Neil Diamond put in loads of onerous yards to succeed in the superior standing he loved as an American songwriter and performer by the early Seventies. By then, a brand new album by the Brooklyn-born star was an occasion, and his seventh LP Stones, launched in late 1971, was no exception. After debuting on the American chart on November 13, and on its approach to gold standing for half 1,000,000 gross sales, it hit the UK bestsellers on December 11 that 12 months.
Stones was solely Diamond’s third LP to make the UK countdown, however on either side of the Atlantic, its success was fuelled by the highly effective hit single “I Am…I Said,” to today one of many strongest entries in his whole songbook. It expressed the views of an artist who felt misplaced between the worlds of New York and Los Angeles.
“It was consciously an attempt on my part to express what my dreams were about, what my aspirations were about and what I was about,” Diamond later informed Mojo journal of the weighty ‘I Am…I Said.’ “And without any question, it came from my sessions with the analyst.”
When Stones arrived, it opened with that hit, which had climbed to No.4 in each the US and UK. However not like the album’s 1970 predecessor Faucet Root Manuscript, on which he wrote all however one of many songs, this time Diamond was the composer of solely three of the ten picks. The others have been the title observe, which was concurrently climbing the Scorching 100 to succeed in No.14 and listed as a double A-side with a 3rd authentic, “Crunchy Granola Suite.” A reprise of “I Am…I Said” rounded out the album.
Elsewhere, Neil selected to interpret his contemporaries and different favorites. He took Roger Miller’s 1966 hit “Husbands and Wives” right down to a reflective tempo and remade the work of such songwriting royalty as Joni Mitchell (“Chelsea Morning”), Leonard Cohen (“Suzanne”), and Randy Newman (“I Think It’s Going To Rain Today”). The album additionally featured Diamond’s model of Jacques Brel and Rod McKuen’s much-covered and mournful “If You Go Away” and people figurehead Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing On My Mind.”
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