The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 47

Wkt Inquirer MONDAY August 10, 1992 DADLY MAGAZINE SECTION PEOPLE HOME MOVIES THE ARTS TV STV2 Neil Diamond the rock 'J A 1 ijiiHji i vv I For years he had a square-cut image. Now Rolling Stone talks of his "brilliance." The pop prince, playing the Spectrum, reflects on his solitary self. for his eight-night stand at the Los Angeles Forum. "I'll make up any excuse to continue to work," he says in that familiar, froggy voice. "Because I know, basically, it's my job to produce music and if I stop, then I'm doing something wrong.

"So no matter what happens, I'm producing music Good, bad music, doesn't matter. Like a shark, when it stops swimming, it dies." Diamond once planned on becoming a doctor. "For a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, singer was not one of the top three choice occupations," he jokes. He attended New York University on a fencing scholarship. Fencing As a student at his father's alma mater, Abraham Lincoln High, Diamond wanted one more extracurricular activity to match the five his dad had listed under his yearbook picture.

Diamond added fencing and turned out to be good at it "my first winning experience," he says. But he left college before graduation for a S50-a-week songwriting job. The '60s pop scene brimmed with geniuses and would-be geniuses whose lives revolved around the legendary Brill Building on Broadway. Many have glorified those days, but Diamond says he remembers them as See NEIL DIAMOND on E5 By Ann Kolson INQUHKK STAKK WHITKH NEW YORK From brooding young man in bell-bottoms to smooth superstar in beaded shirts, it's been a long road for Neil Diamond. Over 25 years, his tunes have entered the pop lexicon: "Cherry Cherry." "Sweet Caroline," "I Am I Said," "Song Sung Blue," "Cracklin' Rosie." Now in the midst of a wildly successful 10-month world tour (he opened a sold-out three-night stand at the Spectrum yesterday), and with not one, but two retrospective double albums just out, he is a middle-of-the-road idol to millions.

He's never been big with the hipper-than-thou, this god of soft-hits radio. so depressed?" Candice Bergen barked at her glum colleagues on a recent Murphy Brown. "Neil Diamond release a new But perhaps the tide has turned. Rolling Stone ponders Diamond's unhipness in its current issue, then notes that his new records provide the "perfect opportunity to throw political correctness to the wind and finally admit the man's peculiar, unfashionable but ultimately undeniable brilliance." And Diamond's publicist says drummer Troy Lucketta, from the heavy-metal group Tesla, recently begged to meet his hero. It's his dream, the younger musician said, to play onstage with Diamond.

Ensconced in a recording studio here last week, just back from Europe on the luxe Queen Elizabeth 2, Diamond, 51, seems less the mesmerizing singer who puts on 2'i-hour shows and more the tired businessman. The real Neil Diamond is a quiet man: "I sing, I don't talk," he says. Before a performance, cranky and nervous, he applies his own makeup. "That changes the person a little bit," explains the singer-songwriter. "Then I get dressed and I become: NEIL DIAMOND.

Before then I'm just Neil. My dresser says, 'OK! You look like Neil Diamond to He doesn't consider himself particularly disciplined or driven "I'd like to think of myself as being wild and untamed" yet he's churned out music continuously since he was nothing but a 17-year-old Brooklyn boy with a used guitar. He has sold 90 million records worldwide. In March, he grossed $3.3 million just i Assoaeted Press "It's my job to produce music and if I stop, then I'm doing something wrong. A ray of revisionism is shining on the onetime brooder (left), all-time star.

I.I ijpu.ujwyww u.j.. mm Sll Vif -i A isi III. 11 0Km WW I In 71: "I didn't know vou were allowed to smile in those pictures. There was no instruction manual." U2 has an open rehearsal at a charitable $15 a seat Fans had listened to them all week outside HersheyPark Stadium. So the band said thanks.

II wjfWH mil -1 rfi mV Iff ty'M il! Villi Mi i fc --fir vi L-- v- Set phasers on stun Star Trek and Slar Wars-like shootouts may not be as far in the future as you think. The U.S. military is quietly developing new lightweight lasers that can blind soldiers on the battlefield, New Scientist magazine reports. One laboratory technician involved in tests, who nearly lost the sight of an eye, said he heard a popping sound as the laser hit his eyeball before blood started to flow. Food fatalities Chew this over carefully.

Although still rare, the number of fatal and near-fatal allergic reactions to food appear to be rising. So say researchers reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, who speculate that the increased use of protein additives in commercially prepared foods may be at least partially to blame. Marrow transplants Encouraging news: Using bone marrow transplants to try to cure leukemia became modestly more successful during the 1980s, reaching a 57 percent survival rate in cases caught early enough, a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says. Take my candidate please If late-night comedy zingers are a barometer of the national mood, President Bush isn't having a good year. The Center for Media and Public Affairs says Bush was the target of 56 Johnny Carson jokes this year, compared with 45 for Bill Clinton, 34 for Jerry Brown, nine for Dan Quayle, six for Gennifer Flowers and five for Ross Perot.

As for Jay Leno, Carson's Tonight Show successor, he had uncorked 35 uuoli jCcvCt ccinpwrct "i iGr wtuiuu, Brown and eight for Quayle. Synonymous for synonyms The expeditious fuscous reynard steeplechases on top of the ergophobic whelp. That's another way of saying "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," courtesy of the newly issued fifth edition of Roget's International Thesaurus. In a rather sad sign of the times, the book beloved of undergraduates and crossword puzzlers includes the word crack as an abusable substance and not just as an opening or separation. By Marc Schogol, with reports from Inquirer wire services.

By Dennis Romero INWIHKK STACK WHITKK HERSHEY U2 built it, and they came. HersheyPark Stadium became a field of beams last weekend as U2 opened its construction-style set and Irish-rock sounds to 25,000 area fans. It was a gesture of appreciation to the few thousand youths who flocked outside the venue over the week to listen to U2 rehearse for the outdoor leg of its "Zoo TV" tour, its first North American passage in nearly four years. "You guys spent more time on the lot outside than we did trying to build this thing," lead singer Bono told Friday night's sellout crowd. The concert was a treat not only because acts as well known as U2 usually skip small towns like Hershey: The crowd was the first to see the "Zoo TV Outside Broadcast" and, they saw it in a venue that is smaller and more personal than the stadiums U2 usually plays.

After last Tuesday night's sound check, the group decided to throw the $15-a-seat charity gig it was actually billed as an open rehearsal in appreciation of tiieiiaiii fans 5ucu as 14-yeur-old Rend Almondhiry of South Hanover Township, who caught a whiff of U2's sounds outside the stadium during the band's weeklong tour-preparation here. "I'm really glad they did a concert," she said. "And I hope they come back." Almondhiry and other fans got a preview of what will probably be one of the most technologically advanced tours to date. Although U2 pumped out with soul and precision a generous portion of older songs paired with tunes off the centerpiece album i4ch-tung Baby, the set stole the show. The crowd reacted most to the lights and video images.

U2 rented the stadium for seven days so it could test the new set an adaptation of the smaller-scale indoor set the group toured with in the spring and fine-tune its stadium sound. The roughly $l-million setup looked like a desert oasis out of the movie Road SeeU2onE10 ili if Fof The Inqurar MIKE LEVIN Friday's audience saw U2 in a setting noticeably smaller than the big-city stadiums where the band usually plays. "You guys spent more time on the lot outside than we did trying to build" the set, lead singer Bono told the sellout crowd. Acts like U2 usually skip small towns. Index Ann Landers 2 On Theater 4 Television 6 Review: Film 3 Ninjas 3 Review: Television C-azy in Lova i3.