DLB: Let’s talk about Neil Diamond.

EG: OK.

DLB: My feeling is this: You’d be on my map of one of the most important Rock personalities of all time just from your productions and vocal arrangements of the early Neil Diamond hits... [Editor’s Note: Here I am referring to the dozen or so songs which may be found re-mastered on the Columbia recording CLASSICS: THE EARLY YEARS which chronicles Diamond’s first hits from the period of 1965-69. Ellie and her husband Jeff Barry were instrumental in launching Diamond’s career and shaping the sound of his earliest hits]. That’s how beautiful those records are... When you consider that the "Holy Grail" of all the Brill Building writers was The Perfect Three-Minute Record...

EG: They worked so well!

DLB: Omigosh!

EG: Neil was, and is, a phenomenon unto himself. Once again, I met him through doing all these demos for publishers. I had gotten a call from this publisher-- I think it was Pincus Music-- and he had a guy up there who had some songs, and he needed a girl singer. That’s how it all began. Now, you see? A fluke. What if I had been busy that day? Think about it. What if I’d said, "Naw, I really can’t make it today. Sorry." That would’ve been it! It just so happened I was available; I went. And then the rest became history. He had written these two songs... as I recall, one was called "Call Me His". I don’t have a copy of that today-- which kills me! ‘Cause I’d love to hear the lead vocals I did of two Neil Diamond songs. And I don’t have them. But I remember I thought his writing style was kind of interesting.

DLB: Yes... very intense, very "New York", very heartfelt, very sincere, very energetic. I love Neil. Though I must say I love his early material better than I would come to like his later 1970’s and ‘80’s material...

EG: While I wouldn’t say I like all of it, I will say I appreciate all of it. I know where he’s coming from, you know? Even when I recorded those first two songs of his, I thought, hmm, that’s different. I didn’t even know if I loved them or not. But I thought, there’s something here. There’s something here. And when he sang them to me, I was like, "What a weird voice!" [Laughs.] It wasn’t the kind of voice I was hearing on the music scene in those days. The long and the short of it: I did the demos, and I said to Neil, "I really would like you to meet my husband. What are you doing?" And he replied, "Who are you?" [Laughs]. And he hadn’t been around on the scene for long, he was trying to get some of his stuff recorded, he sang, but nothing was really happening for him. So I mentioned him to Jeff-- who initially didn’t even want to bother with him, he was so busy. I eventually convinced him to give Neil a listen. And as it turned out, Jeff was really taken by the way he sang, as opposed to his writing. Whereas I liked his writing, but was not initially sold on his voice. A perfect match.

DLB: Now, Ellie, were you actually doing those vocals on the background of those early Neil records?

EG: Yes.

DLB: So you mean that’s you on the tag of "I’ve Got The Feelin’", going "Whoa-oh, whoa-oh."?

EG: That’s it... I wrote that lick and performed it.

DLB: Oh my lord! Ellie, you’d be on my list of favorite rock people just from that lick alone! It’s so inspired... It sounds like a woman sobbing... supporting the meaning of Neil’s lyric. It’s fabulous.

EG: And I love doing background vocals. I mean, literally, I could just make a living just out of doing backgrounds. I’d be happy just stepping in at recording sessions, going, "OK, you-- you come in right here with this... Try this over here." And so forth. I’d love that. You know, David, sometimes I think that the background vocals are as important to a song or record as the lead vocals are.

DLB: Well, in the [1965 Neil Diamond] record, "Cherry, Cherry", that record is unthinkable without the background singers going, "She got the way to move me... She got the way to groove me..." Unthinkable without that hook.

EG: Right. Right.

DLB: ...and that’s your baby, right?

EG: Yep. And years later, I was working with Cyndi Lauper on her single "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". And during the rehearsals, they got kind of... stuck on the breakdown part of the song. So I thought for a minute, and then it came to me: "Girls. They want. Wanna Have Fun. Girls. They wanna have. Just wanna, they just wanna. Girls. Girls just wanna have fu-un." And so that’s what we went with.

DLB: You spontaneously generated a counterpoint! Incredible. And what I love about your background vocals is the way you used them as what modern synthesizer arrangers would call a "pad". In other words, your backgrounds created a soft, unobtrusive cushion of harmony which the lead vocals, lead guitarist, etc., could sit on top of. Providing the harmonic context for the whole record. A foil. That, for me, was such a source of beauty...

EG: So I guess what you could say is, Phil came up with the Wall Of Sound, and I came up with the Wall Of Voice.

DLB: Ellie Greenwich, thank you.

EG: You’re welcome.