Dreaming Out Loud

by Bruce Feiler

  Finally, and saddest of all, Garth became isolated from the town. On a warm, sunny day some months into his tour, Garth returned to Nashville for what should have been the highlight of his career. Capitol Records was spending a whopping $80,000 to throw a party for six hundred people to celebrate Garth’s having sold 60 million records. The party was held at the Sunset Studios, the cavernous television studio where Wynonna had taped her special with Bette Midler. With all the equipment removed, the room was an enormous, windowless black box several hundred feet long in every direction. In homage to the number of records he had sold, the room had been decorated from top to bottom with memorabilia from the sixties: psychedelic banners, spinning black-and-white kaleidoscope wheels, a Volkswagen bus, even go-go dancers in white vinyl boots gyrating atop towering centerpieces. Plus, everyone was required to come in costume. “It was my idea that if you don’t come in costume, you’re out of here,” Garth told me. “We didn’t want anybody thinking this was a big industry party. This is a thing among friends, a thing among dreamers.” Amid the sea of Deadheads and mop-tops, a few look-alikes had been hired to work the room. Jackie O was there. As was Batman. Even John Wayne himself, who later posed for a picture with Garth in front of the VW bus.

  For the first hour or so, guests mingled, ogled the costumes, and groused about the refreshments. (Despite all the guests wearing tie-dye and toting joints, there was no liquor served, an irony that even Billboard felt obliged to point out: “For God’s sake, why does a man who’s richer than God serve no alcohol at his party?”) Finally a small ceremony ensued. At Garth’s request, the festivities were hosted by Jim Fogelsong, the courtly man responsible for signing Garth in 1988, who was then pushed aside in favor of “Hurricane” Bowen. On this day, Fogelsong was the only one of Garth’s bosses with whom he was still speaking. “This is what I wore in the sixties,” Fogelsong said of his church-deacon blue suit. “This is also what I wore in the fifties.” Garth, standing behind him, was dressed in a cream St. Louis Browns baseball uniform with the unexplained number 1/8 on the back (it turns out the Browns left St. Louis in 1954, but few realized this at the time). Sandy was dressed in a blue sundress with a red fringe vest and floppy leather cap.

  “I remember when twenty-five thousand albums was respectable in country music,” Fogelsong said, “even ten thousand was acceptable. We’ve come a long way in Nashville and we all should feel very proud.” After Marilyn Monroe came to the stage to sing “Happy Sixty Million to You,” a string of dignitaries presented Garth with tokens: a letter from the governor, a plate from the mayor, a plaque from the Recording Industry Association of America. Scott Hendricks, looking awkwardly out of place, unveiled a brand-new Kawasaki Mule, a buggy for Garth to drive around the farm. And Charles Koppelman, visiting from New York, had Scott drive in a $200,000 Ford New Holland front-load tractor. Garth seemed genuinely excited by this. “When you sell one hundred million,” Koppelman said, “you can call me ‘Bubba’.”

  Finally Garth took the podium. “I prepared no speech,” he said. “I’m going to talk without thinking.” He then proceeded to tick through a series of acknowledgments, that under the circumstances sounded more like an apologia than a celebration. To his family in Oklahoma, he said: “Thanks for the patience. Meaning something to you is all I ever wanted to do.” To Bob Doyle and Pam Lewis: “I hope we can remember how innocent and fun things were when we started.” To Jimmy Bowen: “My hat’s off to you. Our hottest time was under your roof.” To Scott Hendricks: “Anytime something old gets new, there are going to be fights. If there’s another milestone, I hope I can celebrate it with you, and I hope you feel the same way about me.” And finally, to his band and crew, to his label, and to all the players: “You need to know what’s about to be said. They had to order and ship fifteen million units this week just to reach sixty, so tomorrow morning, back to work. God bless you guys. Here’s to the dream.”

  After his speech, the crowd started humming as Garth stepped down and, as always, began to sign autographs and pose for pictures. The mood in the room was valedictory: eulogizing more than jubilant. “There’s so little joy here,” said one frequent partygoer. Indeed, the comparison between this party and the one five years earlier when Garth had topped the SoundScan chart and trumpeted Nashville’s arrival into the mainstream were unavoidable. Though they had been invited, no other label heads were there. No artists, other than a few novice acts on Capitol, came. Few if any reporters outside the local press turned up. “He burst down the door for all of us,” one manager told me, “but then he turned his back on us. He just hasn’t been embraced by the rest of the town. They see the lack of sincerity. If you believe in this town, the town will believe in you. If you isolate yourself, the town will isolate you too.”

  The mood was perfectly captured in an article in the Nashville Scene entitled “The Thrill Is Gone.” “These days,” wrote columnist Beverly Keel, “the superstar’s nickname, ‘GB,’ more likely stands for ‘Garth-bashing’—the most popular Music Row trend since ponytails on middle-aged men.” The most common complaint about Garth, she noted, was his insincerity. “It’s hard to say when the cracks first started appearing in his armor of earnestness. Was it when he left the American Music Award or when he outed his sister on Barbara Walters without her permission? It could have been when he announced his ‘retirement,’ attacked used CD stores, or told a reporter that he cowrote most of his songs because he couldn’t find any others that were good enough.” Above all, the most damaging fact about Garth was that he refused to take any blame for his decline. “Brooks should realize that he’s neither John Lennon nor John Wayne and that he’s become a man the ten-year-old Garth probably wouldn’t have liked. Certainly, his contributions are not to be overlooked. His music has touched millions and forever changed the face of country. But unless he refocuses on the music, he’s likely to be remembered in the industry not for his successes, but for his shortcomings.”

  An hour or so later, after the line dwindled down, I went to get my picture taken with Garth. He was still standing in front of his tractor, shaking hands, hugging, and smiling into the camera. It seemed to be rote now—sincere yet methodical. When my turn passed, Sandy called me over. She was sitting in the mule, observing Garth. This was not the dutiful wife I had seen at the Opry, but the concerned best friend. “I just like to sit and watch him,” she said. “He has such a knack with people.” But from her wistful tone, it was obvious that she too believed Garth had been scarred by his success. His moment, as he had feared, had passed. “You remember you asked me once if Garth was a cowboy?” she said. “Well, I was thinking about that the other day. I realized that he’ll never be that cowboy. He’s just too tender. He wears his heart on his sleeve.” She smiled awkwardly. “He hides it a lot of the time, but he gets hurt. I know he does. This business has hurt him. These people have hurt him. Nashville, especially, has hurt him. And that’s the hardest part of all. Look at what he did for them.”

  At the end of his hour-and-a-half stage show that year, Garth sang “The Dance.” He would stand in the spotlight near the front of the stage, staring at the sea of swaying bodies and waving arms, Bic lighters in the air. Now, more than ever, the words seemed prophetic: “For a moment, wasn’t I the king / If I’d only known the king would fall / Hey, who’s to say you know I might have chanced it all.” It was a transcendent moment, and when it was over he would disappear below the stage. Moments later, to waves of applause, he returned for his encore, “American Pie,” about a music star who dies prematurely. At the end he sings his grand finale, “Ain’t Going Down (Til the Sun Comes Up).” For that number, he would bound once again up the Plexiglas drum pod, which lifted him on its hydraulic piston and delivered him into the sky.

  “It’s the greatest feeling in the world,” he told me of those moments onstage. “That’s where I feel the safest. Any pictures you’ve seen of us onstage you can bet only our heels are left onstage—we’re jumping up, or flying, or leaning out in
to the crowd. I can’t get enough. ’Cause, dude, I’ve got to tell you, it’s those ninety minutes when all the bullshit is off. That’s when the hype leaves, and you check your sanity at the door. That’s where me and my managers fighting over business deals, me and my label fighting over contracts—all those things are just left at the side of the stage. It’s just me and them.”

  Indeed, as was becoming clear, Garth needed his time on the stage because it was the one place where he could still communicate with his fans. They were the one group still in his corner. When, late in the year, I sat with Garth again in his stark, contemporary office on Music Row and asked him about Sandy’s comment that Nashville had turned its back on him, Garth seemed unnerved, but agreed: “Those people that vote for the CMAs and ACMs, I don’t do them any good. I mean, you’re talking about your fair buyers: We don’t play fairs no more. Talking about your agencies: We don’t have an agency. We do our own booking.” Add it up, he said: Few people in Nashville stand to gain from his winning awards, doing well, or being on top. “I’m sure they’re saying Garth’s doing his own thing and that’s fine. You make yourself an island, get ready to be treated like an island.”

  Which is why he seemed so removed from Nashville: Garth Brooks, the team player, had completely given way to Garth Brooks, the lone operator. In essence, he had lost the old-fashioned values (cooperation, neighborliness, humility) that had once made him so country. When, in that conversation, I read him the quote from his mother, who believed that he had achieved his goals and should feel happy, Garth looked at me directly and said, “That’s sweet. That’s very sweet. But she’s wrong.” He had yet to reach his peak, he insisted. “There’s sixty million American sales. There’s what, seven billion people on the Earth? You do the math.” There were millions he had yet to reach, he said, there were entire countries he had yet to conquer, there were entire generations yet to be born. “Think of all the young people,” he said, his eyes gaping at the thought. “Think of the next generation.”

  That degree of ambition may be understandable, but under the circumstances, it also seemed harmful. Garth Brooks, it turns out, was real: He couldn’t let go of success. “Do I think it’s over?” he asked. “That’s only God’s call. But I haven’t seen a sign yet that says ‘Step down.’” The only change, he allowed, was that “now I’m an underdog again. Which is good because the big pressure’s off. Now the only pressure left”—he lifted his middle finger to his forehead—“is in here.”

  It was one of the last conversations we had before he took his tour to Ireland, the first of his overseas stops. Garth had retreated to the sanctuary of his own mind, where he comforted himself with the belief that, having fallen, he might soon rise again. If anything, he seemed to relish the symbolic position, his most iconic achievement. That winter, on the cover of his Believer magazine, sent to his most devoted fans, Garth printed the picture of himself he had been saving all along. In the photograph, he was dressed in black jeans, a black long-sleeved shirt, black ropers, and a black Stetson hat. His back was leaning against a white wall. His left leg was bent, his left foot tucked behind his right knee. His arms were outstretched parallel to the ground, his wrists dangling lifelessly. His hat was drooped to his chest. Garth Brooks, on the face of his own publication, had crucified himself.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE FAMILY

  Wynonna was getting ready. She strolled from one end of her hotel suite to another, lofting her daughter onto her hip, rifling through bags of unused diapers, then pausing for a sip of too-sweet iced tea (“I’ve got to order some more,” she says. “Northerners just don’t know how to make sweet tea…”). She spritzed a bit of raw lemon down her throat, then went to open the curtains, letting the noonday sun pierce her cocoon for the first time all day. Presently she switched on the television, clicking through the channels before finding an old movie to mute. The television was a tiny comfort, a scrap of home, part of the elaborate nest she constructs for herself in every place she goes: the towels on the floor, the socks on the chair, the magazines littered across the table. “Oooh, wait, we must have our daily love offering,” she said, darting into the bathroom, peering behind her bed, then returning joyously with a paper sack from which she pulled a package of strawberry PEZ candies and a pink plastic bunny dispenser. She handed the trove to me. FUN ‘N’ GAMES INSIDE! the wrapping boasted.

  Wynonna was preparing for her day. It begins with what she calls “family time.” She plopped down on the sofa and grabbed a half-empty bottle of formula from alongside an overturned (completely empty) bottle of Cristal champagne (price: $150). Grace, bald now, with a pink dress and white dimples, squirmed in anticipation of the bottle, then lunged for the rubber nipple. “Look at these socks that my mom bought her,” Wynonna said. “Aren’t they adorable?” Wynonna lifted her own feet to the edge of the coffee table, dispersing her eclectic devotional of reading material: Rolling Stone, Us, the latest issue of Fortune, which contained a special report, “Is Your Family Wrecking Your Career?” They sat alongside T. Berry Brazelton’s latest parenting book and a small white Bible with the name WYNONNA ELLEN embossed on the front. Just as Wynonna launched into a tirade about the Fortune article, her husband called from home. Arch had stayed on the farm with Elijah this weekend while Wynonna performed three sold-out shows in downstate Connecticut at the Foxwood Resort Casino on the grounds of Mashan-tucket Reservation. “I love you, honey,” she said at the end of their conversation.

  Wynonna was getting ready for the world. Finally nearing the end of one of the more tumultuous years of her career, Wynonna was inching toward equilibrium. She had a new manager (her stepfather), a new record label (Curb/Universal), and a new producer (Brent Maher). She was also trying to develop a keener sense of where to take her music. “I’m going to do some of the things I’ve always wanted to do, but didn’t think I had the right to because I didn’t want people to think I was crossing over,” she said, stringing together a list of friends she hoped to work with: Bonnie Raitt, Elton John, Babyface, Bryan Adams, Melissa Etheridge. “Even Meat Loaf wants to sing with me,” she said. “Go figure.” Yet she knew the one thing she must do was stabilize her family situation. “The general public continues to be interested in Wynonna’s personal life,” she said. “I guess I can understand that. There are so many dynamics at work in my life that everybody deals with. I have my sister. I’ve got Arch and all that drama. Then I’ve got my mother, my typical ail-American divorced parent situation. People characterize me as this victim, but I don’t see myself as the victim at all.”

  It was that feeling of misunderstanding that most plagued Wynonna and that caused the greatest transformation in her life. For years, Wynonna had shunned the press and let her mother do the talking, a process that created a shadow Wynonna that the real one never fully understood. Now, having been smothered by that shadow for so long, Wynonna finally decided to open her life and confront her ghosts head-on. Only by doing so could she hope to answer the question that had circled her since childhood: Could she become the legendary figure she’d always seemed destined to become?

  The first step was to confront her reputation as the weirdest person in country music.

  “You know how some people just attract things?” Wynonna said. It was early afternoon by now and Wynonna was sitting alone on the sofa, spending her “personal time” in reflection. Grace had been handed off to her nanny; the television was still on mute. “I guess I’m one of those people, like that poor kid Culkin. There are plenty of kids just like him in the world. Why does he get the stuff he does?”

  Wynonna was wearing black sweatpants, a baggy black zip-up shirt, and a pair of mod black-mesh hightops with the phrase ROCKET SHOES on the sole. Her most conspicuous sign of stardom was the round turquoise sunglasses she wore even though she was indoors and that seemed, in either case, more evocative of Yoko Ono than Barbara Mandrell. Her hair was shorter than it had been in a while, with a touch of blonde at the top, deeper red around her bangs, a
nd a foxy tail reaching just beyond her shoulders. A hint of gray was visible in her bangs. Up close, it was a messy mix. But far away, carefully stroked under her brush, it was a brilliant frame for her face, as beautiful as ever.

  “I remember the morning of my wedding,” Wynonna said, continuing her theme of media abuse, “when I walked out of my house, the helicopter was so close I could have thrown a rock at it. Later, I was saying my vows and I could hear the helicopter hovering over the building. I thought, ‘I have a choice here. Either (a) I can admit to everybody that I’m pissed or (b) I can try to let it go and concentrate on the moment, which is what’s important: saying “I do” to my future husband.’”

  Letting go, she admitted, had long been her strategy. “My mother is a bulldog when it comes to the press,” Wynonna said. “Her attitude is: You control them or they control you. It’s always been her number one rule. My attitude has been: You don’t need to defend what doesn’t need defending.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “I was playing Tahoe recently and one of my ex-boyfriends came to the show with his mother. This is a guy I have known since 1984. He’s like a brother to me. He’s married and has kids and we exchange photos. We’ll always be close. He’s my soul mate. Sure enough, two days later someone calls him and says, ‘We have a package to deliver from Federal Express. What’s your address?’ Then they show up and hound his mom.” The following week a story about the two ex-lovers appeared in one of the tabloids. “They say we’re having an affair,” Wynonna said. “Three blissful days spent together. Arch is described as having the personality of a donkey. It hurts my feelings.”