Neil Diamond: NET WORTH MONEY AND MORE
Net worth – $175 million
Profile – singer-songwriter, musician
Genres – Pop, rock, folk, country and soft rock
Neil Diamond also known as “Jewish Elvis” is a prolific American songwriter and singer who started his career in the early 1960′s. his real name is Neil Leslie Diamond. Neil Diamond tops annual list of highest-paid singers, according to the sources. The successful singer led a very illustrious and colourful career in the music industry for the last five decades. Diamond has sold 160 million records worldwide during his career with hits including Song Sung Blue, Cracklin’ Rosie, Love On The Rocks and You Don’t Bring Me Flowers. By scoring a number of hits during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, Neil Diamond is best known as a successful pop music singer. He is a Father of musician-turned-photographer Jesse Diamond. Neil is the third most successful adult contemporary artist on the Billboard charts behind Barbra Streis and Elton John.
Childhood
Diamond was born in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, New York, in the year 1941, January 24 to be exact, to the proud parents Rose (née Rapaport) and Akeeba “Kieve” Diamond. His parents emigrated from Europe to the United States and settled in New York. Kieve Diamond operated and owned a series of dry goods stores in the New York City borough. His father also served in military. Neil attended Abraham Lincoln High School from which he received his high school diploma. Also he was a top fencer during his time at New York University. He grew up as most other kids but at the age 16, he received a guitar for his birthday, who knew that gift would forever change his life.
His life ambition was in medicine, as explained in a live interview with TV talk show host Larry King:
I actually wanted to be a laboratory biologist. I wanted to study. And I really wanted to find a cure for cancer. My grandmother had died of cancer. And I was always very good at the sciences. And I thought I would go and try and discover the cure for cancer.
But during his senior years he got an offer from a music publishing company which he could not refuse-writing songs for $50 a week started him on the road to stardom.
Personal life
Diamond got married three times. Firstly, Neil got married to the gorgeous Jaye Posner, his school sweetheart (school teacher) in the year 1963 with whom he had two daughters, Marjorie and Elyn. They got separated in 1967 and his first marriage ended in 1969. The same year Neil then married Marcia Murphey, a production assistant. They had two sons Jesse and Micah. They got divorced in 1995. He was forced to pay $150,000,000 to former wife Marcia Murphey in their divorce settlement. This holds the record as the most expensive divorce in history. In 2011, he made engagement announcement the same day he learned he was to be a Kennedy Center Honoree. The twice-divorced singer, who in 2012 tied the knot with his third wife 41 year old Katie McNeil, his manager and producer of the documentary Neil Diamond: Hot August Nights NYC.
Career
Daimond’s first song was “Hear them bells”, which he wrote for his girlfriend but he didn’t record it. At age 18, Neil wrote his fifth song “Blue Destiny”.
Brooklyn Erasmus High School was the first to give Neil an exposure to music. There he sang for a fixed choir group with then classmate Barbra Streisand and totally obscure her. After that Neil with his friend Jack Packer, formed a duo singing group called Neil & Jack and recorded a single for Shell Records. However, the duo soon broke up as the record failed to sell. His first success as a songwriter came with “Sunday and Me” in November 1965. After that he worked with many other companies till 1996, when Diamond signed a deal with Bert Berns’s Bang Records. His first hit, “Solitary Man”, was his first release on that label. That same year, he penned the Monkees’ No. 1 hit “I’m a Believer.” After that Neil moved to the Los Angeles in 1970. He wrote three blockbusters- Sweet Caroline, Holly- Holly and “Brother’s Love…” after the slump. “Sweet Caroline” was the most popular, peaking out at #4 on the billboard charts. His next major release was “Cracklin Rosie” which was inspired by his trip to an Indian reservation. This release rose to #1 position on the billboard charts. Besides that Neil could also record emotional songs, one of them was “I Am….I said”, which took him 4 months to complete. Yet this song reached the top 5 positions on the billboard.
Diamond once recorded a simple tune with a simple message and didn’t think that it would be a hit but on contrary, the song led the billboard with #1 position. Some movies also gave the opportunity to Neil to write like “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”, fetching him a few awards.
Apart from that the “Jewish Elvis” also remake the movie “The Jazz Singer” that again fetched him awards. He wrote three greatest hits for this. They were “Love on the Rocks”, “Hello Again” and “America”. Each of them is positioned among top 10 on billboards.
Neil gave many hits year by year. His recent major release was “Home Before Dark” in 2008. In 2009 he released two albums viz. “Hot August Night/NYC” and Cherry Cherry Christmas. In 2012 Neil released The Very Best Of Neil Diamond – The Original Studio Recordings.
Awards
Diamond has earned various rewards for his work. In 1974 he won the Golden Globe and Grammy award for the Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973). In 1990 he got the award of merit. In 1991 he was awarded with ASCAP ward for the song America, The Jazz Singer. In 1981 he won the worst actor Razzie award again for The Jazz Singer. In 2000, he won the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award at Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2007 he won the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. He was awarded with the Icon Award at Billboard Music awards and was an honoree at Kennedy Center in 2011. Recently In august 2012, Sweet Caroline singer Neil Diamond was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Besides them he was also named as the 2009 MusiCares Person of the Year.
Personal Quotes
It’s very difficult for me to say ‘I love you’ but to sing ‘I love you’ for me is easier.
My voice is unadorned. I don’t try for perfection. I try to be honest and truthful and soulful with the voice I have. If I make mistakes in notes, or there are cracks in notes, I don’t fix them. That’s the way it is.
I’m not there to entertain people. We’re there to do something together.
I never expected that I would be doing this for as long as I’ve been doing it. So looking back and seeing that it’s been over 40 years since the first hits makes you think, ‘Is there a time that you stop?’ But I don’t think I’m ever going to stop. It’s the only challenge I have left in my life.
I want to know what marathon runners do. Because I do the same thing. I run a two-hour marathon every time onstage. So I have my electrolytes kept at a certain level, and I do my carb-loading after the shows for the next night.
Somehow it’s dawning on me that I’m a more mature individual and I’m not a kid writing ‘Cherry, Cherry’ anymore.
I already have “Sweet Caroline”. Most of these people haven’t heard “Hell Yeah” or “Man of God”, but I see them and they’re listening, and that’s really all I want.
This is my job. Someone much greater than me gave me that job. He said, “You, you with that stupid look on your face – go out and sing until I tell you to stop”. I haven’t heard the word yet so I’m just going to keep doing it.
Love is the elixir of eternal youth.
