Garth Brooks would have to try extremely hard to get me to not absolutely love every little thing that he does. I inhaled this book in less than 2 days, while very, very sick. I did nothing but read and sleep. I adored it. I learned a lot. I thought it was SO cool to be able to get all of the original (living) musicians, producers, songwriters, etc to be interviewed with their input for the anthology. And the few that have passed were still included and thoroughly represented throughout the book. The price is absolutely unbeatable. The pictures incredible. The casing and put-together so neat and well done. The ‘book to music’ idea was incredible. I LOVED being able to read each year & then listen to it on cd. I also loved how much Trisha was included throughout and even info on her song at the end such as “Like We Never Had a Broken Heart”. So overall? For what this was, it was definitely a 5 star effort to someone like me who has been literally a life-long Garth obsessed girl. My family jokes that I was singing his songs before I was speaking in full sentences. This anthology book is very bare bones though. It goes song by song on the first five albums with little page inlets in between sometimes about writers, the early days, etc, but very little else. Nothing about anything in the first 5 years of Garth’s career besides the songs themselves & nothing at all about his personal life. Now, I, myself am fine with nothing being in the book regarding his personal life - others should beware though if that’s what they’re looking for, but I feel that his career, especially that first 5 years, is SO much bigger in the scope of history than just a page or two about each song from that time period, and I was disappointed that we couldn’t delve deeper into that.
Here’s my top 5 things that I feel could’ve made this better for us fans that will (hopefully) be taken into consideration for the following years / volumes in Garth’s anthology series:
#1 - Garth re-released his first 6 albums in a ‘limited edition’ box set in the late 90s where each album included a bonus song recorded during the time of that album. These songs went on to actually become very popular as they should have & should have been on the original cds.
One of the last pages of anthology #1 is for one of these songs, “Which One of Them”, which I believe was the bonus song on “Ropin’ the Wind”.
But none of the other songs are mentioned at all and that really bothered me.
For the first album it would have been “Uptown, Down Home, Good Old Boy”. For the “No Fences” album it would have been “This Ain’t Tennessee”. For “The Chase” album it would have been “Something with a Ring to It”. And for the “In Pieces” record, it would have been “Anonymous”, which actually became so popular that it had its own music video. But none of these songs got mentioned at all & that was a real shame.
#2 - While we’re on the subject of music videos - Garth has some of the most famous music videos of all time. Especially in country music and especially during that first five years.
I want to hear the stories behind the highly controversial “The Thunder Rolls” video & how he decided to play the villain, himself. I want to learn more about such emotionally moving videos like “The Dance”, “If Tomorrow Never Comes” & “Standing Outside the Fire”. I want to learn more about the rumors I’ve heard on how many gallons of paint had to be used in “The Red Strokes” video, haha! I want behind the scenes pictures and stories on those timeless videos.
#3 - Speaking even more on videos, the television concert specials Garth originally did were out of this world unbelievable. They are the prime examples of why he is the “entertainer of a lifetime”.
While the book at least does have some pictures from those and Garth briefly mentions them a few times such as in the chapter where he talks about learning to play saxophone himself on “One Night a Day” for the tour / second tv special, I want to hear the stories of filming a television special in the early 90s in which you set the stage on fire, make it rain from the rafters, fill the isles with a full gospel choir and fly clear to the back of the stadium during the encore!
We won’t even get into the historic Central Park concert. (Which I realize wouldn’t have been in the first 5 years.) My point is, Garth’s television specials, especially the early ones, were literally historic. I feel they should have had their own chapters.
#4 - In the “Cold Shoulder” song section, there is a picture of Garth next to a “Beyond the Season” album cover picture, but why was “Beyond the Season”, his first Christmas album, never mentioned in the book at all?
As I recall, it sold extremely well, is still a top staple in my and many other family’s Christmas music traditions, and had a lot of super unique songs that you don’t hear everyone else singing a billion times every year such as “Santa Looked a lot Like Daddy”, (which always makes me laugh), “The Gift” (which always makes me cry), and “Unto You This Night”, (which I always have to turn up at full volume). Not to mention a timeless country Christmas collaboration such as “The Friendly Beasts” and Garth’s personal family story he tells during the song “Silent Night”.
I know Garth is a huge Christmas guy, and that was a huge Christmas album, so I can’t believe that it didn’t bear any mention at all in the first 5 years book?
#5 - Why was “Night Rider’s Lament” the only original album track not mentioned @ all in the book? I mean, they just went from “That Summer” to “Face to Face” as if NRL wasn’t even in between. That was weird.
Also, from other things I’ve heard Garth and others say on his xm-channel and in interviews & at concerts and what not throughout the years, I feel like there was definitely more of a story to some of the songs than what they told in this book. Maybe not, but I feel like there was. Some song pages only had a paragraph or two about the actual song, itself, and the rest of the page / pages was about the writers or other stories.
I don’t know. Like I said, I love Garth, I love the effort here and I love what I read. But I’m also sad for what I felt was missing and how much better I feel it could have been. I feel an anthology can encompass more than just the songs in a musicians’ career without delving into their personal lives or anything else. And Garth Brooks has definitely broke enough records and made enough history to be able to share more of it with us than just basic song info.
This is the only book I have ever given 5 stars to while still walking away from it longing for so much more. I am very thankful for what we got, but I’m hopeful that volume 2 next year will pack more of a true GB punch.
