The Garth Factor

by Patsi Bale Cox

  In October 2000, he was a surprise performer when Allen Reynolds was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for writing songs including “Five O’Clock World,” “I Saw Linda Yesterday,” “Ready For The Times To Get Better,” and “I Recall A Gypsy Woman.” Garth sang a medley including “Five O’Clock World” and “I Saw Linda Yesterday.”

  When a friend pointed out that in recent years Reynolds had primarily been known as a producer, he answered, “Songwriting brought me to the music industry in the first place, and a love of great songs is what brought Garth and I together. I can’t explain how much it meant to me that he came out for the induction. And, speaking of inductions, there’s not a doubt in my mind that Garth Brooks should be in the Songwriters Hall of Fame—as well, I might add, as the Country Music Hall of Fame.”

  Garth also co-produced a film project with Whoopi Goldberg, Call Me Claus. The film was a Columbia Tri-Star production, in association with Red Strokes Entertainment and Whoopi’s One Ho Productions. Call Me Claus starred Whoopi and featured new music by Garth, who said he learned a great deal during the filming. In the recording studio, as on tour, he could be in complete charge. But he soon found that in the making of a film, he had to rely on others.

  “Whoopi takes orders from no one,” Garth laughed to AP Radio. “And there’s a good reason for that. She’s smart. She’s very smart. When it comes to TV, and when it comes to Whoopi, nobody knows Whoopi more than her!”

  The year 2000 was filled with special appearances. In January, he was one of the artists who sang a medley of Burt Bacharach songs in tribute to the composer at the seventy-second annual Academy Awards at the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium. With Nanci Griffith in March, he guest starred in Don McLean’s first-ever television special, Starry Starry Night, on PBS. Also in 2000, Garth was the featured artist on Austin City Limits’ twenty-fifth anniversary show on PBS. The pilot episode of Austin City Limits had been taped on October 17, 1974, in a University of Texas TV studio and starred Willie Nelson and Family. Garth first taped Austin City Limits in 1990, when he told the show’s producer, Terry Lickona, that the experience felt like being a ballplayer and making it to the World Series. Then there was the hat tip that made Garth laugh: Playgirl named him one of the eight hottest celebrity cowboys, along with actors Matthew McConaughey and Johnny Depp.

  But a private drama cast a pall over that entire summer and fall. The inconclusive tests that Garth’s friend Chris LeDoux had ignored almost a decade earlier came back to haunt him in 2000. He began to feel fatigued, in his words, “out-of-kilter.” It wasn’t anything specific, but Chris knew that something was wrong. When he went to a doctor that summer, he heard bad news. The diagnosis was primary sclerosing cholangitis, a serious liver ailment that requires a transplant. But, the doctors told Chris, everything depended on finding a match.

  When Garth got the news he was devastated. It would have been one thing if his stepping in with financial help could have made a difference. He had done that for various people through the years, always very quietly. But money couldn’t help Chris LeDoux. Only a transplant match could do that.

  Finally in October, Chris did find a match, and underwent successful surgery. At first Chris kept the news quiet, but speculation heightened about shows canceled and hospital stays. At that time, he released a letter to his fans. This is a portion of what Chris wrote: “I was in pretty bad shape when I checked into the University of Nebraska Medical Center in October. Garth Brooks had already been there taking tests to see if he could donate part of his own liver, willing to risk his own life to save mine. But it was not to be. His liver wasn’t compatible. Garth was determined to keep his action secret, but I thought people ought to know.”

  Chris finished his letter with a short piece of advice for his fans: “Life is a miraculous and mysterious thing. It can be beautiful, and it can turn downright ugly. Enjoy the good parts.”

  THE AVERAGE LENGTH OF a first marriage prior to a divorce is eight years. Garth and Sandy had been married for fourteen. They had gone the extra mile time and again to save their marriage, even renewing their vows in 1996. But Garth had been solidly on the road, in the studio, or traveling to one personal appearance or another for years. Their lives had become so separate that at one point Sandy even had her own fan club.

  When they went back to Oklahoma it was soon obvious that their children were what they had left in common. At that point, as in so many marriages, a decision has to be made. Do you stay married “for the children” or do you divorce in time to retain a good relationship with each other as parents. Garth and Sandy opted for the latter solution, determining that the best option.

  Garth knew an announcement would have to be made, especially since Sandy did not plan to attend the biggest party of his career. In October 2000, Capitol Records planned to throw a black-tie party at the Nashville Arena celebrating Garth’s passing the 100 million sales mark, a feat unmatched by any other solo artist in history.

  The week prior to the celebration, Billboard’s Melinda Newman interviewed Garth and he spoke about the divorce, saying, “Right now, we’re focusing on the impact it will have on the children and how to handle that. We want to remain parents, even if we don’t remain husband and wife.”

  The primary focus of the interview was Garth as an artist. In answer to what sorts of events had affected him more than the 100 million sales, he answered, “Truthfully, there are so many other things in my career that have affected me more. Like the first No. 1, “If Tomorrow Never Comes.” Getting to play Central Park. Getting my very first platinum and gold record, getting to play Fan Fair, getting to play the Opry. This wasn’t one of those ‘stand on the mountain’ things, going, ‘I made it to here’ kind of feelings. Which I thought it would be.”

  He took the opportunity to make an additional point about his sales. “The Recording Industry Association was sweet to give us the largest-selling solo act in history, but I think we all know it’s Elvis. It’s just the method of counting wasn’t as certifiable then as it is now. It’s cool and everything, but at the same time please know that I’m seeing it with a very real look.”

  Newman also asked Garth to address the misunderstandings about his career. “Well, I don’t think I’m misunderstood by the public. I think the public sees me as a guy who will fight for his music, will die for his music, and has been tough about that. I think the industry, as a majority, feels I do things for numbers. And the people that think that about Garth Brooks don’t have a clue who I am.”

  In the days approaching the celebration, Garth thought about what his achievement really meant, and about the challenges he had faced over the years. The conclusions he came to about why he’d been able to succeed to this remarkable extent appeared complicated, yet in reality were stunningly simple. Among other things, he recalled some advice a friend had given him years earlier: “It was something that most of us could take to heart,” he confided. “She said, ‘Be sure you know who’s willing to ride shotgun and who’s just along for the ride.’ ”

  At a news conference just prior to the event, Garth reiterated that he was no longer touring and that his career was not his top priority. “I’ve done my career with the old saying, ‘Burn bright, burn fast.’ ”

  He went on to talk about possible new projects—an album still owed Capitol, a duet project with Trisha Yearwood, and another soundtrack album. But for the time being, fatherhood took precedence: “My children and I are together every day. And every night I tuck those children in, and I’m responsible for their safety. I feel good about that.”

  On the night of his gala, when he listened to words of praise sent from luminaries ranging from President Bill Clinton to Whitney Houston, he discovered that the high didn’t compare to hearing his first record on the radio, or to being inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. And on the night of his 100 million party he was not surprised that, as thrills went, cheering for a soccer-playing daughter had replaced receiving the applause of the past ten years.
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  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  If you ever wonder what happened to me

  Garth sat alone in a back room at Bob Doyle’s office, listening to songs for the final album he owed Capitol. He was incredibly frustrated and suffering from writer’s block. He was still depressed because of his mother’s death, and worried that his father was in even worse emotional shape.

  As he opened yet another box of tapes Allen Reynolds had recommended, he was reminded of a piece of advice Jerry Kennedy had given him during his first year in Nashville: “The song you’re looking for is on the tape you haven’t listened to yet.”

  EVEN THOUGH CAPITOL’S PARENT company, EMI, reported pretax earnings up 8 percent in 1999, the market share had tumbled. EMI believed it was due in great part to the lack of a big seller from Garth Brooks. That knowledge alone would not have brought Garth back to Nashville. The truth was, while he loved his time at home, he missed making music.

  Former Arista record executive Mike Dungan had taken over at Capitol. Dungan kept Garth’s team at the label, including longtime press agent Karen Byrd, who was vice president, public relations. In making the announcement, Capitol Group president/CEO Roy Lott (also formerly with Arista) said that Pat Quigley had never been considered a permanent label head, but one hired for the interim. Dungan, said Lott, was chosen for his ability to spot and develop talent.

  Dungan had practically grown up in the music business. Born and raised in Cincinnati, Mike started working part-time in a record store as a young teenager, a job he kept through college. After graduating with a degree in biology, he took a job with RCA’s pop promotion division, working his way up to a regional manager position before moving to sales with RCA’s parent company, BMG. In 1990 Arista’s Tim DuBois hired Dungan to head the Nashville label’s sales and marketing. In 1998 he was named general manager of the label, and in 2000 he came to Capitol as its new president.

  Mike and Garth got along from the beginning, sharing a mutual respect. Dungan also treated the staff very well, and that went a long way with Garth. Moreover, the new label head understood the most important thing there was to know about Garth Brooks: his music wasn’t negotiable. Dungan had no interest in strong-arming him about specific cuts or recording techniques. What Garth had been doing had connected with millions of fans and Dungan felt no need to try and get in charge of it. Perhaps if Mike had come along in 1995, Garth would have stayed at Capitol. But by the year 2000 he was burnt out on major labels. His attitude could best be illustrated with his two favorite Ricky Skaggs quotes:

  1: “Life’s too short to live like this.”

  2: “Life’s too long to live like this.”

  But one last album loomed. Dungan wasn’t surprised when Garth finally came to him and said he was ready to record. Each time the two spoke, Garth got more enthusiastic as he talked about making music. “It was just a matter of time,” Dungan later said with a laugh.

  “I honestly didn’t know if I was up to making a record yet,” Garth told a friend. “But both Allen [Reynolds] and Bob [Doyle] convinced me that I needed to get back in the studio. I felt like I’d been out of the loop for so long that I didn’t even know if I could still write a decent song.”

  Garth was also worried about the state of country music. Nashville labels were actively promoting singles to pop radio, pop stations were playing more country records, and there was a decline in the numbers of country stations across the nation. The biggest problem, as he saw it, was that pop deejays would never admit that the records they were spinning were country. “A whole new group of fans will grow up not realizing that this music is coming out of Nashville.”

  Given Garth’s writing worries, Reynolds put the word out: bring on the tapes. In the end, the two listened to over ten thousand songs. “Everyone in Nashville knew I’d had a hard time with Mom’s death,” Garth said. “And we didn’t want people thinking they should pitch me a bunch of ‘downer’ material because of it. So Allen told publishers not to try and second-guess the album. In the end, the songs did have a lot to do with my personal life. But it happened in an organic way, not contrived.”

  One thing both artist and producer agreed on was that Nashville writers were better than ever. They found hundreds of extraordinary songs, many of them from new writers they’d not previously been aware of. It portended well for the industry but, too often, not for Garth’s sessions. “I heard songs I thought would be smashes for half the artists in town,” Garth laughed. “I’d be suggesting that the writers get that song to Tim McGraw and this one to Deana Carter and another one to Reba. But I didn’t hear so many that were right for me. It makes you wonder if time has passed you by.”

  Approaching his return to the studio with great trepidation, Garth admitted that he felt his hands tightening up and his throat getting dry at first. He continued to have a hard time writing, and considered scrapping the entire album several times. “Allen Reynolds told me, ‘I’d tell you if I thought it was time to quit, and it isn’t,’ ” Garth said.

  In the end, Garth decided to title the new album Scarecrow because, “In Oz, the Scarecrow led with his heart. But remember, he was brainless,” he laughed. “That pretty much sums me up.”

  In fact, Allen Reynolds insisted that Garth stay true to his heart through the entire process, from writing his own material, to listening to outside songs, to the recording itself. “I’ve always advised Garth to stay close to his emotions when he records. This time those emotions ran the gamut, and they all ended up on the record,” says Allen Reynolds. “It is very difficult, this far into a career, to stay fresh, but Garth accomplished it by staying honest with himself about everything he was feeling.”

  And so, once again, Garth’s album was a reflection of a time in his life, one that combines extreme lows and highs. Many of the songs on Scarecrow address family, with one speaking directly to his devastated father. “I had trouble after Mom’s death, but I knew I had to pull myself back. Dad wasn’t even trying. My sister and my brothers and I kept attempting to bring him out of his shell, but nothing seemed to work. Then I heard a song by Kevin Welch, who was one of the first artists I met when I moved to Nashville in 1987. The song was titled ‘Pushing Up Daisies.’ ”

  Kevin allowed Garth to modify the lyrics somewhat to fit what he wanted to say to his dad, that he must break the cycle of wishing he, too, had died, that he couldn’t go on without Colleen by his side.

  “Dad responded to ‘Pushing Up Daisies’ in that it drove home how much we all wanted him back,” Garth told a friend. “But it wasn’t any cure.”

  “Thicker Than Blood,” written with Jenny Yates, was another song aimed at family. “This song was also for my dad, to show him what a wonderful life he and Mom made for us kids,” Garth confided. “Our family was the old ‘yours, mine, and ours’ story. This song paid tribute to how my parents made it work.”

  One self-penned song on the album raised eyebrows, “The Storm,” which addresses surviving a breakup. Of course, that was a topic Garth had written of many times, but this time was different because he was getting a divorce. “The Storm” is about those times in life when the storm finally catches up to you, and you realize that you can survive it.

  “Yes, the song is autobiographical in a way,” he said. “It could have been written about a man or a woman. And I’ve found that the personal songs on this album have been healing, not depressing.”

  Garth explained to a friend: “I needed to open up. The two albums I probably revealed the most on have been The Chase and Scarecrow. There’s some dark moments on Scarecrow, but there’s also laughter. It was like that scene in Steel Magnolias, where the woman buries her daughter, and standing at the cemetery, she shouts, ‘I want to hit somebody!’ One of her friends pushes another woman toward her and says, ‘Here, hit her!’ And even though it’s the saddest situation you can imagine, you break up laughing.

  “I know it’s a cliché, but you really do laugh to keep from crying. That’s what I felt while we ma
de Scarecrow. I’d find myself with the worst blues, then turn around and find something so lighthearted, so funny. Eventually those emotions smooth out, and you get back on some kind of an even keel. It’s a process you go through trying to remember that you are still alive.”

  When Garth talks about Scarecrow, he often brings up the musical side of it. He points to the accordion playing by Joey Miskulin on “Pushing Up Daisies” and the string arrangements by Dennis Burnside on “When You Come Back To Me Again.”

  “One of my favorite things about this album is the instrumentation on ‘Don’t Cross The River.’ It’s an old America cut, but strangely, I hadn’t heard it. The version I heard was done by Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, with Jerry Douglas playing Dobro. I got Jerry to come in and play on the song, and he told me that the Lawson cut was his very first session.”

  Another favorite musical moment came on “Wrapped Up In You,” when Terry McMillian traded harmonica licks with fiddle player Jimmy Mattingly. “The best part of that whole song happened when I stopped singing,” Garth laughed.

  The video for “Wrapped Up In You” took Garth back to something he told Bob Doyle when the two first met. When Bob asked him if he could summarize one thing he’d like to do with his music, Garth thought a moment, then said, “Bring it out to the front porch.” What he visualized was music that reflected family, close-knit ties, and laid-back living. Main street. And in the “Wrapped Up In You” video, he took that concept to a general store in small-town America, with townspeople and tradesmen using brooms, checkers, and wooden blocks to set a percussive mood.

  There was a duet with George Jones, one of his idols, called “Beer Run,” which George also included on his 2001 album, The Rock: Stone Cold Country. George released it as a single in October 2001, and it hit number 24, his highest-charting single since 1997. Garth laughed about being on record with the Possum: “He lapped my ass one hundred times while he was singing. I thought, ‘Shit, I can’t compete with this.’ So I just did the best I could.”