Real name? First wife? 10 things to know about Garth Brooks
Garth Brooks plays five concerts at Croke Park, Dublin this weekend. (Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images)
Croke Park will be a sea of Stetson hats this weekend as Garth Brooks arrives – finally – for his much-awaited Dublin concerts.
Brooks is known for his spectacle-infused live shows, partly inspired by the theatrics of hard rock bands such as Kiss (as we shall see). In addition fans can look forward to an evening hits that, laid end to end, would probably stretch from Ireland to Nashville.
But what about the person behind the hat, the denim and the deep-fried country persona? Read on to discover more.
The singer’s actual first name is Troyal. He was named after his father, Troyal Raymond Brooks, a draftsman for an oil company in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
All of Ireland was transfixed when Brooks was booked for five shows in 2014 only for the concerts to be pulled amid licensing issues. But it isn’t the first time he’s been in the spotlight. There was a bru-ha-ha over his 1992 song, We Shall Be Free, which addressed racial divisions in America.
Brooks wrote the track after witnessing the LA riots of 1992, which followed the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.
“The night the riots hit we watched it all on TV on the bus leaving LA. And as you drove out of LA you could see the buildings on fire,” he said. “It was pretty scary for all of us, especially a bunch of guys from Oklahoma. Ya know this is intense out here.” The track was a plea against racial, sexual and religious discrimination – and did not go down well among the more conservative elements of his fanbase.
It was banned by radio stations across the American South. Brooks did succeed in having it played at the 1993 Super Bowl, however. He’d been booked to sing the American national anthem – but threatened to walk unless the We Shall Be Free video was played immediately afterwards. CBS relented, having initially told Brooks the track was too contentious.
“We Shall Be Free is definitely and easily the most controversial song I have ever done,” Brooks would later write. “A song of love, a song of tolerance from someone who claims not to be a prophet but just an ordinary man. I never thought there would be any problems with this song. Sometimes the roads we take do not turn out to be the roads we envisioned them to be. All I can say about We Shall Be Free is that I will stand by every line of this song as long as I live.
Brooks wrote a third verse for Friends in Low Places that he only performs when singing the song live. The same is true of The Thunder Rolls, which he will no doubt bash out in expanded form in Dublin.
Upset at the thought of his children growing up with their dad a virtual stranger, in October 2000 Brooks stepped away from performing and touring to spend more time at home. The timing was interesting: he made the announcement the very day his record label threw a party to mark Brooks selling 100 million albums. He would not tour again until 2007.
During his final year at Oklahoma State University, Brooks worked part-time as a bouncer. One night he was called upon to eject an unruly woman from the loo. It was Sandy Mahl, whom he would go on to marry, before divorcing 15 years later (he would later tie the knot with country star Trisha Yearwood).
“My job was to escort people out that caused disturbances,” Brooks said. “She beat me about nine times close to hell that night, too. I finally got her outside and I just kept noticing how cute she was … I asked her out. She told me to drop dead.”
One of Brook’s big innovations was to bring stadium rock theatrics to country music (he loves to fly around on wires, for instance). Among his inspirations are Queen and Kiss. In the case of Kiss, the love flows both ways. In 1994, they asked him to sing lead vocals on their tune Hard Luck Woman for a Kiss tribute album.
Famous musicians are often festooned with honorary degrees. Not Brooks. In 2011, he graduated from Oklahoma State University with a Master of Business Administration. It was his second qualification from the college, from which he obtained a degree in advertising in 1984.
Brooks attended Oklahoma State University on an athletics scholarship and threw javelin at a competitive level. He never quite abandoned his dreams of making it in sport - not even after achieving fame as a musician. In 1999, he briefly played minor league baseball with the San Diego Padres. He later participated in training sessions with the New York Mets.
Garth Brooks fans are famously devoted to the singer. Brooks feels likewise about his audience. In 1996, he appeared at the Fan Fair country festival in Nashville and signed autographs for 23 straight hours. “You talk about fun, you talk about memorable, you talk about those last things you see when your last breaths are taken on this earth, that day will be one of them for me,” he said of the marathon.
Tired of being “Garth Brooks” on stage every night, in the late 1990s the singer attempted to reinvent himself through the rock’n'roll alter-ego of Chris Gaines. The idea was that he would play Gaines in a movie – and even wrote a fake “greatest hits” to give the character grounding. That album, 1999’s Garth Brooks in… the Life of Chris Gaines, went to number two in the US – but the film plans fizzled away. “I got the shit kicked out of me for doing that,” he later reflected. “That was fun to do, though.”
