The Neil Diamond Concert at Hollywood Bowl was part of my first pampering trip to LA.   The first time we saw him was at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City and we wore matching Mother/Daughter pink boucle’ sweaters.  Not this time;  this time it was jeans… forever in blue jeans, babe!   It felt right after our day of travel, shopping, manicures, pedicures, and delicious Brazilian dinner.

The last time I was at the Hollywood Bowl was a long time ago.   Parking was memorable , because you drove in and parked just as though you were stopped at a stop light — only there were a hundred cars in each lane.  LA refers to this as “Stacked Parking”.  This worked great upon arrival, but after the event, you must wait for the cars in front or on either side of you to leave before you can leave.  True to form … at the end of the concert, one entire line of cars filled with waiting people were waiting for one little blue car at the front of their line with no driver in sight!!! 

This time we walked –from my hotel — The Magic Castle!   Only a few blocks away, it was an easy walk and so much quicker to avoid the traffic jams and not having to wait for the driver of the blue car to appear!  The Magic Castle …. that is a story in itself… and another blog post in itself!

The Hollywood Bowl is a naturally occurring venue, that has been enhanced by man.  The acoustics are nearly perfect and there is not a bad seat in the house.  Oh, there are stairs, to be sure, but you are outside and the day was hot (89 degrees), the evening perfect.  One of the best things that I like about the Hollywood Bowl is that you are able, and encouraged to “picnic” there.  We actually brought our champagne, baguettes, hummus, veggies, cheese, and cookies with us.  Yes, the three bottles of champagne were heavy to carry on the walk from the hotel and up the stairs, but we all appreciated the effort .   And, of course, the walk down was much lighter!  For those who don’t plan as well as we did, you can purchase your picnic inside the gates of the Bowl.  The general atmosphere is one of a festival or faire … it might have something to do with the LA laid-back mentality.  Who cares, it was great!!

But, I digress, back to Neil Diamond.    He was incredible!  His beautiful bed-roomy, gravelly, sexy voice as sonorous and enthralling as ever.  I was surprised – not that the Hollywood Bowl was filled but that there were people there of EVERY age.  I knew that I loved Neil Diamond and my daughter likes him enough to get tickets and invite 6 other friends to go, but there were multi – generations there.  Neil Diamond was the solo performer –straight through –no intermission — and we did get an encore -”America”.   One song that he did not sing was “Heart Light”, the one he wrote immediately after seeing the movie ET.  Part of our group was looking forward to that song and even made little ET’s to hold up.  So here they are:

ET at the Hollywood bowl by PDXFirefly

 I was about to tell you the highlight of the evening for me …but there were several.  One is when Neil performed “Sweet Caroline”.  Now don’t tell me that when you are driving, you don’t sing along when that song comes on the radio because I won’t believe you.   Well, just take that feeling you have when you hear “Sweet Caroline, (boom, boom, boom - in time with the drums) good times never felt so good (so good, so good, so good)” and sing it out and multiply it by tens of thousands of other voices on a beautiful Southern California evening in one of the worlds most acoustically perfect natural amphitheatres with Neil Diamond singing lead and you will have a brief sense of the magic of the evening.  The fun part was what Neil said at the end of the song, “Well, that was pretty good, but you know what?  There was a man down here near the front that didn’t sing.  And you know what that means!  That means you have to sing it again!!!”  The audience went wild.  We loved it and got to sing again!!!  Thankfully, Neil Diamond is one artist who recognizes that the audience singing along with him is a huge compliment and embraced that fact. 

Another highlight for me was when he sang some of his new songs.  They are beautiful songs, reflective of his life.  They make the artist come full circle in his songs on life.

One other brief highlight was when Neil Diamond acknowledged that Cher was there, “Thank you, my darling, for coming out tonight.”  As we were leaving and walking along the boulevard to our hotel there were upwards of 20 limousines waiting for their passengers.  Some people were upset because they couldn’t find the right white limo!  I did spot James Caan and his friends just before he ducked into his big black stretch limo.  What’s a trip to Hollywood if you don’t see at least one movie star?