Crowd Goes Wild for Neil Diamond in Brooklyn
Rock and Roll Hall of Famer returned to his high school for surprise show
October 06, 2014
Neil Diamond performs on October 20, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California. (Christopher Polk/Getty Images)
It must have felt like home for Neil Diamond. The 73-year-old Jewish rocker returned to his Brooklyn roots last week for his first ever performance at his alma mater, Erasmus Hall High School. Diamond, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, sang in the school choir for two years when he was a student.
Flanked by a six-piece band, Diamond performed an intimate 10-song set in the school’s auditorium. He sang his new song “Something Blue” (which will be released on Melody Road, his first album in six years), and with lines like “some days were a little bit daunting, some days I’d rather forget. But you’ve changed my life for the better,” Diamond could have easily been ruminating about his high school days.
In a video of the performance, Diamond joked that although “it was my dream to get out of high school,” finally “enough time has passed that now I feel good about coming back to my old haunts.”
The cheering crowd in the packed house seems to have felt good about his return as well.
Zack Schrieber is an intern at Tablet Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @zschrieber.
