Back in 2003, we taped an interview with Neil for a morning radio show I produced. The show's host decided that he'd let the female co-host conduct the interview and, once complete, we would splice in questions from the host which Neil would ultimately "ignore". The joke was that Neil didn't like the host and informed us that he would not answer questions from him during said interview. It led to an awkward-sounding back-and-forth between the host, co-host and Neil. Should've been funny, right? Wrong.
After the interview aired, his legions of fans (who heard about the interview from Neil's fan club) tuned in to hear the awkward interview via the radio station's internet stream and were furious. They accused us of faking the interview...but for reasons that weren't even valid. In the interview, Diamond, a Boston Red Sox fan, mentioned the Chicago Cubs and how exciting it was to watch the team in the playoffs (up until the infamous Steve Bartman game of 2003). Diamond's fans claimed the interview was clearly fake because Neil would never talk about the Cubs (spoiler alert: he did!). They also believed Neil would never be mean to someone in an interview (they were right about that part). In doing so, they flooded our radio station with complaint calls and emails and even posted my phone number online. For years following this incident, a simple Google search turned up rants from these angry fans. I am happy to report those pages must have come down because I no longer find it in my search results. Neil Diamond's fans clearly have moved on...