Neil Diamond decided to try something different when he took his first major acting role in The Jazz Singer in 1980. Unfortunately, most film critics found him and the film in which he starred to be utterly lacking.
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Luckily, Diamond came out of the project with his career in pretty good standing anyway. That’s because he released a soundtrack album brimming with hit singles. That included “Love On The Rocks”, an after-hours lament for fading romance.
All That ‘Jazz’
Neil Diamond’s music career was riding high entering the 80s. Every album seemed to contain a hit single or two. In 1978, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, his duet with Barbra Streisand, earned him a No. 1 single and Grammy affirmation. In fact, there was even talk of making a movie out of it.
Why did Diamond suddenly want to try the acting game? Maybe it had something to do with the health scare that he endured in 1979 due to a tumor on his spine. He was barely recovered from his surgery to remove it when he did indeed head out to a set for his acting debut. But instead of a film about a hit single, he jumped into a remake of a film that originally helped end the silent movie era.
The Jazz Singer did OK at the box office, but critics were rough on it and, in turn, Diamond’s acting. His musical momentum didn’t suffer one bit, however. Diamond composed a series of songs that would find their way into the film. “Love On The Rocks” stood out as one of the most moving of these new tracks.
Writing with an Idol
When writing for The Jazz Singer, Diamond decided to seek out a collaboration with an idol of his. Long a fan of The Everly Brothers, Diamond noticed the name Gilbert Becaud in the songwriting credits for The Everly Brothers’ classic “Let It Be Me”. Diamond wrote five songs on the soundtrack with Becaud.
“Love On The Rocks” was one of these co-writes. Originally, the song captured a much lighter vibe. The pair wrote it at first as “Scotch On The Rocks”. They even had it set to a playful reggae beat. Somewhere along the line, however, they decided to take the song in a more serious direction.
Diamond chose “Love On The Rocks” as the first single from The Jazz Singer. It ended up soaring all the way to No. 2 on the pop charts in the US. And it paved the way for “Hello Again” and “America” to also work their way into the Top 10 as fellow singles from the soundtrack.
Behind the Lyrics of “Love On The Rocks”
“Love On The Rocks” sets the tone right off the bat with a killer couplet. “Love on the rocks, ain’t no big surprise,” Diamond moans. “Just pour me a drink, and I’ll tell you some lies.” Those are lines you might expect from a Frank Sinatra-style barroom weeper. Here, they explain the anguish of the narrator as his relationship crumbles.
The song breaks out of that quiet melancholy, in a musical sense, with urgent connecting sections. “Suddenly you find you’re out there walking in a storm,” Diamond sings to depict the suddenness of a broken romantic vow. “Not much you can do when the feeling is gone,” he confides about the scenario. “Maybe blue skies above / But it’s cool / When your love’s on the rocks.”
“We all know the song,” the narrator insists. We might know them, but it always helps when bluesy ballads are written and performed by an expert like Neil Diamond. He’d never do another big acting gig after The Jazz Singer. Why would he, considering he had ace songs like “Love On The Rocks” up his musical sleeve?
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