“Born in a motel room”: The strange Kennedy legacy behind ‘Sweet Caroline’
Neil Diamond’s seminal ‘Sweet Caroline’ may be the ultimate worldwide drunken anthem, but before you launch into another burst of “hands, touching hands”, have you ever actually thought of where the lyrics come from? It turns out not many have because, unbelievably, it took decades to reveal who this much-vaunted Caroline really was, as there’s no such mention of that name in the list of Diamond’s previous lovers.
No, this was not a love song in an ode to the girl of his dreams because the real ‘Sweet Caroline’ hailed from a very different place. It turns out the musical world’s most famous woman was indeed already famous in a totally other league – not least because she was actually a child.
This has the potential to sound very strange, but go with it. When finally pressed as to the meaning behind his 1969 mega-hit, Diamond revealed in 2007 that the song was inspired by President John F Kennedy’s then 12-year-old daughter, Caroline. Seeing a photo of the young girl previously in a magazine, he explained: “It was a picture of a little girl dressed to the nines in her riding gear, next to her pony. It was such an innocent, wonderful picture. I immediately felt there was a song in there.”
Around five years later, while Diamond sat in a Memphis hotel room writing the song, the name he had remembered all that time finally found its place. “I tried ‘Sweet Caroline’ — that works,” he recalled. But it required a bit more of an extensive explanation to his then fiancé Marcia Murphey, whom he had promised to write a song about. “It didn’t work with Marcia, so I couldn’t tell her that I dedicated the song to her. It was almost Marcia…[but] there was no way to squeeze it in.”
It’s a shoddy excuse at best, really. But in that same spirit, even though ‘Sweet Caroline’ would go on to be a major part of Diamond’s sonic legacy, the idea as a whole was also borne out of very humble beginnings. “‘Sweet Caroline’ was born in a motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, really as an afterthought to some songs I had specifically prepared for the next day’s recordings,” Diamond said. “When it came out of me in that humble little room, I was as surprised as the next guy.”
Yet despite his lack of preparation, Diamond knew his rush job tune had the makings of a mammoth. He continued: “The minute it did come out of me, I knew it was special and had some other special meaning other than potential commercial success. Most songs take planning and thought. ‘Sweet Caroline’ has none of those elements in its creation.”
All in all, this just goes to dispel the rumour that hard work brings you the best results, given that one of the world’s most favourite tunes was, to use its creator’s own phrase, an “afterthought”. It also demonstrates the rare cultural crossover of politics and popstars, as a First Daughter unknowingly inspired a hit simply by being a kid in the public eye. It may be a strange story, but it’s one that makes the legacy of ‘Sweet Caroline’ “so good, so good, so good”.
