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Garth Brooks: Earthquakes, Internet Rumors, and Missing Persons · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a production of Double Elvis. The stories about country megastar
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Garth Brooks are insane. He has more albums that have
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: sold over ten million copies than any other artist in history.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: He cut one of the biggest record deals of all time,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: bigger than Madonna, bigger than Prince, a deal matched at
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: the time only by Michael Jackson. He triggered an earthquake
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: at a concert in Baton Rouge. His touring route has
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: been scrutinized by online detectives looking to suss out a
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: rumor about missing persons cases, a rumor that alleges people
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: vanish when Garth Brooks stops by to play music, great music,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: some of the greatest country pop songs of all time.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Unlike that loop. I played a few at the top
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of the show that wasn't great music. That was a
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: preset loop from my melotron called millions of People Now
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Vibing MK One. I played you that loop because I
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: can't afford the rights to all about that bass by
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Megan Trainer, And why would I play you that specific
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: slice of right Junk in the Right Places cheese? Could
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I afford it? Because that was the number one song
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: in America on November eleventh, twenty fourteen, And that was
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: the day that Garth Brooks joined Facebook with a video
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: so bizarre that it launched a conspiracy theory, one that
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: continues to have ripple effects to this day. On this episode,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: online videos, conspiracy theories, earthquakes, missing persons in Garth Brooks.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan and this this disgrace slant country music
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: television entertainment tonight, the Today Show. Just a few media
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: outlets that have at one time referred to Garth Brooks
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: as groundbreaking. Others still have called him earth shattering. Why
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: because Garth Brooks is a megastars megastar He's got more
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: albums that have been certified Diamond by the Recording Industry
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Association of America than any other artist in history. And Diamond,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: for those of you keeping score at home, is more
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: than ten million copies sold per album. Garth has nine
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: albums that have done that, The Beatles on six. I
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: could go on and on with data numbers, the world
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: records that Garth Brooks has left in the dust over
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and over again. But I don't want to get ahead
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: of myself. My point here is that the words Garth
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Brooks and earth shattering are often mentioned in the same sentence.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing that's not actually true. Garth Brooks' music,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: his career, they aren't literally shattering anything. People can love music,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and anyone can be in awe of the career, but
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: when it comes to shattering the earth, to literally breaking
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: the ground that we walk on, it takes more than
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: a shit ton of number one songs. Garth Brooks couldn't
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: shatter the earth on his own. To do that, he
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: needed the assistance of one hundred thousand people. April twenty
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: twenty two, Louisiana State University. Garth Brooks was doing what
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: he was born to do, putting on a show, the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: kind of show that made him the biggest musical act
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: on the planet some three decades prior, a show that
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: generated mucco fomo. Garth sprinting across the raised platform, Garth
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: swinging from a rope, Garth and his bandmate smashing two
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: guitars together. A Garth Brooks concert was a spectacle, and
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: this particular concert was his first in Baton Rouge in
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: twenty four years, over one hundred and two thousand fans.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: One hundred and two thousand fans let him know that
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: they were glad to have him back, and the roar
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: from the crowd was deafening. Garth rode the high of
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: his fans adoration as he transitioned from one of his
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: oldest hits, much too young to feel this damn old,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: into a cover of the Oakridge Boys colin Baton Rouge.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: The unofficial LSU anthem made the audience go crazy. Hundreds
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: of thousands of feet stomping in the stands of Tiger Stadium,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: every person in attendance singing along. People with Apple watches
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: felt their wrist vibrate and then saw the alert. The
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: sound level, now at ninety five decipels and climbing as
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: loud as an approaching subway car, loud enough to cause
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: hearing losses. Sustained for too long, the ground shook beneath
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: their feet. Inside LSU's nearby geosciences building, a seismic graph
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: began to spike. The machine recorded actual seismic waves in
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the ground as a direct result of the concert. Seismic
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: waves as in the kind triggered by volcanic eruptions, explosions, landslides,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and avalanches. Garth Brooks and the LSU audience triggered an
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: actual earthquake, scientifically proven by equipment already located on campus.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Three months later in August in Houston, the crowd wasn't
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: expecting earthquakes per se. Capacity at NRG Stadium, home of
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the Houston Texans football team, was only sixty seven thousand,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: But no matter the size of the audience, Garth delivered
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: and the crowd loved it. They held up handmade signs,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: hoping theirs would make it to the JumboTron screen about
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the stage. Some did make it, like one that read
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: we love Garth, so wholesome and so representative of how
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: everyone in that stadium felt at that moment. A camera
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: zoomed in on it, and then the image was up
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: on the jumbo tron, But within seconds, the person holding
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: the sign dropped it, revealing another sign behind it, this
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: one with a message hastily written in black sharpie, a
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: message that read, where are the bodies g The JumboTron
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: camera suddenly flailed around and then quickly cut away back
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: to a tight shot of Garth. But everyone saw it,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: sixty seven thousand people, people who are now thinking, what
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: the fuck was that? Where were the bodies? G bodies?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: What bodies? They had no clue. These obsessive Garth Brooks
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: fans first and lined by a ticket knew every word
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: and every melody to every deep cut, completely unaware of
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: the rumor. It's so easy to turn a blind eye
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: to rumors, to truth, even when you love something. We
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: all do it. The flaws that some of our favorite
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: performers possess we are willing to ignore, separating the art
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: from the artists and all that. But this particular rumor
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: was sinister to its core, so evil that one simply
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: had no choice but to reckon with the information the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: data upon learning about it, just like we're about to
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: do right now. Stick with me here. This isn't simple,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and this isn't easy, but it's necessary to understand what
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: the sign was trying to communicate. Back up to the
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: yearly nineteen nineties, Garth Brooks is on a swift and
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: unprecedented rise to fame, on the rise at the exact
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: same time the number of missing persons cases in the
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: United States. And this is a simple fact. You can
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Look it up. Plot the graph of Garth Brooks's success
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: alongside the graph of the missing person's epidemic in the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: country and you'll see what I'm talking about. By nineteen
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: ninety seven, the number of missing persons peaked just under
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: nine hundred and eighty one thousand. This was the same
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: year that Garth was at his most powerful, playing to
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: over a million fans in Central Park, releasing his seventh
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: studio album, a record called Seven's Seven as in the
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Seven Deadly Sins the Seventh Seal. You know I'm the one.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: I'm the one, the one they call the Seventh Sun.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Missing person cases dropped a bit after this, but they
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: spiked again two years later in nineteen ninety nine, at
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the very moment Garth Brooks went full Ziggy starred us
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: and unleashed his rock and roll alter ego, Chris Gaines. Coincidence,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: You can make the argument. You could also argue that
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Chris Gaines was some kind of publicity stunt. But Chris Gaines,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and we'll get to him later, Chris Gaines is so
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: obviously the quote unquote dark side of Garth have the
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: same person good and evil. It was all there out
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: in the open or so this particular conspiracy theory alleges.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Check out the titles to some of the songs Garth
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: covered on a box that he released in twenty thirteen.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: You ain't going nowhere, don't close your eyes, act naturally,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: hold on, I'm coming. These are the things a predator
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: says to his prey right before he grabs them and
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: stuffs the chloroform soak rag against their face, and then
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: you can only imagine what happens next. But consider this,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: People kept turning up missing even years later, and many
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: of these missing persons had the same eerie thing in common.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: They all disappeared when Garth Brooks's tour buses rolled through town.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: January twenty fifteen, Gareth Brooks plays Tulsa, Oklahoma. A seventy
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: four year old man disappears. That same night, May twenty sixteen,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Garth Brooks plays Grand Rapids, Michigan. A guy known only
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: as Gary vanishes from the near by a town of Hamilton,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: just thirty minutes away. February twenty seventeen, Garth Brooks plays
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: a week of shows in Edmonton, Alberta. On his night off,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: you guessed it, another person gone. Okay, so let's say
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: you've been clocking all these developments in real time, or
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: maybe it's only in hindsight that you realize something's going on.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: So you start asking that question, where are the bodies
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: get But no matter how much you ask the question,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: and no matter how many handmade signs you hold up
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: at stadium shows, you get no answer. So you keep
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: digging into the past. You find an old clip from
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the TNN show Crook and Chase in nineteen eighty nine,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: long before Garth Brooks was a household name, Charlie Chase
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: and his Music City mustache asking his guests Garth if
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: he ever thought about acting. I'd love to be a
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: bad guy. Garth says, no, Charlie, Lass, you don't want
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: to do that. You look like a good guy. Garth
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: just smiles and says, I'd rather kill somebody. That'd be fun.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Then there's an interview Gareth gave to the Music City
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: News in nineteen ninety in which he said about his
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: backing band, quote, the band's contract is that if they leave,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I have to kill them. And what about the profile
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: of Gareth and Rolling Stone Magazine nineteen ninety three, He's
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: on top of the world. Over one hundred million albums sold.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: His recording contract allegedly as lucrative as Michael Jackson's, a
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: contract that unbelievably put Madonna's in Princess Cush Deals to shame.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Gareth's talking about quote stomping the other guy's guts out,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: who's in competition with you unquote just to get what
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: he wants, which is at number one spot, and then
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: doing whatever it takes to stay there. How does one
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: do this? You're like an athlete, competitive hungry. Losing is
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: not an option. You've get to have drive, determination and
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: a killer instinct. Lightning flashed outside and lit up the
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: darkened room, nice house, new or built. He'd been out,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: laid again, unfaithful again. She confronted him when he got home.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: He didn't want to hear it. He hit her so
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: hard that she went flying over the couch, and as
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: he did, more lightning outside illuminated the whole scene, bright
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: enough for their young daughter to watch from the stairs above.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: He looked up, and the girl backed against the wall
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and began to sink, like she wasn't there at all.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: But he held his gaze, eyes dead mine, made up,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: determined to do what he'd just done to his wife
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: to his child as well. At least that's what the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: girl was afraid of. He made his move, but his
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: wife moved faster. The gun there in the drawer, now
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: in her hand, she aimed. She fired. Thunder crackled just
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: beyond the windows and made the gunshot sound louder than
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: it really was. And the girl watched as he was
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: struck down. This man her daddy. The man playing her daddy,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: a man who sort of looked like Garth Brooks. If
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Garth Brooks had curly black hair, a tightly groomed beard,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and glasses inverse, Garth Evil Garth, perhaps Garth's vision of
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: what a bad guy looked like, if he thought about
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: bad guys at all, which, as we know from that
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: bizarre Crook and Taste interview back in eighty nine, he
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: most certainly did. Two years after that interview, in nineteen
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: ninety one, Garth did more than think about bad guys.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: He was a bad guy, at least for a day,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: playing an abusive husband in the music video for his
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: song The thunder Rolls, the first track on his second album,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: No Fences, released the previous summer. No Offences, was huge.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: It reinvigorated the country music market in America, specifically country pop,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: turning on a new generation to a genre which it
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: bottomed out in the previous decade. This might be hard
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: to imagine now in our current landscape, when last year alone,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: thirty six percent of the streams on Spotify's Top fifty
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: songs in the US were country songs. But just prior
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: to Garth's arrival, country music was in crisis. No fences
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: signaled a sea change. Millions sold big singles like The
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: thunder Rolls, Garth six number one on the Country chart
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: upon its release. One hundred and eighty three radio stations
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: put the song into rotation, the most in country chart
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: history at the time. But The thunder Rolls wasn't a
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: shit kicking rock. It was no friends in low places.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: This song was heavy. The video di and shy away
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: from domestic violence. TNN did not do domestic violence or
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: anything remotely controversial for that matter. TNN was not MTV.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: The thunder Rolls was immediately taken off the air. There
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: was one way to get the video back on TNN.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Garth simply had to tape a disclaimer that would run
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: before the video, something condemning domestic violence. That know on
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: certain terms. But to Garth, a disclaimer felt like pandering,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: like he was using controversy to promote a video. He
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: didn't do the disclaimer on principle. His stance struck most
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: as genuine, authentic, and that in turn led to his
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: first major crossover. First there were the country music stations
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: screening the band video at shopping malls and country music venues.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Then Tower Records in Nashville playing the video on loop
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: NonStop from four to eight pm every day for five days. Next,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Women's Shelters reaching out to Capitol Records, Garth's label, to
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: explain how the is helping them raise awareness about domestic abuse.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: And finally VH one, a cable station that played pop videos,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: now airing Garth Brooks's country video on the regular. But
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Garth Brooks wasn't country, not in the sense that it
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: confined him. He loved George Strait, but he loved Queen
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: and Kiss just as much. He put rock and roll
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: energy into the music he was making and took country
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: where it had never gone before. Rope in the Wind,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: his third studio album, went straight to number one on
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: the Billboard two hundred the same week that No Offences
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: was holding the number two spot, and his debut was
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: still clinging to the number ten spot. And it wasn't
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: just stubbornness, determination and drive to put Garth Brooks on top.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: There was something else. Fear. Fear of the man in
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the video, who was the polar opposite of Garth's squeaky clean,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: forward facing image. Fear of evil Garth, fear of the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: rest to the music industry of hip hop and heavy metal,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: two genres that Forbes magazine vilified in a nineteen ninety
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: two article positioning Garth as a goodie two shoes messiah
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: here to deliver us from evil. If you don't live
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: in the inner city, you can't relate to those lyrics.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Garth's producer was quoted as saying, those lyrics referring, of course,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: to hip hop, a genre that was creatively thriving at
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the time, but one that was being held back from
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the mainstream, being denied Garth level chart dominance by this
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: very line of thinking. Their music bad our music, good fear,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: plain and simple fear was the great motivator. Magic Johnson
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: told Garth Brooks this after trying and failing to sink
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a ball into the corner pocket nineteen ninety four shooting
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Pool was equal ground for the two superstars, both competitive
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: players at the top of their respective games. Besides, Garth
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: wasn't dumb enough to challenge Magic on a half court,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: and Magic wasn't about to step out on stage. They
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: both sucked at pool, and that wasn't the point. Pool
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: was a chance to dick around. Prior to the conversation,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: they were taping for a Fox TV special called One
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: on One with Magic Johnson. But first Garth wanted to
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: know what separates an NBA player from everyone else. Magic
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: was quick to respond.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Easy.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: The thing that pushed the Beatles to try and make
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: better records than the Beach Boys in the sixties, the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: same thing that pushed Magic to jump higher and block
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: harder than Larry Bird in the eighties. Fear. The higher
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Garth Brooks climbed, the more that fear sank in, fear
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: that his latest record wasn't going to do as well
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: as the last. Fear that this new mullet on the block,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Billy Ray Cyrus five straight weeks at number one with
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: that Achy breaking bullshit was going to send Garth straight
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to the cutout biz. They humiliated him on air in
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: London to the Brits, he was a country bumpkin straight
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: out of Hicksville, but in Dublin he was a god,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: at least as big as the Pope, setting a new
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: record for the largest audience since His Holiness paid a
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: visit some fourteen years prior. When he left Ireland, one
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: quarter of all Irish households owned a Garth CD or cassette.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: The fear was paying off. March nineteen ninety five the
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: fastest selling artist of all time, fifty million albums sold
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: in just six years. May nineteen ninety six, scratch that,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: the number is now sixty million. August nineteen ninety seven,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Garth stock the Central Park Concert a million people shot
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: live for HBO, the cable network's highest rated program of
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: the year, and then just three months later in November,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Garth Brooks released Seven's, his seventh LP in his fourth
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: to debut at number one on both the mainstream and
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: country album charts. He had the crossover video and the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: crossover albums, and now he just needed a crossover number
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: one single That would be an all time high for
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Garth Brooks, just like another all time high making history.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: At this very same time, the number of missing person
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: cases in America more than nine hundred and seventy thousand
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: in total, a daunting number, a number that Garth Brooks
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: may or may not have been aware of. What he
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: was aware of was how his own personality was beginning
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: to split in two, one man on stage and another off.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: It that man up on stage that wasn't Troyl Garth
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Brooks or in nineteen sixty two Tulsa, Oklahoma superstar Garth
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: GB for short. He's a character. As soon as the
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: house lights go down and he takes those first few
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: steps onto the stage, his heart pounding. That guy Troyle disappears.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Garth does things that Troyle would never do. He sees
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: some woman riding the rail down front, screaming your head off,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: and he reaches down from the stage, his button up
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: shirt tucked neatly into his jeans, his cowboy hat looming large,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: and he grabs a woman's hair and yankes as hard
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: as he can. It's physical, it's thrilling. When he talks
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: about moments like these after the fact, Garth talks about
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: himself and the third person like he's Jimmy from Seinfeld.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Garth got carried away tonight, Garth grabbed the woman's hair.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Did you see that? For Garth Brooks the entertainer, like
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: all incredible entertainers, it's all about connection, but he didn't
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: have to physically touch every person to knock them on
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: their asses. When my people leave the auditorium, I want
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: them crawling out, he told Rolling Stone. I want them
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: so damn tired. I want their voices gone. I want
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: them to be just like me, ringing wet, just dead,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: just dead, hey man, he said it, not me. By
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: the late nineties, at the top of his game, Garth
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Brooks was thinking a lot about death, not just about
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: entertaining his fans to death, if only metaphorically. There was
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the death of his mother Wants, a Country Western singer
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: in her own right, gone after a battle with Answer
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: at the age of seventy, And there was also the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: death of a fictional rock star when that Garth was
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: going to resurrect and make real and doing so would
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: give the most popular singer in the world the one thing.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: He still did not have a number one hit song
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: on the mainstream pop chart. We'll be right back after
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: this word word word. Fourteen year old Kenny Edmunds wanted
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: nothing more than to meet the singer for his favorite band,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: The Jackson Five, But Kenny Edmonds was nobody, and young
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Michael Jackson was one of the biggest stars in the world.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Even now in nineteen seventy three, when the band's best
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: years were arguably behind them. Kenny knew the opportunity to
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: meet Michael wasn't going to fall in his lap. He
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: had to create it himself. So he looked in the
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: local paper and found the name of the show's local promoter,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Charles Williams. Then Kenny opened the phone book. So many
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Charles Williams listed here in Indianapolis. He picked up the
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: phone and began to call each one. Took a minute,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: but he got promoter Charles Williams on the line, and
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Kenny put on a fake voice, the spot on impression
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: of Jimmy Stewart that he dragged out whenever he wanted
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: to make his friends laugh. But this was no laughing matter.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: This was Kenny pretending to be an adult the journalism
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: teacher at his high school. To be precise, who is
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: now asking promoter Charles Williams if this band come into
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: town or what was their name? The Something five, the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Jackson five. I perhaps one of this journalism students could
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: interview them when their tour arrived here in Indianapolis. Promoter
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Charles Williams thought this was a terrific idea. He asked
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: for a number to call the teacher back once he
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: confirmed details. Just call my student directly, came the reply,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: and then Kenny Edmunds gave the promoter his actual phone number. Opportunity, ambition,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Kenny Edmonds had both in spades. These things landed him
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a face to face interview with Michael Jackson at just
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: fourteen years old, and these things were driving him to
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: also made huge R and B hits. Now some two
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: decades later under his better known professional name as the
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: writer and producer Babyface, Kenny Edmund's aka Babyface was behind
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: huge hits for Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, Voice to Men TLC.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: But Babyface's ambition knew no bounds, no genre. He recognized
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: the potential in a Nashville country song performed by on
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Nona Judd, and he brought that song not to an
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: R and B singer, but to Eric Clapton. Changed the
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: World was a bonafide smash in nineteen ninety six thanks
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to that ambition. Thanks to a guy who is still
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: taking chances. Long after he co called the promoter of
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: a Jackson five show. His next idea was wilder than
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a slow Ham colab. This was a very big swing.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: A movie called The Lamb about a fictional rock star dead.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: In the film's first scene, his life told in flashbacks
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: as one of his fans tries to prove that he
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: was murdered. The script was being written by the guy
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: who wrote Diehard in the Fugitive and Babyface was executive producing.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: But before the movie could be released, a genius level
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: marketing plan had to be executed. Introduced this fake singer
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: by way of a real album. An album of the
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: dead rock star is so called hits performed by an
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: actual musician pretending to be someone else, the same musician
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: who would then play the dead rock star in the movie.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: The concept was as bonkers as a guy Babyface thought
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: would be perfect for the gig, Garth Brooks. Garth Brooks
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: may have had four records hit the top mainstream album chart,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: but his number one singles were all still on the
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: country side of the tracks. Becoming Chris Gaines was going
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: to change all of that. Chris Gaines was everything. Garth
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Brooks allegedly was not. He had dark hair, a soul patch,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: he wore eyeliner. He was a sex addict who made
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: albums with titles like Fornacopeia. Garth dropped weight and got
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: into character. He intended to disappear, just like all those
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: people who were busy disappearing across America. But Garth Brooks
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: couldn't get lost, and Chris Gaines not really. The whole
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: thing looked like a joke, and it was a joke.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Garth's country audience didn't get it. The thing was Garth
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't laughing. The album Garth Brooks in the Life of
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Chris Gaines did sell two million copies, which is nothing
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: to sneeze at, but two million was dittally compared to
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: the numbers Garth was used to putting up. The movie
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: was Shells and Babyface went looking for the next opportunity.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Chris Gaines went back in the ground. Although the experiment
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: didn't get Gareth the number one crossover single, it did
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: get him to number five, which is higher than he
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: ever got on the pop tracks, and that's saying something.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: But Chris Gaines ultimately was a failure. But ill conceived
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: plot precipitated garth'snnouncement that he was taking a break from
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the business and considering early retirement. Chris Gains, it seems,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: did something Garth Brooks could never do. He lost and
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: if you can't beat him, well, you know the rest.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Joining Facebook did not come naturally to a guy like
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Garth Brooks. Noah did not. But in twenty fourteen, Garth
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: his alleged retirement, it was nothing but a memory. He's
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: getting ready at this point to stage a massive three
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: year comeback tour. So social media makes a lot of
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: sense for Garth Brooks at this point. The forty five
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: second video Garth Brooks post to what was his new
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Facebook page at the time made it official. The video
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: is low quality. It's shot by Garth himself. He's sitting
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: in bed in an empty hotel room and he talks
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: about Facebook as a conversation between himself and the fans,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: to which he says, I like that. But he doesn't
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: say I like that in the way you thinking. He
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: says it like I don't know. It's fucking creepy. Man.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: His voice drops, it's almost a whisper, like he's trying
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: to stay like incognito.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: He keeps that tone going too as he talks about
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: all the stuff he's gonna post on social media. Cool stuff,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: slick stuff, raw stuff. It's like he's being sexual. It's
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: fucking weird. The way he says everything in this short,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: forty five second video is creepy. It's creepier than I'm
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: able to describe. You have to watch it. There's also
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: this like devilish, psychotic gleam in his eye when he's talking.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: This is the kind of video you're gonna watch over
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and over and over on repeat. Okay, do it after
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: you listen to this podcast. But you're gonna do this,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: trust me, because it's that weird and it is that strange.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: It's the kind of video that makes you want to
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: ask questions, a lot of questions, questions like where are
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: the bodies? Gee? The bodies of course kept disappearing Buffalo, Wichita,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: New Orleans, Worcester, all across America from September of twenty
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: fourteen to December of twenty seventeen. Garth's tour buses they
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: rolled on and people kept vanishing, sometimes on the day
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of an actual show and other times on Garth's days off.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Then long before that sign went up on the JumboTron
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: at Energy Stadium in Houston, Internet sluice were connecting the dots.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: They started calling out Garth Brooks on social media over
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: the missing persons. They wanted to know where the bodies were.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: You can go see for yourself. You can scroll through
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the comments of any random post on Garth Brooks's Instagram
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: page and you'll see that. Over the years, a growing
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: community of conspiracy theorists have been out there tuning into
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: the frequency, leaving comments like my family cannot rest until
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: you tell us where our grandmother is, please Garth. Or
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: for God's sake, Garth, the families, The families need closure,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: or what did you do to Christine? And thanks to
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: the diligent, full court press of these people online, we
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: are getting close now, closer to knowing the whole truth,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: closer than we've ever been before. The truth about where
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: the bodies are. Well, I'm going to tell.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: You where the bodies are.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Twenty eighteen a year Garth Brooks does not tour, a
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: year that missing person reports in the United States plummet
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: to their lowest number in three decades. People are beginning
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: to talk. A dirty little secret is getting out a
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: secret alleging that Garth Brooks is a serial killer, thus
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: explaining why so many people go missing when he's on tour.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: But consider this Exhibit one. There is no hard evidence
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: connecting Garth Brooks to any people who have disappeared along
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: his tour route. Exhibit too. Despite the constant barrage of
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: comments on his social media accounts, Garth Brooks has never
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: addressed the rumors or accusations. He hasn't even acknowledged them.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: And you know why because he doesn't have to, because
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: none of this is true what you're saying. Okay, there
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: are other comments that have cluttered up Garth Brooks's social
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: media accounts for years, ones that aren't looking for closure
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: for grieving families. These comments are more absurd, yet they
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: pop up over and over again, things like touch my
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: camera through the fence, Garth, and I got a dui baby,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: and you bet I'm coming up in May. If these
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: sound like the work of trolls, well they are. This
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: whole thing, this theory that Garth Brooks is some kind
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: of serial killer. It's all a joke. It's not my joke.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: It's a real joke. It's out there a straight faced
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: joke started by comedians, specifically Tom Sagura, who hosts a
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: podcast with his wife Christina Pozitski called Your Mom's House
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: And it was. On this podcast, Tom Segura talked about
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: watching Garth's now infamous first Facebook video from back in
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, and then watching a press conference in which
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Garth gets oddly emotional talking about his upcoming stadium tour.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Tom Seguira couldn't believe how strange Garth Brooks was, how weird, bizarre.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Segura joked, so weird, so cringey, that you could just
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: imagine the hundreds of bodies he had buried under his house,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: which it goes without saying, Garth Brooks absolutely does not
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: have bodies buried under his house. That was the whole gag,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: a gag with incredible legs, and that's the point. It
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: never stopped. It's still going years later. Even now, as
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: you listen to this podcast episode, Garth's weird little videos
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: keep popping up, videos in which Garth's eyes go wide
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: and his smile tilts and his voice.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Drops to a creepy whisper.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: The guy's an easy mark in the millions of Your
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Mom's House fans. Tom Segura fans go after Garth with
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: the same ambition that Garth went after the music industry
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: in his prime. That guy holding up the sign that
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: read where are the Body's g the one I told
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: you about at the top of the episode. That guy
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: was planeted at the show by Tom Segura. That timeline
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I laid out for you at the top of the show,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the one that ties Garth Brooks's milestones and movements to
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: the fluctuating rate of missing persons cases in America. I
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: got that online too, and shout out to at Barth
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Brooks on YouTube. Garth Brooks, still, like I said, is
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: not commented. He did, however, block Tom Segura on social media,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: so perhaps that's comment enough. And at the end of
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: the day it doesn't get at him. He's too busy
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: continuing to perform at a level that most artists can
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: only dream of. He's setting off fucking earthquakes and Baton
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Rouge and the Baton Rouge show at LSU is part
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: of his stadium tour, the one he got teary eyed
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: over while talking about it at a press conference. Garth
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: closed out that tour back in the place where he
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: might be loved even more than he was here in
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: the States. In Dublin, Ireland, five sold out shows, four
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand people in total gross revenue of twenty eight
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: point six million for just those shows. On the final date,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: September seventeenth, twenty twenty two, Garreth left the audience the
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: way he always wanted to leave them. Tired, crawling out
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: of the venue, voices shot just dead. The crowd shuffled
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: out of Croke Park, the giant football field with a
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: historic soil pitch. They went back to their houses and apartments,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: many of which had a picture of Garth hanging on
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the wall. The next morning, they woke up feeling like
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: they'd been hit by a mack truck in the best
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: possible way, made coffee, made tea, and opened the morning paper.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: In the pages of that paper they read about a
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: boy in kill Rain, some two hours south of Dublin,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: just seventeen years old, disappeared two nights earlier. Meanwhile, Garth
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Brooks's crew packed up up and shipped down. The long
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: tour was over.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: In the thunder Rold, I'm Jake Brennett, and this this disgraceland.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
• 35:42
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• 35:45
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• 35:48
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• 36:26
  Speaker 2: He the Bed Down Man