Live albums were a very big deal in the 1970s. Peter Frampton became a superstar with the multi-million selling Frampton Comes Alive! Kiss and Cheap Trick both got their big breakthroughs with live albums – Kiss Alive! in 1975 and At Budokan in ’79. And then there was Neil Diamond’s blockbuster, Hot August Night.
Recorded on 24 August 1972 during a 10-night stand at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, Hot August Night sold more than two million copies in the US. But most amazing of all was the album’s success in Australia, where it held the No 1 spot for a mind-boggling 29 weeks.
In a 2008 interview with Q magazine, Diamond talked about the making of Hot August Night and the “crazy” risk he took during one part of his live performance.
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By the summer of ’72, Diamond was riding high after a series of top ten hits in the US, including Cherry, Cherry, Sweet Caroline, Holly Holy, I Am… I Said – and two No 1 smashes in Cracklin’ Rosie and Song Sung Blue.
He recalled to Q: “I was in my prime as far as people focusing in on my stuff. I’d written some of my best music. It was only five or six years since I had my first chart record, so it was pretty intense.”
However, as he prepared to record Hot August Night, he was yearning for a break from touring.
“At the end of that tour, I didn’t know if I was gonna come back or not,” he revealed. “I had a new baby and I wanted to make sure that I did it right with this kid, after what I’d gone through with my first marriage and my two girls.
“So I said I was gonna hang it up, which was at that time kind of tantamount to suicide, because you had to have records out on a continual basis and you had to be out there on a continual basis. It was no use taking four years off.
“But I had read about John Lennon, when he was a house husband. And for me, it was a blossoming, it was a blooming of my life. I was able to pull away from the insistent demands of my work and enjoy myself, enjoy being with my kids, enjoy reading a book.
“So I knew I was coming up to period away from the constant touring that I’d been on, the constant writing and recording, so I was a very excited and very happy guy.”
His mood at this time was evident in the performance captured on Hot August Night, with slick and powerful renditions of his hit songs and deeper cuts, and a playful experiment in real-time songwriting.
Diamond enjoyed a challenge. For his 1976 album Beautiful Noise he wrote a song with only one chord.
In the show preserved for posterity on Hot August Night, he wrote a song right there on the Greek Theatre’s stage.
As he told Q: “It was exciting, and I was so confident in my powers then. I could be that person: I could do anything I wanted on stage.
“I could hit notes that I never hit before and I did. I could do songs that I never did before and I did.
“I could write a song immediately in front of the audience and I did. And the band would join in and play with me, and they had no idea what I was doing. That was the Soggy Pretzels thing.
“It just came out, I felt silly, and I wrote it right on the spot. You have to be a little crazy to do something like that.
“It was the first time and last time – I never did it again. It just shows the kind of frame of my mind I was in. I was at the top of my game, and I was fearless.”
Reflecting on the success of Hot August Night, Diamond described it as a pivotal album in his career.
“It became a very popular album,” he said, “and I felt that when I did come back [to performing live], if I was gonna come back, I would always have the chance to play the Greek Theater again, if only for one night.
“So that was my safety net. I would have the chance to prove myself again if I wanted to come back. So I felt secure in that.”
Diamond’s return to the stage – and to the Greek Theater – was commemorated in his subsequent live album Love At the Greek, released in 1977.
He added: “After that I wrote many more songs – but not under the hammer.”
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