Dreaming Out Loud Read online

  DREAMING OUT LOUD

  GARTH BROOKS, WYNONNA JUDD, WADE HAYES, AND THE CHANGING FACE OF NASHVILLE

  BRUCE FEILER

  May the circle be unbroken

  For the memory of

  George Alan Abeshouse

  and

  Ellen Abeshouse Garfinkle

  I hear down there it’s changed you see

  They’re not as backward as they used to be.

  -Bob McDill,

  “Gone Country”

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  PRELUDE

  The Players

  VERSE I

  1 The Opry

  2 The Studio

  3 The Tabloids

  4 The Town

  VERSE II

  5 The Hat

  6 The Cover

  7 The Face

  8 The Legends

  VERSE III

  9 The Interview

  10 The Party

  11 The Single

  12 The Politics

  VERSE IV

  13 The Stage

  14 The Money

  15 The Fans

  16 The Launch

  VERSE V

  17 The Show

  18 The Family

  19 The Awards

  CODA

  The Future

  NOTES

  The People

  The Sources

  The Music

  Searchable Terms

  About the Author

  Praise

  Books by Bruce Feiler

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PRELUDE

  THE PLAYERS

  At what should have been a crowning moment in his career, Garth Brooks made a rare misstep.

  He was wearing his black Stetson that evening and his lace-up ropers as well—the signature accessories of American myth. As usual, his black Wranglers were three sizes too small—the better, he confessed, to conceal his often unruly weight. (“Truth is,” he told me, “I don’t mind making fun of my body. That way we all know straight out of the box: ‘Don’t worry, guys, I don’t have a hangup about how I look. I’m not a sex god.’”) All together, with his puffy eyes, his chipmunk cheeks, and his dumpling chin, he looked a bit like a high school football coach who had gotten all dressed up to help chaperon the prom.

  “And now, to present the award for Favorite Artist of the Year, please welcome, once again, superstar Neil Diamond…”

  The tuxedoed crowd in the red velvet seats of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles applauded politely as Neil Diamond stepped to the Lucite podium fondling the trademark triangular envelope of the American Music Awards.

  “Thank you so very much,” said the onetime pop idol who himself had just cut an album in Nashville in an effort to capitalize on the exploding interest in all things country. “It’s my privilege to present the final award of the evening, Favorite Artist of the Year. The five nominees represent the wide range of music, and they are: Hootie and the Blow-fish, TLC, Green Day, Boyz II Men, and Garth Brooks…”

  As the cameras panned the faces of the nominees, Garth Brooks, sitting spread-eagled on the front row, bowed his head and clutched the arm of his wife Sandy. Having already claimed two awards that night—Favorite Country Album and Favorite Male Country Artist—he was having another banner evening, coming off another record-breaking year, and climaxing what had been the fastest rise to stardom of any artist in American history. In a little over six years, the thirty-three-year-old former college javelin thrower from Tulsa, Oklahoma, had captivated America with his modern-day version of an old-fashioned singing cowboy—Gene Autry with a social conscience. His songs, many of them self-written, were an irresistible fusion of James Taylor-esque you’ve-got-a-friend-in-me bear hugs and John Mellencamp-like let’s-get-rowdy anthems that had people all across the nation saying, “Hmm, I didn’t know country could be cool.” His shows were an eye-popping mixture of honky-tonk raucousness and arena rock pyrotechnics that coaxed even die-hard country music haters to call their friends and declare, “If he’s the captain, I’m playing on his team.” And play they did. In the span of half a decade, Garth Brooks sold an astonishing 60 million albums—one for every household in America and more than Michael Jackson, Madonna, Billy Joel, even Elvis Presley. Along the way, he was certified as the bestselling country artist in history, the bestselling artist of any genre in the 1990s, and the bestselling solo artist in North American history, behind only the Beatles in total sales.

  Garth Brooks, in other words, was big. But like Tom Hanks in the movie of that name, Garth had achieved his status by acting like an innocent kid who accidentally struck it rich. It was all part of his charm. He read the Bible, thanked his mother, and, for all appearances, drank his milk as well. His imagery was so simple, so elementally American—hat, guitar, mama’s boy, a touch of evil—that in no time Garth had become America’s you-get-what-you-pay-for hero, our national Eagle Scout-at-Large. At a time of nihilism and unfettered cynicism, here was someone prepared to stand up with a straight face and deliver an unapologetically upbeat message. As he sang in one early benchmark song, “The River”: “Don’t you sit upon the shoreline/And say you’re satisfied/ Choose to chance the rapids/And dare to dance the tide.”

  One reason Garth Brooks became so big was because of people like me. Though I was born and raised in South Georgia, I grew up hating country music. Nashville (and by that I mean the country music side of Nashville) embodied everything about the South I abhorred—hay bales, banjos, overalls, bigotry. Most of all, as a teenager who was eager to escape the region and its choking stereotypes, I disliked what I viewed as the music’s lingering attachment to outdated images and ideals. Four years at Yale, followed by three in Japan and one as a graduate student in England, only increased my distance from what I perceived as the voice of the obsolete South.

  Garth Brooks, by contrast, embodied the New Nashville and, by extension, the New South. Born in Tulsa, where the South, West, and Midwest collide, Garth was smart, college-educated, and savvy—as hip to Hollywood as he was to West Virginia; one part movie star; one part fraternity brother; three parts “Home on the Range.” No part hillbilly. Garth Brooks’s The Hits was the first country album I bought, and I loved it—its fun-loving pop ditties (“Papa Loved Mama”); its soaring, sensitive-guy ballads (“If Tomorrow Never Comes”). I urged everyone I knew who mocked country music to buy it. I put the winding fiddle intro from one of its songs, “Much Too Young (to Feel This Damn Old),” on my answering machine. I even made love to the album on the floor of my apartment in Washington, D.C. (Actually, I tried to make love. My partner needed a dose of Mary Chapin Carpenter to finish the deed. Then she dumped me.) In short, I became obsessed with Garth Brooks in the way that only a recent convert can feel. In particular, I relished the promise he held for fallen Southerners like me—you could go home again and not feel embarrassed. That feeling only intensified when high-minded friends of mine, including a diplomat from Singapore, sat me down and told me politely that I was losing my mind.

  I didn’t care. As I reached my thirties, country music became a passion and, for someone who had spent so many years abroad, a way back into America, a real America, far removed from the cynicism and manipulation of New York, Los Angeles, or Capitol Hill. I decided to learn more about this world, which is where Garth Brooks came in. When I first visited Nashville in 1995, I was told that Garth was just coming out of a period of semi-retirement and was interested, if the circumstances were right, in opening up to a writer. Once I passed several rounds of screening (which included breakfast with his handlers at the famed Pancake Pantry and some heavy breathing on my part about my then-favorite Garth song, “Unanswered Prayers”), I was invited to meet him. I
n time we developed a friendly, intimate, though always professional relationship, and during the course of the next several years I was with him on a regular—at times weekly—basis in what I later realized was a rare, and perhaps unprecedented, opportunity to witness a major American entertainer at the height of his stardom. Also, as it turned out (and though neither of us anticipated it), the time I spent with Garth coincided with a dramatic turning point in his career.

  When I first met Garth, I was captivated by his magnetism. In person he was just as cordial as he appeared on television, with an aw-shucks charm and effortless good manners. It was almost as if he had stepped out of an episode of “My Three Sons.” “Nice to meet you, sir,” he said upon our first meeting. “Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am,” he replied to questioners on a radio show. And while being hurried to a press conference, Garth brushed off his handlers to greet a girl who was cowering in the corner. “Hi, I’m Garth,” he said, locking onto her with his spellbinding eyes. “What’s your name?” Instantly the girl began to cry. Later, when prompted by a reporter to tell where he hoped to be in ten years, he offered an impossibly humble reply: “Hopefully I see myself as a father, as a husband. I would still like to be a son ten years from now. And that’s about all I know. If it’s music, then God has blessed me more than I could ever imagine, and if it’s not, I hope it’s something where I still get a chance to make a difference.” The crowd erupted in applause.

  The focal point of Garth’s charisma was his eyes. When he first burst into public view in 1989, Garth’s eyes were a constant topic of conversation—among friends, fans, and colleagues alike. They were dreamy, cerulean blue eyes with a hint of martial green. They searched the sky constantly for inspiration, and when they found it they locked on the spot with near-religious intensity. It was as though he was following a spirit that no one else could see, but Garth made it so believable that everybody else wanted to follow. And when he turned those eyes on you—in person, onstage, or even in photographs—you couldn’t help but be transfixed. As Jimmy Bowen, the head of Garth’s label and later his chief antagonist, wrote of the first time he saw Garth perform: “Garth’s eyes got so wide and fiery, you could tell what color they were from twenty rows back. He looked out over four hundred people in one area of the crowd, and every person thought he was making eye contact with him or her.” Garth Brooks had the kind of eyes that made you feel important, but also made you feel as if he was looking into the depths of your fantasies.

  Over the years, though, Garth’s eyes began to change. They became less innocent, and more calculating. Instead of looking out at the world, they began to peer inward. The puffy-cheeked kid with the too-big baseball cap and the dream of becoming a singing cowboy became increasingly overshadowed by the hard-nosed mogul with the degree in advertising and the desire to extend his empire to all corners of the globe. Garth, of course, always had both traits in his personality, but all during his rise he had brilliantly straddled the line between the two. Sure, he strategized, but he did so in a way that made you root for him. Caught cheating on his wife early in his career, Garth and Sandy went on TNN (The Nashville Network), confessed, and discussed their commitment to rebuild their relationship. It was a brilliant act of self-effacement. When Garth’s video for “The Thunder Rolls” was pulled from TNN and CMT (Country Music Television) for its depiction of spousal abuse, Garth rallied support in battered women’s shelters. Again fans backed him. Every month he seemed to be in the news for a different cause (saying he might retire after the birth of his first child; announcing his sister was a lesbian on Barbara Walters), and though some accused him of being a crass manipulator, more supported him. After all, here was a man who talked openly of old-fashioned dreams and throwback heroes. After winning country music’s prestigious Horizon Award in 1990, Garth thanked four people: his father, George Jones, George Strait, and John Wayne.

  Now, five years later, Garth was clearly beginning to strain under the pressure of trying to live up to his own image. “I’ve thrown up, cried, and passed out,” he told Billboard magazine of his new album, Fresh Horses, his first in two years, “everything physically possible you can do with a record.” With another interviewer Garth went even further. “It just got too loud in my head,” he said of fears that became so intense that one day he blacked out on his farm. “It just got…too…loud. People were screaming, and I was one of them inside there: ‘What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO? If it doesn’t work.’” He spent the first three days after turning in his album in a fetal position, worrying. “I know this artist’s worst nightmare is being forgotten,” he said to me in the odd manner he developed of speaking of himself in the third person. “I’m going to have to come face-to-face with that. I’ve never been a fan of the backside of the bell curve.”

  All of which raised a series of questions that haunted his mind as he waited to hear the results of the American Music Award for Favorite Artist of the Year, questions that would play themselves out in a vivid and sometimes disturbing way in the months to come: Could it be possible that the reigning sovereign of American music, having almost single-handedly brought Nashville to an unprecedented primacy in America, had overstayed his welcome? Might it be true that his efforts to transform himself into a modern-day John Wayne would fall short? And, more importantly, what would happen if the public (especially those in Nashville) sent him a message that they no longer believed his humble, normal-guy image?

  “And now…” proclaimed Neil Diamond with a dramatic pause as soon as the clips of the nominees’ videos were complete, “the Favorite Artist of the Year is…” He carefully slid open the triangular envelope as the fans in the balcony began to scream out their votes—Hootie, TLC, Boyz II Men—until Diamond’s own voice cut them off: “Garth Brooks!”

  Sitting in his seat, Garth lurched backward and his eyes bugged out in surprise. “Everything suddenly went white,” he told me later. Sales of his new record had been disappointing. He had not performed publicly in over a year. Surely he didn’t deserve this award. His mind was spinning. He felt sick to his stomach. Finally, after a moment, he leaned over and kissed his wife. He rose, hugged the other (startled) nominees one at a time, and finally scampered to the stage. “I just kept saying to myself, ‘Man, I don’t deserve this. Man, I don’t deserve this. Man, I don’t deserve this…’” Once in the light, he removed his hat, bowed, and collected the trophy from Neil Diamond. Arriving at the podium, he paused, looked directly into the camera, and delivered the speech that for months afterward would be viewed as the signal that Garth Brooks was becoming so consumed with own image—and with creating media stunts to enhance that image—that he risked losing his effortless, common-man touch.

  “Thank you very much,” Garth said in his familiar, small-town mayor tone of voice. “So you’ll know right off the bat, I cannot agree with this…Music is made up of a lot of people, and if we’re one artist short, then we all become a lesser music. So, without any disrespect to the American Music Awards, and without any disrespect to any fans who voted, to all the people who should be honored with this award…” He set the trophy down on the podium. “I’m gonna leave it right here.” And with that he left the stage empty-handed.

  The audience, stunned, sat still in its seats.

  In Nashville, tired of such speeches, people clicked off their sets: Garth had already accepted two awards that evening. What was wrong with this one?

  And by the following day word had spread around town: Garth Brooks seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown.

  The first dime-store cowgirl with a camera and flashbulb slid on her knees to the front of the stage even before anyone appeared in the doorway. The second and third ones followed soon after. By the time the announcer turned on the microphone and unleashed his generic bass radio voice, nearly two dozen feathered-haired fans in creased Western shirts and slickly stitched boots were bobbing like schoolgirls in front of the cramped corner stage at Bronco’s Lounge, “Central Virgin
ia’s Number One Country Showplace.”

  “Welcome to Bronco’s, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Cal, and we’re glad you’re here.” The squeal, even then, could not have been louder. Cal’s voice was as low as could go. “And now, what you’ve all been waitin’ for…”

  The roar in the room grew rowdier with each word. A few of the three hundred people overcrowded in back started to bang on the red-and-white tabletops. “Is he going to come out of that door?” a young woman asked as I emerged from backstage. When I nodded, she yanked her mother from her seat and took her picture in front of the closed door.

  “His first single, ‘Old Enough to Know Better,’ has been on top of the K95 charts. It’s been on top of the R&R [Radio & Records] charts. It’s been on top of the Billboard charts for the last two weeks as the number one country hit in our nation. You’ve heard it before. You’re going to hear it again. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Columbia recording star, Mr. Waaaaaade Haaaaaayes!”

  With a blaze of fiddle fire and a flash of Kodak light, the backside of Nashville’s newest hunk in a hat went streaking through the side door of the lounge and paused, momentarily, in the center of the stage.

  “One, two, three, four.” The drummer, a blond, rapped his sticks together. “Five, six, seven, eight.”