At 5 a.m. last Thursday in Dublin, concert promoter Peter Aiken picked up the phone. He had an important call to make – to Garth Brooks manager Bob Doyle in Nashville.
Three hours later, tickets for the country music star‘s two announced concerts in Dublin, September 9-10 next year, were on sale. From the number of people in the line, Aiken knew these concerts would be sold out.
“I could see the demand on our computer system. I told him, ‘That’s big,’ “Aiken said over the weekend.
It was so big, he told Doyle, that he wanted to add the other three shows that had already been scheduled for planning.
“Are you sure?” Doyle asked down the line from Tennessee. “Do you know what you’re doing? ”
“Yeah, I know what I’m doing,” Aiken said.
Doyle followed him because “the confidence was still there. It doesn’t matter what happened the last time.
And so, it was decided just before dawn last Thursday that Garth Brooks would perform five shows at Croke Park in front of 400,000 fans – eight years after it should have happened for the first time.
“What happened last time” has been reported around the world. In July 2014, Dublin City Council only granted permission for three of the five scheduled shows. After a standoff between Brooks and the council, no solution could be found.
The stress of the times prompted Aiken – the son of legendary promoter Jim Aiken, who died of cancer in 2007 – to go through a red light without realizing it.
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“I’ve never been under that kind of stress where you are a part of history,” he said. “So yeah, I was a little stressed, financially and emotionally. But compared to what some people go through, it was nothing, really.
“Yet I was very embarrassed by all of this. My late father would have been extremely disappointed. You think, “How could this have happened? “Because nearly 10% of the population went to these concerts in 2014. Everything was booked. It wasn’t like I hadn’t gone to ask permission to put it up for sale.
“Then it turned into such a circus and everything gets lost in the story. I don’t know why they were so anti-Garth. People say he was this, that and the other.
“I think there was snobbery. If it had been a rock band, there wouldn’t have been the vitriol – the way people laughed and laughed. It was because of who it was and the perception of who was going to come to concerts.
He returns philosophically to this time. “I’m not bitter about it. It’s finish. The past is rewritten to fit the narrative, which must have had a pop to Garth, unfairly.
And now?
“I heard someone on the radio a few weeks ago. They said, “He’s cocky, he’s petulant – and his name is Garth Brooks.” What to say. But I’ve been through a lot of acts and he’s up there with one of the best guys I’ve ever met.
Aiken thinks there is a bigger problem at play.
“Garth’s music – and country music – is played all over Ireland with the exception of Dublin. In the north we have a radio station called Downtown Country, which is very popular. You go to Shannonside Radio in the Midlands, C103 in Cork and the big station in Galway – they all play country music all the time.
“I’ve seen this over the years. My family is from Jonesborough in Armagh. That’s where the old man came from. He loved country music. It was his past. He was very proud of it all. He liked the people who made country music and the people around them.
“That music and that feeling continued with Garth. The people around him are good and honest people.
“A certain type of Dubliner looks down on Garth, country music. It was like that when I first arrived in Dublin in 1986 – the way people talked about GAA. And now, it’s OK to love GAA. It’s like the way they talked about northerners. Same when you go to England and they talk about people from Manchester.
A few months after the 2014 shows were canceled, Aiken met Brooks in Nashville. There was no embarrassment between them.
“No, he’s not that kind of person. He didn’t know what was going on. He had no idea how this could happen. How could he understand it? They don’t have that in America. They are scrambling to get jobs, for tourism and taxpayers’ money.
When they met three years ago, Brooks was playing in sold-out stadiums across America.
“So it wasn’t about ‘Let’s sit down and talk about when you come to Dublin.’ It wasn’t an obsession. He just said to yell at me when you think you can.
A year ago, Aiken “discussed various ideas with him and his manager”. Was Brooks hoping for a breakthrough?
“You have to wait to get the license from Dublin City Council. We only received it a few weeks ago. Nothing has been confirmed before. He was perhaps worried that he had been refused the last time.
The request for the shows must be in the same calendar year as the concert. So September 18, Aiken made his move. Was he nervous?
“I was sometimes. I am surrounded by experts, ”he said. “Someone called me when the three extra days were announced and said, ‘I knew this was going to happen.’ I said, in a response from smart-alec, “Do you have any other advice? Because you never know until the first two go on sale. Never.
“If it were that simple, there would be a lot more promoters in the world. There are hundreds of shows in Ireland – and I’ve promoted a number of them – where there were less than 50 or 60% spectators. For massive acts.
What did he do differently?
“Nothing. It’s the same request. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t.”
Aiken had a deal that Brooks would play five shows if the demand was there – but that, he said, “happens with every artist and you don’t know until you put the tickets on sale. The concert world is full of shows that people thought they were going to do well and that they didn’t.
He talks about the benefits for the local economy, but he is more animated when he returns to the subject of what he calls “snobbery” against the fans of Brooks.
“I think there is a bit of anti-music, and an anti-youth thing as well,” he said. “Look at the way the media talk about nightclubs in relation to Covid. The point is that there are very few nightclubs left in Ireland. But you have a lot of old women and white men talking about nightclubs who have no idea.
“Before, there were five nightclubs in Dundalk. There are no more now. We have Copper Face Jacks. So, lazy journalism – send some eejit to take a picture. And this idea of children getting up is not good at concerts. The kids at these shows, whether it’s a heavy metal gig or a Garth Brooks or Dylan gig, they take care of each other. Because they are like-minded people.
“The concerts are not a problem. But there is a perception that concerts cause problems. This is simply not true.
He also rejects the idea that Croke Park has too many concerts.
“If you ask the man in the street, because of the way it’s reported, it’s, ‘Oh, there’s a ton of concerts in Croke Park.’ This is not true. There have been two years in the last 20 years that there haven’t been concerts there.
Aiken first met Brooks 27 years ago in Memphis. “It was a brilliant show. He was a charismatic leader. His connection with the audience was like Springsteen or Bono. I was sitting down before he got there and someone shoved my back and said, ‘Nobody sits at a Garth concert’. So I got up. The 30,000 people present at the show went mental. I had never seen anything like it.
At this point, Brooks’ songs were already popular in Ireland, but the singer was “a little skeptical about coming to Ireland and doing several evenings together.”
“He thought it might make a night,” Aiken said. “Then in 1994 we ended up selling eight nights at Point Depot – 68,000 people. “
In 1997, Aiken brought him back for three nights at Croke Park. “He could have done more. People loved his music. And they still love his music. It means something to his fans.
“I think it’s an important point that there is really a whole other Ireland that loves Garth Brooks. I was recently at a home wedding in Northern Ireland and the place went crazy when they played Friends in low places. The children, the grannies, people my age, they loved it.
“You put that song on Dublin 4 and they looked at each other and said, ‘Oh, couldn’t you play The seat of mercy by Nick Cave? “
“But there is a whole Ireland outside of Dublin. And the other Ireland is in the majority.
