{"id":100199,"date":"2016-07-08T13:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=100199"},"modified":"2016-07-08T14:02:50","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T18:02:50","slug":"mr-brooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/08\/mr-brooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Brooks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

From the cover of In Pieces<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

I saw Garth\u2014that\u2019s what we called him, just Garth\u2014with three friends when we were in the fourth grade, maybe fifth. He was touring in support of 1993\u2019s In Pieces <\/em>album. A Nashville native, I had been listening to country music for as long as I could listen, but Garth was the artist that had turned me from a passive listener into an enthusiast. My grandfather had had Johnny Cash, my parents Alabama. But Garth, Garth was mine.<\/p>\n

As far as they were concerned, I could have him. When the guitar arpeggio at the start of \u201cFriends in Low Places<\/a>,\u201d his first hit, came over the radio, my parents would switch the dial from 97.9, which played Top 40 country, to 95.5, which played the classic stuff. \u201cBlame it all on my roots\u2009\/\u2009I showed up in boots,\u201d Garth sang, in a lyric that seemed to announce a changing of the guard, \u201cand ruined your black tie affair.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

My father didn\u2019t own a black tie, but neither did he much wear boots. Something about Garth needled him. What I heard as brave and original he heard as bigheaded, crude. Garth was one of those figures. A line in the sound. There was before and after: B.G.<\/small>, A.G.<\/small><\/p>\n

His songs could be moving (\u201cThe Dance\u201d), suspenseful (\u201cThe Thunder Rolls\u201d), clever (\u201cTwo of a Kind, Workin\u2019 on a Full House\u201d),<\/em> scandalous (\u201cThat Summer\u201d), even enlightened (\u201cWe Shall Be Free\u201d), but for all their emotional and thematic range they were bound by a fervor and intensity that was uniquely his own. A New York Times <\/em>review from the early days of his career called the music \u201cbawdy,\u201d \u201cself-aggrandizing,\u201d \u201cdisturbing,\u201d and \u201chollow.\u201d You bought into it or you didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I, for one, was invested. Garth\u2019s rise from \u201cFriends in Low Places\u201d (1990) had loosely coincided with my grandfather\u2019s willingness to let me cut his lawn unassisted, and so I saved the money I earned from mowing, as well as from painting the fences around his pasture, to buy Ropin\u2019 the Wind <\/em>(1991) and then The Chase <\/em>(1992) on cassette tape.<\/p>\n

Both were sensations. In the spring of 1992, The Chase<\/em> had debuted at No. 1\u00a0not only on the country charts but on the pop charts as well, crowding out Madonna\u2019s Erotica<\/em>, brushing shoulders with Whitney Houston\u2019s Bodyguard <\/em>sound track. The album went nine times platinum. But I didn\u2019t know about that. I mounted the tractor, adjusted the headphones, punched play on my portable cassette player. By the time I last-lapped the backfield, having paused only long enough to refill the gas tank and flip the tape, I had listened to the album three or four times.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

For all its flamboyance, I sensed in Garth\u2019s music a familiar intimacy. At heart the man was a raconteur. The stories he spun in songs like \u201cThe Thunder Rolls,\u201d \u201cThat Summer,\u201d and \u201cPapa Loved Mama,\u201d which climaxes in a trucker crashing his big rig into his cheating wife\u2019s motel room, were every bit as detailed as they were overblown.<\/p>\n

Garth might have been about the business of crashing black-tie affairs, but I thought he\u2019d have been right at home sitting around the table on my grandfather\u2019s porch or in the passenger seat of my uncle\u2019s pickup on one of those drives when the road and the clock melted away in a space-time warp of narrative.<\/p>\n

In theory at least, a close run-in with Garth wasn\u2019t out of the question. In early elementary school, a rumor circulated that he\u2019d bought a farm, of all places, on a hill off of Old Dickerson Pike. We passed by the property every day going to and from school. You couldn\u2019t see much of the house, a two-story antebellum number, from the road, but there was a great big warehouse-looking structure off to the side, into which you could have easily fit a stage, a studio, a fleet of sports cars, or all of the above.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t possible, but if Garth really was up there it meant that occasionally he had to come down\u2014the gate would have to swing open and he\u2019d turn onto the very road we were driving on.<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t possible, but then one morning on our commute we thought we might have passed him riding by us on a John Deere, but it really wasn\u2019t possible, and then one night he and his family were walking out of Cracker Barrel as we were walking in, and it wasn\u2019t possible, except that apparently it was.<\/p>\n

Suffice to say that by the time I came by a copy of In Pieces<\/em>, this time on CD, Garth\u2019s music had gone from being a private excitement to a source of pride. He\u2019d become Garth. Not Garth as in Prince or Pavarotti, not Garth as in a mononymous abstraction, but Garth as in I felt like I knew him. To my mind, we were on a first-name basis.<\/p>\n

A student in my mother\u2019s class had given her a \u201ccompact-disc\u201d player and, not knowing what to do with it, she\u2019d lugged it home and left it sitting behind a chair in the den. I plugged it in and, over the course of a week, put to mind the entirety of In Pieces<\/em>, from the first lines of the rousing \u201cStanding Outside the Fire\u201d\u2014<\/p>\n

\n

We call them cool,
those hearts who have no scars to show \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2014and the bridge of \u201cCallin\u2019 Baton Rouge\u201d\u2014<\/p>\n

\n

Hello, Samantha dear, I hope you\u2019re feeling fine
And it won\u2019t be long until I\u2019m with you all the time<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2014to the final verse of the acoustic \u201cCowboy Song\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

So when you see the cowboy, he\u2019s not ragged by his choice
He never meant to bow them legs
Or put that gravel in his voice<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The sixth track,\u201cAin\u2019t Goin\u2019 Down (\u2019Til the Sun Comes Up),\u201d\u00a0gave me fits. It was a barn burner, the fastest song I\u2019d ever heard. \u201cThe Devil Went Down to Georgia,\u201d by comparison, felt like a waltz. The song\u2019s laser-quick tempo took cues from the lyrics, which recounted the story of a redheaded girl\u2019s curfew-testing tear across a Southern town, and it was pure action, a lightning strike of verbs relayed lickety-split through a derecho of fiddles. In the CD booklet, the first verse looked like this:<\/p>\n

\n

Six o\u2019clock on Friday evening
Momma doesn\u2019t know she\u2019s leaving
\u2019Til she hears the screen door slamming
Rubber squealin\u2019, gears a-jamming
Local country station just a-blaring on the radio
Pick him up at seven and they\u2019re headin\u2019 to the rodeo
Momma\u2019s on the front porch screamin\u2019 out her warning
Girl you better get your red head
Back in bed before the morning<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It sounded more like:<\/p>\n

\n

Six o\u2019clock on Friday evening Momma doesn\u2019t know she\u2019s leaving \u2019Til she hears the screen door slamming Rubber squealin\u2019, gears a-jamming Local country station just a blaring on the radio Pick him up at seven and they\u2019re headin\u2019 to the rodeo Momma\u2019s on the front porch screamin\u2019 out her warning Girl you better get your red head Back in bed before the morning<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And went on that way for three more verses. Garth was flouting rules even as he left few doubts that he could keep them. On an album whose title and cover art suggested quiet introspection, the song amounted to an exalting taunt. Go on, it said, see if you can.<\/p>\n

I must have listened to \u201cAin\u2019t Goin\u2019 Down (\u2019Til the Sun Comes Up)\u201d fifty times, holding down the rewind button to revisit botched lines and then inevitably pressing too hard and having to scan forward from the start. Unlike the run-of-the-mill country songs on the radio, you couldn\u2019t passively absorb this one. You had to engage. Getting it down felt like an accomplishment. You carried it, flaunted it, like a favorite scar.<\/p>\n

The skipping back and forth must have driven my parents up the wall, and yet, for all of their disdain for Garth, I don\u2019t recall them ever asking me to get up off the floor and put the music away. The concert was a harder sell.<\/p>\n

The music wasn\u2019t at issue as much as the logistics. Did I have money to pay for the ticket? Yes. Would there be adult supervision? Of course. And besides, why did I need to go now\u2014<\/em>wouldn\u2019t there be plenty of other chances to see Garth? Maybe so, I said, paraphrasing another Garth song, but what if the next time never comes?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

It really was a coup. Like Braves baseball, grandfathers, and Mortal Kombat<\/em>, Garth was an enthusiasm I shared with my buddies. His music and proximity made us feel as if we were at the very center of something vital. The concert\u2014held south of the city, on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University\u2014would be a confirmation.<\/p>\n

Or so we hoped. I\u2019d never been to a proper concert. The little live music I\u2019d heard had come out of modest spaces: restaurants, churches, school gyms. Even so, as we parked and then hoofed across the asphalt for what seemed like miles, any expectations I harbored deep down began to give way.<\/p>\n

The basketball arena soared up against the night sky. The ticket line spiraled around the building and spiraled some more. Once inside, we climbed flights of stairs and scooted across aisles before finally arriving at our seats. There were people everywhere. Above us, below us, pooled along the floor, crammed into corners. \u201cGarth!\u201d they chanted. \u201cGarth! Garth! Garth!\u201d<\/p>\n

Who were these people? Where had they come from? What did they think they knew about Garth? I stood among them, hating them, feeling already as if a treasure had been taken from me and distributed at random, one of thousands and thousands and yet wanting for some reason to be the only one. As it grew louder, I grew quieter, stiller. By the time the lights dimmed and the music started, I stood encased in a thick cocoon of silence.<\/p>\n

Garth shot from the stage. Part trapeze artist, part troubadour, he smashed guitars and slung cymbals, leapt over flames, climbed a rope ladder and swung out over the crowd. He did \u201cFriends in Low Places,\u201d did \u201cPapa Loved\u00a0Mama\u201d and \u201cAin\u2019t Goin\u2019 Down (\u2019Til the Sun Comes Up),\u201d and I knew every word but, swallowed by the people and struck dumb by the spectacle, could not bring myself to make a sound.<\/p>\n

Are we enlarged by what diminishes us, blessed or disparaged by what un-singles us out? Whatever else it signified, the concert forever altered my perception of Garth. He was, I realized, a very big deal.<\/p>\n

On those previous occasions when I\u2019d seen him around, I hadn\u2019t thought about getting his autograph. I hadn\u2019t felt as if I needed it, not when I had the music, not when the man himself was right there.<\/p>\n

But the next time I saw him, a year or so later, out to eat with my family at a meat-and-three, I worked up the courage and walked over to the table where he was sitting with his wife and daughters.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Brooks,\u201d I said, blushing, brandishing forth my father\u2019s pen, \u201ccould I ask you to sign my napkin?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can call me Garth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, Mr. Brooks,\u201d I repeated.<\/p>\n

I never called him Garth again.<\/p>\n

Drew Bratcher is a writer from Nashville. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw Garth\u2014that\u2019s what we called him, just Garth\u2014with three friends when we were in the fourth grade, maybe fifth. He was touring in support of 1993\u2019s In Pieces album. A Nashville native, I had been listening to country music for as long as I could listen, but Garth was the artist that had turned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":439,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[23174,6461,8892,14236,11509,19216,23173,23171,23172,1666,18164,13487,10401,9909],"class_list":["post-100199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-aint-goin-down-till-the-sun-comes-up","tag-celebrity","tag-childhood","tag-concerts","tag-country","tag-country-music","tag-friends-in-low-places","tag-garth-brooks","tag-in-pieces","tag-nashville","tag-performances","tag-songs","tag-the-nineties","tag-youth"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy I Got Really, Really Into Garth Brooks As a Kid<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The country star performs in New York for the first time in nineteen years this weekend. 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