Garth Brooks Biography

Troyal Garth Brooks, born February 7, 1962 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and raised in Yukon, Oklahoma is an American country music singer-songwriter and charity director.

Brooks was a phenomenal musical force in the 1990s. He had his chart breakthrough in 1989, having come apparently from nowhere, and was an immediate commercial success. Lacking the tall and lanky physical appearance typical of some male country stars, he successfully integrated pop and rock elements into his recordings and live performances. He soon began to dominate the country singles and country albums charts and quickly crossed over into the mainstream pop arena, selling records like no one else in country music ever had and exposing country music to a larger audience than previously thought possible.

Brooks enjoyed one of the most successful careers in popular music history, with over 70 hit singles and 15 charted albums to his credit and over 115 million albums sold in the US alone, breaking records for both sales and concert attendance throughout the 1990s. Possibly dissatisfied and looking to expand his career boundaries, he then attempted (and left uncompleted) an artistically ambitious multimedia project involving a fictitious alter ego.

Troubled by the conflicts between career and family, the year after the decade ended, Garth Brooks announced his retirement from recording and performing, thereby disappearing from the music world as suddenly as he had come.

Garth Brooks grew up in Yukon, Oklahoma. His father Ray Brooks worked as a draughtsman for an oil company, while his mother Colleen Carroll was a country music singer on the Capitol Records label in the 1950s and also a regular on the Red Foley Show.

Garth grew up with an interest in music and sang in casual family settings, but his biggest interest was in athletics. He played football, baseball, and ran track in high school.

Brooks attended Oklahoma State University in Stillwater on a track scholarship as a javelin thrower. However he dropped track while at the school and graduated in 1984 with a degree in advertising.

Brooks began his professional singing career in that same year. He became very successful as a local artist, playing to packed clubs and bars in Oklahoma, the Tumbleweed in Stillwater in particular. However, a 1985 trip to Nashville to gain a record contract was a miserable failure. Brooks returned to Oklahoma and in 1986 married Sandy Mahl of Owasso, Oklahoma, whom he had met while working as a bouncer at the Tumbleweed.

In 1987, the couple moved to Nashville, and Brooks was gradually able to wend his way into the music industry. By 1988, he was signed to Capitol Records.

During the early years, Brooks frequently recorded demo records for songwriter Kent Blazy. It was Blazy who introduced Brooks to Trisha Yearwood, another unknown aspiring singer, in October 1987. The pair became immediate friends and pledged to help the other out once one of them made it big. Garth landed a record deal and tour first and took Trisha on the road as his opening act in 1991. The rest is country music history.

Garth Brooks' eponymous first album was released in 1989 and was both a critical and chart success. It peaked at #2 in the US country album chart and reached #13 on the Billboard 200 pop album chart. Most of the album was traditionalist country, influenced in part by George Strait. The first single ahead of it was "Much Too Young To Feel This Damn Old", a country top 10 success. It was followed by his first well-known song, "If Tomorrow Never Comes", which was his first country #1 and is still considered one of his best-crafted efforts. "Not Counting You" reached #2, and then "The Dance" put him at #1 again; this song's theme of people dying in the course of doing something they believe in resonated strongly and together with a popular music video gave Brooks his first push towards a broader audience. Brooks has also claimed that of all the songs he has recorded, "The Dance" is his favorite.

The album No Fences followed in 1990. It reached #1 on the Billboard country music chart (staying there for 23 weeks) and #3 on the pop chart, and would go on to become Brooks' biggest-selling album, with global sales of over 20 million copies. It contained what would become Brooks' signature song, the blue collar anthem "Friends in Low Places", which was a favorite of American troops serving in the 1991 Gulf War. The album contained two other Brooks classics, the dramatic and controversial "The Thunder Rolls" and the philosophically ironic "Unanswered Prayers". Also a hit was the affectionate "Two of a Kind, Workin’ on a Full House"; all four of these songs hit #1 on the country chart.

While Brooks' music was definitely in the country idiom, he had also absorbed a sensibility from the 1970s singer songwriter movement, especially James Taylor (whom he idolized and named his first child after) and Dan Fogelberg. Similarly, Brooks was influenced by the operatic rock of the 1970s-era Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. In his highly successful live shows, Brooks used a wireless headset microphone to free himself to run about the stage, adding energy and arena rock theatrics to spice up the normally staid country music approach to concerts.

When Garth Brooks' third album, Ropin' the Wind, was released in September 1991, it had advance orders of 4 million copies and entered the pop album charts at #1, a first for a country act. It also further propelled the sales of his first two albums, such that he sometimes occupied the top two spots in the pop album chart (and the top three in the Country one). Nashville had never imagined that a country artist could become the biggest artist in popular music, but when both record sales and concert attendance were looked at, Garth Brooks was doing just that. Ropin' the Wind's music was a melange of pop country and honky-tonk; hits included Billy Joel's "Shameless", "What She's Doing Now", and "The River". In the end it became his second-best selling album after No Fences.

Brooks was in Los Angeles when the 1992 riots broke out there. To then express his desire for tolerance of all kinds, he co-wrote the gospel-country-rock hybrid "We Shall Be Free", which was the first single off his fourth album The Chase. [1] However the song met with resistance from country radio stations and from the culturally conservative country audience, and only made it to #12 on the country chart, his worst showing to date. Nevertheless, the song often received standing ovations when performed in concert.

The Chase, which Brooks would later describe as his album that gave the closest look into his mind, would go on to become a huge success, with its next two singles both making it back to #1. But it would not quite match the sales of his previous albums, and the tension between what Brooks wanted to do and what at least parts of his core audience were willing to accept would seem to stay with him for the balance of his career. In any case, Brooks's most loyal fans greatly admired his pushing of boundaries and personal vision.

Brooks won his first Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 1992 for the album Ropin' the Wind. He was awarded the Academy of Country Music award for Entertainer of the Year for 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993, and the award for Top Male Vocalist for 1990 and 1991. As a performer and artist he has been compared to fellow country and pop/rock legends, such as the likes of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Jackson Browne, Kenny Rogers, Elton John, George Strait, George Jones, and Eagles.

During this period Garth and Sandy Brooks had three children: Taylor Mayne Pearl, born July 8, 1992; August Anna, born May 3, 1994; and Allie Colleen, born July 28, 1996.

Brooks' August 1993 album In Pieces was another instant number 1 success, going on to sell in the region of 10 million copies world-wide. However, it was not issued across the world all at once, which caused upset among his fans. In the United Kingdom, one of Brooks' most committed fan bases outside the United States, country music disc jockeys, such as Martin Campbell and John Wellington, noted that many fans were buying the album on import; indeed it was the first album to debut in the top 10 of the UK Country album charts when it was not actually released there. Once officially released, in 1994, it reached the top spot on the UK Country chart and number two on the UK pop albums chart. That same year "The Red Strokes" became Brooks' first single to make the pop top 40 there, reaching a high of number 13; it was followed by "Standing Outside The Fire", which made number 23. Previous albums No Fences, Ropin' The Wind and The Chase also remained in the top 30.

Brooks then embarked on a 1994 UK tour, selling out venues such as Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre and London's Wembley Arena. He opened the London radio station, Country 1035. He also made a number of other television and radio appearances, experiencing considerable rude treatment from the British media (see Controversies below). Nevertheless, Brooks success in bringing his brand of country music to Britain was evident; indeed, Brooks has been nicknamed Garth Vader (a play on Darth Vader) in reference to his "invasion" of the charts and his success as an icon of the country genre, and the nickname probably originated from Britain when a top disc jockey, Nick Barraclough, used the phrase to describe Brooks' success on his BBC radio show. Brooks returned to the UK in 1996 for more sold-out concerts, although this time his media appearances were mostly restricted to country radio and interviews with magazines.

Brooks' success as a star elsewhere in the world is also evident, enjoying hit records and sell-out tours in Ireland, Spain, throughout Europe, Brazil, The Far East, New Zealand, Australia, etc.

In 1994 Brooks showed the variety of influences his music comes from when he appeared on the hard rock compilation KISS My Ass, a collection of KISS cover songs by popular artists from all genres. Garth requested to be on the project, and the band wholeheartedly agreed. Garth would cover the song "Hard Luck Woman", one of the band's biggest hits, and one of drummer Peter Criss' signature songs. When Brooks was asked if he had intended to make the song a country version (he was the only country performer on the entire album), he said that he couldn't dream of performing the song any other way than Peter Criss did. Nevertheless, Brooks' version made its way into the country charts.

One of the later peaks in Brooks' fame came on August 7, 1997, when he gave a free concert in New York City's Central Park, drawing hundreds of thousands of people in a city that many would say is far removed from the country music world. Estimates of the actual crowd size varied considerably, from 250,000 to 750,000 or even higher (this is because many were outside the actual venue, which was filled, enjoying the show. Brooks himself once said that he "played to over 800,000 people" at the show) [2]; an additional 14.6 million viewers saw it live on HBO. Billy Joel and Don McLean made guest appearances. Brooks once again won the award for the ACM Entertainer of the year in 1998.

In 1991, Brooks took part in Voices That Care, a multi-artist project that featured other top names in music for a one-off single to raise money for the allied troops in the Gulf War. The project included fellow country singers Randy Travis, Kenny Rogers and Kathy Mattea.

In 1999, Garth Brooks began the Teammates for Kids Foundation which provides financial aid to charities for children. The organization breaks down into three categories spanning three different sports.

As his career rose, Garth Brooks seemed frustrated by the conflicts between career and family. He talked of retiring from performing in 1992 [5] and 1995, but went back out on tour each time instead. In 1999, he talked again of retirement again on The Nashville Network's Crook & Chase program; this time, falling records sales may have been an additional trigger. [6]

In 1999, Garth and Sandy Brooks separated [7]; they made public their plans to divorce on October 9, 2000 [8] which became final in 2001.

On October 26, 2000, Brooks officially announced his retirement from recording and performing. [9] That same night, Capitol Records saluted his achievement of selling 100 million albums in the US with a lavish party at Nashville's Gaylord Entertainment Center. [10]

November 13, 2001, saw the release of Brooks' last album, Scarecrow. Brooks staged a few performances for promotional purposes, but stated that he would be retired from recording and performing at least until his youngest daughter, Allie, turned 18. Although the album did not sell as well as his heyday, it still sold comfortably well, reaching #1 on both the pop and country charts.

Although Brooks ceased to record new material between 2002 and (most of) 2005, he continued to chart with previously recorded material, including a top 30 placing for "Why Ain't I Running" in 2003.

On May 25, 2005, Brooks proposed to longtime friend and fellow country music superstar Trisha Yearwood in front of a packed house in Bakersfield, California. In December 2005, Patricia Lynn Yearwood and Troyal Garth Brooks drove to Claremore, Oklahoma and got their marriage license at the Rogers County Courthouse. They wed on December 10, 2005, at their home in Oklahoma. It was Brooks' second marriage and the third for Yearwood. Trisha and Garth are constantly spotted at Utica Square in Tulsa where they shop and dine. They also live on a ranch in Owasso, Oklahoma, just northeast of Tulsa.

Later in 2005 there were rumours of a comeback concert in Las Vegas; however, these proved false and Brooks insisted he was not touring, neither did he have any plans to make any new studio material until 2015. However, there was some good news for his fans in August 2005 when it was announced that Brooks had signed a deal with Wal-Mart, leasing them the rights to his back catalog following his split with Capitol. Three months later, Brooks and Wal-Mart issued The Limited Series, a six-CD box set containing past material and a Lost Sessions disc with eleven previously unissued recordings. [11] This is the first time in history that a musician has signed a deal that states his music will be sold by only one retailer. Confirmation that Brooks still has a large fan base was shown as the set sold more than 500,000 physical copies on its day of issue and it quickly topped 1 million by the first week in December (which by RIAA accounting rules for multiple albums is equal to 6 million units). Granted the boxed set was released around Christmas, as a limited-edition, and priced well below what one might expect of a six-disc collection.

In September 2005, Brooks came out of his retirement long enough to perform John Fogerty's "Who'll Stop the Rain" with Yearwood on the Shelter from the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast nationwide telethon for Hurricane Katrina relief. A new single was also issued, "Good Ride Cowboy", a tribute to his late friend, rodeo star and fellow country singer, Chris Ledoux. Later in the month Brooks performed at the Grand Ole Opry's 80th birthday celebration. Selections included a duet with Steve Wariner on "Long Neck Bottle", another joint effort with country legends Bill Anderson, Porter Wagoner, and Little Jimmy Dickens, and a solo guitar "The Dance", after telling the audience he hoped it was like riding a bicycle. The audience sang along with Garth, and there was a rousing long standing ovation.

On November 15, 2005, Brooks performed "Good Ride Cowboy" in front of a live audience in Times Square in New York City, as part of the 2005 Country Music Association Awards show. The audience went wild, and Garth looked like his old self. In December, the single reached #1.

In early 2006 Wal-mart issued The Lost Sessions as a single CD apart from the boxed set, with extra tracks including the top 40 duet with Yearwood, "Love Will Always Win". All of the Garth Brooks studio albums were also re-issued under the umbrella "The Remastered Series".

For a list of singles and albums, see Garth Brooks discography