by Bruce Feiler
So how did he do it? “It’s kind of like herding cattle,” Travis said. “I’d walk offstage every night and go, ‘You, you, you, you, you, and you. I would cull maybe six or seven, rent a conference room in the hotel, and have my guys set it up. Then it’s one big party.” This part of the evening was for screening the candidates. “That’s your opportunity to sit down and talk to them,” he said, “find out which ones suit your taste, which ones don’t. Then once you get it narrowed down to the two or three, you move those on up to your hotel room. Or, there’s a possibility, depending on what the temperature of the situation is, you may put three of them in three different rooms.” And what were his criteria for selection? “Obviously, it was appealing to the eye,” Travis said. “This is a guy who never had any kind of attention from females in school. And once I did get it, it was nowhere near these gorgeous babes. I mean, these girls looked like they stepped out of Cosmo, Penthouse, or Playboy. And they’re there. For the picking. Every night. And they don’t want commitment!” All of which leads to the obvious question: Why did they do it? “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s because it makes them look more important. Or if they feel it’s their only connection to someone famous. It’s kind of like the old syndrome of touching the hem of the garment. If they feel like they can be associated with an artist, they know people are going to talk about them. She’s going to walk down the street and people are going to say, ‘She slept with so and so.’ I guess some people find that glamorous. And as far as I was concerned, I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
The potentially explosive mix of violence and sex has led to a new growth industry: backstage passes. Invented in the 1970s as a way to standardize backstage admittance to rock shows, passes arrived in abundance in Nashville in the late 1980s when country acts started hitting it big. On Alan Jackson’s tour, for example, the singer had seven different kinds of stick-on passes: rectangular for BACKSTAGE, square for PRESS, diamond for MEET & GREET, and triangular, circular, and octagonal for different categories of GUEST. Each stick-on was printed in both red and green versions, which the road manager alternated daily to confuse posers. “We figure we’ll be far enough away by the third day,” he told me, “so someone won’t drive and try to reuse the same color.” The ultimate pass, laminated and given only to permanent staffers and, presumably, the artist’s mother, was ALL ACCESS. On the Garth tour, this pass was considered so sacred it actually contained a passport photograph of the bearer and a hologram of the artist’s trademark. When I failed to have even my temporary pass on display just hours before his opening concert, two burly cops promptly lifted me from the arena floor, carried me up the stairs to the lobby, and tossed me, like a hammerthrow, outside the Omni door. Having been at the building nearly twenty-four hours by that point, however, I knew precisely how to sneak around the back and enter Garth’s dressing room from behind. It didn’t hurt that Garth’s mother knew my name.
The main reason, of course, for all this heavy breathing among security personnel is the presence of so many heavy-breathing fans out there. Backstage passes—stick-ons, that is—have several pejorative nicknames on the road (“knee pads” are one example) growing out of their widespread use as commodities to be exchanged for sex. It’s not that the stars need backstage passes to land dates—usually a wink, a nod, and a road manager can get the lucky fan or two backstage. Instead, it’s the crew. Many road crews have what they call a “bimbo pass,” which offers wearers after-show access only. A crew member ushers a young damsel backstage with the promise of unexplored wonders and a potential spot on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” (“The fan who met her hubby behind the curtain and went on to fulfill his every dream…”), only to find that (Oops! Who knew?) the star has unexpectedly departed and the only person left to fulfill her fantasies is the second light rig assistant.
Even journalists have been known to benefit from such refracted glory. I was once flirting with two women at a Brooks & Dunn concert in Nashville. “Oh, you should be talking to my friend,” the prettier of the women said to me dismissively. “She’s single.” As soon as she noticed the laminate around my neck, however, she changed her mind. “Wait, you have a backstage pass,” she cooed. “In that case, I’m a single too.”
All of these components of fan management are never more evident than in the largest contact sport in Nashville, the grand ole orgy of country music, Fan Fair. Though it takes place at a location normally reserved for cows and pigs, Fan Fair, like much of country music, is actually something of a sitting duck. Just the idea of thousands of fans converging on middle Tennessee in the middle of summer to eat corn dogs, listen to fiddle playing, and wait in interminable lines for the chance to receive a hug and peck from some Stetson-wearing good ol’ boy (or girl) is often too much for cynical observers to pass up. Even if those observers are part of the country music industry, the target is still irresistible. “The real question about Fan Fair,” Wade’s publicist said to me just days before I attended my first, “is whether polyester conducts heat?” Minutes later, after I told her I was writing about the event, she quickly retorted, “Now, don’t go write something snide.”
To be fair, there are many parts of Fan Fair that even the most sympathetic person would find extraordinary. One is the nature of the gathering itself. Try to imagine, say, Barbra Streisand or the members of Megadeth shelling out thousands of dollars of their own money to build what looks like an overgrown science fair booth, complete with fake paneling and faux haystacks, behind which they then sit for hours at a time, sign autographs, and receive silk roses with tiny vials of perfume attached. Country artists not only do this, but most participate in what amounts to an internal rivalry to outcountrify one another. Alan Jackson decorates his booth every year to look like a storybook farm, complete with a white picket fence and hanging plants. John Berry builds a simulated front porch. Pam Tillis topped everyone when she sliced a motorboat in half and attached it to the back wall of her booth to draw attention to her upcoming song “Betty’s Got a Bass Boat.” Her effort still didn’t compete with the Oak Ridge Boys, who continue to earn “aaahs” of admiration for their 1982 stunt of arriving at the fairgrounds by helicopter.
Behind this veneer of country excess is a remarkably enduring, even warmhearted tradition. Fan Fair was started in April 1972 as a way to bring country music fans into closer contact with the genre’s artists: superstars, unheralded newcomers, and a sprinkling of flat-out eccentrics. Originally held in a downtown arena, the event drew five thousand fans in its first year alone for a mix of concerts and autograph sessions. The following year it doubled in size. In 1982, to accommodate even more fans, the event moved to the hilly yet barren Tennessee State Fairgrounds not far from Music Row. Since then, it has become both the highlight and the dreaded swamp of the country music year. Artists sometimes complain about the cost (most not only pay for their booths but also spend thousands more to feed their fan clubs at the obligatory picnic), but fans love it. For $90 dollars, they get admission to five days of events at the fairgrounds, as well as entrance to Opryland U.S.A., and the Hall of Fame. At the fairgrounds alone, fans have a choice between an ongoing series of concerts and display halls where they can meet the stars. Attendees end up declaring their allegiance early on. “I can go to a concert anytime,” said a lawn-care worker from Kentucky who carried a special scrapbook with over 100 pages of signed portraits of country stars, “but you don’t always get a chance to get autographs. You come up here, you get to meet your favorites, and if that means you have to wait eighteen, nineteen hours in line to get there, well, that’s how it is.”
While this level of dedication is the hallmark of Fan Fair, it also raises a question: Why would someone wait in line eighteen hours for an autograph? What explains this degree of devotion? After leaving the line of people waiting to meet Garth on day two, I drove fifteen miles on I-40 out to Hermitage Landing, the lakeside marina several miles from the antebellum plantation whe
re Andrew Jackson once lived. It was the location Wade had selected to host his first fan club picnic. About four hundred people were gathered on the beach when I arrived, lying on blankets and dancing in the sand as Wade and his band gave a free show on a small stage. The sun was setting on the piney vista behind the drummer. Every now and then, a plane would dip, silhouetted across the orange sky, on its way to land at Nashville International Airport.
“As y’all may know, we have a new album coming out next week,” Wade told the sympathetic crowd that included his parents, standing peacock-proud at the rear. Wade was wearing blue jeans and an orange button-down shirt. He had a yellow pin on his shirt that said: ON A GOOD NIGHT: COMING JUNE 25. “We’d like to play you some new material off that album,” Wade said. “If y’all don’t mind, that is.”
He launched into an introduction of “On a Good Night.” “As you know, it’s been on the charts several months now,” Wade said, treating his fans like they were part of his business team. “I pretty much get nauseous when those charts come ’round every Monday. I watch ’em close. And I tell you, the Top 20 is just jammed up right now. We’ve got so many good folks with new records out. Vince and Wynonna, for example. But ours is still going up. We’ve jumped another two records this week, even though there’s no place to go.” The audience broke into applause. “Vince’s single went back two places,” he continued, “as did Wynonna’s. And they’ve still got bullets, which means they’re not through yet,” Would he tell them about the number of station adds? I wondered. What about the research? “But they’re lettin’ us sneak through, which is pretty nice.” More applause, this time with screams. “We might just have another hit on our hands!”
After the show, Wade retired to a nearby shed where the volunteer president of his fan club had set up a small barn scene that mimicked his latest video. Wade settled in front of a red barn door covered with horseshoes, posed for pictures, and signed autographs atop several hay bales. He would stay there for the next four hours. Outside, 100 or so people milled around the picnic tables finishing their complimentary meals and trading gossip. The chief stories this night: Alison Krauss had lost fifty pounds on a mysterious crash diet; Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, long rumored to be a couple, had begun French-kissing onstage (“Locking tongues like snakes,” one woman told me); and Alan Jackson’s wife Denise had stood up at his event at the Ryman and said she wanted to end the rumors that her husband was also having an affair with Faith. “The only women in Alan’s life are Allie and Mattie,” she announced, referring to his daughters. As one shocked fan from Alabama recalled, “I almost fell out. If you’re secure in your marriage, why do you say that?”
Across the grass, I ran into Trish Fuller, the best example I had met of a devoted fan. Trish, forty-five, was the postmaster of Mason City, Iowa. She had shoulder-length black hair, a slightly beaked nose, and a friendly Midwestern accent. On this day, she was wearing her signature Wade Hayes jean jacket. I had first met Trish several months earlier after a Wade concert in Owensboro, Kentucky, a fourteen-hour drive from Mason City. Since that time, she had also seen him in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a six-hour drive from her home, and Severville, Tennessee, a twenty-hour drive. “I got this tour jacket at last year’s Fan Fair,” she explained. Then Wade had written: “Trish, Thank you for spending my first Fan Fair with me.” This year he had added, “To Trish, The First Fan Club Party.” She also owned two Wade pillowcases, she explained, a poster, and a set of Wade dog tags, all of which she had purchased from his fan club. Her Iowa license plate said WADE FAN, and when Wade didn’t believe her, she brought the license to him, took his picture holding it, and made that into her keychain. Then she put the picture of him and the license on the front of a T-shirt, and on the back she listed all the dates and places she had seen him in concert. It totaled nine states; twenty-three locations; 15,683 miles. “It started when he told me that Trish is also his mother’s name,” Trish explained. “Obviously he could remember my name. We developed a really special relationship.”
“And do you consider yourself a groupie?” I asked.
Suddenly her tone became serious. “There’s nothing sexual about this,” she said. “This is what I do. This is what’s important to me. I sincerely like country music. And country artists, there’s nothing like them. You don’t see the Spin Doctors meeting with their fans. It’s just totally different. And I’m glad it is. It’s just really special to me to be able to meet that person whose music I enjoy listening to and whose songs really move me. Then to get to meet them and know what they’re like, that’s what special about Nashville.”
Back at the fairgrounds, it was almost midnight when I arrived. The evening concert had long since finished, and the nightly fireworks had long since been fired. The only people left inside the facility were the several hundred fans who were still in line to get their audience with Garth Brooks. Garth had been signing for fourteen hours and, according to the people in line, still hadn’t broken for food or relief. It was the perfect expression of his mind-set at that time: the stubborn hero. Would his fans have minded if he interrupted his signing for a few bites of a hamburger?
More striking, though, was the reaction of everyone around him. Close to four hundred people stretched in calmly snaking fashion from one end of the football-field-sized shed to the other. A half dozen cops stood idly by, drinking coffee and nodding off. Soon it began to rain. The temperature dipped. By any measure, this should have been the hour when tempers started to flare. It turned out to be the opposite: a country version of Lord of the Flies, where people formed alliances instead of rabid packs. One group of linemates played charades. Another strapped umbrellas onto their heads and simulated a bullfight by waving ponchos. A group of women used a cellular telephone to call Domino’s and have them deliver a pizza. When it arrived, though, they decided it wouldn’t be right to eat it alone. “We’re doing a Garth Brooks deed,” one of the women said. “We’re going down the line just feeding the children.” Several hours later, a man near the end of the line ran out of cigarettes. He offered to buy one from a neighbor for a dollar. The neighbor, having only three, declined, pleading addiction. The man went to the next person in line, who also declined. “I’ve got ten, but I’m kind of a heavy smoker,” he confessed. Finally a nearby woman had eleven. She sold the first man a cigarette, who lit it and passed it to the second, who passed it to the third, who passed it back to the woman—each of them taking several drags. “Never seen each other before,” one observer remarked with utter admiration, “and here they’re smoking the same cigarette. It’s like a bunch of inmates in jail.”
By half past six in the morning, the sky started to lighten and the mood turned to celebration. A reporter from “Good Morning America” set up a camera to do a live remote broadcast and had to urge the audience to act more subdued, as if they were tired from staying up all night. As soon as the light on the camera went on, though, the fans cheered. They were part of a history-making stunt, and they were proud of themselves. Back at the front, meanwhile, Garth was starting to strain. His eyes were narrow and bloodshot. He was leaning against the fence. A cup of undrunk Dr Pepper had sweat through the bottom of its container. At nine, the camera of a woman in front of the line broke, and Garth, exhausted, said, “We’re doing the hard part here.” Whereas six months earlier, on the verge of his return to the public eye, Garth had signed autographs at the Grand Ole Opry until the middle of the night and seemed, at the time, to be drawing energy from his fans; now, feeling battered and bruised by six months of decline, his effort to push himself beyond what was humanly possible seemed more desperate. Plus, it wasn’t working. Instead of Garth drawing strength from his fans, this time his fans seemed to be drawing strength from him.
At the start of the twenty-fourth hour, there were eight people in line and, now that Fan Fair had reopened, a huge throng of gawkers pressed around the hastily formed police line to watch the end of the sideshow. When the last person, Shirley Johnson of Fontana, Cali
fornia, stepped up to have Garth sign two shirts, a poster, and a cowboy hat, a giant roar rose up from the crowd. “I just can’t believe I’m here,” she said. “I’ll never forget this the rest of my life.” Garth, by this time, could hardly speak. He gave her one last hug and smiled blankly at the empty space where once the line had stood. He gathered up the notes and wilted flowers that were scattered around his feet and hobbled toward the exit route that Mick had carefully cleared. The transfer of power was now complete. Garth Brooks had nothing left to give; his fans had taken it all.
SIXTEEN
THE LAUNCH
On the last Tuesday in June, Wade Hayes’s mother was standing in her cramped, naturally lit kitchen off a clay road in Bethel Acres, Oklahoma, baking a loaf of banana bread. The persimmons and cottonwoods just outside her window provided a layer of protective shade in an unusually arid summer. Over her kitchen table, a single-room air conditioner was straining to cool a three-room area that already, at nine o’clock in the morning, was filling with the hurryings of the day’s homecoming. Today was the day that On a Good Night, her son’s second album, would go on sale from Key West to Puget Sound. Today, his young career would confront its most critical sophomore exam. And today, his first since striking it rich in the manner his father had always dreamed, Wade would make his long-awaited return to the no-stoplight town an hour’s drive southwest of Oklahoma City that didn’t even have a post office, but that did have what was even more important for this ceremonial-cum-commercial occasion: a Wal-Mart.
