StreamingSoundtracks.com - Jonathan Livingston Seagull

#	Track Listing	Length	Played
01	Prologue Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	3:18	19
02	Be Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	6:32	115
03	Flight Of The Gull Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	2:24	9
04	Dear Father Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	5:14	13
05	Skybird Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	1:12	17
06	Lonely Looking Sky Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	3:15	10
07	The Odyssey-Be / Lonely Looking Sky / Dear Father Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	9:39	61
08	Anthem Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	3:04	13
09	Be Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	1:07	7
10	Skybird Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	2:21	20
11	Dear Father Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	1:16	9
12	Be Lee Holdridge, Neil Diamond	3:27	9

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Reviewers Rating

1 review done for this album.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

By:	markinboone
Date:	1 Dec 2006
Rating:

I remember the popularity of Richard Bach's brief tale sweeping the nation - or at least all the adults in my parents' circle. I read the novelette myself (at age 12) and with the adults in my reading circle was wary about the film version coming out as live action (long before CGI was even imagined), though a cartoon treatment seemed more inappropriate. The film was a strange bird - a sort of recut National Geographic on seagulls with a voice track that was less memorable than Neil Diamond's soundtrack.

The musical score, based primarily on the lyric pop tunes, is surprisingly filmic in its depiction of the shore bird's spiritual passage. The enigmatic songs - crooned by Mr. Diamond at his most dramatic - make sense in the context of the story, but may puzzle listeners not familiar with Jonathan's journey:

"Be. Like a page that aches for a word that speaks on a theme that is timeless."

The instrumental tracks are pleasant and beautifully orchestrated; fortunately, the trend of the times to score everything with a synthesizer did not relegate the project to disappear along with the 8-track tapes it was recorded on. You may recognize the instrumental version of Skybird since it was a long-time favorite of television broadcasts of professional golf (and a car commercial, if I remember correctly).

The cinematic tracks that I enjoy most include The Prologue, Flight of the Seagull, The Odyssey (3 instrumentals of the songs Be, Lonely Looking Sky, and Dear Father), and Skybird (the shorter track is the instrumental, I think). I remember liking the baroque-styled Anthem - with harpsicord and boys choir - but always felt the melodramatic spoken invocation at the beginning and end - "Transcend. Purify. Glorius." - detracted more from the track than it enhanced.

All in all, it has a nice blend of 70s pop with enough classic influence that most of it doesn't sound dated. In fact, Diamond's foray into the classical genre well preceded Paul McCartney's, but to my knowledge was not a journey he took again.

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