He changed music forever, but he's still ours
Garth Brooks receives the Will Rogers Spirit Award at Crowne Plaza Downtown in 2007. Tom Gilbert / Tulsa World file
By SARAH HART Scene Assistant Editor
Published: 6/9/2009 2:29 AM
Last Modified: 6/9/2009 1:12 PM
As if you needed any reminder, Garth Brooks is an Okie through and through. Always has been, always will be. Just ask him -- he's pretty approachable, and since he lives in Owasso, you won't have to go far. Or better yet, read a new book by Patsi Bale Cox that centers on Brooks' meteoric rise in the music business, a feat performed with such magnitude that it's only been done a handful of times in the history of music, first by a hip-shaker named Elvis and then by four mopheads from Liverpool who called themselves the Beatles.
But Brooks is our very own Beatle-meets-Elvis. And Bale Cox knows a thing or two about the country-pop crossover master. She's been around him since the beginning.
"I had worked with him for so long and written about his music so long," Bale Cox said in a recent telephone interview from her home in Nashville, Tenn. "I thought there were so many misconceptions about him and his career that after Garth and I finished working on the material for his Web site, I had written and researched so much for that Web site and so much couldn't be used, such an overwhelming amount. And so I thought, 'This story really has to be chronicled.' And I felt I should be the one to do it."
And Bale Cox knows how to chronicle. She was the co-author of bestselling autobiographies by Loretta Lynn, Wynona Judd and Tanya Tucker. She's a former magazine editor, a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and has served on the Grammy nominating committee. What she offers is perspective.
"I have worked at record labels three of them — so I knew exactly what was going on. Record labels try to control their artist," Bale Cox said.
But that didn't worry her about Garth.
Bale Cox related a story, also detailed in her book, about a longtime musician concerned with Garth's nonchalance of record label types.
"He said that Garth might want to stop and think — that the record label guy could chew him up and spit him out," she said. "I had written about Garth for so long, and I told him that, for the first time in this town, instead of betting on the label head, I'm going to bet on the kid from Oklahoma."
Bale Cox was witness to all the hoopla that became an arena sellout empire. She says it was a rise in popularity so sharp and so quick that duplication would be next to impossible. He created a new type of country music, one that included bits of other genres, something Garth didn't fear. Bale Cox said Garth is the godfather of a genre that required a willingness to branch out.
"He included Western music. He loves the West, rodeoing and cowboy songs. And he's also willing to go to the power ballad, straight-up honky-tonk, and he loved story songs."
And that willingness to explore created a superstar.
"It happened for a very simple reason," Bale Cox said. "In the entertainment business, you meet artists who suck the oxygen out of the room. They don't just command it, but everyone else is a little less because they are so much more.
"But when Garth walked into a room, he didn't suck the oxygen out, he breathed energy into it. And that translated to his music, his live shows — when you can harness the ability to do things like that, that's the reason for the phenomenon. It was the biggest shot in the arm that Nashville could've ever had."
Brooks' ability to be grounded, free from arrogance and down-home, didn't hurt. Bale Cox was privy to his charm on many occasions.
"He is so approachable and so real. There is an emotional candidness in him," she said. "His core is the same, especially when you've gone through being the Elvis of this part of the century."
The day Bale Cox met Garth Brooks, he was at his management company, which was seemingly deserted.
"He was answering the telephone because the secretary needed to go to lunch. The first 30 minutes we were talking, he would have to take a call. I was so charmed by that. Then, flash-forward to 1997 and he's the biggest star on the planet."
The author … the star
Patsi Bale Cox, who grew up in southwest Kansas, knows the respect that Brooks has gained in the world. But she also knows the adoration he has for his home state. But was it Oklahoma that gave him some of his appeal?“Several people have said that (his roots are) what instinctively drew Garth to them,” she said. “It’s what made Garth willing to fight a lot of battles on behalf of a lot of people. He had that toughness to dig his heels in when he had to.”
Look for a review of “The Garth Factor” (Center Street, $24.99) in the upcoming weeks.
THE GARTH FACTOR
The Career Behind Country’s Big BoomWhen: 2 p.m. Saturday
Where: Barnes at Noble, 8620 E. 71st St.
Sarah Hart 581-8480
sarah.hart@tulsaworld.com
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