Country’s Gamesman

Garth Brooks is tired as he sits in his dressing room at NBC Studios in Burbank, wearing a baseball cap instead of a cowboy hat and sweats instead of the fancy two-tone shirts and freshly pressed jeans that are his trademarks.

It’s midafternoon and the man who has sold more albums in the U.S. than any other solo artist in history--62 million and counting--is relaxing following a sound check for his appearance on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

Leno has already popped in to say hello and an NBC staffer has delivered a warm letter from NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield, who has worked with Brooks on his concert specials for the network.

With the dressing room door now closed, the country superstar leans back on the sofa and closes his eyes. The fatigue is understandable with his relentless, nonstop schedule.

Brooks has been trying to get everything ready for the release today by Capitol Records of his long-delayed new album, “Sevens.”

He’s also in the midst of a grueling North American tour that included 121 shows last year and almost twice that this year. And it’s not over. The tour will stretch through December of next year--with a few European dates possible after that.

As Brooks rests with his eyes closed, he seems close to drifting off. But after a few seconds, he snaps to attention. There’s business to be done--an interview in this case--and no one in pop music takes care of business with the determination and drive of Brooks, 35.

Whether it’s listening to more than 1,000 songs to find material or helping design the promotion campaign for an album, Brooks exhibits an intensity that has led him to be branded everything from a perfectionist, by friends, to a “control freak,” by Jimmy Bowen, the head of Capitol’s Nashville wing between 1989 and 1992.

Given his attention to detail, it’s easy to see why Brooks pulled what amounted to a sit-down strike in August by refusing to let Capitol release his new album as scheduled, because the sweeping executive changes at the label’s parent company, EMI Recorded Music, raised concerns in his mind about the label’s ability to deal effectively with “Sevens.”

It was only after he was satisfied that the right people were in place at Capitol in Nashville--including his longtime ally Pat Quigley as president-CEO--that Brooks allowed “Sevens” to be shipped to stores, where advance orders total 4 million.

During the interview, Brooks speaks about the subsequent controversy, during which he sent EMI brass a message by helping push Trisha Yearwood’s greatest-hits album (on rival MCA Records) into the pop Top 10 during the weeks his own album remained on the shelf. He also discusses his seemingly endless tour and whether he’ll ever be able to catch the only act that’s sold more records: the Beatles.

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Question: What about the Trisha Yearwood album? You seemed to be doing everything you could to help promote it, including recording a duet with her and then showing up at her concerts. Was it to show EMI what they were missing in not having your album in the stores?

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Answer: Trisha and I are friends and she wanted the duet of “In Another’s Eyes” on her album. That’s why I did it. We’ve been planning to do an entire album of songs together and that’s going to happen. But am I going to say the success of her album [past the 1 million mark in just 10 weeks, by far her fastest-seller ever] no way affected EMI’s decision to get my situation straightened out? I can’t make that call.

But there’s a line to Trisha in the liner notes to my new record that basically says, “I was having my head held under water and you were my oxygen.” That’s what that record meant to me. In my heart, I would have been shocked if my album would be out right now if it wasn’t for what happened with Trisha’s record.

Q: How hard was it to stop the release of your album in August? Everything seemed set up, momentum-wise. With all the attention from your Central Park concert on HBO, it was the perfect moment to put an album out.

A: It was the perfect moment in that sense. We felt the impact of the HBO show on demand for tickets to the concerts. Everything has doubled since Central Park. We took a risk by not putting the record out then. Who knows if all the people who might have bought the album in August because of the concert will still be looking for it now.

Some people around me were saying, “Put the record out now and deal with EMI later,” and that might have been the better way to go. I’m not saying in any way that I made the right decision, but I just didn’t feel in my gut that things were right.

Q: What were your feelings at the time?

A: Thirty days before I was supposed to deliver the album, [EMI] wiped out the whole branch that was handling us for 14 months. My statement was, “Until somebody brings me a plan that has as much detail and involvement as the one we had, it looks to me as if we are going to need another 14 months to set up a plan.”

Q: Were there lots of tense meetings?

A: Actually, no. There was a period where I didn’t hear from them for I’d say 7 1/2 to eight weeks. Thank God, I had my touring to keep me busy . . . and Trisha’s record. . . . Then, I finally got a call saying that Quigley, the one guy who had helped set up the record who was still at the company, had been moved to president of Capitol Nashville. I called him and asked him if we should go ahead and he said, “Trust me. . . . They’ve done everything we need to put the record out.” That was enough for me.

Q: Let’s talk about the tour. Why do you spend so much time on the road?

A: I’m a big sports fan and there have been a lot of athletes who have come to our shows and I’ll meet them afterward and you know what? I may have never been a fan of the guy or his team, but the next time I turn on ESPN, I’m pulling for him.

The same is true of concerts. I am a big fan of the people I’ve seen face to face. I remember seeing Jefferson Starship live years ago with free tickets from a radio station and ending up buying their records. There’s no substitute for connecting with an audience live. . . . There’s a bonding that takes place.

Q: Do you think the fact that you only charge $18, which is half of what some other acts charge, is the reason you sold more tickets in the U.S. last year than anyone else in all of pop?

A: A lot of people are very sweet and say that we could have had the same turnout at $30 or $35, but simple math tells me we’d be seeing half the people we’re seeing now. You have to remember that a ticket under $20 still isn’t cheap. If you have a family of four, that’s $80 and then there are the T-shirts.

Q: You went 18 months between tours last time. Do you think you’ll take another long break before you head out on the road again?

A: Yes, we’ll definitely take a long time off. You need time off for your family and everyone involved, the band, the crew. . . . We will never come out and make a statement again that we are going to do a three-year tour like we did this time. I think we are pushing everybody way too hard.

Q: Now that you’ve become the biggest-selling solo artist, how far are you from the Beatles’ record as the biggest-selling artist, period?

A: You serious? [Laughs] The Beatles are way out there. [The Recording Industry Assn. of America] is reassessing the Beatles’ total. Nobody seems to know. It may be 90 million, 100 million. It’s just amazing.

The most important thing to me about sales is that it is a way of showing that you are touching people. That’s the ultimate thrill . . . to have someone tell you or write you a letter to say that something you’ve sung has helped them or inspired them. It’s making that connection that keeps you pushing so hard. You want to make a difference. When it’s all over, you want to look back and think somehow the world didn’t spin quite the same way it did before you were here.