The Garth Factor

by Patsi Bale Cox

  The Complete Guide to Country Music Videos described the video as “simply one of the most moving and eloquent videos ever made. It was probably the single biggest boost to Brooks’s career, other than his own remarkable talent.”

  In June, when Garth performed at Capitol’s Fan Fair show, he was presented with his first gold record. One of Garth’s first reactions on hearing about the sales award was to request that Lynn Shults and Jim Foglesong be among those receiving plaques. As of 2008, Garth Brooks has sold 10 million albums.

  GARTH’S SCENE-STEALER ALBUM, however, was standing right there in the wings, waiting for the curtain to go up. No Fences, his second album, was complete and scheduled for an August release. Garth knew it was good, but he also knew expectations had risen since “The Dance.” His days of being an underdog newcomer who just wanted to make his hometown proud were over. Sophomore releases have long been a peril of the music business; time and again an artist busts through with a home run debut, then strikes out on his second time at the plate.

  Even when a follow-up outsold its predecessor it often caused critics to raise eyebrows. Randy Travis’s brilliant 1986 debut, Storms of Life, sold fewer copies than 1987’s Always & Forever, yet Always & Forever was criticized for being a somewhat formulaic pitch to the female fans. If so, it proved to be an effective strategy.

  Sometimes the second-album problem comes from a feeling of invincibility that comes with instant stardom. And there are those artists who unwisely decide to record an entirely self-penned album so as to collect the royalties outside writers were pocketing. Sometimes it is the result of distractions on the road.

  Case in point: The O’Kanes—Jamie O’Hara and Kieran Kane—were singer/songwriters who got together in 1985 with the goal of writing some hit songs. It didn’t take long before the two became a duo. Their 1986 self-titled Columbia album was a start-to-finish class-act fusion of country and bluegrass, with harmonies sometimes reminiscent of the Everly Brothers. Their Top 10 debut single, “Oh, Darlin’,” set up the biggest hit they scored, 1987’s “Can’t Stop My Heart From Loving You.” But extensive touring cut short this excellent duo’s career. “The road affected us as writers,” Kane lamented. “Some people find touring gets their creative juices flowing. We didn’t.”

  If Jimmy Bowen had continued to operate in the spirit of his initial conversations with Allen Reynolds, the Garth Brooks story would have been far different. In the early weeks of the new relationship, despite all the Music Row stories about Bowen’s heavy-handedness, Garth was cautiously enthusiastic about their potential working relationship. At first Bowen appeared to be solidly behind the kind of music Garth wanted to make, and willing to give him the freedom to work unfettered by the usual restraints. But those who knew Bowen best said it simply was not in his personality to stay out of the recording process of his biggest star.

  Before Garth even began cutting No Fences, Bowen warned him that his recordings sounded dated, laying the fault squarely at Allen Reynolds’s door. Bowen described the meeting where, he explains, he gave Garth some straight advice. “I’ve listened to your album, and I frankly don’t feel it’s up to standards, technically, of your competition. Allen is a good man and when it works for him, he is a terrific producer. But he owns his own studio and cuts a certain old-fashioned way, which worked for Crystal Gayle and others. But it’s not gonna work with you.”

  Garth rejected the advice, telling Bowen he didn’t like studio tricks and preferred to keep on recording analog and later transferring the entire recording to digital. “Allen and I are a team,” he said. “This is how we record. We like to keep it real.” It was a clear rejection of any suggestion that he’d dump Reynolds in favor of the label head. When Bowen told Garth that he had to trust him, Garth told him that as far as the road to trust went, consider him just boarding the bus in Oklahoma.

  Bowen didn’t let the implied pressure drop for long, and at a later meeting asked with a smile, “Hey, pal, when am I gonna be producing your records?”

  Garth smiled and shook his head. “It’s not gonna happen.”

  Bowen’s irritation at being ignored started bubbling up over seemingly insignificant things. When Garth asked that song lyrics be included in the No Fences CD package, Bowen was furious. At a meeting with a financial officer Bowen went over the cost of adding pages of song lyrics. “Does he know this expense is recoupable?” Bowen asked. The man shrugged. “Then do it and charge it back to the SOB,” Bowen responded sharply. Another Capitol employee, waiting to see Bowen, said the hair stood up on the back of his neck. People at the label already had a sense that No Fences was going to be a monster release. Why would Bowen take such a petty—and angry—attitude? The employee speculated that it could only be because Bowen wanted to produce the star himself.

  Word leaked out onto Music Row that Bowen had made his move and Garth stood his ground. One country artist, who believed Bowen had destroyed his career when the two crossed swords at Elektra Records, expressed concerns to a music journalist at one of Nashville’s watering holes. “I don’t think this kid has any idea who he’s dealing with,” the singer said. “Bowen’s gonna bury that kid.”

  The journalist, who had come to know Garth well, disagreed. “If I was betting, I’d put my money on the kid.”

  In Garth’s world, fair play was vital. It was a character trait he’d learned from his marine veteran father, and one he took seriously. People who betrayed that sense of fair play were usually stunned at how quickly he could take on Raymond Brooks’s tough personality and dig his heels in.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Only in America

  In the summer of 1990, the Winston Cup Illustrated’s Tom Higgins was covering the races at Michigan International Speedway. One of Higgins’s favorite side trips during the NASCAR weekend was a stop at the nearby Lenawee County Fair in Adrian. That year’s fair headliner, Tanya Tucker, was ill and had been replaced by a relative newcomer. Here’s what Higgins had to say about the experience some years later:

  We bought tickets and found seats about six rows back from the temporary stage, situated on sand where trotters had raced a day or so before. It took Garth Brooks only two or three songs to make a crowd of 750 or so forget that he wasn’t supposed to be the star.

  He came out into the crowd and touchingly told of visiting a children’s hospital and having a little girl entice him into singing “The Dance” a cappella. With that introduction, Brooks and his band performed the song that was soon to be a hit. The audience seemed mesmerized until after the final note, then rose for a standing ovation.

  A soft rain began to fall. The entertainer ignored it and sang on… a variety of numbers ensued: “Cowboy Bill,” “Two Of A Kind, Workin’ On A Full House,” “New Way To Fly,” and “If Tomorrow Never Comes.” Finally, Brooks related an anecdote about giving his mother a tape of a new song that held promise of becoming a mega-hit. A local radio station somehow obtained the copy and played the number on air prematurely. Since it was already out, Brooks reasoned he’d go ahead and let the Adrian audience hear the feature from a forthcoming album. “Friends In Low Places” brought the crowd to its feet again, clapping, dancing, shouting, and dancing in delight. That song, along with “The Dance,” was to take Brooks to higher places than he ever dared dream, selling out shows faster than any country music entertainer before him.

  Who would have imagined during that drizzly Friday night during Michigan race weekend at the Lenawee County Fair that the guy on that stage was destined to become an international show business icon? Only in America.

  And for country music in America, it was the day of the newcomer. Five of the top acts during the first half of 1990 were new to the charts: Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt, Clint Black, and the Kentucky Headhunters.

  Fans had Harold Shedd, the man behind Alabama and K.T. Oslin, to thank for the Headhunters. While Shedd-produced acts had generally resided at RCA, he was running Mercury when he heard the guitar-driven band from E
dmonton, Kentucky. The band’s chart positions belie the real level of their success during that first year in the public eye. The debut album, Pickin’ on Nashville, was a wild ride through Hank Jr., Charlie Daniels, and Lynyrd Skynyrd Land. Looking like they stepped out of a Willie Nelson Fourth of July concert video, the band had signature songs, “Walk Softly On This Heart Of Mine” and “Dumas Walker.” Their only Top 10 was the boogied-up “Oh Lonesome Me.” Though they didn’t chart again after 1991, the band remained a force on the concert trail and, along with Travis Tritt, proudly carried the banner for Southern country rock.

  The album that lifted Garth out of the country up-and-comer crowd was No Fences. Part of the secret of the album’s creative juice was that Garth still had the cardboard box of songs he’d spent a year collecting. One of those songs had a long history.

  Stephanie Davis was already sick of hearing about Garth Brooks when she first met him. Stephanie had been working a series of low-paying jobs and trying to plug her songs when she began meeting with Bob Doyle, who she’d heard was one of the most writer-friendly Music City insiders. She was happy that Bob seemed to like her material, but soon annoyed that he kept bringing up a third party, a kid he believed was going to be the next big thing, Garth Brooks.

  At one Bluebird Cafe writers night Stephanie sang her song “Wolves,” about economic hard times, turning the plight of the American farm family into an allegory about natural selection. Standing in the back of the room, Garth was transfixed.

  The song hit him on several levels. First, he was taken with Stephanie’s mastery of words woven into lyrics. Next, he loved her brooding delivery of the song. The message also struck a deep populist chord involving Garth’s Oklahoma roots, not that far removed from dust bowl days. But finally, he related to the concept of being one of those people the wolves pull down. “In the end, I thought the song was about death,” he said.

  He was listening so intently, Garth forgot what he was doing. “I walked right up to the edge of the stage and stood there, invading her space, in reality,” Garth ruefully recalled. “All of a sudden I realized how close to her I was standing and how crazy I must have appeared staring at her. I thought, ‘This woman probably thinks I’m some kind of a stalker.’ But that didn’t stop me from telling her that I wanted to record the song.”

  “Sorry,” Stephanie answered. “It’s on hold for Willie Nelson.”

  Garth got a copy of “Wolves” anyway. Even if he didn’t get to put it on an album, he loved listening to the song.

  By the time he started recording No Fences, Willie Nelson had moved on to other songs and “Wolves” was available.

  To accentuate Garth’s plaintive vocal on the cut, Allen Reynolds brought in classical upright bassist Edgar Meyer. “Edgar is a world-class talent,” Allen said. “What we wanted was a powerful low end, one that the listener might not even be aware of, but would feel. And Garth loves that low-register underlining of the mood.”

  Garth placed “Wolves” at the very end of the album to indicate that it was his favorite, as he had done on his debut with “The Dance.”

  What Garth didn’t know was that this song would earn him the ire of a music legend. When Willie didn’t cut “Wolves,” fellow outlaw Waylon Jennings decided he wanted to record it, only to learn about Garth’s cut. It seemed to Waylon that an upstart had jerked a song out from under him, and he did not forget it.

  “Friends In Low Places” was another song on No Fences that a fellow artist had wanted to release. Mark Chesnutt also recorded what became the monster single from No Fences. Chesnutt’s version was closer to a classic country honky-tonk tune, but lacking that over-the-top party atmosphere that permeated Garth’s cut: hit material but probably not the presentation that would have caused college students to line up singing the song’s chorus outside America’s bars. What made the difference in Garth’s cut was its attitude, one that came from the crowd of rowdy pals who came to the studio to sing on the chorus. They had so much fun that the company that mastered the record tried to send the album back.

  “The mastering people called and said, ‘You’ve got a real bad glitch on ‘Friends In Low Places,’ ” Garth laughs. “We almost died, because we were on such a tight schedule it would have been almost impossible to go back in the studio. It would have set us back weeks. Then, when we listened, we realized that what they were hearing was either Rob Hajacos or Steve Morley popping a beer can right by the microphone. And if you listen closely, you’ll hear someone yell out, ‘Push, Marie!’ That’s because [road guitarist] James Garver was with his wife, Marie, at the hospital, where she was having a baby. We figured all of it was good luck and should be left in.”

  In concert “Friends” gets thunderous applause from the minute the intro begins. Originally the song didn’t have a real intro, so Mark Casstevens decided to create one utilizing the first four chords of the song. Ty England laughs when he recalls Garth telling him that they needed to follow Casstevens’s lead and emphasize the intro. “It’s true,” Ty says. “Garth anticipated what was going to happen. In concert the minute I start to play those first notes, the crowd goes nuts.”

  The history of “Friends In Low Places” contains a music business tale made to order for Nashville film director Robert Altman. One afternoon DeWayne Blackwell was drinking at the LongHorn restaurant with a writer named Bud Lee. Neither was known for his fiscal responsibility. In fact, writer Larry Bastian, Blackwell’s close friend, credits his own deal with Major Bob to DeWayne’s finances. The two were writing for Snuff Garrett’s L.A. publishing company in the late ’80s, and according to Larry, Bob approached Blackwell first.

  “DeWayne always needed money,” Larry laughed. “One time I remember he was trying to get to Nashville from L.A., and ran out of money somewhere in Kansas. He had to call me to wire him some, which I was able to do since I was working at the time. DeWayne was all set to sign a deal with Major Bob, but before the papers could be signed, Bob got called up for two weeks of air force duty. DeWayne got an offer with cash up front and had to take it. When Bob got back, DeWayne said, ‘It’s too late for me. You ought to talk to Larry.’ So I ended up getting the gig!”

  Bud Lee was a well-liked, immensely talented character around the Row, but prone to drinking too much and running up his tab. One afternoon following a wealth of alcoholic riches, Blackwell asked Lee how he planned on paying his share of the tab.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lee laughed. “I’ve got friends in low places.”

  It was a hook made in hillbilly heaven, and even before they wrote it the two knew they had a hit on their hands. The problem was, Bud usually had a drink in his, and he could count on only a few of those lowly pals to spot him for more. Others who hung out at the LongHorn knew that it was only a matter of time before “Friends” started making money. By the time it was over, Bud Lee had traded a considerable percentage of his song royalties to pay a LongHorn bar bill.

  “Friends In Low Places” became an overnight college anthem, and was named the 1991 Single of the Year at both the CMA and ACM awards shows. It also made “Garth Brooks” a household name. On the day that “Friends In Low Places” hit number 1, October 6, 1990, Garth was the sixty-fifth artist inducted into the Grand Ole Opry.

  The Orlando Sentinel explained why Garth’s cut hit all the right chords: “ ‘Friends In Low Places’ starts out wistfully, almost like a folk song, and grows increasingly countrified and rowdy. The chorus is as catchy as they come, with Brooks’s bravura dip into the very bottom of his vocal range and the whooping crowd sing-along on the last chorus. The lyrics are a masterpiece of irony: A man crashes his old flame’s wedding in a misguided attempt to show how little he needs her. Writers DeWayne Blackwell and Bud Lee ought to get some special Country Music Association award for rhyming ‘social graces,’ ‘low places,’ and ‘oasis.’ ”

  “Unanswered Prayers” followed “Friends” to the number 1 chart spot. Larry Bastian calls it his “phantom song.”

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nbsp; “Garth had the idea for this song and talked to me about some of the lines he’d already written. He just couldn’t come up with a title. So I suggested ‘Unanswered Prayers.’ The next thing I knew Garth and Pat Alger had finished it and my name was included as a writer. I said, ‘Well, that was easy!’ ”

  Then Bastian laughs and adds, “But I ain’t giving the money back.”

  The song’s intro features one of Garth’s favorite sounds: two acoustic guitars playing in harmony. Chris Leuzinger played the second part, although it wasn’t credited on the album, Mark Casstevens said. The sound they created resulted from Casstevens’s thumb-pick-and-fingers technique and Leuzinger’s flat-picking.

  “Unanswered Prayers” became one of Garth’s signature songs, but not quite in the way Garth thought might happen. “It was the second single from the album,” Garth reflects. “I thought, ‘I’ll get ’em laughing with ‘Friends In Low Places,’ then hit ’em in the gut with an emotional song.’ But it backfired. The fans didn’t want to let go of ‘Friends’ and it took a while for them to pay attention to ‘Unanswered Prayers.’ Since I loved the song so much, I was really worried for a while there, thinking I’d really messed up.”

  Garth had met “Unanswered Prayers” co-writer Pat Alger through Allen Reynolds a few months before his debut album was set for release. A New York native, Alger had been a member of the Woodstock Mountain Review, and written songs for both Nanci Griffith and Kathy Mattea. Alger had his own album out in 1991, True Love and Other Short Stories, on Sugar Hill. Reynolds was a fan of Alger and thought his acoustic folk background would fit well with Garth. There was an immediate creative bonding and the two went on to collaborate on a string of hits.