The Garth Factor

by Patsi Bale Cox

  But in recent years Garth had spoken less about retiring. Many times when he publicly worried about his home life and possible retirement, it was perceived as some sort of Machiavellian marketing maneuver, an effort to sell albums or concert tickets. He’d been burned enough by those charges to make the effort to stay silent when speaking on the record. Instead, he waited until the 1999 Crook & Chase moment.

  As Garth explained on the show, “I never, ever thought in my life I’d say this, but music is not the first thing in my life anymore. Those girls somehow come along and all of a sudden, all you want to do is make them smile.”

  When host Lorianne Crook tried to pin him down, he said he would probably just “lay low” for the next nine or ten months and announce a retirement sometime in the year 2000. But, he said, retirement for him primarily meant that after the grueling three-year tour that had taken him away from his daughters for too long, he would not go on the road.

  “I was talking to my dad the other day on the phone, and I said, ‘Dad, Taylor is seven years old. When I was four years old I could run circles around her playing baseball.’ And I said, ‘That’s because I have the dad I’ve got and she’s got the dad she’s got.’ And you just look at it and go, man, it’s time to step up and take care of the responsibility that I took on seven years ago when we had our baby.”

  Lorianne was aghast, asking him if he felt like he’d been a bad father. “I feel like I’ve been a good dad all the times I’ve been home. But, you know, if you do something, if you put your name on something, then you give everything you’ve got to it. Well, I put my name on that baby seven years ago, and August and Allie, but somehow I’ve been able to justify it by saying I was out making a living for the family. I think it’s time to sit in and focus.”

  Clearly befuddled, both Charlie Chase and Lorianne Crook attempted to get Garth to really define this “retirement.” Finally Charlie said, “I don’t think it’s to the point where the only time we see you is at the drive-through of Taco Bell.”

  Garth laughed at the mention of his famously favorite fast-food establishment. “You can see me a lot there right now.”

  He would, he explained, continue to write songs and, he hoped, work on some film scripts for his production company, Red Strokes. No matter how people viewed the Chris Gaines album as a soundtrack for The Lamb, Garth’s enthusiasm for scriptwriting had not dimmed. “Writing seems to be what my bag is,” he said.

  Some were skeptical. ASCAP’s Connie Bradley said she wouldn’t believe it until she saw it happen. And some of Garth’s friends and fellow songwriters wondered if he was just tired, and after a few months might change his mind. Pat Quigley told the Tennessean’s Tom Roland that he wasn’t 100 percent sure that Garth would really walk away.

  Garth spokesman Scott Stem put it in perspective: “He’s saying that for right now fatherhood needs to be his priority and that’s where he’s putting his attention.”

  Media response was immediate. The following day the Nashville Tennessean headline read, “Life After Garth? Music Row Faces Impossible Challenge If Brooks Bows Out.”

  A follow-up article lamented, “Say It Ain’t So, Garth.”

  Ed Benson, executive director of the Country Music Association, told the Tennessean, “Somebody’s got to wake up in the morning on Music Row and figure out: who do we put in that spot, and how quickly do we get them selling multi-platinum records? Over the last decade Garth’s the artist who had the most sales impact in our business, and maybe in music.” The AP’s Jim Patterson wrote (December 17), “It’s hard to overestimate Brooks’ impact on country music. In 1998 he accounted for more than 10 percent of the industry’s total sales of 73 million albums. This year his US sales stand at 3.1 million with a week left in the holiday season, according to SoundScan.”

  Lon Helton, country music editor for trade magazine Radio & Records, weighed in with the AP’s Jim Patterson on Garth’s tour impact: “When he went through a market, he helped country radio stations gain a couple of shares. You could feel Garth in the marketplace. You could feel Garth at the record stores. Half of selling records is getting people into the store. He brought them in and maybe they’d buy something else.”

  Ben Farrell, president of Lon Varnell Enterprises, one of the promoters Garth worked with on his 1996–1998 tour, said that Garth and Elvis were “the two strongest touring acts to ever set foot on the North American concert stage, without question.” And Buddy Lee president Tony Conway called Garth “the most significant country touring artist that ever existed.”

  R&R’s Helton worried that the intensity of criticism Garth Brooks in… the Life of Chris Gaines had received was playing into his decision. “I hope he doesn’t view it as a failure. He tried to do something new and different. It’s always the pioneers who come back with arrows in the butt.”

  Garth understood slings and arrows. As far back as 1993, when pop and rock critics had turned their ire in his direction, a close industry friend talked with Garth about a conversation with Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson. “This had to happen,” Benson had said. “Everybody’s always gonna try to tackle the guy carrying the ball.”

  Garth had laughed at the sports analogy. “Yeah. I guess that’s why it’s good to have some people out there blocking for you!”

  Frequent collaborator Victoria Shaw (“The River” and “She’s Every Woman”) lamented the genre’s loss of Garth as a writer and performer of great songs. “Garth is one of the people cutting the most interesting songs, and that’s what makes me sad. It’s one down for people with guts to say something interesting and push the envelope.”

  Several currents were at work in the industry during that time, and some of them spelled potential trouble for the business of country music. Consolidation was the motto of the business world, and radio, record stores, and labels were being sucked into conglomerates that intensified pressure on bottom-line thinking. Major labels were laying off staff members and rumors floated of a shutting down of newer companies, where executives were seldom given time to develop a substantial roster. Publishers worried that singers were leaning toward writing much of their own material rather than drawing from Nashville’s rich song pool.

  However, there were positives when it came to country artists and durability. Looking back on the artists signed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we see a large number of them exhibited considerable staying power. The singers who were just trying to make it into a recording studio about a decade earlier—Trisha Yearwood, Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt, Tim McGraw—had become a very successful establishment.

  The females, especially, were a diverse lot: glamorous pop-flavored figures like Shania Twain and Faith Hill; the lasting appeal of a Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride, or Reba McEntire; and the edgy traditional-weds-rock sound of the Dixie Chicks. New and tougher-imaged women like Terri Clark and Jo Dee Messina made chart news. Sara Evans made a splash that year with her first number 1 single, “No Place That Far,” from the RCA album of the same name. But those successes were dwarfed by the men: Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, George Strait, Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Trace Adkins, Mark Chesnutt, and Lonestar. Brooks & Dunn and Tim McGraw, in particular, had utilized tours that effectively translated to sales.

  Brad Paisley was an act with staying power, first charting in 1999. His “He Didn’t Have To Be” was the second single, and first number 1, from his platinum-selling Arista debut, Who Needs Pictures. Just a year later, he won the CMA’s Horizon Award. The West Virginia native brought strong country credentials with him to Nashville, having started opening shows for artists including Ricky Skaggs and George Jones when he was only thirteen. He signed a publishing deal with EMI prior to obtaining a record deal, and wrote hits including David Kersh’s “Another You.” Like Keith Urban, Paisley brought both song-writing and formidable guitar skills to the Nashville table.

  Keith Urban’s solo debut, “It’s A Love Thing,” only reached the Top 20 in 1999, but
the following year he started a string of hits that included “But For The Grace Of God,” “Where The Blacktop Ends,” and “Somebody Like You,” which stayed at number 1 for six weeks. Interestingly, given the singer’s impending chart dominance, in 2000, Capitol had difficulties rounding up New York media figures who were interested enough to attend a reception in his honor. That lack of interest quickly vanished and, at long last, Capitol Records in Nashville had produced another superstar.

  The top-charting singles in 1999 were Alan Jackson’s “Right On The Money,” Martina McBride’s “Wrong Again,” Jo Dee Messina’s “Stand Beside Me,” Mark Chesnutt’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing,” Sara Evans’s “No Place That Far,” the Dixie Chicks’s “You Were Mine,” and Kenny Chesney’s “How Forever Feels.” Nashville had by now welcomed Clint Black’s “movie star” wife, Lisa Hartman, into the fold, and the two performed their duet, “When I Said I Do,” on the CMA awards show. The song was another of the year’s top singles.

  The striking thing about 1999’s top singles (devised by monitored airplay time) is how the list had grown steadily shorter over the years. Shrinking playlists had been a trend for a while and consolidation exacerbated it. In 1999, for example, the list included eighteen releases. Through the 1980s the same year-end lists usually contained around fifty singles. Radio not only had continued to shorten playlists, but to keep songs in the top spots longer, which kept many records off the airwaves. For example, in 1999, Kenny Chesney’s “How Forever Feels” stayed at number 1 for six weeks; Tim McGraw’s “Something Like That” and “Please Remember Me,” five weeks each; George Strait’s “Write This Down,” four weeks; Martina McBride’s “I Love You,” five weeks; and Lonestar’s “Amazed,” eighteen weeks. So during a fifty-two-week period of time, five artists dominated the top of the charts for thirty-three weeks. And between the end of 1998 and early 2000, the Dixie Chicks spent twelve weeks at number 1 with five releases.

  Lonestar was the biggest news of the year. One of the group’s two lead vocalists, John Rich, had been fired from the band in 1998, so after the overwhelming success of “Amazed,” a good many people in Nashville thought he’d missed the Big Time Bus. But Rich took his energy and talents in another direction. With “Big” Kenny Alphin, Jon Nicholson, and Corey Gierman, Rich founded the MuzikMafia, a loosely organized jam session headquartered at Nashville’s Pub of Love. The Mafia encouraged and supported people who might not otherwise have gotten a shot, most notably Gretchen Wilson. Among his biggest song-writing hits are, “Like We Never Loved At All” (Faith Hill and Tim McGraw) and “Redneck Woman,” “When I Think About Cheatin’,” and “All Jacked Up” (Gretchen Wilson). As an artist (Big & Rich), a writer, producer, and new talent proponent, Rich has given far more to the industry than he would have swapping Lonestar vocals with Richie McDonald. John Rich’s kind of innovation was just what Nashville needed.

  It was becoming painfully obvious that new talent had to have room to grow in Nashville, because far fewer were breaking through. With too much targeting of the youth market, a smaller number of singles making it to number 1, and fewer breakout artists, it’s not surprising that country music found itself with a shrinking number of big-selling acts. George Strait, Garth Brooks, the Chicks, Shania Twain, Tim and Faith, Reba, Martina, and Trisha, among others, could sell multiples of platinum, but of the next in line, only a few, such as Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, and Rascal Flatts, would sustain multiple platinum sales.

  By 1999 most executives understood that Garth Brooks was a phenomenon that was not likely to happen again, especially by design. “Find me the next Garth Brooks” had been replaced by “Find me a few acts that can together sell on those levels.” And they had quit trying to predict who was going to even come close. One of Nashville’s most respected producers, Paul Worley (Dixie Chicks, Martina McBride), told the Tennessean’s Jay Orr and Tom Roland that the thought process had changed: “No one would have predicted Garth’s huge success when he was developing as an artist. Nobody predicted the Dixie Chicks’ success when they were developing as artists. I love their music the way I love most of the music I work on. Why does it translate into something larger than life? It has a lot to do with the qualities of the artists as human beings.”

  DETERMINED TO SAVE THEIR marriage, in early 2000 Garth and Sandy bought a farm near Sandy’s parents’ home in Oklahoma, and a short trip away from Raymond Brooks’s house. The new property had several hundred acres, barns, and a small house. “Nobody ever tried to stay married more than Garth did,” Allen Reynolds says. “I’ve never seen anyone work as hard to put things back together.”

  In addition to working on the marriage, Garth was also very serious about being a better father and son.

  “I wanted to stay close to Dad, because Mom’s death hit him very hard,” he said. “Years back, when this whole career got so big, my dad told me that I better remember that I was no longer living in the real world. And he was right. But after Mom died, I realized that both my dad and I needed to get back to the world. For me, a big part of it was taking care of the girls. I started hanging out in the kitchen, learning to cook, making the girls’ lunches. I found out that I really liked doing it, too.”

  Although Garth spent a great deal of time at home, he was no recluse. He continued to work on his lifelong dream of playing with a professional baseball team, joining the Padres and the Mets whenever possible to raise money for his Teammates for Kids Foundation (originally named the Touch ’Em All Foundation) incorporated in 1999 in Colorado. Teammates for Kids, still located in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colorado, is run day-to-day by co-founder/president Bo Mitchell, formerly a chaplain with the Denver Nuggets. It is a nonprofit that contributes financial resources to selected nonprofit organizations that effectively serve and benefit children with an emphasis on health, education, and inner-city needs. The foundation enlists sports figures who will contribute a predetermined sum based on selected categories of on-field performance.

  Private donors and corporate sponsorships then match the athletes’ contributions. Funds are distributed to various organizations that serve children, especially in the areas of health and education.

  Garth and Mitchell developed an operating system with every precaution taken against the criticisms celebrity-connected foundations sometimes receive. Merrill Lynch oversees donations, and an accounting firm provides an audit available to any ballplayer who has contributed. Garth had seen one too many charities lose credibility because of misused funds and excessive overhead. To ensure the foundation remain, in Garth’s terms, “squeaky clean,” all donations go directly to charitable gifts while expenses and overhead funds are raised privately and through special events. The Teammates for Kids Foundation has raised over $17 million for child-related charities throughout the world.

  Baseball was both invigorating and humbling for Garth. He was up to bat twenty-two times with the Padres and only got one base hit, off Mike Sirotka of the White Sox. And he realized that age was catching up with him. When asked why he hadn’t been at the workout room as much as he might have, Garth’s answer was, “I don’t need to stretch. I’m so slow I can’t possibly get hurt.” By the time he got to the Mets, Garth said he’d decided to take George Brett’s advice to heart: “Swing hard. You might hit it.”

  IN APRIL 2000 HE brought the audience of 45,000 to its feet singing “Freedom” with George Michael at Equality Rocks, a concert benefiting the Human Rights Campaign Foundation at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. It was an all-star affair turning the spotlight on gay rights, with performances by artists including Melissa Etheridge, Chaka Khan, and the Pet Shop Boys. And in case anyone thought the blond woman playing drums on several songs looked familiar at first glance, a second look showed her to be Tipper Gore.

  Garth got involved with Equality Rocks through his friend and Red Strokes partner, Lisa Sanderson, who was co-executive producer, and learned early in the booking process that some straight performers were uncomfortable at t
he thought of playing Equality Rocks. Lisa spoke to Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Willman: “There was some resistance felt even in the entertainment industry, which is the most liberal of all.”

  Sanderson told Willman that part of Garth’s interest involved Equality Rocks’ heavy concentration on hate crimes and how they affect the children in our society. “Garth’s gonna stand on that stage to try to make people hear that the violence with our children in all communities has gone way too far.”

  Willman “got it” and wrote about it, but some reporters didn’t receive the memo. Given Garth’s advocacy for human rights, and the lyrics of his hard-fought-for song “We Shall Be Free,” it was surprising that anyone questioned his solid support for the event.

  “Does anyone in my family think it’s odd that a non-homosexual is at what some refer to as a ‘homosexual event’?” Garth responded at one news conference. “I’m here because it’s Equality Rocks for human rights. I’m not here for gay, straight, white, or black. I’m here hoping that our intelligence will rise a step forward, get beyond the fences that we’ve put up ourselves. That someday we will look and say that we are all human—and that is true equality.”

  The gay community never forgot Garth’s support. In 2002 the Washington Blade, a prominent gay publication, listed “We Shall Be Free” as one of the all-time most important songs inspiring pride in gays, saying, “Every movement talks about support both from within and from ‘outside.’ For gays, this means ‘straights.’ The struggle for equality can’t work without them. That’s why Garth Brooks’ song about personal rights and freedoms is so important. He’s straight, hugely famous, and asks his hordes of country fans to love one another and let everyone else love whom they choose.”