ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 7, 1996 TAG: 9611070006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: `1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
GARTH BROOKS and the Beatles were not separated at birth.
They have their trademark accents, sure, but you would never mistake Brooks for a lad from Liverpool. He carries hometown America too firmly in the pocket of his Wranglers.
These days, he's sporting a close-cut hairstyle under his cowboy hat, looking more akin to a young Hank Williams than a mop-topped Paul McCartney (though both looks have been known to prompt women to hysteria).
Brooks changed country, and the Beatles changed rock 'n' roll.
But it is the numbers - eight-digit numbers - that have the musicians sharing headlines.
The Beatles, who released their first album in 1963, have sold 71 million of them over the years, making the group No.1 in U.S. record sales. Brooks, who released his first album in 1989, is No.2.
"To be able to sell 60 million records in six years' time it's phenomenal," said Kent Henderson, a reference researcher at the Country Music Foundation.
Brooks is not yet in the Country Music Hall of Fame - that's determined by longevity as well as merit.
"In due time, I don't think there's any way you can deny him entry," Henderson said.
And yet Brooks sometimes talks about being forgotten, especially when he's taking a break from touring, as he did before his most recent "Fresh Horses" album.
But consider: His hometown of Yukon, Okla., has a Garth Brooks Boulevard.
This month, the museum adjoining the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville is showing continuous footage of Brooks smashing Ty England's guitar at the end of a concert.
And consider this: Both of his shows at the Roanoke Civic Center this week sold out in a day; tonight's show sold out in only 55 minutes.
No one seems to be forgetting anything.
Brooks talked to The Washington Post recently about what he expects to be doing 10 years from now. Being a father and a husband still top his list. "If it's music, then God has blessed me more than I could ever imagine," he said.
Country singer Chris LeDoux has been blessing Brooks, too, each time he belts out his award-winning "Whatcha Gonna Do with a Cowboy," which the two recorded together for Liberty Records.
In concert, he ends the song with a simple, "Thanks, Garth," or "God bless Garth Brooks."
And Brooks utters his own debt of thanks, each time he sings "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)," a song from his debut album that includes a musical tip of the cowboy hat to LeDoux, a friend, mentor and former rodeo champion.
"Garth sort of introduced me to the nation, through that one line in that song," LeDoux said in a recent telephone interview from Missouri where he was performing. "I can't thank the guy enough for that."
LeDoux was driving down the road in his home state of Wyoming when he heard "Much Too Young" on the radio for the first time. "I heard him mention something about broncs and saddles and turned it up," he said. "A worn out tape of Chris LeDoux, lonely women and bad booze, seem to be the only friends I have at all" came through the radio at full volume.
"I thought I'd misunderstood," LeDoux said. "Then I thought it was someone from Wyoming, a local guy. I come to find out it's Garth Brooks. Funny thing is, he says `You don't know what using your name in that song has done for my career.' It's helped me more than it's helped him."
LeDoux has had a faithful following of cowboy fans for years. On his own, he put out 22 ``8-track tapes, and then LPs, and then CDs were invented," and sold $4 million worth through the mail, at country fairs and from the back of his Suburban on the rodeo circuit.
The music was a hobby, "a spiritual release. I was writing songs about the cowboy lifestyle, for myself and my cowboy friends. I put it on tape to get some extra income. It was another way to keep the family fed."
About 10 years ago, with a Bareback Bronc World Championship under his belt, he left the rodeo and a pair of bad knees behind. He bought a small ranch in Kaycee, Wyo.
He kept singing and performing his energetic stage show, using coffee cans and gunpowder before he could afford safer pyrotechnics.
Brooks, who first heard LeDoux as a college student at Oklahoma State University, kept listening.
And when the young singer captured America's spotlight in 1989, he turned it back on LeDoux for a spell. In 1991, LeDoux moved to Brooks' Liberty Records, and soon paid off the mortgage on his ranch.
He now performs some 120 shows a year, returning home to his farm and Peggy, his wife of nearly 25 years.
The ranch is there for his old age, and for his five children, if "they decide not to live in some big city, and want to come and do the old style of life, the cowboy life."
It's there for when the music world gets tired of him.
He hopes it doesn't happen soon, but he's already had it better than most, he said.
"A lot of new artists don't seem to get a chance. They have one hit and they disappear.
"The longevity thing isn't there, I guess."
That word again. Longevity. Does Brooks have it?
"He's going to be around forever, until he finally decides, `to heck with it,''' LeDoux said. "There's something real about him. Something genuine in his emotions. He really reaches out and touches people. He's reaching a spot that has needed to be touched in all of us for a long time."
Garth Brooks' concerts tonight and Friday at the Roanoke Civic Center are both sold out.
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Garth Brooks. color. 2. Cowboy singer Chris LeDouxby CNBsays he is grateful to Brooks, who national recognition with a line
in the song ``Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old).''