Neil Diamond To Refund 11,000 Tickets After Poor Ohio Performance

Following a poor performance at a concert in Columbus, Ohio, singer Neil Diamond felt it necessary to say sorry to his fans. But instead of just issuing an apology (which he did) and promising to perform better his next time through Ohio (which he said he will), Diamond will instead refund the tickets of every single person who attended the August 25th concert at the Value City Arena. To break it down numerically, that's 11,000 tickets that the Solitary Man will refund.

Diamond is in the thick of a U.S. tour, and during the last few shows, the singer had been suffering from acute laryngitis. He still made it to the Columbus stage, but fans were soon greeted onstage by a hoarse sounding singer. "Dear Fans in Columbus," Diamond said in a statement, "I haven't let you down before, and I won't let you down now. Until you hear from me again remember, You are the sun. I am the moon. You are the words. I am the tune. Forgive me. I love you. Neil." The all-out refund shocked even the concert's promoter, with Scott Stienecker saying "I've sat through Vince Neil falling-down drunk before. I've sat through Bob Dylan, not even acknowledging that there was a crowd," and neither of those artists refunded the fans. In an effort to avoid future refunds, and due to his ongoing throat problems, Diamond has cancelled two concerts this week.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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