After he recovered from a bout of depression brought on by the Sony BMG "rootkit" fiasco, in which the company coded his acclaimed 12 Songs album with potentially malicious antipiracy software and then pulled the disc from retail, Neil Diamond went back to work writing songs for his next effort with producer Rick Rubin.

"To kind of get warmed up, we started recording a couple of cover songs and Neil has been writing, but I haven't heard any of the new stuff he's been writing yet," Rubin told Billboard. "But we still had a bunch of songs from the last sessions we did, so some of those might work their way into the next one."

An album of covers or another album of originals both have been discussed, but Rubin said it's too early in the process to know which way it will go.

"It depends on how long the writing process takes," he said. "I thought if it's going to take a while to write, it might be fun to do a covers album in between, but we'll see. The material is going to dictate everything."

12 Songs, an acoustic set, will be reissued December 12 with a second disc of demos and alternate takes.

HIGHS AND LOWS

Upon its initial release, 12 Songs became the highest-debuting album of Diamond's career. Fueled by a stack of positive reviews, it debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 with sales of 92,700 copies.

Yet Diamond's joy and triumph with the album's debut was soon replaced by frustration and depression.

Soon after its release, consumers discovered that 12 Songs was one of 20 Sony BMG titles to include XCP, short for extended copy protection, a controversial digital rights management system that automatically installed potentially malicious rootkit antipiracy software on any computer attempting to play it.

After a groundswell of negative publicity, including the filing of several class-action lawsuits, Sony BMG recalled the affected CDs, effectively taking 12 Songs out of the marketplace during much of the crucial holiday shopping season. Still, the album managed to sell more than 517,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

When asked what prompted the 12 Songs rerelease, Diamond cited the XCP disc. "Columbia Records decided for a rerelease based on what happened last year," he said.

The new executive team at Columbia declined to comment on the XCP issue but said that 12 Songs deserves to be revisited.

"It was the right thing to do for Neil Diamond and for this particular record," said Columbia Records Group chairman Steve Barnett, who took the post in December 2005.

BOUNCING BACK

It was about a week and a half after the initial release of 12 Songs that Diamond found out about the XCP problem.

"I didn't know about it. I wasn't asked about it," he said. "I had to ask my son who is a tech nerd what it meant. He told me, I fainted.

"When I came to, I went into a deep depression for a couple of weeks, and then I started working on our next album," said Diamond, sitting a few feet from the work space where he has been recording demos of new material for Rubin.

It's that dedication to work and singular focus that has made Diamond one of the most successful recording and touring artists in the history of popular music.

By his own admission, the Brooklyn-born son of Akeeba and Rose Diamond had little success during his first eight years in the music business. It was the path he chose after dropping out of his premed studies at New York University just six months shy of graduation.

"Originally, it was pure songwriting, and I didn't do it very well," he said, referring to his days on Tin Pan Alley as a staff songwriter for Sunbeam Music. He earned $50 per week.

Nonetheless, Diamond "not once" thought of giving up his dream. He went on to tremendous success, scoring a string of platinum-selling albums from the early '70s through the early '80s, including such multiplatinum smashes as Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973), I'm Glad You're Here With Me Tonight (1977), and The Jazz Singer (1980).

But it was his earliest, late-'60s recordings that Diamond and Rubin revisited before starting the sessions for 12 Songs.

BACK TO BASICS

The producer--whose credits include such diverse acts as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Shakira, Dixie Chicks, Slayer, and Jay-Z--initially reached out to Diamond more than a decade ago. But it took a while before Diamond agreed to meet with him.

"We started meeting on a pretty regular basis for a long time before we started any work," Rubin said. "We just became friends and listened to a lot of music, talked about songs, what we liked and why and compared notes."

During that time, Rubin had Diamond revisit some of his earliest recordings.

"Over the years, typically when artists play songs live, they kind of evolve and change," Rubin said. "I wanted him to hear what the songs sounded like when they initially had the impact that they did, just to see how they changed over the years and talk about the content of the song, what was going on musically in the songs and what the arrangements were."

One thing that had changed through the years was that in the studio Diamond no longer accompanied himself on guitar. Rubin insisted on it.

"He was insecure about his guitar playing," Rubin said. "But I found, for one, it informed the other musicians what to do. He would kind of set a rhythmic tone for the song, and all the other players were playing off of what he was doing."

While directing the group of ace session players--including guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and guitarist Smokey Hormel, known for his work with Beck and Tom Waits--Rubin noticed that the quality of Diamond's vocals changed when he played guitar.

"It was harder for it to become too much of a vocal performance, it was much more just getting the song over, because he was focused on playing guitar," Rubin said. "It also gave it a more natural feeling."

The album generated some of the most positive reviews of Diamond's career.

"It wasn't sloughed off like any of the albums in the past years," Diamond said. "It got some serious looks, and some of the reviews were unexpectedly positive."

The new material also helped reinvigorate Diamond's famed stage show, which included cuts off 12 Songs alongside his classic material. "It's the difference between a nostalgia act and an act that's still productive, so it's important for me to have new material," he said.

As Diamond and Rubin continue to work on the follow-up to 12 Songs, the songwriter doesn't foresee hanging up his guitar anytime soon.

"It's programmed into my genes at this point," he said. "I write consistently. I love writing. There's always that unknown factor in writing. You don't know what you're going to come up with. You don't know if it's going to be the usual or if it's going to be something unusual."