COVER STORY : The Amazing Garth-O-Matic! : The music and the fans are what make Brooks’ life so charmed; the business almost got in the way

It’s just six hours before country sensation Garth Brooks begins his concert at the 12,000-seat Lawlor Events Center and workers are rushing to get things ready.

A long-haired youth in a rock T-shirt, a member of the local crew, walks to center stage where he acts as a stand-in for Brooks during a lighting test.

“How tall is Garth?” the young man asks a member of Brooks’ own tour crew. He needs to know so the spotlight operator can tell where to aim the light.

“Six-one,” answers John McBride, the tour production manager. “But why don’t you ask Garth himself? That’s him on the floor behind you.”

The surprised youth turns and stares curiously at a man on his knees, tugging at a drum kit to make sure it is anchored to the stage.

Is this nondescript guy with the Mickey Mouse baseball cap, white T-shirt and jeans really the country singer who sold more records last year than anyone--including pop hotshots Michael Jackson, U2 and Guns N’ Roses?

“That’s Garth all right,” Mickey Weber, Brooks’ tour road manager and buddy since grade school in Oklahoma, says later when told of the incident.

“When we go into Corvallis tomorrow, he’ll be right there again, unloading the equipment along with everybody else. He wasn’t raised to sit and watch other people do things that he could do himself.”

But Weber also sees a deeper purpose to Brooks’ involvement with the crew--a way for the singer to keep his balance in the face of his unprecedented rise in country and pop.

“Garth doesn’t want to separate himself from the guys,” Weber continues. “He realizes it would be very easy to get a big head after all that has happened to him. He could easily afford to travel between shows on his own bus, the way most stars do. But we’ll have 10 people on our bus tonight and he’ll be right in there in the middle of us.”

This normalcy is at the root of Brooks’ appeal, but it’s hard being Mr. Average when you’re the hottest thing in the pop world--and it’s one of the contradictions that makes Brooks a complex and interesting figure. In a country music world often shackled by conformity, he moves in daring and sometimes surprising ways. He may look like one, but he’s not just another one of country’s faceless “hat singers.”

Brooks seems equally driven by twin but conflicting obsessions: being the guy next door that is one side of his nature and being a superstar, which requires a fierce competitiveness and ego.

“I used to spend a lot of time asking, ‘Why me, why me?’ ” he says of his stardom. “Then I heard Arsenio Hall one night. I’m not a big fan of his show, but he speaks well and he said he used to wonder, ‘Why me?’ too, but that he finally decided that God gave him a gift and he wasn’t going to waste time wondering why.

“And that’s the way I feel. If I am going to do anything to justify this gift, I’m going to get after it and bust my ass for the time he has given me to do it in.”

There was so much interest in Brooks’ concert--only the seventh sell-out in the nine-year history of the Lawlor Events Center--that the phone company asked country station KBUL-FM (98.1) to halt a contest that awarded two tickets to the 98th caller each time the station played a Brooks record.

The reason: Local phone lines were jammed because of the estimated 80,000 calls to the station.

“Garthmania,” declared Debbie Raborn, the station’s general manager. “I’ve been in this business 18 years and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Brooks is more handsome than he appears in his photos, which make him seem a bit lumpish. His good looks are soft and understated--reminiscent of actor Mark Harmon. There’s a boyish quality in his unfailing politeness. He says please and thank you to co-workers when he asks for something and invariably addresses people he meets with a “sir” or “ma’am.”

This can seem a bit mechanical or false when you watch him shake hands and express interest in each guest during nearly an hour’s parade of radio station executives and contest winners in the dressing room before the show.

Yet there is no trace of cynicism. He doesn’t drop politeness when the guests leave the room or offer a hint of condescension.

Brooks, 30, is the first to tell you that he’s not the best singer in country music or the best writer or the best guitarist or the most handsome star.

So why has he attracted this massive Middle America coalition of older, traditional country fans and younger pop-rock fans?

Listening to his Reno fans answer that question, it’s easy to start thinking of Brooks as the Ross Perot of country music.

The fans say they don’t know what he stands for exactly outside of his songs, but the homespun values in the music and the convincing way he sings hit home. The words you hear over and over: “realness,” “sincerity,” “one of us,” “not just another entertainer.” He’s an alternative in a pop world dominated by the rage of rap, the anger of contemporary hard-rock and the blandness of mainstream pop.

Brooks, however, sees himself as an extension of his audience.

“I am just a mirror of them,” he says. “Maybe they see themselves in me . . . and they say, ‘Hey, you don’t have to be this ungodly person to make your mark on life. You just got to be yourself.’ ”

The conflict between the humble, unassuming Garth and the driven, ambitious Garth is so deeply rooted he appears at times to be two separate people. In fact, he writes about the two Garths in the tour’s souvenir program.

“Garth is not difficult to understand if you look at him as two different people,” he suggests. “There’s GB the artist and Garth the lazy guy just hanging around the house. Here’s how the two differ: GB likes the view from the edge; Garth hates heights. GB loves to try new things; Garth is a meat and potatoes kind of guy. . . . GB loves the control, responsibilities and duties that come with the road. Garth enjoys being lazy, dreaming and other senseless things that people call foolishness.”

Even Mick Weber speaks of the two Garths.

“When I came out on the road (in 1991), he said, ‘You’ve got to understand that there’s Garth Brooks and that’s who you’re with now . . . and then there’s “Garth Brooks” who we all work for, including me.’ When Garth sits and signs autographs for nine hours or whatever at Fan Fair (in Nashville), it’s Garth working for ‘Garth Brooks.’ ”

The dividing line between the two Garths is sometimes difficult to define, although he doesn’t try to hide the contradictions in his personality.

When someone at a press conference on the afternoon of the local concert asks him to explain the Garth phenomenon, he speaks humbly about all that has happened to him. He describes artists such as James Taylor and George Strait--two of his favorites--as true phenomena because they have stood the test of time.

“I think anybody can come out and make some fireworks go off,” he says. “It’s how long you can make those fireworks last. That’s what separates the great ones from guys like me who will be trivia questions in 20 years and no one will know the answers.”

During a private interview a few minutes later backstage, however, he exhibits his own intensity and drive.

When asked if he is prepared for the inevitable career decline, he says flatly: “That’s something I will not give in to . . . the fact that we won’t be up there (on top). The conventional thinking is every career has a bell curve. I don’t accept that. . . . I want to keep playing arenas . . . like the Rolling Stones or something . . . 30 years of pounding it out.”

At the press conference, he also expresses concern about a potential backlash from all the exposure of the last 12 months.

“I read the magazines where people say, ‘Garth sucks, I’ve had enough of him.’ Those things hurt, but I understand where they are coming from because there was a time before I was in this thing that there were guys who were just in your face all the time . . . in the press and stuff.

“Now that I’m in the business . . . , I understand it’s not the artist that steps out there and goes, ‘Cover me, cover me, cover me.’ It’s something to sell magazines and right now our face seems to sell.”

Yet moments later, during the interview, Brooks spends almost five minutes complaining about one of his biggest frustrations at the moment. Life magazine, he says, promised him the cover of the July issue in exchange for his cooperation on photos and a story. But it only gave him a small photo on a cover otherwise devoted to a photo tied to a story about the abortion debate in America.

He feels the magazine went back on the agreement.

“The reason I agreed to spend all that time with those people is they agreed to give me the cover, which could help sell some records, I suppose,” he says, with a rare flash of anger. “So basically what this magazine does is say, ‘Now that I’ve got what I want, screw you, Garth, and you can’t do anything about it.’

“My managers tell me to forget it, that if I get the press against me it’s all over, but I wasn’t raised to take that sitting down. You have to stand up and take your swings.”

Brooks’ refusal to play it safe may be one factor that endears him to his audience. He stood by his controversial video for the song “The Thunder Rolls” last year even after the Nashville Network refused to show it because of its violent content--a battered wife shoots her husband when he heads menacingly toward their daughter. Brooks thought it was an important statement about wife beating and refused to edit it.

Similarly, you may expect artists such as rapper Ice Cube or rocker Tom Petty to write a song about the L.A. riots, but Garth Brooks?

Yet he and Stephanie Davis have written a brotherhood anthem, “We Shall Be Free,” that will be on his new album and is featured in the current tour, which includes dates July 17 at the Forum and July 18 at the 32nd St. Naval Station in San Diego. The song, which he says was inspired by the L.A. riots, calls for tolerance in all areas--racial as well as sexual preference.

“Tolerance is an important issue to me,” Brooks says when asked about the song. “Just like we might today ask our grandparents how anyone could have ever judged a man by his skin, our grandkids will say, ‘How could anyone ever think someone’s sexual preference affected how their mind works?’ ”

Brooks also doesn’t shy away from offering his views when asked about the upcoming election.

“Too many people go by label, Democrat or Republican. To me, the best guy for the job is the man or woman who is going to represent your voice the best, whether that be Democrat, Republican, white, black, straight, gay, whatever.”

Most pop stars would probably leave it at that, especially in country music, where the rule is don’t ruffle feathers.

But Brooks continues.

“I tell you I have looked at Bush and this whole (Gulf) war thing and if I was in his shoes, I probably would have done the same thing. They say he pulled out too early, but I would have pulled out then too. Going to war, I would have done it too. I know there are people who say our economy is wrecked, but I’m not that kind of guy . . . not a guy who keeps up with economy. If the election was tomorrow, I guess Bush would be the guy.”

One reason Brooks may be different from most country stars is he didn’t spend a lifetime dreaming of becoming one.

There was always music around the house in Yukon, Okla., a suburb near Oklahoma City. His mother was even a country singer, recording briefly for Capitol Records in the ‘50s under the name Colleen Carroll, but she didn’t push him in that direction.

The musical diet wasn’t exclusively country, either. The youngest of six children, Brooks also heard a lot pop and rock--everything from Janis Joplin to Styx--because his brothers and sisters would play it.

Brooks’ main interest during his teen years was athletics. He played baseball and football in high school, and attended Oklahoma State University on a partial track and field scholarship. He majored in advertising and marketing.

“I had a vision of every athletic heroism in the world . . . from hitting a home run in the World Series to the winning touchdown pass, but as far as music, I never knew what to expect.”

Brooks points to the power and flashy theatrics of a Queen concert when he was 17 as the start of his serious thinking about a career in music. Watching Brian May on stage during a guitar solo triggered something in him.

But he didn’t want to be in a rock band. He felt a greater affinity for country music. After getting some experience singing around Stillwater, Okla., he headed for Nashville in 1985, visions of stardom in his head. It was a humbling experience. After one discouraging audition, he headed home. The trip had lasted less than 24 hours.

Back in Stillwater, he joined a group and married his college sweetheart. It took him a year to work up his courage to return to Nashville. But this time, he stuck it out. His wife, Sandy, worked three jobs to support them while he pushed forward with his music.

The debut album was released in 1989 and, after a slow start, it established him as one of the rising new stars in country music--a field that was undergoing a commercial and creative resurgence.

Brooks most certainly benefited from the boom that has seen the number of country radio stations go from 1,500 in the early ‘80s to about 2,500 currently.

Yet the success of his second album, 1990’s “No Fences,” pushed him well beyond country music’s own boundaries.

With his dynamic live shows and blend of pop-rock sensibilities, he has reached a younger crowd that finds a special connection.

“His music combines rock and country,” J. D. Bass, 18, said while standing near the stage before Brooks’ concert here. “It doesn’t drag along like Hank Williams.”

Those words would be sacrilege to country purists, but they represent the new punch of Brooks-style country.

By the time Brooks’ third album, “Ropin’ the Wind,” was released last fall, he had gone from being the king of country to the toast of pop. At one point, all three albums were in the pop Top 20. Total sales to date: 18 million albums.

But the heart of the Brooks experience is in the live show, where he exhibits a disarming, boyish enthusiasm and sings with such believable emotion that he taps into the sociological currents of country as well as anyone since the outlaw days of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

The theme of his music has an underdog, everyman feel. In “Friends in Low Places,” a working-class hero shows up at an old flame’s black-tie affair in his boots and raises a glass of champagne in mocking toast before heading to his neighborhood bar.

But the real lure may be in the songs, such as “If Tomorrow Never Comes” and “Unanswered Prayers,” where he expresses romantic devotion in unusually warm and convincing ways.

Equally important are the songs of inspiration--songs like “The Dance,” one of his personal favorites, and “The River,” which includes the lines:

You know a dream is like a river

Ever changin’ as it flows

And a dreamer’s just a vessel

That must follow where it goes

Trying to learn from what’s behind you

And never knowing what’s in store

Makes each day a constant battle

Just to stay between the shores . . .

In a biography of Brooks by Michael McCall, Brooks’ mother speaks about the family values. “I raised my family to love God, their family and their country in that order. Garth follows that to this day, and I’m very proud of the way he’s turned out. He knows what’s real and it gives him an anchor. That’s why I’m not afraid of how he’s going to deal with all this attention. He’s good, solid people.”

Those close to him--including his sister Betsy Smittle, who plays bass in his band, and brother Kelly, who is the tour director--think he has done a good job of staying plain ol’ Garth.

“We were playing flat-bed trucks at county fairs in the summer and loving it (two years ago), but when ‘No Fences’ came out, it went crazy and adjusting to that was hard,” Kelly recalls. “You have 10 times as many people demanding your time. But I think Garth has done real well. He hasn’t let the pressure get to him or change him.”

Mickey Weber agrees.

“Garth is almost like Joe Montana in the Super Bowl,” he says. “You can’t stop the guy. You can have the best defense in the world, or whatever, but he just clicks.”

Yet Brooks worries about the pressures on him as he sits backstage, an hour before he steps before a crowd that includes fans who paid up to $250 each to scalpers for choice seats.

There was even a time last spring when he felt suffocated. That’s why he took a much publicized six-month break in January from live shows. It was a surprising move because he was at the height of his popularity--with $5 million in concert guarantees all in place for the spring.

“It was a gamble because we were as hot as you could be and who knew if the fans would still be there six months later, but money wasn’t an issue,” he explains now, speaking slowly about a time that still seems to haunt him. “I never had money so the money I’ve made (the last two years) is more than enough.

“The problem for me was that I no longer had any hunger for the road, which is the first time that had ever happened to me. It was like I’d be on stage in the middle of a show and there would be no fire inside--and that depressed the hell out of me. What was happening was that the music was getting pushed way, way back here behind business and other matters.”

But the time off didn’t ease the tension. There were book offers, TV offers following his highly rated NBC special in January, endorsement contracts, his new record deal negotiations--so much to resolve that he found it hard to work on the two albums that he planned to make during the break.

“It was choking me,” he says. “There was a point that everything got so bad, that there only seemed to be one way out . . . and that was to kill myself. I mean it. That was one thing that came into my mind.

“Now, I knew I’d never do it, but the fact that I thought of it pissed me off so bad because life is the greatest gift. I see kids every day with this Make a Wish foundation and they can’t buy life and here I am thinking there is no future for me.”

He called an end to it, putting most of the decisions on hold.

“I called NBC and said I love you guys, if I ever do a deal, it’ll be with you, but I need some time to think about it,” he says. “I went to the endorsement people and said, thank you, but not right now. Then I went to Jimmy Bowen (head of Liberty Records, which distributes Brooks’ records) and said I can’t sing in the studio, I can’t do anything because my head is so turned upside down. He said, ‘You worry about the music and I’ll take care of your record deal,’ and he has.”

Brooks subsequently finished two albums, including a Christmas package due out in August. His much anticipated follow-up to “Ropin’ ” is tentatively titled “Let It Ride” and is due out a month later.

In addition, he has rearranged his tour schedule--no more 225 to 250 days on the road. Under the new plan, he and the band will spend part of most weeks at home in Nashville. He and his wife are expecting their first child in mid-July. The doctors tell them it’ll be a girl, and they’ve already got a name picked out: Taylor Mayne Pearl Brooks.

There had been problems with the marriage in the early days of the career when the freedom of the road led to infidelity, Brooks has acknowledged. But he says he is now devoted to his wife, calling his marriage the most important thing in his life.

By the time Brooks goes on stage, he’s already been at the Lawlor Events Center since almost noon and he’ll spend all night on the bus to get to Corvallis, Ore., in time for the show the next night. He looks tired and the tour has a year to run, including dates around the world.

Until this tour, he stayed around after the show and signed autographs for anyone who wanted one. That was fine during the early club days when he was being seen by a couple hundred people a night. But it bordered on lunacy last year when he was playing to 7,000 a night and it sometimes took him until 3 or 4 in the morning to satisfy all the requests.

Bowing to reality, he now heads for the tour bus after the last number and is usually out of the parking lot before the house lights come on--something that worries him.

“I stayed up nights, wondering what I was going to do,” he says of the decision to stop the marathon sessions. “I finally had to look at the reality of the situation . . . that things had changed, and hope the fans understand.

“This business has a way of changing you . . . picking away at you until you are a different person,” he says, aware of the conflict. “I want to give people the best show we can, but more than anything I want the people who came to see us a long time ago go away from the show now thinking: ‘That guy was real then and he’s real now. He hasn’t changed.’ ”