Comments: 48

• LadypegasusTo the person saying he doesn’t rock, you have a narrow view of the term. To say a singer "just rocks" means they are performing with a great deal of energy, passion, and skill, often in a rock music style. It implies that the singer's performance is powerful, engaging, and leaves a strong impression.
• Alf from BcGeorge Jones also had a song with Rose (wine) in it. A lady asked me to try it for myself, so I proceeded to learn it (Wild Irish Rose) . I've done my best, not sure if she ever heard it by me at the local coffee-houses, but I did give it a go...kinda like it.
• Your Mom from Your HouseLots of you saying the song facts don't matter. I have been writing songs successfully and selling them, as well as writing music and touring for 35 years. Yes it matters. It matters to Neil and matters to alot of his fans. To hear anyone enjoy a song then turn around and say it doesn't matter, just tells me this. You aren't listening to the songs. Try connecting to the lyrics. Song meanings matter as much as the rest of us being in the same key. Also to say Neil Diamond "rocks" is a frickin' joke. The guy hasn't "rocked" one day in his life. He doesn't play rock n roll....cmon...the song is about wine. Cracklin' Rose is a wine from Canada. The story came from a tribe of natives. There were more men than women, so the single guys drank. That was their woman that comforted them at night and made them smile. It's all in the words folks....its all there. easy AF to read. Some of these posts are just stOOpid though...
• Kimberlyrose from Kentucky 40508It’s about wine he told what it’s about in several interviews. Besides, wth does it matter, it’s ALL good.
• Asia Veraska from Woonsocket, R.i.The Eduardian story of the gypsy Railway children who grew up in "Eskimo country" theells us plenty about the original surgical USAge of chainsaws and why U.F.Os are kept secret and how kids faired on their own without parental supervision. The beauty of the song is that it gets it's grace from Native American tribal churches, calling on the protection of Christ, Joeseph and Mary to protect the "children of the future" to have Biblical guidance along their path when "family building" is not an option. The railways used to shuttle day laborers to and from work and the Native American tribal counsel churches used to provide food, doctors, and blessings for those "with only Christ to guide them.
• Shem from OzReading comments here while listening to his songs in the middle of the night. Who cares what the song was about? This song has such a "catchy tune" and his way of singing it - I honestly can't say it makes any difference whether its about wine or women or lumberjacks or whatever! It's Neil Diamond and he just rocks!!
• George from Vancouver, CanadaCracklin' Roie you make me feel horny is prety obvious in that it's metaphor for a girl not at hand.
• Zemo from Kansas CityCracklin' Rosie is an old, well worn rosewood guitar with old, cracked varnish from years of life on the road, that is the singer's solace and joy in his lonely travels. Diamond was being facetious when he spun the bottle of wine story about the song. The lyrics straightforwardly say that "you make me feel like a guitar humming" because he has the guitar firmly against his heart as he sings away into the night on his journey. It is clearly a tale of the relationship between a musician and his instrument.
• Barry from Sauquoit, NyFifty years ago today October 4th, 1970 "Cracklin' Rosie" by Neil Diamond peaked at #1 on Billboard's Top 100 chart, it was in the top spot for one week....
  The remainder of the Top 10 on October 4th, 1970:
  At #2. "I'll Be There" by The Jackson 5
  #3. "Candida" by Dawn
  #4. "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Diana Ross {#1 the week before}
  #5. "All Right Now" by Free
  #6. "Julie, Do Ya Love Me" by Bobby Sherman
  #7. "Lookin' Out My Back Door"/"Long As I Can See The Light" by Creedence Clearwater Revival
  #8. "Green-Eyed Lady" by Sugarloaf
  #9. "We've Only Just Begun" by The The Carpenters
  #10."(I Know) I'm Losing You" by Rare Earth
  And from the 'For What It's Worth' department:
  "I'll Be There" by The Jackson 5 was at #1 on Billboard's Soul Singles chart...
  "Jackson 5 - The Third Album' was at #1 on Billboard's Soul LP's chart...
  "Cosmo's Factory" by Creedence Clearwater Revival was at #1 on Billboard's Top 200 LP's chart...
  "Cosmo's Factory" was also at #1 on Billboard's Best-Selling 8 Tracks Cartridges chart...
  "We've Only Just Begun" was at #1 on Billboard's Top 40 Easy Listening chart...
  "Sunday Morning Coming Down" by Johnny Cash was at #1 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles chart...
  "Fightin' Side of Me" by Merle Haggard was at #1 on Hot Country LP's chart...
• Raven from CanadaThe story behind,'Cracklin Rosie,' Neil Diamond explains what the song is about in a video that can be found on youtube. Native men having no women for the weekend so they buy a cheap bottle of Cracklin Rose wine which becomes their woman for the weekend. Nothing to do with lumberjacks. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxwCJsbq9DE
  
• Richard H from Atlanta GaAll references to singing and music are actually about sex. With only that, now it’s a song about a guy taking a night train with a poor man’s woman, and because she’s the only prospect that night, having sex with her. And then he discards her.
• Guy from CanadaAnnie from London, United Kingdom.. what town in Northern Canada were you referring to?
• Steve from OttawaLike many of his songs, Neil Diamond almost talks instead of sing. Which, like with Frank Sinatra, works beautifully. This song chugs along starts to finish and never releases you. Gorgeous.
• Barry from Sauquoit, NyHere's some obscure trivia:
  On September 10th 1897 the first documented DWI occurred when London, England cab driver George Smith was arrested after he slammed his taxi into the side of a building...
  He was fined 25 shillings...
  And seventy-three years later on August 16th, 1970 Neil Diamond's "Crackin' Rosie" entered Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart at position #62; seven weeks later on October 4th it would peak at #1* for 1 week...
  {See next post below}...
  It was preceded and succeeded at #1 by two Motown acts; "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Diana Ross and followed by "I'll Be There" by the Jackson 5.
• Barry from Sauquoit, NyOn August 16th 1970, "Cracklin' Rosie" by Neil Diamond entered Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart at position #62; and on October 4th, 1970 it peaked at #1 {for 1 week} and spent 15 weeks on the Top 100...
  It reached #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary Tracks chart {also peaked at #2 in Australia, Belgium, and Ireland}...
  The week "Cracklin' Rosie" entered the Top 100, his "Solitary Man"* was at #28, three weeks later on September 12th it would peak at #21 {for 1 week}...
  * "Solitary Man" was a re-entry record; it first entered the Top 100 on May 15th, 1966 and eventually peaked at #55.
• Harry from La, Ca.....here's the link to the Jackson Browne youtube "Rosie". . . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cT-i8NhoFA
• Harry from La, CaIt just so happens that a couple of you hit the nail almost on the head. The song is all about a blow-up doll Diamond nicknamed "Rosie". Other connotations include ("rosie palm" which you can hear all about in Jackson Browne's song, "Rosie".) :) Yes, these two are experts at tailoring lyrics around wacky subjects (no pun intended!) to relieve (no pun intended again) their boredom. Now go to Browne's concert and listen to his opening remarks on this youtube performance of "Rosie".
• Coy from Palestine, TxDiamond tells several stories about each of his songs. Sweet Caroline was never about Caroline Kennedy, but today he tells that story. Originally, the song was from a story Diamond was told about a group of lumberjacks, NOT Indians. While deep in the woods of Canada on week ends the lumberjacks were too far from any town or village to go party. They drank cheap wine called "Crackling Rose' " and would talk about their girl friends or what they would do to various ladies once they got finished at the lumber camp. Thus the line "Cracklin' Rose your' a store bought woman. The whole song is about the lumberjacks getting drunk and talking about women. Listen to the lyrics and this makes sense. The melody is fantastic and this song has one of the best hooks in rock and roll history. Diamond was almost most concerned with a powerful hook in the chorus. All his songs, "I'm a Believer", "Sweet Caroline", "Hello Again" and his many dozens of hits have powerful hooks.
• Brian Foley from Auckland, New ZealandLOL, the lyrics are about a bottle of cheap wine, and I always thought it was about some hot woman! Figures though, couple this with Neil's Red Red Wine, I would say Neil enjoyed his alcohol and it entered his lyrics often.
• Stacia from Lompoc, KsYou gotta admit, the lyric "don't need to say please to no man for a happy tune" gets a little more interesting when the song is interpreted as being about a bunch of lonely men.
• Ed from Asheville, NcHitchin on a twilight train...he's a hobo with his bottle of Cracklin Rosie.
  
• Robbo from Auckland, New ZealandOh for petes sake.
  
  Its obvious he's singing about a pig.
• Rick from Belfast, MeThis was one of many hits that made listening to AM radio in the 60's and 70's so hip.
• Nacho from Guadalajara, MexicoLOL John, Penguin Falls, Iceland... your remark is so very hilarious... What an imagination! No wonder you work for effeminate men hahaha
• Laura from North Richland Hills, TxSomeone once told me he was singing about a blow up sex doll and I guess if you don't know the real story, it could easily be interpreted that way.
• John from Auckland, New ZealandThe original "Cracklin' Rosie" probably was a bottle of wine. Neil apparently was taken with the name, and wanted to use it in a song. That does not mean that the song is necessarily about wine, or women. Personally, the reference to "store born" suggests to me cheap wine (i.e. the lonely drunken batchelors). But it could be a prostitute. Perhaps both meanings were intended.
• Annie from London, , United KingdomPhil, from Victoria...you got it right. I was the Reporter who interviewed Neil the night Cracklin Rosie came into being.
• David from Christchurch, New ZealandCrackin' Rose your a store bought woman, makes perfect sense to believe that he is referring to a bottle of alcohol, because it makes him sing like a guitar humming, i know alcohol does that to me too.. (well maybe I don't sing like a guitar humming). I heard the story that he was in Canada and it was so cold and remote only males could bear it there so to pass time they all got drunk on cheap alcohol. As far as it being a Indian tribe or not though im not sure on that. This is one of my favourite songs up there along side bob dylan.
• Gale from Melbourne, ChileClassic song by a master. In my part of the world the 'fabled' hidden meaning is that Crackling Rosie, is a 'store bought' blow-up doll. Read the lyrics guys and prove me wrong....
• Robert from San Francisco, Ca In the 1960's, in San Francisco area, a major wine company, perhaps Gallo, produced a red wine named Cracklin' Ros'e( RO-SAY ). You could buy a gallon for a dollar or a dollar fifty. For those who didn't have or couldn't afford a lady, the next best thing for some was a store bought,poor man's lady! You could take Cracklin' Ros'e on board slowly by sipping and drink all night and feel like a guitar hummin'! Neil Diamond is one of the great original singer/songwriters!!! - Bob, San Francisco
• Julie from Solvang, CaI was told by someone that there was a real Rosie (Rose). When he was living in Hollywood. It's not about a bottle of wine. The person who told me this was told by someone who knew him and her. Also his first choice in carreres was to be a MD. but when he was in med school someone collapsed in front of him and he couldn't revive them so he decided he shouldn't be a MD. He then pursued a music carrer. This is what I was told.
• Jay from Syracuse, NyDiamond's two best songs are both about a lonely man singing to his drink: one comic and self-deprecating (Cracklin' Rosie), the other blue and pathetic (Red Red Wine). The hooker reading of the song is all right, but takes the wit and pathos out of it: the song works because he doesn't have a woman and he's making the best of it by getting drunk and singing suggestively to "her"--the bottle. Very witty (musically as well as verbally)--too bad Diamond veered into Vegas-schmaltz terrain before long.
• John from Penguin Falls, IcelandI am from Iceland, and I now work as the Broadway Musical Director for afeminate men here at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. I researched the actual lyrics to the aforementioned song and found that the original title was meant to be, "Crack Lickin Rose". This title was chosen after a particular shopping event where Mr. Diamond was in the process of purchasing leather pants the night before his concert in Woburn Abbey, England (July 2, 1977). While in the midst of trying on several pairs of very tight bright orange leather pants, a random act of blatant dressing room homosexuality broke out between he and one of the store clerks. "Crack Lickin Rose" means, if parsed down for review, "crack lickin" obviously an oral bit of foreplay between the he and the clerk and "rose" which is a standard homosexual term for the anus.
  
  Glad I could help shed some light on this topic. Thank you and have a nice day =)
• Camille from Toronto, OhHey, I think the best songwriters, Neil Diamond being one of them, can write a song and give it that double meaning. Hence, could be about that bottle of wine or a hooker, it's written with a little tongue-in-cheek humor.
• Darrell from EugeneAbout the information: All of you have the right information except Wilfred and Jon-Michael. Those two do not know hoboes and Indians from Adam.
• Darrell from EugeneYou have all got your information right. Cracklin' Rosie is not a girl, she (actually IT) is a BOTTLE OF WINE in a PAPER BAG! Wilfred and Jon-Michael, you have obviously never mingled with hoboes or American Indians! I have!
• Paul from Belfast, IrelandI think Diamond is a fantastic singer! but i have heard him interviewed many times in which he has given different accounts of how songs came to be. Which left me slightly bemused.
  But he mostly tells the story of the Indians and the wine.
• Phil from Victoria, Bc, Canada, CanadaThe following is a direct quote from what appears on the album "Love Songs" a compilation of Neil Diamond songs produced in 2002... I have it right in front of me, so if you don't believe it, do your research!
  
  "In DIAMOND, A BIOGRAPHY, Diamond is quoted as saying "Cracklin' Rosie" is an interesting story. During an interview I had with a girl who was working with a newspaper in Canada, she told me that her parents were medical missionaries on the Indian reservations in northern Canada. And she began to tell me what their lives were like and what experiences they had. She told me that on one of the reservations there were more man than women, and come the weekends or holidays, a lot of men were out of luck - there weren't enough girls to go around. And so they would go down to their general store, and they would buy a bottle of very inexpensive wine called Crackling RosÃ?. This wine became their woman for the weekend, and they called their woman "Cracklin' Rosie". And that's what the song was about." Phil. From British Columbia, Canada.
• Marcia from Beverly Hills, CaActually, the story about the indians and the wine came from a reporter that was interviewing Neil. SHE told Neil the story to him about there not being enough women so those men who didn't have a date spent the evening drinking Crackling Rose', and Neil changed the name to Cracklin Rosie. Check out the facts in the book "Neil Diamond: A Solitary Star". The story was verified and written about in this book by the author.
• Steve from Manhattan, NyI'm suprised no one here has listened to the lyrics. Cracklin' Rosie may have been a bottle of wine, but in this song he's talking about a hooker. Atleat, that's one interpertation.
• Emily Whitefish from Edmonton, CanadaI am part canadian indian and Emmma you have been miss-informed. Neil Diamond wrote Cracklin Rosie after he bought a bottle of the popular wine of that name in an Edmonton, Alberta, Canada liqour store one nite after a he played a concert here. I working the dispatch for the taxi he took. FYI, the indian women out number the men two to one.
• Dirk from Nashville, TnEmma, I'll take your word for the interview. I didn't mean to sound contemptuous. Neil has written some beautiful melodies, and they all showcase his beautiful voice. I've heard this song all my life (and find myself singing along with it),and I just meant that it doesn't really seem to be "about" anything to do with Indians working on the railroad. "Inspired" by the Indian's nickname for cheap wine-- OK. "Intrigued" by the name Cracklin Rosie--OK. "Moved" by the notion of a sort of temporary comfort that you can buy in store--I'll give you that. But a song that, in the words of our host site, "tells of an Indian tribe in Canada who apparently had more men than women. The men who did not have women would buy bottles of red wines and the bottles of wine would become their women for the weekend"--I don't think so.
• Emma from London, United StatesActually this is true - I saw Neil Diamond interviewed and he said it was the nickname given by the young, single men of an Indian tribe he'd visited for their homemade alsoholic drink which they would sit round the fire and drink together. He thought it sounded catchy and so wrote a song about it.
• Dirk from Nashville, TnSorry, Mr. Cool Website. This one isn't flying. "This song tells of an Indian tribe in Canada who apparently had more men than women." Huh? An Indian tribe in Canada? Where is the reference here to an Indian tribe in Canada? Oh, OK. And The Wizard of Oz tells the story of the unflinching football rivalry between the University of Alabama and Auburn University. Why not? And Blue Oyster Cult's anthem Don't Fear the Reaper captures the struggle of Franklin Roosevelt to kickstart the American economy after the banking collapse of the early 1930s.... Let's be serious. Neil Diamond had an unbelievably rich voice and he recorded a handful of powerful little pop songs. But none of them was ever about ANYthing except Neil Diamond's voice and whatever arbitrary images he could croon to keep women fantasizing about being crooned to by Neil Diamond.
  
• Mirza from Jakarta, IndonesiaNeil Diamond had another no.1 in 1988, Red Red Wine, by UB40
• Alan from Madison, WyIt is my understanding that the song is about the workers on the Canadian Transcontinental Railway, many of whom were native Indians. With little to do with their evenings, they turned to a bottle of wine for company.
  Alan - Madison
• Jon-michael from Augusta, Georgia, Gaman, i don't believe that wine thing for the world.!
• Wilfred from Melbourne, Australia""Cracklin' Rosie" is a bottle of wine. This song tells of an Indian tribe in Canada who apparently had more men than women. The men who did not have women would buy bottles of red wines and the bottles of wine would become their women for the weekend."
  --
  You've got to be kidding me!!! Neil Diamond could actually think of something that sick... well... it's always the ones you least suspect.

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