'll try and get him in. Have it all cool, no big numbers. We'll just play it by ear."

  The Wings concert is a little contrived-not unlike, say, a Wings album-but I like artists who get out there and entertain. With a lot of help from Showco, the Dallasbased sound-and-light company, McCartney has fashioned a show that reminds of Elton John-especially when Paul is behind the Steinway-and has touches of the Who, David Bowie, and Led Zeppelin. In fact, McCartney discovered Showco at a Led Zeppelin concert in Earls Court in London; he was impressed with how they managed to fill the 3 5,000-seat hall with crisp sound.

  The emotional high point of the concert, of course, is "Yesterday," but the showstopper is "Live and Let Die," the song McCartney wrote for a James Bond film. In concert, Wings attacks the audience with powder kegs, strobes, smoke, syncopated spotlights, and the laser machine gunning string beams of light from the back of the stage to the opposite end of the hall. And the music-teasing, then exploding into rat-a-tat violence-fully warrants the effects.

  For "Band on the Run," the last number before the encore call, a film of the shooting of the album cover is projected onto a movie screen; behind other songs, paintings-and one cartoon-appear on another screen, behind the band. The paintings, McCartney says, are by Magritte and David Hockney; the etchings of Magneto and Titanium Man are by Marvel Comics. "It's all art," says the Beatle.

  Before the tour, the best guesses had Wings grossing $4.5 million for twenty-eight shows in twenty cities. Since then, a huge show has been added in Seattle-at the 60,000-capacity King Dome-and additional concerts have been added in Los Angeles and Chicago. The gross should be over $ 5 million, roughly a million more than the Harrison tour. But the net should be another story, given the lavishness of the stage show, the size of the entourage (seventeen with Showco, nine-piece band, family, friends, publicists, manager, security, and various other aides) and the private Braniff- leased Bac 1011 jet that flies the band back to a base city after every concert.

  I T t s 8: 3 0 N o w, the Wings are all in costume and they should be onstage. They are instead in an upstairs room backstage. Here, they manage to oblige the executives of Capitol Records/EMI of Canada, shake hands all around, accept six gold and platinum albums, pose for photographs, have a laugh or two and apologize for having to runall within three minutes. But everybody, in the end, is happy.

  The local interviewers are still afloat; they've been informed that after the show Wings have to make a quick getaway because their jet has to be off the runway by midnight, to comply with a noise-abatement ordinance. So they are not planning to get any time with McCartney. But after the concert, with Showco breaking down the light stands, the sound system and the stage, with band members, security guards, aides, photographers, and the sketch artist all scurrying around, and with the five Fleetwoods already warmed up and purring, Brian Brolly, the manager, gathers up the local reporters and hustles them into the dressing room, apologizing all the way. They will have just about two hot minutes.

  McCartney, back in street clothes, greets them, looking relaxed and interested. He apparently wants to do this right, too. He shows them a painting a friend has done of him and Linda, and they proceed to field a dozen questions, about musical roots, the first time Linda saw Paul (Beatles, Shea Stadium, 1966) and, of course, the rumors about the Toronto Beatles reunion. Brolly gets itchy and clears his throat and the room all at once, and the McCartneys scram into their limo and screech away.

  Outside, a knot of the faithful wave to them and come up with a modified ovation. It is not exactly Wingsmania, and it is by no means Beatlemania. But it sure seems like rock and roll.

  -June 17, 1976

  Rolling Stone

  THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING

  Veil Diamond

  y the mid-seventies, Rolling Stone, less than ten years old, was being perceived by many as a paper dinosaur. The popular music scene had begun fragmenting, into heavy metal, punk, and disco. While the magazine continued to grow, the writers and articles making the most significant impact often had nothing to do with music. Howard Kohn and David Weir were investigative stars; Joe Eszterhas, Tim Cahill, Michael Rogers, Timothy Ferris, Joe Klein, and others won recognition and/or awards. Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote were joined by such celebrated bylines as Ellen Willis, Richard Goodwin, and Jan Morris.

  The music coverage, meantime, seemed scattered. Writers like Cahill, Chet Flippo, and Grover Lewis had added depth to music pieces; reviewers, paced, over the years, by Greil Marcus, Jon Landau, Lester Bangs, Robert Palmer, Paul Nelson, and Dave Marsh, were tough as ever.

  But there seemed to be something missing. It was the new music. In both the music news section and in the reviews, we'd sought to range widely, and to keep up with changes. But, truth be told-at least it's my truth-we were getting on; becoming increasingly cynical and jaded; vulnerable to missing-or mocking-some of the newer acts. Especially when they were accompanied by the increasingly sophisticated hype being cranked out by record companies.

  While I toured with bands and continued to write several stories in every issue, various editors took charge of the music news section. Now, in the summer of 1976, Wenne
r put me back in charge of the department and renamed it "Rock & Roll." The first major feature was on the breakup of Loggins & Messina, penned by Wenner himself. It was a rare byline for the editor, but it was a personal matter. He'd become close friends with the musicians.

  Yes, we continued to offer excellent reporting and writing. Chris Hodenfield sparkled out of New York; Cameron Crowe covered a widening range of bands, including several we'd ignored (or criticized), among them Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. And, yes, we did get around to punk-primarily because of Charles M. Young, a brilliant young writer and critic out of Madison, Wisconsin. We made fun of disco until we could no longer afford to, surrendering to a special issue about dance music in 1979. The bottom line is that too many of us resisted the musical changes around us. In retrospect, we played it safe, and reflected our boss' tastes, friendships, and loyalties.

  At meetings, we still freely tossed ideas around, and these ranged from Young's calls for more punk coverage to subjects that were so mainstream they might be considered downright square.

  Neil Diamond was one of them.

  On the surface, Neil Diamond seemed an odd choice to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone. He was the epitome of the Top 40-groomed, mainstream pop star, a hit machine who'd followed Elvis into Vegas, where he was doing showroom showdowns with the likes of Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdinck.

  Yet despite its hip veneer, the magazine didn't shy away from artists who didn't get regular airplay on FM rock stations: Pat Boone and the Osmonds were on the cover in 1976. And while we used nearly any excuse to put the Stones, various Beatles, and Dylan on the cover, we did have some standards. For one thing, the subject had to be an interesting story-or, at least, be profiled in an interesting way by the writer.

  Diamond, young as he was, was old school: Brill Building, New York. He wrote songs alongside Goff in and King, Mann and Weill. Taking on a stage name, he hit the pop charts like a sharpshooter at rifle practice. So he seemed too established, if not exactly too old, to hook up with rockers like Robbie Robertson of the Band. But he did, and that-along with his rich history in pop and rock and roll-from "Cherry, Cherry" in 1976 to those Hot August Nights-made him a story.

  Tracking Diamond around Los Angeles and Las Vegas, I discovered a modest-seeming, pensive man, as might be expected from someone who'd written a song with a reference to a nonresponsive chair. Diamond was old school to the end. Shortly after this article ran, I received a thank-you note from him. It was the first I'd ever received from an artist.

  T u F. Y HAD A z' i p: cocaine in Holmby Hills, just outside Beverly Hills. They had a description of a white male in his early 40s, graying. It didn't sound exactly like that guy on all those album covers or, at that moment, on a huge billboard high above Sunset Strip. But they had a search warrant, and the name on it was Neil Diamond.

  And so, on June 30th at 10:30 P.M., a force of fifty men, a joint effort of the sheriff and police departments, arrived at the house in Holmby Hills. A helicopter hovered overhead, ready with searchlights, while the head of the detail telephoned the house from the gate.

  Neil Diamond was home, preparing to leave the next day for Las Vegas and one of the most important engagements in his ten years as a performer. After refusing offers from almost every major hotel for years, he'd agreed to open up the brand-new, $10 million Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts.

  Diamond picked up the phone. He was momentarily stunned. "This is the police," the inspector-the other cops called him "Psycho"-said. "We have reason to believe there's a burglar on your premises, and we'd like to come up and check it." "Psycho" had sent a plainclothes man onto the grounds. Diamond looked out a window and, sure enough, there was a man in the darkness, walking around with a flashlight. Diamond buzzed the gate open.

  In seconds, the police and the sheriffs surrounded the house. One of them handed Diamond the warrant. But he was in street clothes, and Diamond was suspicious. They could be robbers. He asked for identification. Then he saw some uniformed officers. "I don't know what you're looking for," Diamond told them, "but you're not going to find it." But the police quietly, meticulously went through all ten rooms of the house, including the one where Neil and Marcia Diamond's five-year-old son, Jesse, was sleeping. For three hours they went over the house and grounds, but they came up with no cocaine, although they did find marijuana. Less than an ounce of it.

  Finally, "Psycho" turned to Diamond and, forcing a laugh. said, "Well, I guess you're right," and he led the troops out.

  Neil Diamond shook his head and thought again-for the first time in three hours-about Las Vegas. He wondered if maybe it was someone in Nevada-and not some judge in Santa Monica or low-life informer in Hollywood-who was trying to shake him up.

  After all, the Aladdin-through Diamond-was set to disrupt Las Vegas' showroom way of life. First of all, the Aladdin is an actual theater, and not a showroom. Tickets are sold by box offices, and all the seats are good ones. Not only would Diamond be drawing thousands-all five shows, at 7,500 seats apiece, had already sold out, at $20 and $30 a ticket-but if all went well at the Aladdin, other stars might well turn away from the other hotels, with their 1, 500-seat banquet rooms and their 50-minute shows. It had to be Vegas.

  Diamond is sitting on the patio outside his summer house in Malibu Colony. Marcia, Jesse, and his parents, Rose and Kieve Diamond, are inside. Las Vegas is behind them now, but Neil is still trying to figure out the hows and whys of the raid. He lights up the first in a chain of cigarettes and speaks in a calm, measured, and slightly distant manner.

  `At first I thought someone was trying to prevent me from playing Las Vegas," he says. "But the reaction from Las Vegas was, `Great to have you here. It's gonna bring in a lot of people.' There were 3 5,000 who came to see the show. The Aladdin Hotel could hold 1200 at its peak. All the other hotels really benefitted." He pops a grape into his mouth and chews slowly. "I can't figure it out."

  The raid, he says, "was very surreal." He didn't have to tell me that. When I first heard the news, secondhand, my first thought was that it had to be some other Neil. I mean, Neil Diamond? Drugs?

  Surreal.

  My name is Neil. I weep. I cry. I care....

  -at the Winter Garden, on Broadway, November 1972

  I need, I want, I care, I weep, I ache, I am, I said, I am....

  -at the Greek Theater, Los Angeles, 1972

  THE ALADDIN PA I D N EI I. DIAMOND $650,000 for five shows and, in the program, added a gratuity, calling him "the world's greatest performer." The hotel named a suite after him and threw a lavish party for him after opening night-in a banquet room coincidentally called the Diamond Room.

  Neil Diamond should be on top of the world. He is a star there, after all. That line from "I Am...I Said" about the frog who dreamed of becoming a king and then became one-that's Diamond, all right. But he is a restless man: insecure, moody, and serious... and driven....

  Diamond is sitting on the floor of his bedroom, his back against a chest of drawers, talking about his parents. He is happy to have enabled his father to close up his drygoods shop five years ago, after twenty-five years in the business. "He's just been hanging out and grooving ever since, traveling. I really envy him. I wish I had that basic nature to relax and go with it. I'm much more emotionally reflective of my mother, who's more intense. I'm motivated, I'm pushed, I'm driven, in a sense."

  To do what?

  "God knows!" Then, a second later: "I'm motivated to find myself. I'm an imperfect emotional being, trying to figure out some way to give some kind of substance and meaning to my life. I do it in a very silly way. I write these little songs and go and sing them in a recording studio and, later, in front of a lot of people. It seems like an odd way to gain an inner sense of acceptance of the self. But it's what I do. It seems like a lot of people are getting good things from it. It's really the only justification I've found yet for my life. That and my children."

  You KNOW N E I I, DIAMOND. If not, you can at least hum
him. "Cherry Cherry," "I'm a Believer," "Solitary Man," "Kentucky Woman," "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon," "I Thank the Lord for the Night Time," "Sweet Caroline," "Holly Holy," "Shilo," "Cracklin' Rosie," "Play Me," "Song Sung Blue" and, of course, "I Am...I Said."

  "He's written some songs over the years that were extraordinary to me," says the Band's Robbie Robertson, who produced Diamond's latest album, Beautiful Noise. "There's certain ones that ring on. The things I could relate to were the rock and roll things-'Solitary Man,' 'Cracklin' Rosie'-fantastic, good-feeling things."

  Sales figures and gold-record counts do not tell the whole Neil Diamond story. Just consider these items:

  • After the first batch of hummables on a small label, Diamond made a $50,000 per album, five-album deal with MCAs Uni Records in 1967. Later that year, when the Steve Miller Blues Band and Quicksilver Messenger Service got a similar deal from Capitol Records, the rock press got all crazy. Few had noticed Neil's deal.

  • In 1971, eighteen months before his MCA contract was up, Diamond declared himself ready for renegotiations and got offers of $4 million-$400,000 per album for ten albums-from Warner Bros. and Columbia Records. He took Columbia, which has recouped its entire advance with his first two albums, and Beautiful Noise is just out.

  • Diamond threw a scare into Columbia in 1972, just before joining them, by announcing a "sabbatical" from concert work for a year or two. He actually stretched his leave out to forty months. During this period he further scared Columbia with the word that his first album for them would be a soundtrack of a movie about a bird, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. (The soundtrack outgrossed the film, $12 million to $2 million, according to one report. Columbia relaxed.)

  • Returning to the stage early this year, Diamond decided to hit Australia and New Zealand for the first time, and literally sold out both countries. When Australian radio leaked the word that a tour was being planned, "blank checks," according to the tour promoter, "were mailed to houses it was assumed he would play, requesting seats and letting the house fill in the amount." Boffo.