In July 2014, Carlos Eugenio Garcia de Alba Zepede, Mexican Ambassador to Ireland, called the Lord Mayor of Dublin to offer his assistance in preventing the cancellation of five Garth Brooks concerts.
On January 30, tickets had gone on sale for what was originally supposed to be two Garth Brooks concerts at the place GAA people call ‘headquarters’. They instantly sold out, and two nights became three.
Garth Brooks has a long history with Ireland. His 1997 concert in Croke Park is the stuff of legend. He loved us and we loved him. In the interview where he announced the five gigs, Brooks said of Ireland, “A concert in this place is as good as it gets. These people know how to have a great time, and they know every word of every song, and they come prepared. They can call it working all day long, but this ain’t workin’, this is eating ice cream for a living.”
The residents who lived near Croke Park had understandable anxieties about the disruption that came with major events at the stadium, but surely Garth Brooks was different. Who could say no to If Tomorrow Never Comes?”
But the disruptive element became a factor. Taking those problems into account, a decision was made to grant an event licence for just three of the proposed five nights. And just like two became three, and three became five, five became three, and then, somehow, three became none at all.
The former Lord Mayor of Dublin Christy Burke remembers 2014 very well.
“The manager of the Aviva rang me and said ‘Christy, you can have the Aviva’ but they only hold 40,000 so it wouldn’t have worked.”
Dublin City Council came to three conclusions that would ultimately seal the fate of all five Garth Brooks concerts. In a statement released on July 3rd, the council wrote:
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“The scale, magnitude and number of the concerts with an expected attendance of in excess of 80,000 people per night over five consecutive nights, three of them being week nights, is unprecedented for Croke Park Stadium.”
“Three consecutive concerts have already taken place in Croke Park from the 23rd to 25th of May 2014. Given that Croke Park is situated in a heavily populated residential area, five shows in a row following on from the three concerts already held there that year is considered an over intensification of use of the stadium for the holding of special events/concerts. It would be in effect permitting an increase of 100% in terms of the maximum number of concerts that had previously been held in Croke Park in any given year.”“The cumulative effect on residents and on some businesses in the Croke Park and surrounding neighbourhoods, of licensing five shows in a row, three of them on weekdays, would lead to an unacceptable level of disruption to their lives/livelihoods over an unprecedented and prolonged period caused by, concert related noise, access restrictions, traffic disruption, illegal parking and potential antisocial behaviour. The City Council would also be concerned with the precedent that would be created if five consecutive concerts in a row of this scale were licensed.”“Having regard to the submissions/observations received and given the number of mitigation measures proposed by the applicant it was considered reasonable and appropriate that three of the events should take place and these had been licensed for the nights of Friday 25 July 2014, Saturday 26 July 2014, and Sunday 27 July 2014.”Concerts have been cancelled before. Concerts will be cancelled again. But what happened after Dublin City Council gave licence for only three of Brooks’ five gigs remains the most shocking twist in this bizarre saga. In the style of a true performer, Garth dropped a bombshell.“I can’t thank the people of Ireland enough for how welcome they have made me feel. I have faith that Dublin City Council will make the best decision for the people of Ireland. For us, it is five shows or none at all. To choose which shows to do and which shows not to do, would be like asking to choose one child over another. However this plays out, Ireland has my heart and always will.”Christy Burke, who dealt directly with Brooks’ management, chalked it up to hubris on the American side. “Garth Brooks couldn’t even fill a stadium in his own hometown. I felt the management were trying to compensate for that reason, so they could go back to America and say ‘Well, we got five in Dublin. The people were out the doors, we couldn’t give them enough.’ So there was a lot of that stuff going on. PR stuff, macho stuff. Ego.”As the dust settled on Brooks’ devastating announcement, the buck was passed from desk to desk. Aiken maintained that they had approached these concerts the same way they approach every concert. Dublin City Council maintained that they made their decision in keeping with the An Bord Pleanála agreement. Croke Park residents maintained that eight massive concerts in one year was a clear breach of the terms under which Croke Park had been allowed to be redeveloped.All of that was indisputably true. None of it explained why all the concerts were cancelled. Three concerts could have gone ahead. In the end, only one man pulled the plug: Garth Brooks. Once he made his mind up, not even Garcia the great Luke Kelly fan could salvage the shows.Ireland was left reeling.And that was that.Then, the fallout.
Bren, the street vendor, recalled the nightmare moment that he learned he had wasted €15,000 on thousands of novelty cowboy hats.“Basically, I bought 5,000. I had the money spent. It was a disaster, got them shipped in from China or whatever, and it came out the morning after that he wasn’t coming. It was like a bad dream. I was screwed then. Didn’t even have anywhere to put them.”“I was gonna sell them for €15 a pop and it cost me about €3 per hat. Three days of 80,000 people. Even if I’d sold 1,000 of them I’d have made my money back.”Luckily, Ireland’s healthy abundance of Garth Brooks tribute acts saved the day.“I ended up going down to tribute acts in Westmeath and Carlow. Eventually I got rid of them all. I got away with it in the end. Didn’t want to be stung with them for 10 years. It is what it is.”But street vendors weren’t the only ones whose pockets were hit by the cancellation. In fact, the whole country was set to suffer the consequences of the calamity. When Dublin City Council approved just three of five proposed gigs, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce estimated that the boost for Ireland’s economy would drop from €50 million to €30 million. When Brooks made good on his ultimatum, that €30 million crashed and burned into a big fat zero.At the time, Ireland’s economy was still putting new notches in its ever-tightening belt. To lose €50 million seemed like a major blunder. To lose it over a publicity war with Garth Brooks was a farce.Aside from the economic burden, the depth of pain felt by Brooks’ fans was searing. Avril, who had purchased tickets for all five nights, refused to blame Garth after the train came off the tracks.“Anyone that knows him in Nashville and on the scene, they’ll all tell you he’s a genuine fella. He’s not going to say ‘Right, let’s take two nights off the show.’ I actually have more respect for him, even though I was heartbroken.”A visit to the Planet Garth message board threads from 2014 reveal the agony that some fans went through in the wake of Garth’s announcement.“The true fans are the ones who are hurting tonight.”“I hate being Irish.”“I know Garth said the Irish people shouldn’t be embarrassed, but I disagree.”Unfortunately, Garth Brooks is a hard man to get a hold of, particularly from this side of the pond. He’s represented by Bob “Major Bob” Doyle. Doyle’s contact details are public, but he won’t respond to any of my emails or phone-calls. And even then, Doyle would only be the gatekeeper. It’s Garth who we need to understand.
Four years on, the most fundamental questions at the heart of the catastrophe remain unanswered. What I remain most fixated on is what kind of man Garth Brooks is.In today’s money-driven society, what kind of musician walks away from a €10 million pay day for three nights of work? Surely if somebody is motivated by greed, then they’d say to hell with the Monday and Tuesday fans who got screwed, play the weekend nights and celebrate with a new private jet or whatever it is that rich people buy.Does that mean, as Burke speculates, that Brooks was instead urged onwards by an insatiable ego? Always wanting more? A five-night residency in Ireland’s grandest and most historic venue, playing to hundreds of thousands of his slavishly devoted worshippers. Once he learned that he couldn’t beat the system, was his pride so wounded that he took his ball, burst it and stomped off home?And what if Dublin City Council had given in? What if we had let 10% of the entire population ride roughshod over Croke Park and its surrounding neighbourhoods for those five nights? Would Brooks have added a sixth date? A seventh? If things hadn’t gone down the way they did, maybe Garth would still be there, belting out ‘The Thunder Rolls’ and only taking short breaks on the weekend to let Dublin play football.During a Nashville press conference after the cancellation announcement, Brooks said “If the prime minister [Enda Kenny] himself wants to talk to me I will crawl, swim, fly over to him. I will drop on my knees just to let those 400,000 people see me.” Dropping to one’s knees is not exactly the calling card of pride.So maybe it wasn’t greed, and maybe it wasn’t ego.Maybe it was heartbreak.Garth’s long history with Ireland meant these weren’t simply any other shows. Eating ice-cream for a living, that’s what he’d told us right?
Eating ice cream for a living is an understatement. Garth Brooks could have comfortably collected a cheque for €10,000,000 paid for by the Irish public and done it all while performing to a total of 240,000 screaming fans over three nights. He’d have been a martyr too — sharing in the pain of his 160,000 loyal subjects, deprived of joy by resident petitions, the paperwork of faceless local authorities, licensing laws and other things that his fans would have been happy to blame.It’s important to understand that by 2014, Garth Brooks hadn’t released a new album in 13 years. From 2004 onwards, he reserved his live appearances for special performances only. From 2009 to 2013 he almost exclusively played residencies on the Las Vegas strip, the ultimate retirement move. He hadn’t toured or released new music in 10 years.Desperately seeking a comeback, he came to the one place where he knew he’d be loved, where he’d be welcomed back with open arms and no tough questions. A place where he could sell concert tickets to 10% of the entire population without even breaking a sweat beneath his cowboy hat. Maybe when he learned that a failure of bureaucracy had upended his hopes of a five-show comeback special he simply couldn’t believe it. In a tailspin, he gave us the ultimatum of “five or none” and since it couldn’t be five, that meant it had to be none.On July 14, just 11 days before the first of his concerts was supposed to take place, Brooks released a new statement. This one had none of the former’s “five or none” defiance. This one was weighted down with unblinking sadness.“I have always been advised to never send a message in the moment,” he wrote. “It is said it is best to take a walk, wait a while, and think about it. With that said, I just received the news the Irish council cannot change their earlier ruling to not allow the licenses for all five shows. To say I am crushed is an understatement. All I see is my mother’s face and I hear her voice. She always said things happen for a reason and for the right reason. As hard as I try, I cannot see the light on this one.”Avril, Garth’s number Irish fan, has since been to see him in Las Vegas, and reported that Garth still talks about Ireland when he’s onstage in the US. “He straight up brought up Croke Park. He said ‘You’d wanna see Croke Park, you’d wanna see the Irish people, you’d wanna see Ireland.’ He had nothing but love for us. And he didn’t know there was Irish people in that audience.”By the sounds of it, there’s no bitterness nor begrudgery from Brooks. Just love. But it’s four years later and there’s still no suggestion that Garth’s return is on the horizon.As for Ireland, the Garth Brooks-shaped wound on our heart is slowly scarring over, but is still tender to the touch. Whenever we hear “Bruce Springsteen” or “The Rolling Stones” and “extra date added” in the same sentence, we’ll instinctively flinch. Before Garth-gate, Brooks’ most recent three studio albums had reached chart highs of 4, 6 and 1. Shortly after the Croke Park collapse, his Man Against Machine album failed to break into the Irish top 10.Like an old war veteran with a missing limb, we can still feel the twinge where our Garth Brooks concerts were supposed to be. Until we understand exactly why it happened, we probably always will.Topics:
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