(Da Capo Press)

www.dacapopress.com

The conceit of the book is an interesting one: Neil Diamond as the Jewish Sinatra/Elvis. The concept has some legitimacy, fleshed out when author David Wild talks of the high place of honor in which his middle class family in Tenafly, New Jersey, held Diamond; somewhat akin to the place Joe Louis held in the homes of pre-World War II African Americans. But what would have made an interesting magazine article does not have enough oomph to stretch into a book, even one as thin as this.

The book contains little actual biography of Diamond, though what there is makes up its most readable parts. Wild does manage to secure our attention when he writes about Diamond's Brill Building days. Diamond was always trying to compete with, but never felt he measured up to, folks like Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and Doc Pomus and Mort Schuman - and apparently he still doesn't feel he does. In truth, he most often didn't. But George Harrison comes up short measured against Lennon and McCartney; that doesn't mean he didn't flirt with and often achieve greatness.

In the second chapter of this somewhat diffident paean, Wild writes about his rock ‘n' roll themed bar mitzvah. That rite of passage occurred the same year Wild became a Diamond fan, following in a family tradition. The year was 1973 and the walls of the country club dining room where the celebration took place were decorated with posters of Wild's favorite acts -Rolling Stones, Eagles, Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, Cat Stevens, and "the only Jew in the pack, Neil Diamond." He may not have known it then, but doesn't Wild, a rock critic and former Rolling Stone editor, know that the Stones' Charlie Watts and the Eagles' Bernie Leadon are some of the world's better known Jewish rock musicians? And why isn't Bob Dylan the first name on a list of rock ‘n' roll heroes with which a young Jewish could would ethnically identify? Would black kids looking for the same kind of identification ignore Jimi Hendrix? Or Canadians, Neil Young? Wiccans, Stevie Nicks? Pretentious smart assess, Beck and James Blunt?

But perhaps the oddest thing about Wild's relationship to Diamond is that it started a couple of years after Diamond's best pop music had come and gone, and it was to the then-current music Diamond was making that Wild was drawn. This is like becoming a Rod Stewart fan after "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" and confessing that the singer's work with Jeff Beck and the Faces (and even solo hit "Maggie May") left you cold.

A well-edited version of this book would make a great preface to a comprehensive Neil Diamond biography and Diamond is certainly worthy of one. His exclusion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a joke considering that an act like Blondie is in it. Diamond contributed more and better to the music than those poseurs ever did. Diamond had one foot in old showbiz and was right there when rock ‘n' roll and pop were taking over the world and he subsequently had a hand in the coup. But it's anybody's guess what the audience for this book is. The pretext wears thin as does Wild's endless self-deprecation. He Is... I Say is an often tiresome read.

Wild is upfront about his and his family's love for Diamond and makes a good case for it. But the expression of affection still seems tainted with embarrassment due to Wild's awareness of how uncool some folks think Diamond and his fans are, or his paranoid imagining that they think so; the book reveals that Diamond seems to suffer from the same worry. In fact, the days when popularity was considered a negation of artistic quality or hipness are pretty much over. Some of rock ‘n' roll's most respected "artists", Hendrix, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles and even Lou Reed, have had hits and sold plenty of records.

There's no shame in making great pop music and there's nothing wrong with liking it. Didn't Wild's Diamond-loving mama ever tell him that if he's ashamed of something he's doing he probably shouldn't be doing it? RICK ALLEN