WEBVTT - Garth Brooks: Earthquakes, Internet Rumors, and Missing Persons 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.440 This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. 0:00:03.840 --> 0:00:08.319 Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:23.160 a production of Double Elvis. The stories about country megastar 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:27.400 Garth Brooks are insane. He has more albums that have 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:31.160 sold over ten million copies than any other artist in history. 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:34.280 He cut one of the biggest record deals of all time, 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:38.040 bigger than Madonna, bigger than Prince, a deal matched at 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:42.320 the time only by Michael Jackson. He triggered an earthquake 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:46.319 at a concert in Baton Rouge. His touring route has 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.880 been scrutinized by online detectives looking to suss out a 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:54.520 rumor about missing persons cases, a rumor that alleges people 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:59.120 vanish when Garth Brooks stops by to play music, great music, 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.480 some of the greatest country pop songs of all time. 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:05.200 Unlike that loop. I played a few at the top 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:08.640 of the show that wasn't great music. That was a 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:12.040 preset loop from my melotron called millions of People Now 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:16.160 Vibing MK One. I played you that loop because I 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:18.920 can't afford the rights to all about that bass by 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:22.440 Megan Trainer, And why would I play you that specific 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.640 slice of right Junk in the Right Places cheese? Could 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:29.679 I afford it? Because that was the number one song 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:34.399 in America on November eleventh, twenty fourteen, And that was 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.839 the day that Garth Brooks joined Facebook with a video 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:41.880 so bizarre that it launched a conspiracy theory, one that 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:47.080 continues to have ripple effects to this day. On this episode, 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:54.000 online videos, conspiracy theories, earthquakes, missing persons in Garth Brooks. 0:01:54.680 --> 0:02:24.640 I'm Jake Brennan and this this disgrace slant country music 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:29.680 television entertainment tonight, the Today Show. Just a few media 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.680 outlets that have at one time referred to Garth Brooks 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:38.400 as groundbreaking. Others still have called him earth shattering. Why 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.800 because Garth Brooks is a megastars megastar He's got more 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.160 albums that have been certified Diamond by the Recording Industry 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:50.720 Association of America than any other artist in history. And Diamond, 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.280 for those of you keeping score at home, is more 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:57.880 than ten million copies sold per album. Garth has nine 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:01.360 albums that have done that, The Beatles on six. I 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:04.200 could go on and on with data numbers, the world 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:06.639 records that Garth Brooks has left in the dust over 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:08.440 and over again. But I don't want to get ahead 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:11.840 of myself. My point here is that the words Garth 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:15.919 Brooks and earth shattering are often mentioned in the same sentence. 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:21.079 But here's the thing that's not actually true. Garth Brooks' music, 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:25.919 his career, they aren't literally shattering anything. People can love music, 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:28.160 and anyone can be in awe of the career, but 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:31.239 when it comes to shattering the earth, to literally breaking 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:33.760 the ground that we walk on, it takes more than 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:37.120 a shit ton of number one songs. Garth Brooks couldn't 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:40.000 shatter the earth on his own. To do that, he 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:46.600 needed the assistance of one hundred thousand people. April twenty 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:51.320 twenty two, Louisiana State University. Garth Brooks was doing what 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.440 he was born to do, putting on a show, the 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:56.480 kind of show that made him the biggest musical act 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.720 on the planet some three decades prior, a show that 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:05.480 generated mucco fomo. Garth sprinting across the raised platform, Garth 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:08.920 swinging from a rope, Garth and his bandmate smashing two 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:13.720 guitars together. A Garth Brooks concert was a spectacle, and 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:17.159 this particular concert was his first in Baton Rouge in 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:21.239 twenty four years, over one hundred and two thousand fans. 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:24.120 One hundred and two thousand fans let him know that 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:26.800 they were glad to have him back, and the roar 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:31.839 from the crowd was deafening. Garth rode the high of 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:34.839 his fans adoration as he transitioned from one of his 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:38.239 oldest hits, much too young to feel this damn old, 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:42.440 into a cover of the Oakridge Boys colin Baton Rouge. 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:46.800 The unofficial LSU anthem made the audience go crazy. Hundreds 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:50.080 of thousands of feet stomping in the stands of Tiger Stadium, 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:54.440 every person in attendance singing along. People with Apple watches 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.919 felt their wrist vibrate and then saw the alert. The 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:02.080 sound level, now at ninety five decipels and climbing as 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:05.359 loud as an approaching subway car, loud enough to cause 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:09.240 hearing losses. Sustained for too long, the ground shook beneath 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:14.520 their feet. Inside LSU's nearby geosciences building, a seismic graph 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:18.680 began to spike. The machine recorded actual seismic waves in 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:22.159 the ground as a direct result of the concert. Seismic 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:28.120 waves as in the kind triggered by volcanic eruptions, explosions, landslides, 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:32.880 and avalanches. Garth Brooks and the LSU audience triggered an 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:38.200 actual earthquake, scientifically proven by equipment already located on campus. 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.839 Three months later in August in Houston, the crowd wasn't 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:50.120 expecting earthquakes per se. Capacity at NRG Stadium, home of 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:54.120 the Houston Texans football team, was only sixty seven thousand, 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:58.159 But no matter the size of the audience, Garth delivered 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.960 and the crowd loved it. They held up handmade signs, 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.200 hoping theirs would make it to the JumboTron screen about 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.840 the stage. Some did make it, like one that read 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:12.840 we love Garth, so wholesome and so representative of how 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:16.400 everyone in that stadium felt at that moment. A camera 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:18.440 zoomed in on it, and then the image was up 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:22.240 on the jumbo tron, But within seconds, the person holding 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:26.240 the sign dropped it, revealing another sign behind it, this 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:29.919 one with a message hastily written in black sharpie, a 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:35.919 message that read, where are the bodies g The JumboTron 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.240 camera suddenly flailed around and then quickly cut away back 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:41.880 to a tight shot of Garth. But everyone saw it, 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:45.760 sixty seven thousand people, people who are now thinking, what 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:49.039 the fuck was that? Where were the bodies? G bodies? 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:53.279 What bodies? They had no clue. These obsessive Garth Brooks 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.479 fans first and lined by a ticket knew every word 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:59.760 and every melody to every deep cut, completely unaware of 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.200 the rumor. It's so easy to turn a blind eye 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:07.039 to rumors, to truth, even when you love something. We 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:09.880 all do it. The flaws that some of our favorite 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.440 performers possess we are willing to ignore, separating the art 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:17.360 from the artists and all that. But this particular rumor 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:22.080 was sinister to its core, so evil that one simply 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:25.040 had no choice but to reckon with the information the 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.480 data upon learning about it, just like we're about to 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.800 do right now. Stick with me here. This isn't simple, 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:35.040 and this isn't easy, but it's necessary to understand what 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:41.400 the sign was trying to communicate. Back up to the 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:45.200 yearly nineteen nineties, Garth Brooks is on a swift and 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:49.200 unprecedented rise to fame, on the rise at the exact 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:52.160 same time the number of missing persons cases in the 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:55.560 United States. And this is a simple fact. You can 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.960 Look it up. Plot the graph of Garth Brooks's success 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.480 alongside the graph of the missing person's epidemic in the 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:06.360 country and you'll see what I'm talking about. By nineteen 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:10.080 ninety seven, the number of missing persons peaked just under 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:13.559 nine hundred and eighty one thousand. This was the same 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:16.520 year that Garth was at his most powerful, playing to 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:20.679 over a million fans in Central Park, releasing his seventh 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:25.040 studio album, a record called Seven's Seven as in the 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:29.600 Seven Deadly Sins the Seventh Seal. You know I'm the one. 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:31.520 I'm the one, the one they call the Seventh Sun. 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:35.800 Missing person cases dropped a bit after this, but they 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:39.199 spiked again two years later in nineteen ninety nine, at 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.400 the very moment Garth Brooks went full Ziggy starred us 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:47.040 and unleashed his rock and roll alter ego, Chris Gaines. Coincidence, 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:50.280 You can make the argument. You could also argue that 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:54.160 Chris Gaines was some kind of publicity stunt. But Chris Gaines, 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:56.800 and we'll get to him later, Chris Gaines is so 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.800 obviously the quote unquote dark side of Garth have the 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:05.440 same person good and evil. It was all there out 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:09.200 in the open or so this particular conspiracy theory alleges. 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.000 Check out the titles to some of the songs Garth 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:14.600 covered on a box that he released in twenty thirteen. 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:18.800 You ain't going nowhere, don't close your eyes, act naturally, 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.480 hold on, I'm coming. These are the things a predator 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:25.040 says to his prey right before he grabs them and 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.000 stuffs the chloroform soak rag against their face, and then 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:31.280 you can only imagine what happens next. But consider this, 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.040 People kept turning up missing even years later, and many 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:37.959 of these missing persons had the same eerie thing in common. 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.920 They all disappeared when Garth Brooks's tour buses rolled through town. 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:49.600 January twenty fifteen, Gareth Brooks plays Tulsa, Oklahoma. A seventy 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.840 four year old man disappears. That same night, May twenty sixteen, 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:57.920 Garth Brooks plays Grand Rapids, Michigan. A guy known only 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.080 as Gary vanishes from the near by a town of Hamilton, 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:06.160 just thirty minutes away. February twenty seventeen, Garth Brooks plays 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:09.360 a week of shows in Edmonton, Alberta. On his night off, 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:13.839 you guessed it, another person gone. Okay, so let's say 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:16.199 you've been clocking all these developments in real time, or 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:19.160 maybe it's only in hindsight that you realize something's going on. 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.800 So you start asking that question, where are the bodies 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:25.480 get But no matter how much you ask the question, 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.000 and no matter how many handmade signs you hold up 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:31.440 at stadium shows, you get no answer. So you keep 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.880 digging into the past. You find an old clip from 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:38.439 the TNN show Crook and Chase in nineteen eighty nine, 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:42.400 long before Garth Brooks was a household name, Charlie Chase 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:46.199 and his Music City mustache asking his guests Garth if 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:48.760 he ever thought about acting. I'd love to be a 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.360 bad guy. Garth says, no, Charlie, Lass, you don't want 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:55.480 to do that. You look like a good guy. Garth 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:59.720 just smiles and says, I'd rather kill somebody. That'd be fun. 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:05.760 Then there's an interview Gareth gave to the Music City 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:08.080 News in nineteen ninety in which he said about his 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:11.320 backing band, quote, the band's contract is that if they leave, 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:15.240 I have to kill them. And what about the profile 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:19.000 of Gareth and Rolling Stone Magazine nineteen ninety three, He's 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.800 on top of the world. Over one hundred million albums sold. 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:25.880 His recording contract allegedly as lucrative as Michael Jackson's, a 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:30.400 contract that unbelievably put Madonna's in Princess Cush Deals to shame. 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.559 Gareth's talking about quote stomping the other guy's guts out, 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.680 who's in competition with you unquote just to get what 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.680 he wants, which is at number one spot, and then 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:44.160 doing whatever it takes to stay there. How does one 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:48.680 do this? You're like an athlete, competitive hungry. Losing is 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:53.040 not an option. You've get to have drive, determination and 0:11:53.160 --> 0:12:22.599 a killer instinct. Lightning flashed outside and lit up the 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:26.960 darkened room, nice house, new or built. He'd been out, 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:31.079 laid again, unfaithful again. She confronted him when he got home. 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.120 He didn't want to hear it. He hit her so 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:37.000 hard that she went flying over the couch, and as 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:40.520 he did, more lightning outside illuminated the whole scene, bright 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:43.320 enough for their young daughter to watch from the stairs above. 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:46.800 He looked up, and the girl backed against the wall 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:49.480 and began to sink, like she wasn't there at all. 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:54.080 But he held his gaze, eyes dead mine, made up, 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:56.600 determined to do what he'd just done to his wife 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.360 to his child as well. At least that's what the 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.960 girl was afraid of. He made his move, but his 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:07.080 wife moved faster. The gun there in the drawer, now 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:11.680 in her hand, she aimed. She fired. Thunder crackled just 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:14.320 beyond the windows and made the gunshot sound louder than 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.120 it really was. And the girl watched as he was 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:22.760 struck down. This man her daddy. The man playing her daddy, 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.080 a man who sort of looked like Garth Brooks. If 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:29.680 Garth Brooks had curly black hair, a tightly groomed beard, 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:35.080 and glasses inverse, Garth Evil Garth, perhaps Garth's vision of 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:37.400 what a bad guy looked like, if he thought about 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:39.760 bad guys at all, which, as we know from that 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.760 bizarre Crook and Taste interview back in eighty nine, he 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:48.080 most certainly did. Two years after that interview, in nineteen 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.360 ninety one, Garth did more than think about bad guys. 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:55.000 He was a bad guy, at least for a day, 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:58.320 playing an abusive husband in the music video for his 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:02.600 song The thunder Rolls, the first track on his second album, 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:09.120 No Fences, released the previous summer. No Offences, was huge. 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:14.240 It reinvigorated the country music market in America, specifically country pop, 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:17.000 turning on a new generation to a genre which it 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:20.520 bottomed out in the previous decade. This might be hard 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.320 to imagine now in our current landscape, when last year alone, 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.560 thirty six percent of the streams on Spotify's Top fifty 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:30.920 songs in the US were country songs. But just prior 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:35.480 to Garth's arrival, country music was in crisis. No fences 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:39.960 signaled a sea change. Millions sold big singles like The 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:43.400 thunder Rolls, Garth six number one on the Country chart 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:46.840 upon its release. One hundred and eighty three radio stations 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:49.840 put the song into rotation, the most in country chart 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.480 history at the time. But The thunder Rolls wasn't a 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:56.760 shit kicking rock. It was no friends in low places. 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:00.640 This song was heavy. The video di and shy away 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.880 from domestic violence. TNN did not do domestic violence or 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:09.360 anything remotely controversial for that matter. TNN was not MTV. 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.640 The thunder Rolls was immediately taken off the air. There 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:15.960 was one way to get the video back on TNN. 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.120 Garth simply had to tape a disclaimer that would run 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:22.560 before the video, something condemning domestic violence. That know on 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:27.240 certain terms. But to Garth, a disclaimer felt like pandering, 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:31.080 like he was using controversy to promote a video. He 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:34.840 didn't do the disclaimer on principle. His stance struck most 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:39.080 as genuine, authentic, and that in turn led to his 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:43.360 first major crossover. First there were the country music stations 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.800 screening the band video at shopping malls and country music venues. 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:50.240 Then Tower Records in Nashville playing the video on loop 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:54.840 NonStop from four to eight pm every day for five days. Next, 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:58.800 Women's Shelters reaching out to Capitol Records, Garth's label, to 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:03.080 explain how the is helping them raise awareness about domestic abuse. 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:08.320 And finally VH one, a cable station that played pop videos, 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:12.120 now airing Garth Brooks's country video on the regular. But 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:15.400 Garth Brooks wasn't country, not in the sense that it 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:18.880 confined him. He loved George Strait, but he loved Queen 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:22.080 and Kiss just as much. He put rock and roll 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:25.320 energy into the music he was making and took country 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:28.520 where it had never gone before. Rope in the Wind, 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:31.480 his third studio album, went straight to number one on 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:34.440 the Billboard two hundred the same week that No Offences 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.080 was holding the number two spot, and his debut was 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:42.160 still clinging to the number ten spot. And it wasn't 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:46.040 just stubbornness, determination and drive to put Garth Brooks on top. 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:51.680 There was something else. Fear. Fear of the man in 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:54.640 the video, who was the polar opposite of Garth's squeaky clean, 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:59.720 forward facing image. Fear of evil Garth, fear of the 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:03.040 rest to the music industry of hip hop and heavy metal, 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:06.920 two genres that Forbes magazine vilified in a nineteen ninety 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:10.320 two article positioning Garth as a goodie two shoes messiah 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:13.080 here to deliver us from evil. If you don't live 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:15.560 in the inner city, you can't relate to those lyrics. 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:19.840 Garth's producer was quoted as saying, those lyrics referring, of course, 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:22.919 to hip hop, a genre that was creatively thriving at 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:25.200 the time, but one that was being held back from 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:28.840 the mainstream, being denied Garth level chart dominance by this 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:33.280 very line of thinking. Their music bad our music, good fear, 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:38.840 plain and simple fear was the great motivator. Magic Johnson 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.000 told Garth Brooks this after trying and failing to sink 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:46.120 a ball into the corner pocket nineteen ninety four shooting 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:50.000 Pool was equal ground for the two superstars, both competitive 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.960 players at the top of their respective games. Besides, Garth 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:56.480 wasn't dumb enough to challenge Magic on a half court, 0:17:56.520 --> 0:17:59.640 and Magic wasn't about to step out on stage. They 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:03.080 both sucked at pool, and that wasn't the point. Pool 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:05.280 was a chance to dick around. Prior to the conversation, 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:07.800 they were taping for a Fox TV special called One 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:11.399 on One with Magic Johnson. But first Garth wanted to 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:15.679 know what separates an NBA player from everyone else. Magic 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:16.680 was quick to respond. 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:17.520 Easy. 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:19.720 The thing that pushed the Beatles to try and make 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:22.480 better records than the Beach Boys in the sixties, the 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:25.080 same thing that pushed Magic to jump higher and block 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:29.439 harder than Larry Bird in the eighties. Fear. The higher 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:33.600 Garth Brooks climbed, the more that fear sank in, fear 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:35.720 that his latest record wasn't going to do as well 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:38.800 as the last. Fear that this new mullet on the block, 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:42.119 Billy Ray Cyrus five straight weeks at number one with 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:45.320 that Achy breaking bullshit was going to send Garth straight 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:50.040 to the cutout biz. They humiliated him on air in 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.000 London to the Brits, he was a country bumpkin straight 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:56.320 out of Hicksville, but in Dublin he was a god, 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:59.040 at least as big as the Pope, setting a new 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:01.800 record for the largest audience since His Holiness paid a 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:05.960 visit some fourteen years prior. When he left Ireland, one 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:09.639 quarter of all Irish households owned a Garth CD or cassette. 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:17.119 The fear was paying off. March nineteen ninety five the 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:21.200 fastest selling artist of all time, fifty million albums sold 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:25.399 in just six years. May nineteen ninety six, scratch that, 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.600 the number is now sixty million. August nineteen ninety seven, 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:34.240 Garth stock the Central Park Concert a million people shot 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:38.159 live for HBO, the cable network's highest rated program of 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:42.040 the year, and then just three months later in November, 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:46.760 Garth Brooks released Seven's, his seventh LP in his fourth 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:49.359 to debut at number one on both the mainstream and 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:52.960 country album charts. He had the crossover video and the 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:56.200 crossover albums, and now he just needed a crossover number 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.119 one single That would be an all time high for 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.480 Garth Brooks, just like another all time high making history. 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:05.760 At this very same time, the number of missing person 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:09.720 cases in America more than nine hundred and seventy thousand 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:15.000 in total, a daunting number, a number that Garth Brooks 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:17.679 may or may not have been aware of. What he 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.520 was aware of was how his own personality was beginning 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:24.120 to split in two, one man on stage and another off. 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.359 It that man up on stage that wasn't Troyl Garth 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:33.520 Brooks or in nineteen sixty two Tulsa, Oklahoma superstar Garth 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.280 GB for short. He's a character. As soon as the 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:39.480 house lights go down and he takes those first few 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:43.800 steps onto the stage, his heart pounding. That guy Troyle disappears. 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:49.240 Garth does things that Troyle would never do. He sees 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:52.160 some woman riding the rail down front, screaming your head off, 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.080 and he reaches down from the stage, his button up 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:59.000 shirt tucked neatly into his jeans, his cowboy hat looming large, 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:01.480 and he grabs a woman's hair and yankes as hard 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:06.200 as he can. It's physical, it's thrilling. When he talks 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:09.200 about moments like these after the fact, Garth talks about 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:12.480 himself and the third person like he's Jimmy from Seinfeld. 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:15.920 Garth got carried away tonight, Garth grabbed the woman's hair. 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.720 Did you see that? For Garth Brooks the entertainer, like 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:23.960 all incredible entertainers, it's all about connection, but he didn't 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:26.520 have to physically touch every person to knock them on 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.680 their asses. When my people leave the auditorium, I want 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:32.720 them crawling out, he told Rolling Stone. I want them 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:35.160 so damn tired. I want their voices gone. I want 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.280 them to be just like me, ringing wet, just dead, 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:46.000 just dead, hey man, he said it, not me. By 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:48.000 the late nineties, at the top of his game, Garth 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:51.040 Brooks was thinking a lot about death, not just about 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:55.040 entertaining his fans to death, if only metaphorically. There was 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:57.639 the death of his mother Wants, a Country Western singer 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:00.280 in her own right, gone after a battle with Answer 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:02.760 at the age of seventy, And there was also the 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:05.399 death of a fictional rock star when that Garth was 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:08.880 going to resurrect and make real and doing so would 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:11.520 give the most popular singer in the world the one thing. 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:14.760 He still did not have a number one hit song 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:21.919 on the mainstream pop chart. We'll be right back after 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:34.399 this word word word. Fourteen year old Kenny Edmunds wanted 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:36.960 nothing more than to meet the singer for his favorite band, 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:40.800 The Jackson Five, But Kenny Edmonds was nobody, and young 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:43.399 Michael Jackson was one of the biggest stars in the world. 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:46.720 Even now in nineteen seventy three, when the band's best 0:22:46.760 --> 0:22:50.720 years were arguably behind them. Kenny knew the opportunity to 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:53.080 meet Michael wasn't going to fall in his lap. He 0:22:53.119 --> 0:22:55.800 had to create it himself. So he looked in the 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:58.399 local paper and found the name of the show's local promoter, 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:02.640 Charles Williams. Then Kenny opened the phone book. So many 0:23:02.720 --> 0:23:06.240 Charles Williams listed here in Indianapolis. He picked up the 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:09.199 phone and began to call each one. Took a minute, 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:11.879 but he got promoter Charles Williams on the line, and 0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:14.920 Kenny put on a fake voice, the spot on impression 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:17.160 of Jimmy Stewart that he dragged out whenever he wanted 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:20.840 to make his friends laugh. But this was no laughing matter. 0:23:21.400 --> 0:23:24.560 This was Kenny pretending to be an adult the journalism 0:23:24.600 --> 0:23:27.000 teacher at his high school. To be precise, who is 0:23:27.040 --> 0:23:30.440 now asking promoter Charles Williams if this band come into 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:32.760 town or what was their name? The Something five, the 0:23:32.880 --> 0:23:36.080 Jackson five. I perhaps one of this journalism students could 0:23:36.160 --> 0:23:39.919 interview them when their tour arrived here in Indianapolis. Promoter 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:43.320 Charles Williams thought this was a terrific idea. He asked 0:23:43.320 --> 0:23:45.320 for a number to call the teacher back once he 0:23:45.359 --> 0:23:48.920 confirmed details. Just call my student directly, came the reply, 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:55.040 and then Kenny Edmunds gave the promoter his actual phone number. Opportunity, ambition, 0:23:55.560 --> 0:23:59.399 Kenny Edmonds had both in spades. These things landed him 0:23:59.400 --> 0:24:01.639 a face to face interview with Michael Jackson at just 0:24:01.640 --> 0:24:04.679 fourteen years old, and these things were driving him to 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:08.240 also made huge R and B hits. Now some two 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:12.119 decades later under his better known professional name as the 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:18.080 writer and producer Babyface, Kenny Edmund's aka Babyface was behind 0:24:18.280 --> 0:24:22.399 huge hits for Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, Voice to Men TLC. 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:27.800 But Babyface's ambition knew no bounds, no genre. He recognized 0:24:27.840 --> 0:24:30.399 the potential in a Nashville country song performed by on 0:24:30.560 --> 0:24:33.000 Nona Judd, and he brought that song not to an 0:24:33.119 --> 0:24:36.560 R and B singer, but to Eric Clapton. Changed the 0:24:36.600 --> 0:24:40.840 World was a bonafide smash in nineteen ninety six thanks 0:24:40.880 --> 0:24:43.480 to that ambition. Thanks to a guy who is still 0:24:43.520 --> 0:24:46.679 taking chances. Long after he co called the promoter of 0:24:46.720 --> 0:24:50.600 a Jackson five show. His next idea was wilder than 0:24:50.600 --> 0:24:53.800 a slow Ham colab. This was a very big swing. 0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:58.320 A movie called The Lamb about a fictional rock star dead. 0:24:58.440 --> 0:25:01.960 In the film's first scene, his life told in flashbacks 0:25:01.960 --> 0:25:03.960 as one of his fans tries to prove that he 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:07.159 was murdered. The script was being written by the guy 0:25:07.200 --> 0:25:11.400 who wrote Diehard in the Fugitive and Babyface was executive producing. 0:25:13.080 --> 0:25:15.800 But before the movie could be released, a genius level 0:25:15.800 --> 0:25:20.000 marketing plan had to be executed. Introduced this fake singer 0:25:20.240 --> 0:25:22.679 by way of a real album. An album of the 0:25:22.720 --> 0:25:25.680 dead rock star is so called hits performed by an 0:25:25.760 --> 0:25:29.600 actual musician pretending to be someone else, the same musician 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:33.000 who would then play the dead rock star in the movie. 0:25:33.080 --> 0:25:35.960 The concept was as bonkers as a guy Babyface thought 0:25:35.960 --> 0:25:42.119 would be perfect for the gig, Garth Brooks. Garth Brooks 0:25:42.160 --> 0:25:44.960