IN: Neil Leslie Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and actor. With 38 songs in the Top 10 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts, Diamond has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Neil Diamond has been touring around the world consecutively for 50 years. Neil Diamond 50 - 50th Anniversary Collection Diamond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

Diamond was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish family descended from Russian and Polish immigrants. His parents were Rose (nee Rapaport) and Akeeba "Kieve" Diamond, a dry-goods merchant. He grew up in several homes in Brooklyn, having also spent four years in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where his father was stationed in the army. In Brooklyn he attended Erasmus Hall High School and was a member of the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club, along with classmate Barbra Streisand. They were not close friends at the time, Diamond recalls: "We were two poor kids in Brooklyn. We hung out in the front of Erasmus High and smoked cigarettes." After his family moved he then attended Abraham Lincoln High School, and was a member of the fencing team. Also on the team was his best friend, future Olympic fencer Herb Cohen. For his 16th birthday, he received his first guitar. When he was 16, and still in high school, Diamond spent a number of weeks at Surprise Lake Camp, a camp for Jewish children in upstate New York, when folk singer Pete Seeger performed a small concert. Seeing the widely recognized singer perform, and watching other children singing songs for Seeger that they wrote themselves, had an immediate effect on Diamond, who then became aware of the possibility of writing his own songs. "And the next thing, I got a guitar when we got back to Brooklyn, started to take lessons and almost immediately began to write songs," he said. He adds that his attraction to songwriting was the "first real interest" he had growing up, besides helping him release his youthful "frustrations". Diamond also used his newly developing skill to write poetry. By writing poems for girls he was attracted to in school, he soon learned it often won their hearts. His male classmates took note and began asking him to write poems for them which they would sing and use with equal success. He spent the summer following his graduation as a waiter in the Catskills resort area. There he first met Jaye Posner, who would years later become his wife. Diamond next attended New York University as a pre-med major on a fencing scholarship, again on the fencing team with Herb Cohen. He was a member of the 1960 NCAA men's championship fencing team. Often bored in class, he found writing song lyrics more to his liking. He began cutting classes and taking the train up to Tin Pan Alley, where he tried to get some of his songs heard by local music publishers. In his senior year, when he was just 10 units short of graduation, Sunbeam Music Publishing offered him a 16-week job writing songs for $50 a week (equivalent to about US$405 per week, in 2017 dollars), and he dropped out of college to accept it.
QUESTION: Did he do any performances as a youth?
IN: Feeder are a Welsh rock band formed in Newport, Wales. They have released ten studio albums, twelve compilations, four EPs, and 40 singles. They have spent a total of 182 weeks on the singles and albums charts combined as of 2017, and have accumulated 25 top 75 singles between 1997 and 2012. At their peak of commercial success, Feeder won two Kerrang!

For 1999's Yesterday Went Too Soon, the band decided to self-produce the album, brought in Matt Sime for engineering duties and had the album mixed in New York by Andy Wallace. "Dry" was re-recorded as a full band version after the original acoustic version appeared on "Suffocate" as a b-side. That single's b-sides featured tracks from the sessions for that album, therefore revealing what sort of direction it would take on. The working title for the album was originally A Life Through Headphones, and was originally set to be a double album. The name change was due to former Take That singer Robbie Williams releasing his solo debut album Life Thru a Lens, with the band not wanting to be compared to him. When the album was released, the band's reputation was on the rise and it entered the UK albums chart at number eight, which was at the time an unexpected chart position for the band. Before that, the band had released the album's first single, "Day In Day Out", in March 1999 which charted at #31 followed by "Insomnia" at #22, resulting in their first appearance on Top of the Pops. A week before the album's release, the band played the main stage of the Reading and Leeds festivals, while the title track from the album was at #20 in the singles chart. The album was then released on 30 August 1999. Only one single was lifted from the album after its release, in which a re-recorded version of "Paperfaces" charted at #41. Some of the album's lyrical themes were derived from Grant's personal perspective of working in a menial supermarket job on a daily basis ("Day in Day Out"), his experiences after gigs on their US tour ("Insomnia" and "You're My Evergreen"), past relationships (the title track and "Dry"), the music industry ("Hole in My Head") and "fear of commitment in relationships" ("Anaesthetic") amongst others. Musically, the album employed an indie rock feel to it, which also featured extended appearances of an acoustic guitar on some of its tracks. The album was due for release in June, but this was delayed until August to include material written after its completion which the band felt was too good to leave off. Upon its release, the UK music press immediately warmed to the album, which also received Melody Maker 's Album of the Week accolade. The year ended with the band providing support for the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Wembley Arena and Manic Street Preachers at the Millennium Stadium. As of March 2003, the album has been certified gold shipping 100,000 units in the UK, with total counter sales standing at 110,000 as of February 2005. The album was Melody Maker's #24 album of 1999, while Metal Hammer placed the album in at #6 and Kerrang! ranked it at #16.
QUESTION:
Who produced the album?