Lots of folks have been parsing Billy Ray Cyrus’ extensive interview in the March issue of GQ. Talking to interviewer Chris Heath, Cyrus spoke in great detail about his anguish regarding the way he’s parented Miley. In a nutshell, he talked about how wanting to be his daughter’s friend instead of her parent proved to be disastrous.
That, however, is not the part of the story that I want to focus on.
No, the biographical tidbit that I found most fascinating here actually had to do with what inspired Billy Ray to pursue a career in music in the first place.
Are you ready? It was a Neil Diamond concert.
Here’s how Heath described that revelation:
Soon [Billy Ray] is telling me his whole origin story: how he wanted, and expected, to become the catcher for the Cincinnati Reds until he won a radio competition for concert tickets while he was working in a Kentucky tobacco warehouse, and how Neil Diamond paused during the song "Holly Holy" to say, "I don't care if you're white or black, rich or poor, man or woman, if you believe in your dreams and you live for the light and God's love, you can be anything you want to be in this world," and how at that very moment Cyrus felt as though hands were covering his entire body and he heard a voice he took to be God's telling him that he had to buy a guitar.
Now, maybe it’s just ’cause I grew up listening to my dad’s Neil Diamond albums that I found this random factoid so strangely compelling. Even so, I think it illustrates how a celebrity’s influence can be so surprisingly, um, influential.
That Billy Ray credits his career to a stray line thrown out by a pop schmaltzmeister in the middle of a concert is quite remarkable, I think. If things happened exactly as Billy Ray said, without Diamond’s feel-good shout-out to “God’s love” and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, there is no “Achy Breaky Heart.”
And, in all likelihood, that means that Miley Cyrus doesn’t land her starring role as Hannah Montana, either, an opportunity facilitated (at least in part) by her daddy’s “Achy Breaky” fame.
Call it six degrees (or, in this case, two degrees) of celebrity influence.
Thanks a lot, Neil.
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