The Garth Factor

by Patsi Bale Cox

  DeCaro went on: “The intensity of the criticism of role-playing is surprising. Alter egos, after all, are not exactly an unprecedented career move. Two decades ago, David Bowie unveiled his most famous alter ego, Ziggy Stardust—which also was initially derided as too strange for words.”

  Perhaps it was due to the fact that Garth appeared in “character” before there was a film, but the identity questions started to overwhelm the conversation. In October 1999, Rolling Stone’s David Wild, while giving the CD an uneven review, said Garth should be given credit for trying something different, but suggests that he is “confronting some serious identity issues.” And some press began to report industry insiders claimed that the real reason for “Chris Gaines” was to remove Garth from the isolated world of country music. Yet no one said who these industry insiders were.

  Some couldn’t separate the Chris Gaines sales figures from Garth’s. The Daily News called the Gaines first-week sales “feeble by Brooks’ usual standards, selling 262,067 copies and opening on Billboard’s Top 200 at #2. Brooks’ last album, Double Live, moved 1,085,000 copies in its first week.” (Garth Brooks in… the Life of Chris Gaines has since been certified with over 2 million in sales.)

  Others tried to compare the song selections in Chris Gaines to Garth’s own releases. In January 2000, the L.A. Times called Chris Gaines a bad idea, because it contained no “character-filled songs” such as “The Dance” and “Unanswered Prayers.”

  Some, when referring to the Chris Gaines biographical material and character-development copy that Garth had taken such pains to compose, refused to consider it an exercise in fiction writing. “He’s even handing out a bio recreating himself as a brilliant rock icon.” Thank God this crowd wasn’t as wild about critiquing music as storytelling when Willie Nelson released Red Headed Stranger as a concept album and later as a western movie.

  Not everyone in the media discounted Chris Gaines as a case of multiple personalities. David Sokol wrote this first-person account in Stereophile:

  I recently played various cuts from this album for a half-dozen unsuspecting friends—not a scientific sampling, to be sure, but these cronies know their music. None had a clue that they were listening to the biggest-selling solo artist of all time.

  “Sounds like the Doobie Brothers,” said one female thirty-something know-it-all on hearing “Snow In July.” A slightly older newspaper sales rep (it says ‘account executive’ on his business card) insisted that “Way Of The Girl” had to be Bad Company singer Paul Rogers. And there was heated debate when “Unsigned Letter” came on. “Rick Springfield! The Wallflowers! Donovan… ?”

  And on and on. “It Don’t Matter To The Sun” reminded some of David Gates and Bread. And the last track, “My Love Tells Me So,” elicited cries of Badfinger, Paul McCartney, Emitt Rhodes, and The Rutles. Other songs invoked Kenny Loggins, the Youngbloods, and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.”

  How can one guy be singing all these songs? And how come they sound so good?

  Sokol concluded: “Give Brooks some credit… he’s invented a character whose character will never be confused with his creator, and whose record will surely stump your friends.”

  Garth continued to promote the project, which sold 2 million. He kept up a positive attitude in public, but in private, he was upset that the project was being misrepresented. He was proud of the album, believed in it. When The Lamb was put on hold, press accounts left the impression that it was because of the negative publicity. In truth, the reason The Lamb had not gotten to production stages was that the film’s writer, Jeb Stuart, faced a lengthy family medical crisis when his wife, Anne, fell ill. Garth didn’t feel it was right to replace him under the circumstances.

  And while he was let down by the experience, he could fall back on a life philosophy he’d long acknowledged: “Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. When it’s all over you just hope the wins outnumber the losses.”

  In the end, given the reactions from pals of Stereophile’s Sokol, one must consider what would have happened if the advance soundtrack had been released anonymously. It might very well have had the same outcome as Charley Pride’s welcoming launch. Concerned that country radio would reject a black artist out-of-hand, RCA sent his first records out with no photo. By the time people figured it out, the music was already accepted.

  SOME MUSIC ROW EXECUTIVES took great delight in the Chris Gaines commotion, less because of Garth than as a reaction to Pat Quigley. It was strangely reminiscent of the Music Row party Bowen had thrown when Ropin’ the Wind topped the pop and country charts. When some declined the invitation, it had been more about the label head than about the artist.

  After moving to Nashville, Quigley had made few friends in his peer group. His brash personality and cutting the price of CDs having made him a pariah in most executive circles. But the real problem lay not with Row-felt opinion, but the feelings of his employees. Garth had been right when he said he wanted a co-presidency at Capitol, because Quigley turned out to be a marketing marvel but ill equipped to lead the Nashville staff. The problems had started soon after he came on board.

  One of the qualities Garth had most appreciated in Pat Quigley had been his willingness to take a project and run with it. He was a self-starter, willing to play a lone hand if warranted and single-mindedly dedicated to his job: marketing and selling records. But at Capitol he seemed unable to delegate or utilize the team. Quigley loved dealing directly with artists, gave them his personal phone numbers and encouraged them to deal with him, not others on the staff. Individual duties were usurped, and many started to wonder why they were even there.

  Pat Quigley was also disdainful of many country traditions, vastly preferring pop country to any hint of traditionalism. He even trademarked the term “Town and Country” supposedly as country music’s new name. Citing artists like Shania Twain and Faith Hill, Quigley insisted that it was the concept of country music that needed to change, suggesting that people were more intelligent than the music being offered them. “Country for me in Manhattan was the Hamptons,” he told the New York Times. “Why does country have to be some backwoods place in Deliverance?”

  Going for a name change wasn’t a new idea. After country dropped the “western” part of its name, some at the Grand Ole Opry went so far as to suggest changing it to “American” music, but it didn’t take. Country listeners were better educated than, say, in the 1950s, and the numbers of artists with college degrees was growing. But the listeners couldn’t have cared less about a change in I.D. In fact, many fans were reportedly miffed at the idea, whether they preferred pop or traditionalist trends.

  Then there was the joke that spread through Nashville to the point that it became a tiresome story. When talking about a potential John Berry duet with the late Patsy Cline, a Capitol employee said it was doubtful that Cline’s Decca masters were available from MCA. Quigley brushed that aside and asked why they couldn’t just get Patsy to record with John.

  “Uh, because she’s dead?” The employee answered.

  Reports from Capitol staffers didn’t help Quigley’s profile on the Row. He often called employees “hillbillies” and his favorite joke was

  Question: “What do you call a New Yorker in Nashville?”

  Answer: “Boss!”

  Curiously, Capitol employees reported that they never heard him tell that joke or mention Deliverance when Garth Brooks was at the label.

  Quigley had his defenders within the label. Both John Berry and Steve Wariner saw him as an astute marketer who was genuinely concerned with their careers and their music. Berry believed he received enormously important input from Quigley. Wariner, surely a gem in the business, tried to warn Quigley that he wasn’t always showing his best side. “I seem to spend a lot of time defending him to friends around town,” Steve laughed. And some employees claimed Quigley was misunderstood.

  “I never saw the rude side of Pat,” said one staffer who had been with the label since the Bowen day
s. “And I think he genuinely tried his best on behalf of the artists. I remember one time he called me into his office worried about an artist’s latest recording. He said he’d been up all night worrying that it wasn’t up to par. He didn’t want to have to turn it down, but didn’t know what else to do. I had the feeling that his anguish was real.”

  In May 1998, music journalist Beverly Keel wrote a lengthy article for the popular weekly alternative publication, the Nashville Scene. The piece was titled “Will Pat Quigley Destroy Music Row?” Keel wrote,

  Quigley usually remains easygoing. But when he defends himself against his critics, he reveals a side his employees regularly see. Quigley has already won a reputation as a screamer and an intimidator. “There’s a support group for people who worked for me,” he told one employee. “They might not have liked me but they all learned something. Shut up, listen and learn.”

  The attitude apparently hasn’t played well with Capitol’s rank and file. Many staffers say they are looking for other jobs; others say morale is at an all-time low. “He says we’re like a family, but he hasn’t bothered to learn everyone’s name,” says one employee. “I hate coming in here every day.”

  Keel’s article pointed out that Pat Quigley was under fire from some in the business for “jumping on the bandwagon of paying radio stations to back announce songs [naming artist and title], dedicating $500,000 to a campaign to make it easier for listeners to identify songs on the radio.” In Quigley’s defense, this action was taken after the Country Music Association had conducted a groundbreaking nationwide survey that showed a whopping 92 percent of country listeners resented the fact that artists were not identified by deejays spinning their tunes.

  Other criticisms coming from the Row included Quigley’s pricing of Garth’s Limited Series, released the same month the article was published. The set sold for around twenty-eight dollars, compared to box sets selling for fifty to a hundred dollars.

  But Keel made an astute summation of Quigley and his critics, a stinging conclusion that unfortunately went right over a lot of heads: “Then again, for Music Row, the only thing more dangerous than Pat Quigley failing would be Pat Quigley succeeding. What if other barbarians were to follow him through the gate? Imagine a spate of multiple-CD box sets at affordable prices. Imagine major artists having a say in every facet of their labels’ operations. Imagine the country music industry—shudder—controlled by Yankees. Nashville resists nothing so vigorously as new ideas.”

  And you couldn’t argue with success. In 1998 one in every ten country records sold was a Garth Brooks record and Capitol was the most profitable label in town.

  Despite comments made by some staff members for the 1998 Nashville Scene article, when talking to Garth the employees who disliked Quigley downplayed their growing dissatisfaction. Even when Garth specifically asked how things were going internally, his friends at the label denied any real problems. Most employees had intense loyalties to Garth. He stood on their side on many occasions: saved their jobs, backed up decisions, and in one instance, sent a car every day for nearly a year to pick up an employee whose surgery had left her unable to drive. They believed that Garth’s music hadn’t been adequately promoted under the previous regime. So in a strange way, many of the rank and file saw themselves as protecting him by staying quiet.

  That changed in 1999. When a Capitol employee quit suddenly and unexpectedly, Garth phoned a close contact at the label and asked her what was going on. The young woman broke down and told Garth exactly what had been happening, including the lack of respect, the rude comments, and the indignity of being made the butt of bad jokes. It was true, she said, morale was in the toilet. Garth told her to do one thing for him.

  “Don’t mention this conversation. I’m going to call a staff meeting and I don’t want anyone—not the other employees and not Pat—to know you had anything to do with this. I don’t want any fallout coming at you.”

  Garth was at the label within the hour to meet with the staff alone. He explained that no one should fear for his or her job or the way they’d be treated in the future. He wanted people to tell him how they felt and how he could make things better. It took some urging but they had their say. Garth listened as one by one people came forward and spoke of being discounted at best and insulted at worst.

  Before Garth left he promised that things would change. People close to the label head believed that this meeting convinced Quigley he had lost credibility with the man who’d gotten him the gig. Quigley had other concerns, because EMI was once again going through reorganization. Jim Fifield was gone. Sir Colin Southgate had retired under harsh criticisms. Fortune’s Frank Rose addressed the Chairman’s exit:

  “Not three years ago, Sir Colin Southgate was the toast of British industry. As chairman of EMI, the $5.4 billion music giant, he’d saved a national institution, transforming the sickly, grab-bag conglomerate that was Thorn EMI into a global music powerhouse. Today his company is in free fall. EMI’s stock has dropped from a high of about $13 a share to a recent price of below $8. Little wonder that in a poll of London fund managers, Sir Colin was voted Britain’s Most Disappointing CEO, with 40% of the vote.”

  In May 1999, Eric Nicoli, the former CEO of United Biscuits, took over as interim chairman. Ken Berry remained as head of EMI Recorded Music. But the company remained in upheaval. As Fortune described it, “The company has lurched from crisis to crisis: Southgate’s designated heir, Jim Fifield, making his exit after a sudden boardroom putsch; press reports about Ken Berry’s wife cavorting with rock stars; the stock showing a pulse mainly when a new takeover rumor surfaces. ‘It reads like a crappy novel,’ says one high-level victim. ‘Intrigue, jealousy—all that stuff.’

  “ ‘You do know what EMI stands for, don’t you?’ retorts one embittered refugee. ‘Every Mistake Imaginable.’ ”

  It was an environment that left everyone at top corporate levels about as nervous as Nashville label employees had been back in the old days, when Jimmy Bowen was thought to be considering taking over their company.

  Garth played no active role when Pat Quigley was removed the following year. Far more important in that particular corporate shuffle was the fact that EMI was involved in yet another quest to sell the company, creating cutbacks and maneuvering at every level of the business. When Billboard asked Garth about that meeting he’d called with the label’s staff, he downplayed it. “I just offered to step in and listen,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Say it ain’t so, Garth”

  My mother could always see the positive side of things,” Garth told a friend. “She called it ‘Seeing sunshine in the middle of a storm.’ ” He stared at the floor for a few minutes, then shook his head.

  “I had such good parents,” he went on. “And I worry about how I’m doing in the job. Mom was always so supportive of anything we wanted to try. And Dad was there to help us develop at sports. You know, I think Taylor’s capable of being a first-class soccer player,” he said. “I’ve been on tour and doing a million other things while Taylor could have used a dad there helping her develop into a soccer champ. That makes me feel like hell.”

  REACTION TO CHRIS GAINES hit Garth hard, but it wasn’t what knocked him to his knees in 1999. That was his mother’s death, an event that not only hurt him to the core, but also caused him to take a hard look at his own life.

  Colleen’s death brought Garth face to face with how a parent so completely affects children’s lives, and caused him to again question the time he was spending with his daughters. So he slowed down. He had finished a Christmas album, and owed Capitol one more, but that could wait. He had been talking about his need for family time for years, and he had longed for some kind of normalcy in his relationship with his girls.

  “I want them to dare to fly, to make stupid mistakes and learn from them,” he said. “I want them to be foolish—and I want them to be responsible. Life only goes by once—let’s rip it up!”

  Over th
e next months, while Garth spent time with Sandy and the children, he began to realize just what his time on tour had done. It had separated him from his wife—they had grown apart at an alarming rate—and he worried that he had lost touch with his daughters’ lives and progress. He saw something that unnerved him: his daughters had talents that he hadn’t been around to encourage adequately.

  So in December 1999, when Garth dropped the retirement bomb on The Nashville Network’s Crook & Chase, many of those close to him were not surprised. When he said he was thinking about hanging it up sometime in the next year to spend more time with his wife and daughters, ages three, five, and seven, it seemed a natural outcome.

  “Throughout Garth’s career he had told me that when his children got to the age that they couldn’t be out on the road with him, he would retire,” says producer Allen Reynolds. “This was no big secret. Everyone around him knew it. I can’t even say how many times I heard him tell me or others that his parents had been there for him, and he planned to be there for his own children.”

  The long 1996–1998 tour and other issues firmed up his decision. “The announcement certainly didn’t come as a surprise to me,” says national promotion VP Terry Stevens. “Between the touring, his mother’s death, and wanting to save his marriage and be a good father, it was almost a given that he would retire on some level. In my mind, anybody even half listening to what Garth had been saying knew that he was knocking on retirement’s door, and ready to walk inside.”

  After his first daughter, Taylor, was born in 1992, Garth said he would have to see if his career had gotten so big and pressure-filled that he couldn’t function as a dad. If it became impossible he’d consider quitting. In April 1994, when his second child, August, was due during his two-year world tour, he again speculated about leaving the business. And as he told journalist Michael McCall, when in 1995 he dressed as Mickey Mouse and took Taylor and August trick-or-treating on Halloween, “I’ve never been happier than that night. I was just another big mouse with a bag full of candy.”