American singer and songwriter Neil Leslie Diamond was born in Brooklyn, New York City on 24th January 1941, is married and has 4 children.
As a kid, he attended high school where he was a member of a choral club as well as a fencing team. He was gifted with a guitar on his 16th birthday and showed interest in writing songs. Neil then went to university but slowly started skipping classes and tried his luck in making his songs heard with music publishers. He succeeded and was offered a 4-month song-writing job.
During the 60s, Neil recorded several singles, however, they all proved unsuccessful. He persevered and continued composing songs for other artists until success arrived with the song ‘Sunday and Me’ in 1965, followed by more successful hits like ‘I’m a Believer’ and ‘Love to Love’, both sung by ‘The Monkees’.
As a solo artist, Neil’s initial hits were ‘Solitary Man’, ‘Cherry Cherry’ and ‘Kentucky Woman’. Also, several of his songs were covered by various other artists like Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard and Deep Purple.
Towards the end of 1969, Neil had the major hit ‘Sweet Caroline’ which was followed by another two big tracks ‘Song Sung Blue’ and ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’ in early 1970. The year after, he had yet another Top 5 US & UK hit ‘I Am…I Said’. Meanwhile, he continued with his live performances around the US and after a few years’ break, resumed his career and embarked on an Australian tour, plus singing in his native US and other countries like the UK.
During the 80s and 90s, Neil released 11 albums, however, record sales went a bit downhill but his concerts still attracted big audiences. Albeit, he did have some successful singles which made it to the Top 10: ‘Love on the Rocks’, ‘Hello Again’ and ‘America’. Also, ‘Sweet Caroline’ became very popular once again during the 90s and was especially sung during sports events.
From the year 2000 to date, Diamond produced 20 albums and 14 singles. During his long career, Neil had global sales of over 130 million records, making him one of the biggest music artists ever. He is also the recipient of the Sammy Cahn and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards.