The Story Behind the Only Song Waylon Jennings Ever Sang With Neil Diamond

While working on his twenty-third album, Tennessee Moon, in 1995, Neil Diamond returned to one of his musical roots: country. Relocating to Nashville, Diamond surrounded himself with a circle of country elite—Chet Atkins, Harlan Howard, Hal Ketchum, and Beth Nielsen Chapman—as collaborators.

“It’s natural that I come down here [Nashville],” said Diamond in 1996. “My music started from Nashville music, the Everly Brothers, Hank Williams, and Chet Atkins; these were the people that I tried to emulate when I was 16 years old, so I knew all the music. I’ve followed it all my life. I probably should have come down 25 years earlier, but better late than never.”

Before Diamond’s Nashville sojourn, his paths crossed many times in the genre, when T.G. Sheppard took his “Solitary Man” to No. 14 on the Country chart in 1976. A year later, Diamond also wrote “Sunflower” for Glen Campbell‘s album Southern Nights. In 1979, Tommy Overstreet also recorded a country version of Diamond’s 1978 song “Forever in Blue Jeans” for his album I’ll Never Let You Down.

Recorded at Dark Horse Studio in Franklin, Tennessee, Diamond’s album was a success, peaking at No. 3 on the Country chart and No. 14 on the Billboard 200.

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[RELATED: Waylon Jennings’ First Bob Dylan Cover in 1964 Was One He Later Revisited as the Title of Another Album]

“One Good Love”

On the album, Waylon Jennings also joined Diamond for a duet on the ballad “One Good Love,” which was co-written by Diamond and Gary Nicholson, who co-wrote Vince Gill’s 1993 No. 1 hit “One More Last Chance,”  Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood’s 1995 hit duet “Squeeze Me In,” Montgomery Gentry “She Couldn’t Change Me from 2001, and more for Willie Nelson, Ringo Starr, B.B. King, Fleetwood Mac, and George Strait, among many others.

Blending Diamond’s pop-rock with Jennings’ country, the song celebrates finding true love.

It took a while for me to know
What I was looking for
And every heart I’ve ever known
Has left me wanting more

One good love
Can turn it all around
Take hold of a restless heart
Lead it back to solid ground

You can search the world for happiness
And never get enough
When all you really need to find
Is one good love

I followed all of life’s pleasures
Wherever they will be
But someone I can treasure
Is all I really need

Diamond and Jennings filmed a music video for “One Good Love,” featuring their performance of the song together in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium.

“One Good Love” wasn’t the first Diamond song covered by Jennings, who started tapping into his songs by the late 1960s with his rendition of “Kentucky Woman” in 1968 and again in 1977 with “Sweet Caroline.”

“I’ve known Waylon for 25 years,” said Diamond in a 1996 interview with Larry King. “We’re kindred spirits from the road.”

Photo: Waylon Jennings, 1992 (Lehtikuva/Shutterstock)