CoronaVinyl Day 439 (D): Beautiful Noise by Neil Diamond

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "D," and I don't have any more "unique" D artists left, so it will be a heavy dose of Neil Diamond, The Doors, Def Leppard, and The Doobie Brothers going forward.  I still have four more Neil Diamond records to go, so I went with his tenth studio album, 1976's Beautiful Noise.

The album was produced by Robbie Robertson of The Band, and Diamond had some great backing musicians play on this album.  In addition to Robertson (who played guitar on a few tracks), Garth Hudson from The Band played organ on a couple tracks, Jesse Ed Davis played guitar on a track, Derek & The Dominos' drummer Jim Gordon and legendary session drummers Russ Kunkel and Jim Keltner played percussion on much of the album, future Toto co-founder David Paich played piano on one track, Dr. John played organ on one track, Wrecking Crew member Larry Knechtel played piano on much of the album, and famous jazz keyboardist Bob James arranged the strings and horns on most of the album.

The songs on the album were inspired by Diamond's coming of age as a young songwriter in New York in the early '60s.  The album sounds like you would expect a Neil Diamond in the mid '70s to sound.  There are catchy pop songs, with varied influences, lots of keyboards, some strings, and plenty of soul.  Though the album was thought of as kind of a comeback album for Diamond, he was hardly in a slump.  His prior two albums, 1972's Moods and 1974's Serenade, were both Top 5 albums in the U.S.  Beautiful Noise reached #6 on the Billboard album chart and was #1 on the album charts in five other countries.  It also eventually went platinum in the U.S.

Two songs from the album charted on the Billboard Hot 100, with "If You Know What I Mean" hitting #11 and "Don't Think ... Feel" topping out at #43.  

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "Surviving The Life"
Before I realized who played on the album, I thought this sounds like it could have been on a Band album.  Then I figured out that happy little organ in the background was courtesy of Garth Hudson, so it all made sense.  And then the song kind of breaks into a gospel hand clapper.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "Dry Your Eyes"
The album ends on a majestic and emotional note.  The song was co-written by Robertson, and Diamond and The Band played the song during The Band's epic Last Waltz later in 1976.  In that context, it's even more emotional because it's like you were drying your eyes because you were crying about The Band breaking up.  Heavy.