There’s a lot more to Garth Brooks than hit songs and gold records
From new traditionalist to popcountry juggernaut, Garth Brooks looms over the country music genre like nobody else before or since.
He’s made nary a commercial misstep in his journey through the musical ranks, outright owning the 1990s with a series of albums that not only changed country music, but also changed the way everyone viewed country music.
Even his fumbles were successful. When he decided to reinvent himself as fictitious rock singer Chris Gaines in 1999 with an album, mockumentary and (unproduced) theatrical film, he still managed to sell two million records and score a couple of minor hits on the pop charts.
For anyone else this would be cause for celebration, but for Brooks, it was an early indication the shine was coming off his career.
By the time he released Scarecrow in 2001, he’d decided the time was ripe to withdraw. By then, he’d sold well over 100 million albums, become the bestselling solo artist of all time in the United States, and slipped in just behind the Beatles for total albums sold. What more was there to do?
Brooks popped up now and again through the decade to announce releases of box sets and play sporadic shows, but by and large, he kept quiet, instead concentrating on family life and a new marriage in 2005 to fellow singer-songwriter Trisha Yearwood.
A 1999 residency in Las Vegas led to him releasing a covers album through Walmart, and spurred him to announce a new album, Man Against Machine, and a world tour in 2014.
Now he’s back with Gunslinger, released at the tail end of last year, and while the album hasn’t signalled a return to the intense Brooksmania of yesteryear, it’s done respectable business on the charts and laid the groundwork for his current tour, where tickets sold have indicated just how beloved he remains among fans.
Here are a few facts you may or may not know about Brooks:
Brooks was born on Feb. 7, 1962. The No. 1 song on the radio across America that day was Joey Dee & the Starliters’ Peppermint Twist, Part 1.
Brooks wasn’t the only member of his family with musical talent. His entire family sang and played, and his mother Colleen Carroll Brooks was a fledgling country singer in the ’50s, signing with Capitol Records and releasing a handful of singles, including No Tellin’.
A few years before he conceived of his rock ’n’ roll alter ego Chris Gaines, Brooks teamed up with KISS to cover one of the glam rock band’s early classics, Hard Luck Woman, on a KISS tribute album. They later showed up to play it live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1994.
His wife, Trisha Yearwood, swears by Brooks’ talent in the kitchen, and while he doesn’t seem to have quite the knack for cooking that she displays in her Food Network show Trisha’s Southern Kitchen, you can see where “Gartha Stewart’s” (Yearwood’s pet name for him) obsession with detail spills over into other aspects of his life.
Once you’ve climbed atop the world of music, logic dictates that you must look for new galaxies to conquer. Brooks did just that when he joined various professional baseball teams at training camp through the latter part of his career. To be fair, Brooks was an accomplished athlete in his youth, playing baseball and football and even nabbing a track and field scholarship to Oklahoma State University. So why not try out for the San Diego Padres (in 1998 and ’99), New York Mets (2000) and Kansas City Royals (2004)? Brooks was undistinguished in his multiple tryouts, but he did get a hit off of Red Sox pitcher Mike Myers in his final pre-season game with the Royals.
Rumour has it that Brooks turned down roles in both Twister (1996) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). This was probably for the best. Brooks has been careful not to over-extend himself into acting, except when it comes to Sesame Street, where he ended up singing a few songs and even performed some Shakespeare.