[prairie son]

Being a "Baby Boomer" I have always been a huge Neil Diamond fan, but the meaning behind one of his best songs has always elluded me. Can anyone tell me the meaning and/or history behind the song "Hollie
Holy"?
Thanks ,
Prairie Son:eek:

[shygrneyzs]

The most I can find is that the song is about a faith healer. I will keep looking, sorry I cannot come up with more right now.

Edit: this from an interview with Neil Diamond:

"Diamond doesn't think any of his songs need to be explained. Or even understood. "Holly Holy," he says, "is not the kind of thing you're supposed to think about. It's the kind of piece where one line, or one word, sets off a little zinger, gives you a twinge. And that's all it is. 'Play Me,' I've had people say, 'Jesus, there's a couple of lines I wish you'd change.' It's crazy. Let one line reach. Let it not add up to anything and touch you. And let's you not understand it. There are no rules, you see. That's the beautiful thing about it. And the best things I've done are the things that people really don't understand."

See the whole article: The Frog Who Would Be King: Robbie Robertson : Rolling Stone

[JohnANielsen]

Neil Diamond has said in interviews that the words to Holly Holy should not be interpreted literally. Many people that the song is about a general spiritual awakening through a relationship with God or another human being, maybe even between a man and a woman or a man and a child. What I get out of the song is that spirituality and belief in a higher power has the ability to lift you from sadness ("Colored Son in the dead of the night, and the Son's gonna rise in the sky ... Touch a man who can't walk upright, and that lame man he's gonna fly"). But any other interpretation might be just a valid as mine.