Biography

Wrote the song, "Oh Carol", for his girlfriend, Carole King. The song became his first top-10 hit (1959).

In early 1965, at the height of the Cold War, he was invited to appear in concert in Moscow -- as a classical pianist at the 1966 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, not as a rock-and-roll singer! This same competition was earlier won by Van Cliburn.

The song "The Diary" was inspired when he first met singer Connie Francis. They had spent all day going over songs to record and became quite bored. When Connie began writing in her diary, Neil asked her if he could read it. Connie gave him a firm "no" and thus the inspiration for "The Diary" was born.

He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood, California on January 18, 1978.

Was part of the famous Brill Building stable of writers, which included Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Neil Diamond and Carole King (Sedaka's former girlfriend) (1955).

My songs are an interesting combination of pip and evergreen standards, with a bit of roll and roll and a bit of theatre. I write in a comfortable vocal range, with my voice at the piano. It's no more than an octave and a couple of notes.

I remember Pavarotti telling me, 'Oh, Neil, after seventy the voice is going to go.' But I've been lucky. You almost have to learn how to sing all over again. You use your diaphragm more. You have to choose the notes and pace yourself.

I think that the reason I've been around 58 years, and that I have been writing songs for 60 years, is that the piano is the magnet that draws me. It talks to me and says, 'Neil, how good are you, really? Can you top that last collection?' I try to raise the bar and try something different each time.

Many of my songs were inspired by other singers' voices. I hear them on the radio and think: you know, I can write for that voice, that style. But I can top it. It's like a designer. I can take different fabrics from different places. ''Love Will Keep Us Together' was a combination of three different singing styles - Al Green, the Beach Boys, and Diana Ross. I loved all these people and I put their singing styles together and wrote that tune.

At first, Howie [Greenfield] and I were writing songs that sounded like Gershwin and Irving Berlin, but after hearing Earth Angel by The Penguins on the jukebox of our local sweet shop, I knew what I wanted to do. We were both turned on at the same time because we thought writing rock'n'roll songs would make us look cool - because I played Bach I was never popular. It took some time to convince Howie - he thought Earth Angel was off-key, but after awhile he came up with the goods.