Neil Diamond: Jonathan Livingston Seagull : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Neil Diamond's melodies, Lee Holdridge's arrangements, Tom Catalano's production and Armin Steiner's engineering combine to make this a better-than-average film sound-track. However, it should be remembered that most film soundtracks are a priori the most average-sounding music to be found anywhere, save perhaps in elevators. It should also be noted that this effort would qualify as way-better-than-average were it not for Diamond's aggressively arty lyrics, his indulgence in 110 studio musicians and a full boys' choir, and the whole Seagull booklet-cum-album jacket, a mind-boggling landmark in packaging pretension.

Each song has an explanatory subtitle ("'Dear Father' Battered and near death, Jonathan asks for reasons"). A whole page is devoted to an artist-at-work collage of Neil's books (Eastern religion plus JLS), actual handwritten lyrics, and cloying memos ("Hall—I don't want to be Jonathan's voice, I want to be his heart"). Even the record label is adorned with a photo of Neil; Jonathan is, significantly, cropped away into oblivion. And an accompanying press release describes Neil's "current plateau," compares his work to Leopold Stokowski's on Fantasia, chronicles his presumably legendary early days, and suggests that Neil, even more than Jonathan, knows "no limits; no permanency; no pattern." The release isn't signed, but Richard Bach couldn't have written it better himself.

"Be," "Dear Father" and "Skybird" are fine melodies, more striking in the instrumental versions than when sung. "Lonely Looking Sky" is less interesting, sounding like Diamond's standard AM stuff. "Anthem" ("transcend—purify—glorious," he intones) passes through the arrogance barrier, and beyond. En route to the next "plateau," no doubt.