The Garth Factor

by Patsi Bale Cox

  Stillwater was an important part of Garth’s show and career, with each member playing a vital role.

  Mike Palmer had started playing drums for the band in 1987. On the entire Garth Double Live package, Palmer never missed a beat. “He’s always been a great drummer,” Garth said. “But when we were in Ireland, I passed on some advice Allen Reynolds had given me and told Mike to try playing on the back side of the beat for that big fat sound. After a couple of shows he came over and said, ‘Man, I wish you’d told me that years ago!’ ”

  James Garver played lead electric guitar as well as percussion, banjo, and acoustic guitar. “I just loved it when James headed into one of his solos and all the guys out there in the audience were on their feet playing air guitar with him—’cause that’s what his playing made me feel like doing, too,” Garth said, laughing. James was one of Garth’s original band, as was steel player Steve McClure. James and Steve started playing music together back in their native Kansas, and the two made the move to Nashville together.

  Mark Greenwood provided most of the bass on Double Live. (Garth’s sister, Betsy Smittle, played bass on “If Tomorrow Never Comes” and “Much Too Young,” the two cuts gleaned from the Reunion Arena show.) “Listen to Mark playing that kickin’ bass on ‘Papa Loved Mama,’ ” Garth noted. “It’s flawless. And the performance was all the more impressive when you saw us play the song, with Mark running around the stage like a wild man, all of us joking with each other.

  “One of the things I’m proudest about on this album is the tight rhythm tracks. Dave Gant started out as our fiddle player. But when we added Jimmy Mattingly on fiddle, Dave settled in on the keys. So between his keys, Mark’s bass, Mike’s drums, and Debbie Nims’s rhythm guitar, our rhythm section was locked up tight. Debbie is also a stand-up bass player, and her rhythm guitar is as good as anybody out there.

  “Béla Fleck came in and added some banjo on ‘Callin’ Baton Rouge,’ and he even mentioned how the live music swelled and surged with emotion. That’s where the rhythm section made for a great, solid track.”

  One thing Garth listened for when he went through years of performances was audience reaction. “We went and found where people got pin-dropping quiet during the ballads, where they sang ‘Unanswered Prayers’ the loudest and where it was absolute chaos during the rowdy stuff,” Garth told Glenn Gamboa. “Hopefully we got the best of all worlds.” But, he added, listening to his onstage vocals wasn’t always a pleasant experience. “You want a humbling experience? Listen to yourself on a recording straight off the board. You come off stage saying, ‘We killed ’em, we killed ’em,’ and you listen to it and think, ‘My God, that’s killing me.’ ”

  Aside from the problem of somehow conveying the visual excitement, putting this double-album project together was difficult because the tracks came from tours dating back to 1991. Aside from the obvious, that the band got tighter and the audiences wilder over the years, some technical improvements had been made to the show. The system was upgraded from eighteen to thirty-six monitors because of the band’s tendency to run all over the stage. And while the additions were made because of the live show, they certainly improved the recordings.

  There remained one very important consideration, and Garth agonized over it: how “live” should they leave the project?

  “There were some decisions to be made. After Allen and I talked it over, I decided that to reflect how the tours changed over the years, we should use some of the early performances. Allen convinced me to do some studio work, things like replacing an out-of-tune guitar here and there, and adding the choir to ‘We Shall Be Free’—that sort of thing. We put the studio touches on when we felt to do otherwise compromised the music. We added Béla Fleck and a choir to the live performance of ‘We Shall Be Free.’

  “So I’m uneasy about saying this is a ‘live’ album. When I think of the live albums I’ve loved through the years several immediately come to mind—Frampton Comes Alive, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, KISS Alive. Those are the great live albums. I don’t regret the few additions and changes we made, but I do want to acknowledge that they’re there.”

  It was while they worked on the live album that Garth discovered a new song he wanted to add to the project. Benita Hill had written “It’s Your Song” when her mother, Chicago big band singer Carmen Revelle, became ill. In the song, Benita gave credit to her singing mother for the things she’d accomplished in her own life.

  The reason Benita questioned showing Garth this song was because she knew that Colleen Brooks was very sick and the prognosis was not good. But she also believed there was something in “It’s Your Song” that Garth needed to hear.

  As it turned out, Garth wanted to include something for his mother on his upcoming Double Live album. He’d been trying to write such a song for his mother ever since he started out in the music business, but the words never came, and were even more elusive once Colleen became ill. Tears began to fall as he listened to Benita’s lyrics, which spoke of her mother’s love giving her wings. “It’s Your Song” did go on Double Live, and was a Top 10 single.

  “My mother always told me I could fly,” Garth said. “And I believed her.”

  CAPITOL RELEASED SIX DIFFERENT CD packages. One was a first edition marked with a silver foil label and accompanied by a booklet containing an overview of Garth’s career. The remaining sets reflected five tour experiences: Central Park; Dublin, Ireland; Reunion Arena, 1991; Texas Stadium, 1993; and the 1996–1998 World Tour. Some critics decried the various sets as nothing more than a marketing ploy. And in fact, many fans did purchase a copy of each of the packages as collectibles. But releasing limited-edition recordings was nothing new. Just a month before Double Live went on sale, numbered editions of The Best of U2: 1980–1990 hit Canadian stores and the Beatles’ remastered White Album (The Beatles) had serial numbers like the original vinyl copies. Similar limited editions were released on Frank Sinatra and Queen, and acts including KISS had released CDs with a variety of covers.

  Retailers were salivating over upcoming releases from major artists: Garth Brooks, Whitney Houston, Wu-Tang Clan, Jewel, Seal. Some started calling November 17, the day Double Live was set to hit stores, Super Tuesday. Predictions varied but most agreed that sales could increase 20 to 30 percent over the previous year.

  On the day of its release, Garth and the band played a concert in Los Angeles exclusively for Wal-Mart customers. The show was beamed via satellite into the electronics departments of 2,300 Wal-Mart stores throughout the United States. But even before the show started, fans had shown up. Business Wire reported:

  They lined the streets at dawn to be first at the counter. They created record-breaking sell-outs in record-setting time. They sang, they danced, they bonded with others in line with them. No, it wasn’t another Garth Brooks live show. It was Garth Brooks Double Live, the CMA Entertainer of the Year’s first live album, and the fans rushed to record stores all across the country. The buying frenzy began at midnight and continued throughout the day for Garth Brooks Double Live.

  In Rockford, Illinois, hundreds of music lovers arrived at Media Play at midnight, grabbing more than 300 copies of the album. The crowd started forming at 5:00 a.m. at Tower Records in Sacramento, where 400 albums were sold in two hours. A Sam Goody store in Ventura sold all their Garth Brooks Double Live supply in two hours, and made their usual full-day total in dollars in one hour.

  A Blockbuster Music in Dallas held a Mariah Carey/Whitney Houston promotion in connection with a local radio station. Garth Brooks Double Live outsold both of them. In Edwardsville, Pennsylvania, fans snapped up more than 1,000 copies of the album by 5 p.m. at Gallery of Sound. KFRG, a California radio station, asking for canned goods in connection with their Garth Brooks album promotional at the Wherehouse, collected more than 8,000 pounds of food in 2 hours, and sold out of their entire stock of Garth Brooks Double Live at the same time.

  Double Live sold over a million copies during the first
week, breaking a previous record set by Pearl Jam’s Vs in 1993. Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man came in second with 410,000 sales. Despite Double Live’s performance, first-week pop releases fell short of sales expectations. Whitney Houston’s My Love Is Your Love sold far less than Arista had hoped for, as did Mariah Carey’s Columbia hits package. Seal’s Human Being on Warner Bros. shocked retailers by finishing ahead of Houston. But the big surprise was Jewel’s Spirit on Atlantic, which finished right behind Double Live in many markets. Many retailers had underestimated Jewel’s potential on Super Tuesday because the audience for her folky music was deemed more mature, less likely to show up at record stores for a first-day purchase. But others speculated Garth’s live set benefited her by bringing in the more country and folk-friendly masses. Double Live went on to sell 21 million albums.

  The Buffalo News named Double Live one of the best albums released in 1998. Dan Herbeck put together an eclectic list of picks, including the Dixie Chicks’ Wide Open Spaces, Travis Tritt’s No Looking Over My Shoulder, Jim Lauderdale’s Whisper, the Thompson Brothers Band’s Blame It on the Dog, Faith Hill’s Faith, Randy Scruggs’s Crown of Jewels, Vince Gill’s The Key, the Joey Miskulin Band’s Warner Western Instrumental Series Volume I, Ray Charles’s Complete Country and Western Recordings, and the soundtrack for The Horse Whisperer, which included songs by Emmylou Harris, Allison Moorer, Dwight Yoakam, and the Flatlanders. Herbeck also gave a hat tip to Buffalo’s Steam Donkeys’ Little Honky Tonks, writing, “This roadhouse band reminds me of old Commander Cody and His Lost Airmen.”

  Taken as a whole, the Buffalo News listing showed garage band, honky-tonk, and roadhouse running right alongside contemporary country. Those close to him would tell you that this list is a pretty good example of the wide assortment of country music Garth Brooks loves. There’s the western side of the music in Miskulin’s work, the great vocals of Vince Gill, the singer/ songwriter tradition of Jim Lauderdale, and the sassy female attitude of the Dixie Chicks. Material ranges from classic compositions found on the Ray Charles recordings to works from new writers appearing on Faith Hill’s album.

  Most important, every album represents an identifiable artist and sound. And Garth was becoming more and more convinced that too many artists that he heard on radio were starting to sound alike. “I hope we don’t see too many artists developed just in the studios,” he told a friend. “An artist’s sound needs the road, the clubs, and the live audiences to find its soul.”

  Bob Doyle agreed. “I sometimes worry that people think we are just in the recording business, where too often it’s about the latest technology. We are in the entertainment business. To make a lasting impact—like George Strait and Randy Travis—careers need to be developed outside of Nashville, on the road. There’s a validity to these artists.

  “I know that some people think it’s just hits that sell records, but I believe that’s wrong. Tickets sell albums. It’s the people who come to these shows and have that experience who become solid fans. And I think you learn things about your music on tour that you never get in Nashville. Garth would hear one thing in the offices of Nashville, then go out playing live and hear the truth from the public. They’ll tell you when something’s working—and when it’s not.”

  The concerns were well founded. It had been a rough year for country newcomers. Radio consolidation had drastically affected the size of playlists, and few new acts made an impact. In fact, only the Dixie Chicks could claim a move into superstar territory with their 1998 string of chart-topping hits: “There’s Your Trouble,” “Wide Open Spaces,” and “You Were Mine” from Wide Open Spaces, which went on to become one of the biggest-selling albums in country history. And with those three singles, the Chicks stayed at number 1 for two months. The Chicks were no studio creation. Founded in 1989 by multi-instrumentalist sisters Martie and Emily Erwin, the band had several releases and played steadily on the road with some success. But it was in 1995, when Natalie Maines came on board as lead singer, that the group signed with Sony Records’ Monument label and took off. Natalie was the daughter of steel player/producer Lloyd Maines, who’d often appeared on Chicks’ recordings.

  Their wide-ranging song choices were in many ways reminiscent of Garth’s. They loved the ballads (“You Were Mine”), themes like murder and mayhem (“Goodbye Earl”), tongue-in-cheek truisms (“There’s Your Trouble”), and sex (“Sin Wagon”). Like Garth, they took chances and, more often than not, benefited from the risks.

  GARTH WOUND UP HIS historical three-year World Tour on November 19 through 21, 1998, with three sold-out shows at Reed Arena in College Station, Texas, with opening act Trisha Yearwood. Pollstar named it the Country Tour of the Year for 1997 and 1998. Amusement Business’s Ray Waddell provided the wrap-up to the record-breaking three-year tour (November 16, 1998): “The total gross tops $105 million, from 350 shows in 100 cities that drew close to 5.5 million people. It is easily the top country music tour of all time and likely the biggest arena tour ever.”

  Garth responded to AB: “I’m not going to say that we were the biggest tour ever, but we were hell-bent on making sure everybody who wanted a ticket got one.”

  Being on the road and away from Nashville had helped tremendously during Garth’s label difficulties. As he told Waddell, “If [the controversy] showed up at all on the road, it was in a way that you would want, people holding up signs like ‘Keep fighting for us.’ That’s a nice thing to say… [the road] is where all the bullshit stops and things become real. That’s where the artist meets the people. No business gets in the way, no hype.

  “In all fairness, I thrive in that environment because it’s been good to me. The true test of character is when things don’t go well. Everybody is always talking about paying dues. I don’t remember that part. It’s always been a blast, whether it was 20 people in a club, or 20,000 in an arena.”

  In December Amusement Business named Garth and George Strait as country’s top 1998 touring acts: “In terms of numbers, Strait came out on top, with seventeen of his nineteen Country Music Festival dates finishing in the top twenty-five for the year. But in terms of sheer people and dollars pulled from one city, the honor goes to Garth, with his nine-night stand at Target Center in Minneapolis coming in as the top BOXSCORE of the year, or any other year.” As Varnell Enterprises Ben Farrell said, “When you put these two men [George Strait and Garth Brooks] together they are the most phenomenal back-to-back story in the history of the country music business.”

  On the heels of his concert tour de force, Garth’s sales hit 82 million. But Garth often downplayed the horse-race aspect of his numbers. When asked about his potential for passing the Beatles by the San Francisco Examiner’s Gary Graff, Garth said, “[The Beatles] had some double albums that didn’t count as double albums at the time, eight-tracks, stuff like that. We’re not close. It’s not a goal. If we do pass the Beatles, it’ll be because they haven’t reassessed them yet. When they do—forget it. With the numbers stuff, you just have to take it with a grain of salt. Yeah, you feel proud, but the true guy in me has to say, ‘Come on—you’re not on the level of the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, James Taylor, Billy Joel and 100 more guys.’ ”

  Garth found himself with some time on his hands after the final show of his three-year world tour. When the tour wrapped, he closed GB Management, giving his employees and musicians two years’ salary and benefits. “They traded ten years of their lives to chase my dream,” he explained to the Daily Oklahoman. “They’re good people. Everybody is taken care of for the next two years whether they work or not.” During his early years on the road, Garth had seen a consistent problem: musicians with no security. One of the first things he did when any money came in was to set up his operation so that in addition to being paid very well, everyone had health insurance. When he closed up shop, he didn’t want to leave people hanging.

  Garth was only too happy to be able to spend more time at home. The lengthy tour had again reminded him of the time he
spent away from family, and he spoke about it often out on the road. Capitol’s VP of national promotion, Terry Stevens, was often with Garth on the road, and believed him when the star started talking about retiring. “The deejays he met with didn’t make an issue out of his statements, but Garth often mentioned a growing belief that he would not be able to do another tour of this magnitude while his children were small.”

  It was during this time that Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds approached Garth about an unusual film project. Finally, after years of being characterized as a marketing mastermind, Garth put together a blueprint combining music and film promotion. Ironically, no one would believe it was a marketing plan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Has Garth lost his freakin’ mind?”

  It was the second time that Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds had called Garth about the film project he and his wife, Tracey Edmonds, were passionate about. It was a movie they’d tentatively titled The Lamb, a thriller that focused on the life of an international pop/rock superstar named Chris Gaines. Babyface wanted Garth on board.

  “We think you’re the guy who can take on the role of Gaines and put together a soundtrack of greatest hits for this character,” Babyface explained for the second time. “Look, we’ve got one of the best scriptwriters in the business working on this, Jeb Stuart. Think Die Hard. Think The Fugitive.”

  “Man, I don’t know,” Garth said, weakening a little. “Don’t you think you need a rocker to play a rocker? What about Prince? He’d be great. I might be lousy.”

  “No, no, no!” Babyface was adamant. “We think you could pull this off better than anybody in the business. We want you and Paramount wants you. Besides, Tracey and I will be right beside you. You can’t fall that hard.”

  BETWEEN 1997 AND 1999 Garth received some of the music press’s highest accolades. Performance magazine readers named him Country Act of the Year for the sixth time. Newsweek called him “the most-loved country singer in history.” And Playboy named him the Male Country Vocalist of 1997. People magazine readers named Garth their Favorite Male Singer, with runners-up including Elton John, George Strait, Michael Bolton, and Elvis. He became the first artist to win four Entertainer of the Year awards from the CMA, besting the record three wins he had earlier tied with Alabama. And he received the 1998 Distinguished Artist Award from the Music Center of Los Angeles. Past winners included Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon, and Shirley MacLaine.