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Garth Conquers All
02/08/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Lisa Zhito
Like a prairie fire, he swept out of Yukon, Oklahoma, consuming everything (well, most things) in his path. After Nashville succumbed to his charms, he quickly overthrew New York, Europe and Australia. Now Hollywood, that international conduit of American culture, is his latest conquest.
Welcome to Planet Garth.
As Garth Brooks quickly eclipses anything that's come before--by the new millennium, he'll become the first artist to ever sell over 100 million records--folks in Nashville are scratching their heads: Wasn't his career supposed to be over by now?
Indeed, difficult though it may be to believe, just three-and-a-half years ago folks were writing Garth off as a has-been. His album Fresh Horses had failed to meet expectations; marketers were telling label execs that "new country" was where their fortunes lay. Since that supposed nadir, Garth has gone on to sell some 45 million records, while pretty-boy hat acts are being tossed out on their Wranglers in droves.
Nowhere was this about-face more evident than on the road. Garth's two-year world tour, which culminated in the history-making Double Live CD, was more than validation--it was vindication. Garth's 1998 tour grosses alone were $34.8 million, pushing him ahead of pop stars like Janet Jackson, Eric Clapton and Celine Dion. Meanwhile, Double Live became the first album to ever push 1 million units in a single week. By January it was platinum 12 times over, representing sales of 6 million double-CDs in just two months.
"The tour actually gained momentum, which we didn't think it could do," Garth notes. "But you've got to remember: the tour kicked off in March of '96, coming off Fresh Horses, and you know the problems I had with that. So the tour, as wild and as loud as it was in the first, would gain momentum as the years went by, because I would gain more confidence back.
"I don't like to touch on this, but [I realized] maybe the fact of being told that your career is over wasn't coming true," he continues proudly. "People were still showing up, and not only were they showing up, [the crowds] were starting to get larger and larger."
Well, Music Row does have a habit of underestimating its biggest and brightest stars (are you listening, Shania?).
Those close to him say if he hadn't discovered music, Garth Brooks would probably have been a televangelist or politician. More charismatic than Billy Graham, certainly more prudent than Bill Clinton, Garth has still been accused of being calculating, egotistical--even, believe it or not, bad for business. How multi-platinum record sales could hurt the music business is anyone's guess, but great strides are seldom achieved without controversy.
Much of the sniping came about during the battle over Sevens. Garth had long maintained that Fresh Horses would have been a success had it been marketed properly. Determined not to let the same thing happen with Sevens, he held up its release until some changes were made.
When the dust cleared, key staffers at Capitol Nashville were out, Pat Quigley was in, EMI had opened a Nashville branch of Virgin, the Capitol roster had been transformed, and Sevens was six-times platinum and nominated for a Grammy. But many worried that Garth wielded too much power, noting Capitol's two new signings under the Quigley regime were Friends-Of-Garth Steve Wariner and Susan Ashton.
"Just so you know, 32 million albums later, it was the right decision," the mighty Garth says defensively, referring to his record sales since Quigley took over. Actually, it's 33 million records, sold in one year, mind you. No one, not even the Beatles, has bested that mark.
"What happened from the instant that [controversy] happened a year ago has been nothing but good," Garth points out.
This past year has seen some fence-mending between Nashville and Garth. "With [Double Live], I didn't have the weight of controversy," he explains. "It was a clean album, which I never thought I'd get. So it's nice to know you can come back, you've got a home."
If nothing else, folks are finally starting to realize that Garth's instincts were correct. Steve Wariner's first Capitol record, Burnin' The Roadhouse Down, is his most successful ever: it's gone gold and yielded the award-winning, Grammy-nominated hit, "Holes In The Floor Of Heaven."
"Garth's the one that got the ball started," Steve recalled at a January '99 party celebrating Roadhouse's gold sales triumph. Wariner had just exited his deal at Arista, after being told that Arista wouldn't release the album that would become Roadhouse. "I was riding on a plane to do The Tonight Show with Garth; he was performing and he asked me to do 'Longneck Bottle' [the song they wrote together] with him. Garth was grilling me, saying, 'What are you doing? What are you working on? What's going on in your career? You need to come over to Capitol and be part of our family!'"
This kind of loyalty is a Garth hallmark, and is largely what makes him the major force that he is. Just ask longtime friend Trisha Yearwood, who got her start opening Garth's 1991 arena tour. He had promised her a gig years earlier, when she was still an unknown demo singer; after her first single, "She's In Love With The Boy," took off, he made good on his word.
Much has been made of Garth's plans to take 1999 off, but with as many as four album projects and a film on his plate, the only relief he'll find is from worrying about the road.
"You've gotta know that for 350-something shows, we had 80,000 pounds hanging over our head and the crowd. And thank God, there was not one snapped cable, not one thing where somebody got hurt. Worrying about your drivers falling asleep, and your trucks and your buses, these things now are gone, I don't have to worry about any of that!
"Truthfully, I want to get within myself and do what I moved to this town to do, and that's write," he rationalizes. "I really, really want to write."
Garth says negotiations between MCA and Capitol are progressing, clearing the major hurdle in the way of a long-anticipated Garth Brooks/ Trisha Yearwood duet album. Sources say at least three tracks have already been cut, one of them a Steve Wariner song.
Meanwhile, Garth is definitely planning to release a Christmas album in 1999, his second. "The Colors Of Christmas is going to happen. What Pat [Quigley] brought out is that a Christmas album, of all things, is public domain--a lot of the music is--which keeps your costs down. Which means now, can you do a double Christmas album for the same price, and the people get twice as much for the same money, like the Live album? So we're going to see about that. I don't know of too many double Christmas albums, so it is something that's new, and hopefully will be fun, and there's plenty of stuff out there to cut."
Then there's his film project, tentatively titled The Lamb, a psychological thriller about a rock star. It will be co-produced by Garth and Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds. Garth says he hasn't ruled out appearing in the film--some reports have claimed he'll star--and he's recording the soundtrack as well.
In addition to all that, the rumor mill recently began chewing over a new piece of information regarding another Garth event album, along the lines of Double Live or The Limited Series. With a "vacation" like this, who needs to work?
"You know me, I've got to find some way to get a fresh fire," Garth concedes. "Whatever it is I do, I hope it's quality, I hope that it's something that's class. We're all loved as artists for the things that we did more than the things that we do, and I don't like that, I really don't want that to happen to us. So when I'm playing live, and we get the round of applause we do for 'Friends In Low Places,' I'm thinking, 'We're loved for things that we did.' But when I play 'Make You Feel My Love' and it gets one of the best ovations of the night, that makes me feel like we're getting loved for things that we do.
"As long as I can keep that feeling, then I think I know what I'm doing."
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