Neil Diamond tribute performer Peter Byrne Shakes It Up for charity
Neil Diamond’s classic hit Sweet Caroline has recently found a new generation of fans, and singer Peter Byrne, who performs a tribute show to the US superstar, says it’s a testament to Neil, who is now 85, and his amazing ability.
Mona Vale resident Peter has long followed Neil’s career, and now dedicates his shows to raising money for Parkinson’s disease research, an illness which Neil Diamond was diagnosed with in 2018. “For somebody who started so late in life, he was an absolutely amazing songwriter, and I still can’t believe today that this year is the 60th anniversary of the first hit that he wrote in 1966, Solitary Man,” Peter says.
A move to Australia from Dublin in 1988 saw Peter trade his business job for a career in performing. After being told that he sounded like Neil Diamond, Peter put together a band and started performing 45-minute shows of pure Neil Diamond hits – and even had the ‘wonderful pleasure of meeting him’ in 1996 when he toured Australia.
“On stage Neil Diamond was never much of a showman in the sense of having all the poses and moving around. He was very much stand still and let the music and the vocals do the talking,” Peter says. “So when I met him as a person, I expected him to be exactly the same way, and he was – so gently spoken, so well educated and his passion for his music was amazing.” He even received a signed photograph from Neil in the post nine months later, congratulating him on a great tribute show.
Peter Bryne sings in his From a Diamond to a King show
A signed photo from Neil Diamond
When Neil Diamond announced he had Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder, Peter says it spurred him into action. “I sat back one day and I thought to myself, ‘You’ve made a wonderful career and you’re still making a wonderful career out of performing his music, wouldn’t it be nice to give back?’”
So Peter put together a show, recreating Neil’s Hot August Night album with a symphony orchestra, and raised $50,000 for the Shake It Up Australia Foundation, a charity which funds research into finding a cure for Parkinson’s.
His new show, From a Diamond to a King, is on a national tour. It sees Peter, along with Damian Mullin, an Elvis impersonator, perform with the Australian Symphony Orchestra. A donation of $10 from every ticket sale goes to Shake It Up, supporting the more than 200,000 Australians living with Parkinson’s. Peter is now an ambassador for the charity.
Despite having raised a total of $71,000 for Shake It Up through his shows, including a recent show at North Sydney Leagues Club, Peter says there’s another reason he does it. “It’s about raising awareness,” he says. “Because the younger people today don’t realise that Parkinson’s is not an old person’s illness. It’s a young person’s illness too, you can get it as young as 30 years of age. So in order to someday find a cure for this, you need to make more people aware of it.”
Find out more at fromadiamondtoaking.com