As an aspiring musician/singer do you really think it's plausible that the theatre would be the size of the LA Forum with a backup orchestra the size of the LA Philharmonic??
Come on! The first concert should be in a lounge or restaurant.
Like the two clubs where he played "You Baby" & "Amazed and Confused".
shareAspiring? His album got a gold record a year earlier. That's at least 500,000 copies, and for all we know could have been just short of the 1 million needed for platinum. Hardly the mark of someone struggling to break into the business.
And what makes you think that was the Forum? It was the Pantages, 1/7 the size of the Forum. As a comparison, Diamond himself was able to sell out multiple shows at the Greek Theater - much bigger than the Pantages - just two years after his first gold albums.
As for the string section, the trivia says it was only 41 musicians, not even the size of the LA Phil's string section, never mind the entire orchestra. You could make a more convincing argument if you didn't completely exaggerate every singe point.