Garth thought he had it all planned out. But he learned that even the best-laid plans can fail to ignite. During the first Texas show he stood with his arms flung skyward expecting flames to shoot up in front of him, setting up “Standing Outside The Fire.”
Nothing happened.
Garth glanced around, nervously trying to cover up the staging error, but it was obvious something had gone wrong.
After the show he asked his tech man, “Why no fire?”
“Because you were standing on the gas pipe. Good thing I noticed because I damn near torched you.”
The crewmember wore a shirt that read, “I work for a madman.”
By ’96 only two hundred markets in the United States could accommodate the Garth Brooks tour, a reality Garth regretted: “Two of our best markets are Fort Smith and Little Rock, Arkansas, and we couldn’t play them because they didn’t have the right buildings. We never went back to Oklahoma State [in Stillwater], but we probably covered those people in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. We never got back to Boise [Idaho] and that’s a great market for us. There were a lot of places we didn’t get to this time.”
Before the tour started some speculated that the special effects Garth had become known for were too extreme for country concerts, and in late 1995, Garth talked with New Country’s editor Brian Mansfield about it. “A lot of people are saying that we’re going to take it over the top, and for the first minute and a half, they’re right. But for the other hour and a half or whatever, it’s going to be focused on the music. Entertaining is about making an entrance. So we’re going to make an entrance. We are going to MAKE an entrance. And we’re gonna have fun… but probably 95 percent of the gags we’ll do will be in the entrance. Then, of course, if we’re lucky enough to get encores in certain places, we’re going to do some stupid stuff, simply because that’s what GB does.”
And what an entrance it was to be. Country Weekly described how Garth kicked off the first show of the tour: “Thick smoke gushed from all corners of the stage. Multicolored lights turned, twisted, flickered and finally framed the stage with beams. The band’s drum set then rose in a slow, full-circle spin, encased in a glass pyramid that looked like a spacecraft. Garth then made his entrance—through a little sleight of band. Fans heard the opening chords from the slow-building song ‘The Old Stuff,’ then saw a white baby grand piano rise from below stage level. Seated at it was a man dressed in a white suit topped with a white cowboy hat. At first glance it looked as if Garth had decided to act out the all-white scene from ‘The Red Strokes.’ Then the surprise. As Garth’s voice rang out, fans realized he wasn’t in the white suit—he was in the piano! A mechanical lift delivered a fist-pumping Garth through a hole that opened in the middle of the piano. To screams and a standing ovation, he bounded onto the stage and belted out the first of 19 songs.”
By 1996 Stillwater had expanded. Two longtime members, Ty England and Betsy Smittle, who were pursuing solo careers, had been replaced. Mike Palmer was on drums and Mark Greenwood replaced Betsy on bass. James Garver played lead electric guitar as well as percussion, banjo, and acoustic guitar. Steve McClure played steel. Dave Gant played keys, Jimmy Mattingly was on fiddle, and Debbie Nims took Ty’s place on rhythm guitar.
Garth talked to Country Song Roundup about the new band: “It’s got a big smack. Debbie came in and whipped the hell out of all the boys, like a little sergeant in there. Then there’s this kid named Jimmy Mattingly on fiddle who came in, and I think everybody stepped up to a new level when they heard him play. They want to show what they can do. The additions are nice and the remaining original members are rougher than I’ve ever seen them. They’re strong as a rock.” To fully appreciate the sound of this tight group, listen to their stellar work on Double Live.
After taking a few weeks off for the holidays, Garth kicked off the 1997 leg of his world tour with three sold-out shows at Hirsch Memorial Coliseum in Shreveport, Louisiana, on January 16. Reports of record-shattering ticket sales started stacking up. On January 25 fans bought over 51,000 tickets for six upcoming Garth concerts at the Jacksonville Coliseum in Jacksonville, Florida, in less than four hours. The previous record holder was Elvis Presley in March 1975. Also on January 25, fans bought over 31,000 tickets for three upcoming Garth concerts at the Richmond Coliseum in Richmond, Virginia, breaking the 1985 record of the Grateful Dead. The January sell-outs were just the beginning of a long list.
In February the Country Music Broadcasters’ Association UK named Garth the Most Popular Artist for 1996. On March 11 he received Blockbuster Entertainment’s Artist of the Decade award on a televised broadcast hosted by Vanessa Williams. But there was one award Garth did not feel right in accepting. On January 29, 1996, at the twenty-third annual American Music Awards, Garth was shocked to hear his name called as the Top Artist of the Year, over Boyz II Men, Green Day, Hootie & the Blowfish, and TLC. Since he had not released an album, Garth felt foolish to have been chosen over artists who’d had successful recordings. And so he walked to the podium, tipped his hat to the accomplishments of his competitors, and declined the trophy.
“I thought I was dreaming when they called my name,” he said when returning to Nashville. “Hootie & the Blowfish? Come on, they should have had that. Look at what they’ve done. After all those years of kicking around and making great music they just busted in and killed everybody—won a Grammy and sold four million albums.”
The most important milestone of 1996 was closer to home, when on July 28 Sandy Brooks gave birth to the couple’s third daughter, Allie Colleen. Three months earlier, on the tenth anniversary of their marriage, the couple had renewed their wedding vows. The newest Brooks baby weighed in at eight pounds, ten ounces, and was twenty-one-and-a-half inches long. Garth said, “People are telling me that if we have two more, I’ll have a basketball team!”
Given the enormity of Garth’s success, the couple took a serious look at the way the girls would be raised. One thing they wanted to avoid was for Taylor, August, and Allie to see themselves as “star kids.” It was a widespread problem in the entertainment industry, with too many youngsters developing a sense of entitlement because of their parent’s celebrity. Nor did the couple want their girls to be spending time on the road in future years.
It was one thing for the children to travel with Garth when they were small, but Garth completely rejected the idea when it came to preteen and teenage years. He wanted them to be raised as closely as possible to the way he and Sandy had been. He talked to CountryAmerica’s Neil Pond about it.
“Sandy and I won’t be doing them any favors by giving them an easy road. Life is not an easy road, thank God. The best roads I have traveled have been ones that, with God’s help, I have cut down the trees and laid the gravel and poured the concrete myself. Then, it’s just as smooth a ride as can be. If somebody gives you a ride it ain’t half as fun. Some of my favorite years were 1989 and before, when Sandy and I together didn’t clear more than ten or twelve thousand dollars a year. But we thought we were on top of the world. And we were.”
Garth and Sandy knew they walked a fine line when it came to determining what behavior was “normal little girl stuff” and what was “spoiled little girl stuff.” As he told USA Weekend, “When Taylor leaves half a sandwich on the plate, I start thinking, ‘Oh God, don’t let her get used to taking just a bite out of something and think we’ll just get some more if it runs out.’ ”
Concerns about how the children viewed their father and his star status turned out to be something in need of continual attention. Just a year later Garth and Sandy were with the girls outside of their home one afternoon when a group of fans showed up at the gate. Taylor was five years old, and fans shouting “Garth Brooks!” confused her.
“Why are those people screaming my dad’s name?” She asked Sandy.
“Well, they came to see him and just want to know if he’s here,” Sandy answered.
“That’s crazy,” Taylor mused. “He’s just Dad.”
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When they were back at the house, Garth told Sandy that he hoped the girls could keep that “just Dad” attitude.
But that night at dinner Taylor called her father “Garth Brooks.”
“We’re gonna have to have a long talk,” he said. “My name is Dad.”
GARTH’S BIGGEST PUBLIC NEWS of 1997 came on March 26, when he held a press conference announcing that he would play a concert at Central Park in New York City on August 7. Less publicized, but equally important to Garth, were his plans to travel to Ireland to film a television special in May.
When Garth had played eight sold-out shows at the Point in Dublin three years earlier, he had promised the Irish fans that he’d return and that the next time he’d bring cameras. And that’s what he did.
Three shows quickly sold out for Dublin’s Croke Park May 16 to 18, 1997. Polls showed that one in every twenty people in Ireland wanted to attend the concerts. Mary Arnold, writing in Country Music News (Ireland), put it this way: “Garth Brooks had played Dublin in 1994, so in effect, this was the second coming. And if it had been the real Second Coming, I don’t think a lot of Irish people would have been more excited.”
Producer Jon Small utilized an international film team: over four hundred professionals from Ireland, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, France, and Australia. In addition to veteran U.S. director, Michael Salomon, Small brought on board Australian director of photography Toby Phillips, considered one of the best in the business for multicamera concert shoots, British lighting designer Patrick Woodruff, and line producer Tom Forrest.
One of the most formidable challenges Small and Forrest faced was Garth’s desire to use two helicopters with cameras, one flying over the audience and a second hovering just above the first. The normal minimum air space requirements were finally waived when the production team found a Vietnam veteran and Europe’s premier helicopter pilot. “The noise and the downdraft was unbelievable,” Small said. “It was wild and the crowd loved it.” Ireland and Back was later nominated for an Emmy for Multi-Camera Picture Editing for a Miniseries.
Transporting the equipment needed for the show was a major undertaking. The supplies, shipped by air and sea, filled 60 trucks and had a weight of nearly 2 million pounds. The equipment required for the shows included over 100 miles of cable, ten 35 mm cameras, 300 pounds of confetti, 6 generators, 350,000 feet of film, a 70-foot crane, and the 2 helicopters. Each show (recorded on 96 audio tracks) required 24,000 amps of power (a normal house runs on 200 amps). The stage measured 460 feet wide and 65 feet tall.
The first ninety minutes of the special was primarily concert footage and filmed completely in Ireland. Trisha Yearwood, Stephanie Davis, and Susan Ashton provided harmonies.
Garth was filmed visiting Brazen Head (Dublin’s oldest pub) to record two songs for the special. He enjoyed the company so much he stayed several extra hours to talk with the customers, and sang “Dublin In The Rare Auld Times” with one of the pub’s regulars. The Hollywood Reporter’s Tony Gleske pointed to the outstanding performance filmed when Garth and fiddle player Jimmy Mattingly performed “That Ol’ Wind” on the waterfront in the fishing village of Howth, about thirty minutes outside Dublin. The final portion of the special was filmed in the United States, and included duets with Garth’s friend Steve Wariner.
When Garth arrived in Dublin for the concerts, he was presented with a million-seller sales award from EMI (for Irish and UK sales), then talked with the press.
“The whole tour this year is the Circle Tour with the UFO—we have this huge UFO that actually launches and lifts off at the start of the show. The theme is one of NASA space gear that includes all the crew, everybody.
“It’s not a completely new image,” he laughed. “I’ll still be in the Stetson wearing those ridiculously tight pants!
“This whole game is built on confidence,” he continued. “Confidence only comes through God and people. And only confidence is gonna get you through that first night. What happened at the Point [in 1994] gave me the confidence to believe that music can travel across the water, and that somebody other than in your own country can get what you’re trying to say. If I can feel like I did when I walked out on stage at the Point—that’s what I’m hoping for. That’s magic.”
The trip had strong family connections. When Garth had played for Irish crowds in 1993 the audience had serenaded Sandy Brooks over the telephone. This time Garth was able to introduce her to the Irish fans. The response was overwhelming, even to Garth and Sandy, who had both seen plenty of screaming fans. Colleen Brooks, whose family is from County Cork, south of Dublin, was unable to attend the shows because of health concerns, but the people of Cork gave her a citation as an honorary citizen in absentia.
Garth explained the experience to the Today show’s Katie Couric: “What happened was… it shocked Sandy. That night in bed, Sandy’s laying there, two in the morning, her eyes are wide open. She goes, ‘I see why you do it now.’ ”
Garth’s fiddler extraordinaire Jimmy Mattingly (now with the Grascals) later reflected on returning to the United States during an interview with PlanetGarth.com. When he boarded the plane for the return flight, it seems Jimmy spotted an empty seat with a pillow and blanket. He commandeered it and quickly fell asleep. When he awoke hours later he found the entire band and crew asleep. Garth was on the floor using his jacket for a blanket and his bag for a pillow. In an instant, Jimmy realized the plane was a seat short to accommodate the crowd and he’d grabbed Garth’s seat. Chagrinned, he awoke Garth to tell him he could have his seat back. “It’s okay,” Garth said. Only after Jimmy insisted the two switch out for the remainder of the flight did “the boss” crawl back into his chair.
The tour broke the sales records of several other acts, including AC/DC, New Kids on the Block, Elton John, Aerosmith, Journey, Van Halen, Elvis Presley, Billy Joel, Foreigner, Neil Diamond, the Grateful Dead, Huey Lewis, the Eagles, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Def Leppard, KISS, Paul McCartney, and Michael Jackson. Having one of their own knocking down ticket records set by rock’s biggest stars provided a powerful promotional tool for the Country Music Association.
The buzz helped make country even more attractive to promoters, advertisers, and sponsors. His concerts influenced the road shows of numerous stars, including Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, and the Dixie Chicks. But on the downside, Garth had not released a studio album since Fresh Horses, and it affected the genre’s overall sales. In 1993 country had accounted for 19 percent of all records sold, but by 1997 that percentage was down to twelve. A big-selling album was sorely needed, and in fact, Garth had one ready to go.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
New York shows up to kick some ass
Icame here to play some music, raise some hell, and have some fun!”
That was just what the audience of nearly a million wanted to hear Garth say when he hit the stage in Central Park that night in August 1997. The masses of screaming fans seemed to overwhelm Garth.
“Not only did you show up,” he said. “You showed up to kick some ass!”
GARTH’S NEW ALBUM WAS finished. It was titled Sevens for several reasons, one being that Garth had been born on the seventh of February in 1962. So, on November 25, 1997, the seventh year of the decade, he would release his seventh studio album (not counting his Christmas recording). But after the Fresh Horses experience, he was not prepared to entrust the release of another album entirely to Capitol in Nashville. The label had done well with artists like Trace Adkins and Deana Carter, and had signed Keith Urban, but not so well with its established artists such as Garth and Tanya Tucker.
Then New York–based EMI executive Pat Quigley brought an idea to the table: a free concert in Central Park as part of the album’s launch. This was not a new idea. Joe Mansfield had first broached the subject with Garth in the early 1990s because he’d worked with CBS artists who’d had wildly successful Central Park experiences—Barbra Streisand, Paul Simon, Diana Ross, James Taylor. But at that
time, Garth wasn’t sure he could draw that kind of a crowd.
Quigley hadn’t come up through the music marketing ranks, but had a background in sales with companies such as Rolling Rock beer, Swatch watches, and various winter sports companies. He had made a name at EMI as a sales wizard who thought outside of the box. There was a constituency at EMI who considered Quigley’s management style abrasive. But it was a side Garth Brooks never saw.
Garth and Pat had become friends over the past year. When Quigley’s father died, Garth attended the funeral, even held Pat’s crying child during the service. That shared event solidified Quigley’s loyalty to the Nashville-based artist; he later explained: “How do you repay a guy like that? You work hard for him.”
As he had when Mansfield first brought up Central Park, Garth hesitated when Quigley broached the subject, unsure if he could bring out New York audiences on that level. When he finally did agree, it was more about the challenge, and promoting Sevens would be the added benefit. Working with Quigley, Charles Koppelman, and EMI executive VP Terri Santisi, Garth began to put the event together. In many ways, the Central Park story, with its upfront highs and behind-the-scenes lows, becomes a paradigm of Garth’s career pattern—disciplined risk taking.
He took flak for the decision to play Central Park. The New York Daily News asked if this had the potential for a “Garthgantuan flop.” The New York Times asked, “What’s New York about Garth Brooks?” And there were other digs. Garth laughed when he heard that the Stage Deli had named a sandwich after him: turkey on a kaiser roll.
“The very first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade I participated in I was asked to ride on the turkey float,” he joked. “Do you think there’s a pattern here?”
Underneath, despite an unbelievable amount of careful preparations and extensive promotion, Garth was nervous about the outcome. “I have nightmares about this show,” he said. “I dream that I run out on the stage and Central Park is completely empty.”
The Garth Factor Page 22
