The movie "Solitary Man" (Starring Michael
Douglas, 2009) uses the Neil Diamond song, "Solitary Man" as it's theme.
That makes no sense.
"Solitary Man"-- just about the only song by Neil
Diamond that I like-- is about a man who decides that he will just live
alone rather than engage with women who, it seems to him, are likely to
cheat on him, and play "games" behind his back. He's looking for a
sincere, faithful woman, who won't see love as a "part-time" thing.
In the
movie, Michael Douglas plays Ben Kalmen, a man whose career as a car dealer
is crashing, and who is a serial womanizer. He just can't resist.
He's already blown one marriage and has just seduced a woman in order to get
her father to invest in a new car dealership. When he sleeps with her
daughter, a chain of events brings him to near ruin.
Ben's problem is not
women who play around behind his back. And he's not a solitary man--
he doesn't nearly have the gravitas for it.
As I said, I do like the song,
and I've liked it since I first heard in the late 1960's, I think. It
has that kind of self-pitying seriousness adolescent boys take on when they
realize that girls aren't necessarily grateful to you if you like them: it's
a bubble-gum pop-rock version of the infantile "My Way", a contemptuous
statement of male insularity and self-sufficiency.
It's really a typical
Neil Diamond song in the sense that it doesn't seem to reference any
specific reality. Cute lyrics: "I'll be what I am". Yes, you
will.
Somehow he walks in on Linda and Jim, without evoking any kind of
actual location or circumstance: he "found" them together. His relationship
with "Sue" died too. Just died. And he knows:
...it's been done having one girl who loves you,
right or wrong,
weak or strong
What? I'm not sure what he means by "right or wrong"
and I'm not sure why a "weak" relationship would be any better than Sue.
The two phrases do not add to our understanding or insight into this man's
predicament. Here's an example of how it's done, from the master:
You say you're looking for someone
Never weak, but always strong
To protect you and defend you,
Whether you are right or wrong
Okay, so it's unfair to compare Neil
Diamond with Bob Dylan. Okay-- so that's my point.
But while we're
looking, more from Dylan:
You say you're looking for
someone
Who will promise never to part
Someone to close his eyes for you
Someone to close his heart
"...close his heart"! Then he adds,
later: "someone who will die for you and more".
So, I ask myself, what do I actually like about "Solitary Man"? I
don't know. The chorus, I guess, and the minor chord it starts out in,
and the sneaky rhythm. That's all. And maybe the way Chris Isaak
makes it sound.
By the way, Diamond deserves some credit for the album "Tap Root Manuscript"
(1970) which experimented with native African rhythms and textures more than
a decade before Peter Gabriel or Paul Simon embraced the idea. That
doesn't make it a good album-- it still has the excretable "Cracklin' Rose"
on it, the most overplayed song of all time (once would have been
sufficient). (It's real claim to fame is that it is one of the few
songs that is more annoying than "Sweet Caroline", which has
inexplicably-- or not-- infested the crowd at Boston Red Sox games, maybe
because it was inspired by Caroline Kennedy. It's true.) But
"Tap Root Manuscript" was relatively bold and relatively daring and it was
important as an acknowledgement, by popular music, of the black roots of
rock'n'roll.
Diamond started his career as a factory song-writer in the Brill Building,
writing hits for other groups including the Monkees ("I'm a Believer", "Look
Out, Here Comes Tomorrow"). The Monkees later insisted on writing
their own songs, which Mickey Dolenz likened to Leonard Nimoy becoming a
real Vulcan.
Diamond once sang a duet with the Fonz, which could only have been less
embarrassing than a duet with Helen Reddy at the same gig. Think about
it: the author of "I am I Said" sang a duet with the man who destroyed the
mystique of the 50's rebel. And the "I am Woman" lady.
I never quite understood why Diamond was invited to "The Last Waltz", the
eponymous farewell concert of The Band. I thought at the time that it
was an allusion to the strain of pure pop music that helped shape
rock'n'roll, part of the mix that influenced the Band. Diamond is the
opposite of The Band: colorless, predictable, pompous. You could tell
he realized that he had just had the coolest honor ever by being invited.
He could put it right up there next to his Grammy for "Jonathan Livingston
Seagull" (the soundtrack) and his Razzie for "The Jazz Singer".
