Garth Brooks: Ropin’ the Whirlwind

Garth Brooks is a regular at the Pancake Pantry on Twenty-first Avenue in Nashville. When he arrives for breakfast, the proprietor greets him at the door with a handshake, the waitress embraces him – “Ohhh, how are you, darlin’?” She takes an order from his guest but doesn’t require one from Garth. With a twinkle in her eye, she says, “I know what he wants.” And when Garth orders a second round of hot chocolate to accompany his meal, she suggests a pitcher. A pretty young woman, Tracie, comes over to ask for autographs for herself and her friend Kim, who writhes in shyness at a nearby table. “I guess I’m the one with all the nerve,” Tracie says, smiling. After she leaves, an acquaintance at a table behind Garth leans over and asks about Garth’s wife, Sandy, and their new daughter, Taylor Mayne Pearl, born last July.

Through it all, Garth is soft-spoken, polite – “Yes, ma’am,” “No, sir” – friendly and obliging. Beneath his modesty and rural reserve, however, the truth is, he’s loving it. Like all youngest children – and Garth, now thirty-one, is the youngest of six – he adores attention. He accepts affection with grace and a very genuine gratitude. At the same time, his need for it creates an appealing air of vulnerability.

All in all, Garth conveys neither the manner nor the emotional profile you’d expect of popular music’s preeminent superstar. Not many superstars joke about their bulging waistlines or thinning hair. But then again, when you’re in a position like Garth’s, you can afford to joke at your own expense.

The simple facts of his career are daunting and require little embellishment: Since the release of his debut album, Garth Brooks, in 1989, he has sold close to 30 million records. His second and third albums, No Fences (1990) and Ropin’ the Wind (1991), are each approaching 10 million in sales. His Christmas album, Beyond the Season, entered the Top Five in the first week of its release last summer.

Those numbers are awesome for pop or rock stars, placing Garth squarely in the stratospheric ranks of Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Michael Jackson. For a country artist, however, they are entirely unprecedented. Eclipsing trailblazers George Strait and Clint Black, Garth, who moved to Nashville from his native Oklahoma in 1987, has transformed country from a sleepy musical backwater into one of the most commercially vital sounds on the contemporary scene.

But if Garth’s sales have propelled country music into the American mainstream, he has achieved them by exploding country stereotypes. While his songs strive for the intimacy of feeling and literary finesse of singer-songwriters like James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg, his shows are raucous rock-outs, complete with dramatic smoke and lighting effects and bar-band covers of songs like Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” and the Georgia Satellites’ “Keep Your Hands to Yourself.”

Nor has Garth backed off from confrontations with the more conservative elements in the country community. After the Nashville Network said it would not air his 1991 video for “The Thunder Rolls,” in which a woman shoots her abusive, philandering husband, he refused to compromise and dilute its message. And the single “We Shall Be Free,” from The Chase (1992), was a response to the upheavals that occurred in L.A. after the acquittal of the police officers who assaulted Rodney King. The song also included lines in defense of gay rights: “When we’re free to love anyone we choose … then we shall be free.” The song met resistance at country radio and earned Garth some harsh responses.

“I feel bad any time somebody brings up the Christian aspect against ‘We Shall Be Free,’ ” Garth says, “because it was meant to be a gospel song. It was meant to be the truth as I saw it. And being called Brutus and Judas, all kinds of things, really hurts. I do believe that God exists. I do believe in the Bible. But I can’t see that loving somebody is a sin.”

Garth shook the music industry late last year, when at the pinnacle of his success, he talked about retiring. Sandy’s difficult pregnancy and the prospect of touring and having to spend extended periods of time away from his wife and new daughter darkened his mood. He was also bound up in painful, protracted negotiations with his record label. It seemed easier to walk away.