Garth Brooks may be a marketing genius, but he makes you believe the schmaltz. Something about him suggests honesty and fair dealing, says Kathy Sheridan, after meeting the man in the stetson
By KATHY SHERIDAN
YOU don't find that moving? Then you, Ma'am or Sir (as Garth might address you), the one with the problem. Over three nights this weekend, more than 120,000 Irish people will bathe their souls in that chorus, haunted by what might have been, their cigarette lighters flickering in the north city darkness, catching the glimmer of tears coursing down more than a few faces.
The six o'clock news put to music, that's country. And that's why the promoters could have sold those 120,000 tickets twice over. That's about one in 20 of the population. Get over it, sneer leaders. You know that something's up when half a dozen fairly sophisticated middle aged women suddenly drop an angst ridden conversation about Bolshie teenagers, cheating husbands and cranky old parents to belt out that chorus in a suburban livingroom. Spontaneous, heartfelt, word perfect. Or when a bunch of their relentlessly cool, student offspring manage to rouse themselves from the hip, angst ridden lyrics of Alanis Morrisette to squabble about the shortage of tickets for would you believe? a Garth Brooks concert.
Clear the way and the record books the other GB has landed. The Grammy winning, biggest selling solo artist in US history, the man who has sold more than 60 million records, played to over four million people, is second only to the Beatles in US sales, outsold U2 in their native country, and got rid of those 120,000 Croke Park tickets in a morning, is back. Back in the place that, he insists, "just changed everything . . . changed where I was going in my life".
And the odd thing is, he makes you believe it. This is a marketing graduate, a marketing genius, one who calls records "units" and was featured on the cover of Forbes (the business magazine famous for its batting list of the seriously rich). You examine his face for signs of spin doctor cunning but all you see is clear, blue eyed innocence and a certain edginess about journalists. After all, here is a megastar with the nous to provide medical insurance and a pension plan for his band - and he gets sneered at by hip types who imply this is less than cool. He can do nothing about that.
But he can reduce the sneer factor by insisting that journalists see a concert of his or at least a video before coming along to interviews. The story of the pursed lipped music executive who felt obliged to see one of his nine concerts in the Point, but returned every night afterwards, is hardly unusual. Even for fans, Brooks in concert can be a very different creature to Brooks on CD ... a rock `n' rollin', rambunctious, crazy man belting out the chorus of You May Be Right, who in seconds can also reduce a giant stadium to tears with The Dance. He thanks "the good Lord" repeatedly for his "good fortune", attributing it all to a higher power. But there is no false modesty there either. Thus, the insistence that interviewers do more than bone up on their "slicin' and dicin'" technique, as he calls it, before they come calling.
"The cynics? Well, you gotta know first, that's part of the gig, just part of the job. I keep a thing . .. somethin' I call `The Rut'. It's a huge headline that says `Garth Is In The Same Old Rut' and it's a review of an album called No Fences which, right now, is 14 million for us in the States the largest selling country album of all time. So I keep that and I just realise, that's goin' to be a part of it." He accepts critics as "watchdogs of quality" but not the type who "go away to just slice and dice, say anything the worst things you could say so someone would talk about your paper and someone else would buy it. I just understand that this is what you're deal in with now ...
Sitting in his Berkeley Court suite, cracking his knuckles (he's extremely courteous but would undoubtedly prefer to be somewhere else), dressed in baseball hat, blue Nike sweatshirt over the usual racing shirt and blue jeans, he could be just another charmed and gullible American tourist. But something about Garth Brooks makes you glad you abandoned that plan to dig out the stetson and fringed suede jacket for the occasion.
On the last tour in 1994, after a tortuous session On The Bed with a sneering, caterwauling Paula Yates on Channel 4's The Big Breakfast, Brooks finally revealed his tetchy side. He told an interviewer afterwards: "I wish people would do me the favour of lookin' over the counter and saying `I don't get it. I think it sucks. I think you suck. See ya.' I'd walk out of there goin', `I like that guy'".
Instead, on the relatively downbeat UK leg of his last tour, he was confronted with yet more yeehawing television interviewers, showing up in 10 gallon stetsons and cowboy shirts, complaining mockingly that this was the best that "props" could do. Does it hurt? Yep. "I don't think they mean to offend you. I think they kinda want to make you feel at home, but I think a lot of people that don't understand cowboys think that it's some kinda mythical thing. Even in the States, George Carlin a comedian that I love he goes `why are guys still wearin' cowboy hats? Why don't we still wear pirate uniforms and stuff?' And what George doesn't understand is when you sit on the back of a horse movin' cattle and it starts to rain, you're gonna be glad you've got a cowboy hat. Or if you're ever out in the wind, the sun, whatever, if you've got that cowboy hat and you're haulin' straw or hay, that thing saves your neck. It's real. Very real."
The fact that it only became "real" for Brooks after his first record deal, when he was able to buy the 400 acre farm overlooking Nashville, is hardly worth arguing about. His father supported a wife and six children by working as a draughtsman with an oil company for 38 years but the point is they always wanted to be cowboys. "I'm not saying we were poor but we just couldn't afford livestock or land so I didn't get to grow up with that. Then I went to Oklahoma State, which is an agricultural college, and I got into it a lot there and when the record deal came, we were fortunate enough to be able to buy the farm. My Dad loves this stuff, he's definitely a cowboy. You know, you can tell cowboys simply by how other cowboys react to them, and every cowboy loves my Dad and he loves them so I'm glad that he's finally gettin' to do all that."
It is stories like this that feed the Brooks legend. Ask him what vast wealth means to him and he replies, simply: "The farm." But surely he has a Porsche or three tucked away? "No, but we have a nice truck, a beautiful truck. We actually have two, one that I get to drive around in and then I got a farm truck that I get to tear up."
So. Still one of the boys. And one with the same problems as the rest of us to boot. The weight (though he looks leaner than before): "We're filmin - that's why you see me like this. I'm starvin' myself. You see me Monday, I'll be 800 pounds," he says with a whoop. "If I lived here and I wasn't filmin', I'd eat Eddie Rockett's every night, just big burgers and big chillies."
Then there's his wife and two little girls: "Number one priority," he affirms with a broad smile. But just like the songs (and nearly every couple alive), they've had their feudin' years too. He's not too keen to rehash old history except to say that they were "tough times, tough times and still have them, still do". How tough? "Just no communication. Lots of wonderin' what was goin' on when we were apart." A bit of playing around? "I can't speak for her. She's told me not and that's enough for me. I was the one that was probably doin' 99 per cent of the wrong things but still, even to this day, you have hard times. Like all marriages, you have times when you look at each other and you think sometimes, it'd be better just to start all over ..."
With someone else? "Yeah, which - God forbid . . . " he tails off ruefully, "But that's the deal. The longer you're married, the worse you get towards `My God, I don't want to start all over with someone else, I don't want to go through this again'."
On the 24th of this month, the volunteers, he will be married for all of 11 years to Sandy, a woman who breastfed their children backstage and who, for all her dazzling blonde hair, is definitely no Barbie doll, either in body or spirit. In fact, Brooks legend has it that they first met when he was a bouncer in a bar, sent to remove an unruly woman from the ladies' room. And there he first set eyes on the love of his life, her fist punched through a plywood wall. He requested that she kindly leave the premises and in the same breath invited her to spend the night with him, to which she replied: "Drop dead, asshole."
Needless to say, they were married within a few years. Years later, Sandy would tell an interviewer that in the early years of Garth's success, "the hardest thing was to keep from beating the holy shit" out of him. You better believe it. When she finally got sense and announced she was leaving, he says he "wore out a pair of jeans at the knees begging her to stay. When she decided not to go, I think that's the day I started to become the husband I needed to be."
It may be good for the image but that doesn't mean he's not telling the truth. Something about him suggests honesty and fairdealing. And anyway, it has a ring of truth. So when he tells you that way up in the woods, overlooking a lake and downtown Nashville, he has christened one of the most beautiful and peaceful places on his farm The Point, you tend to believe him. "It's a piece of magic, it's beautiful .. . " Yes, you might not associate our Point down the docks with peace, magic and beauty but that's what it's called after the Point, the first stop on his 1994 European tour, the place that changed his life's direction.
"If it's only in my eyes, so be it - but something happened in the Point for me that really just . . . just changed where I was going in my life. Changed my views on myself and on the music.
It meant that much. You know, if you're playin only in your own backyard, you start to think `hey, things are happening here and it's cool but only in your backyard. And you think but it wouldn't go over in that person's backyard over there. So you go over there and something like that happens that gives you a faith, gives you a courage to actually not be afraid of the world, to not be afraid of the difference that we have ..."
The man seems to mean it. Really. He's all for integration, justice and not noticing the colour of your skin. Politics? "I think I'm registered Republican, but my system voted in this president for four years so he has my support, thoughts and prayers for those four years because one of the things that's killin' us right now in our country is if you didn't vote for him, then knock him for four years, well, he can't do any good so you can say, `see, I was right'. Screw that . . ." Religion? "The last thing I would do is tell someone to do as I do but I'd say God exists, God is the ultimate of what fairness is and truth. Do have I a particular church? No. If this upsets people, I'll understand but my opinion is you can't cut love up. We all believe in the same belief and that's God. Now when you get down to whether Jesus was the son of God I think he was but if you don't think he was, that shouldn't separate us because it's about God and that's what Jesus came to talk to us about." He reads a passage from the Bible every night.
Racism? We Shall Be Free, one of his concert anthems, is a message of tolerance said to have been written after he witnessed the Los Angeles race riots. He has suggested that the US president invite the Native American tribe leaders to the White House and publicly apologise for all the wrongs of the past. Charity? He says this is between himself and the charities, but publicly, he has raised nearly $10 million for charities, focused mainly on children. So. Not your average hillbilly. And wouldn't you know it? If you zip back to his great grandmother's time, you'll find authentic Irish blood. What more could you want? Three hundred pounds of confetti? You got it. But you have to go to the concert. And don't forget your camera. Garth says so.