one to one

This interview started by Gary asking about Neil's schooldays. He was asked how important his music was to him then. Neil said when he looked back on the songs he wrote then they were pretty poor. At the time he thought they were good. He said for a bit of fun now in concert he was singing his very first song. Gary asked what it was about. Neil replied that it was about nothing much. It was called "Hear Them Bells". He wrote it for his girlfriend. It was his first song and she was his first wife. It worked!

He was asked what he was striving for at that early time in his career. Neil replied that basically it was to pull himself out of poverty. He would take any kind of work. If he could sell a song for a hundred dollars - great. He lived from week to week like that.

He really had no thought of becoming a singer at that time. That came accidentally.

Gary said his big break probably came when he was signed by Bang Records

Neil agreed and said that came about through Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. They wanted to produce and he had just been fired from a staff writing job at their company. They said they liked the way he sang. So Solitary Man barrelled its way up the charts to number 92. At least he was on the charts. Neil said his next record, Cherry Cherry, got to number 2 in the States. The Monkees had I'm A Believer at the same time. Gary asked if he had written that song specifically for the Monkees. The answer was no, he had written it for an album of his own. However he took it over to them and they recorded it. Ellie and Jeff produced the Monkees on that record. Having the combination of Cherry Cherry and I'm A Believer in the charts at the same time gave him a good start.

Gary then continued the interview by suggesting that Neil's big international success started with Taproot Manuscript. Cracklin Rosie, from that album, became a hit in Britain. Neil said it was an experimental album. It was the first time he had written an extended piece that covered the whole side of an album. The African Trilogy was based on African musical forms and instruments. It taught him many things and he was able to go on a step from there and try Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, which was even more extended. It covered both sides of the album. Then, Beautiful Noise which was the same thing and then, The Jazz Singer. So the African Trilogy was his first attempt at going further than the three-minute song.

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They then talked about I Am I Said. Neil said he had gone for a screen test for the Lenny Bruce film. He had never been in front of a camera before and was scared to death. After the first two scenes he went to his dressing room for lunch. He was very depressed and down in the dumps. He always had his guitar around so he started writing. He wrote the title and the melody and some of the words to the chorus during that lunchtime. The song said something to him that maybe some of his other songs didn't. So he committed himself to working on the song. It was really a labour of love. He wasn't writing a song really but plumbing his own depths and writing about himself.

Greatest Hits Album 1966 - 92 had just recently been released. Gary asked if it had not been a big struggle as to know what to put on the album. Neil replied that it wasn't really favourites but just the biggest hits. That made it easy - you just looked at the charts and saw which records went the highest. He agreed that it was much tougher to choose material for a live concert. He had to leave out a lot of songs. As many as he did, he still somehow had to leave out a lot of hit records. He had been at Wembley that past summer. The show had been two and a half hours long and there were still nine or ten hit records that he hadn't done in the show. He just couldn't sing that long. The audience would usually tell him at that point what they wanted to hear.

Gary asked what a nice Jewish boy was doing releasing a Christmas Album. Neil replied that he had to ask himself that question also. The fact was that Christmas music was the most glorious music written. There was so much glorious Christmas music that you couldn't fit it on one album. He had always had in the back of his mind that he would like to do a whole album of Christmas music. When the record company approached him and asked, he jumped at the opportunity with both feet saying "I'll be in the studios next week!"
As far as a nice Jewish boy doing it, well he had some questions about that because they had done a lot of holy songs and hymns asides from the carols. He went to all his Christian friends and asked them "Well what do you think of this? Can I do it? How do I sing O Holy Night and fall on your knees, Christ is Our Lord? My stage manager said - think of it as a professional. You're a singer - perform it as well as you can as a singer. I thought OK that made me feel a little bit better about it.
But I continued to ask people until I came to the final arbitrator in the family. That is my mother. She is in her seventies and she is wise. I said to her "Mum, listen. I have a chance to record a Christmas Album but there is a lot of Jesus Christ in this album."She said "You know Jesus Christ was once a nice Jewish boy too so I think you should do it. Just sing it well." That made me decide I should do the album."

They then spoke about the Jazz Singer. Gary asked why it had taken him so long before doing a film. Neil replied that it was because he had not really been actively looking for a film. The Lenny Bruce thing had been a disaster in his mind. By the late seventies his agent asked him if he was ready to give it a try again. He gave Neil a list of movies and asked which one he would like him to try and get for him. Neil looked at the list and noticed The Jazz Singer. He thought maybe that one because it wasn't all that far from his life. It was - a Jewish kid grows up poor and tries to make it as a singer. Except in the movie it was against the wishes of his father who was a rabbi. Neil's parents were just working people and certainly his singing and his writing weren't against their wishes. They enjoyed it. But it was a story that intrigued him. The fact that Al Jolson had done it and he was the premiere pop singer of his time, there were a lot of coincidences, so he said "Let's try it."

Neil went on - "We started working on the script. We had four or five scripts written. Finally we came back with a script and this time it was this script or nothing. This was the fifth script and I didn't have the nerve to read it. I was too scared so I had my wife read it to me. We sat in a room and she read the entire script. She finished and she said "Neil I don't think you should do this." Then she looked up and she had tears in her eyes. I said "Why are you crying?" She said "I don't know but I just don't think you should do this."
As soon as I realised that she was emotionally moved by the story, I thought - I have to do this now. This is real. These are real tears. Your intellectual mind says don't do it because it's old or …I don't know… but the tears were the dead give-away. I called the next day and said "I want to do this movie. If it can make my wife cry then maybe it can make someone else cry."

Neil continued "They signed Laurence Olivier to play my father. That scared me to death. I had never been on a movie set before and here was the greatest actor of our times working with me. It did scare me but I sought out friends including Dustin Hoffman. I met him and I said to him "I am in a terrible predicament here. I am an amateur, I'm inexperienced and I am working with Laurence Olivier. What do I do?" We discussed it and Dustin gave me the key. He said "Well you are intimidated by this man now and your character is intimidated by his father in a film. You can use that fear and it will show and it will work for you." I actually stopped worrying at that point. I was meant to be scared of this guy so it worked OK."

Neil then went on to describe how he had enjoyed working with Laurence Olivier. He was always very helpful and Neil often went to him with questions.

Here is a small excerpt (rm file) in which Neil gives a little Laurence Olivier impression. Click here

Neil then answered questions about Barbra Streisand. - They had both sung together in public school in Brooklyn. However it was a big chorus and they never met. They never knew one another then. They just discovered that several years later. They have become friends over the years. As for the duet - well they had recorded You Don't Bring Me Flowers because they both liked it. Barbra had done her recording in the same key and with the same arranger. Disc jockeys in the States started editing the two versions together. It sounded pretty good so they decided to go in and do it the real way. They went in with a piano and a string section and did the duet.

There was then a break in the interview and the Cherry Cherry video was shown.

The second video shown was I Am I Said from the Greatest Hits video.

The next video showed Neil in concert singing September Morn.

They broke into the interview to show America from the Greatest Hits video.

	.....And the show finished with the You Don't Bring Me Flowers duet from the Grammys.