Garth Brooks – Live in Central Park – Review

Garth Brooks in Central Park

by Aaron Lazenby
August 7th, 1997

I passed Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley as I rushed up Broadway to catch a 6 train. They leaned nonchalantly against their van as I hurried to the subway station to get uptown before Garth Brooks hit the stage at 8:00. That’s when it hit me; here were members of the greatest band alive casually kicking it outside a record store before a no-hype free performance while 90 city blocks away a huge crew crawled all over Central Park’s north meadow in preparation for an enormous hoedown. I started to wonder why the fuck I was in such a rush.

The reason I was so driven to sit in the park with 250,000 honky rednecks, suits, and frat boys was because the Garth Brooks media machine had succeeded in raising this free concert to the level of a historical event. (Note: Brooks’ people insisted that there were 750,000 people in attendance, despite NYPD and Parks & Recreation estimates to the contrary.) For months in advance, New York had been plastered with coy “Garth Live” advertisements on the subways, in Times Square and in all the local newspapers. And with the city of New York eager to show the world that people can congregate in Central Park without being stabbed, raped, or otherwise violated (c’mon, it’s an election year), the city was reduced to a marketing tool to promote Garth’s new album and his steadily declining career. Missing this spectacle would be like being the party-pooper at the Jonestown Kool-Aid love-in.

So regardless of the evil forces at work behind the concert, I grabbed my piece of grass and awaited Garth’s arrival. But when the sun went down and the Jumbotron monitors jumped to life, the hype melted away and the man was left to face the crowd with only his showmanship and his songs. That’s when he started foaming at the mouth with trite musical platitudes. He sang about the simple things: God and Country, Rodeo and Family, Whiskey and bad grammar. He sang the one about drinking with the redneck friends his woman is too good for. He sang that scary song about domestic violence with all the subtlety of a drunken left-hook to the jaw. He sang a song of tolerance. He made every effort to assure the crowd that he is an average, everyday kinda guy.

But Garth forgot one thing. The average, everyday kinda guy has not sold over 60 million records. The average guy isn’t America’s most successful solo musician. The average guy isn’t able to position himself, godlike in front of a gargantuan crowd of slobbering fans. Garth’s kind of success precludes him from the race of average, everyday kinda guys. Just ask Michael Jackson.
This contradiction made the shit-eating grin Garth wore as he ran from one end of the stage to the other more than a little sinister. This concert was the largest public ego massage I have ever seen. Garth wanted to make sure the kids at home still love him regardless of record sales that have steadily declined since his debut. Garth might feel a bit irrelevant in a world of country music dominated by trailer park JonBenet Ramsey lookalike country phenom LeAnn Rimes. To make sure the crowd still thought he was the cock and balls of country music, Garth asked us to sing his songs right back to him. The crowd indulged him more than once, singing whole verses for Brooks without missing a beat. Garth, we still love you!

In an attempt to win over any cynics, Garth brought out local boy Billy Joel to sing a scripted crowd-pleaser, “New York State of Mind.” During one of his songs about the sun coming up, Garth simulated intercourse with a piano while Billy pounded away at the keyboard. There was Garth laying humping the top of the piano sharing Billy’s microphone their lips inches apart, making for a bizarre homoerotic musical union.

For one moment, however, the massive ego and marketing machine broke down and Brooks created a moment of arena-rock magic. For the last song Brooks brought out Don Maclean to sing a duet of “American Pie.” Humbled next to a performer he idolized and singing the words of one of rock and roll’s best-written epics, Garth sounded sincere and even talented for the first time that night. And I have never seen so many lighters held aloft in one place at one time. At that moment I realized that maybe there was a real musician underneath all the shit heaped atop the shoulders of the round-faced Okie.

Maybe one day, after playing a decade in Vegas, Garth might end up back in New York playing a small set in a local record store in support of a greatest hits record. He might chill with his homies outside the store before venturing in and playing a stripped down acoustic set of great songs other people wrote. Then I might even become a fan, but for now, the immortal words of media assassin Harry Allen sum up the entire Garth Brooks experience. Don’t believe the hype.