The King of Country holds court for his swooning subjects

Melissa Schorr

Friday, Aug. 14, 1998 | 9:53 a.m.

When country star Garth Brooks played Las Vegas in 1993, in order to thank fans who'd waited on line in the sweltering heat for tickets, he promised them that next time, he'd be back at the same prices: a working man's 18 bucks.

Now, he's back for four nights at the Thomas & Mack Center, and again, fans had to wait out in the sweltering heat for hours to get tickets.

Would Garth renew the deal?

Pondering the question for just a moment at a press conference Thursday before his opening night show, Brooks replied that if he returns, he would: "It might as well become a tradition," he said with a smile.

Is it any wonder his fans great him with such adoration, setting records left and right for this show?

It was, according to T&M Promotions Director Cliff Clinger, the quickest sell-out in arena history (52 minutes), the largest number of performances by one artist at the arena (even the Grateful Dead only performed for three nights), the highest attendance for a multiple performance (72,076) and the largest gross (an expected $1.29 million).

And, after almost a decade of megastar fame, you'd think Oklahoma-born Brooks, 36, would be used to it all by now. The high decibel yells. The foot-stomping. The mass hysteria.

But no. Brooks still has his "Who me? Aw, shucks" shrug down pat, greeting the adoration of his fans with looks of wonder and amazement -- even while visibly reveling in the spotlight.

The fans' fever began rising well before Brooks actually took the stage. It really began about a month earlier, when they called and called and called Ticketmaster until another and another and still another show was added.

It started Thursday when 10-gallon hats of white and black began pouring into the parking lot at 5:15 p.m. to form a line to enter the stadium. It continued with a revved-up crowd chanting for "Garth" and doing "the wave" minutes before he came on.

Leaping on stage in his trademark black hat, black shirt with a swish of red and dark blue jeans, sporting a goatee and well-shaved sideburns, the singer told the receptive crowd: "We've come to raise some hell and have some fun."

Overwhelmed at points by the crowd's enthusiasm early on (Brooks could hardly run across the stage without being greeted by screams) he said, "You guys are starting way too hard to last the whole evening." Then, he made a promise impossible to keep: "It's simple: you keep this up all night, we play all night."

He didn't play all night, naturally, but he did perform for more than two hours, until 11:30 p.m., beginning with "Back When the Old Stuff was New" and leading into "Rodeo" and "The Beaches of Cheyenne," promising it would be a night of "90 percent old stuff."

The crowd, which stayed mostly on its feet, sang along to "I've Got Friends in Low Places" (demanding that Brooks include the "mysterious third verse" only heard at live concerts), swayed to "The Dance," (Brooks' "third, second and first favorite song") and cheered his closing cover of (an abrieviated) Don McLean's "American Pie." They snapped flash photos, waved banners and tossed bouquets. One woman donated her black bra, which Brooks retrieved -- gingerly.

The 10 percent new stuff included two songs that Brooks chose to debut in Las Vegas, the last venue on the three-year-long tour in which audio and visual material will be taped for use in a "Garth Double Live" album Brooks plans to release Nov. 17.

One new piece was "Wild As the Wind," a spine-tingling duet with Trisha Yearwood, which will be featured on an upcoming "Duets" album on which the two are currently working.

Yearwood wowed the crowd with her own opening set of hits, from "She's In Love With the Boy" to "There Goes My Baby," topped off with the award-winning "Con-Air" theme song, "How Will I Live (Without You)?"

The second song Brooks debuted was a soaring, deeply moving ballad about where an artist draws his inspiration from, called "It's Your Song."

"All my life, I looked for a song I could sing to the ... people I need to thank: my parents, God, and the people you play for," Brooks said. "To find a song that talks to all those entities is tough, but I think I found it."

If one happened to stumble into the concert unknowingly, they might at times have mistaken the high-energy country rock for a Bible-thumping revival meeting, what with the cameo backup vocals by two local choirs wearing white robes in "Wild As the Wind" or the sight of 19,000 of Brooks' flock chanting about the wisdom of God's "Unanswered Prayers."

At other times, they might have thought they had stumbled onto the set of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," with the UFO-like saucer set design hosting the arena's colored and white lights.

Overall, it was undeniably Garth: the arm-waving, guitar-playing, larger-than- life good 'ol boy.

At the end of the evening, Garth thanked the crowd, saying "I don't remember the three nights of my last stop being as wild as the first night of this one."

Next up, Brooks and Yearwood will be off to South America, rounding off the tour with seven more cities on the East Coast.

Then, it will be up to Brooks to figure out how to top the records he's already set -- the 80 million albums sold since 1989, including 1990's "No Fences," the best-selling country album of all time, and the HBO special last summer of his concert in New York's Central Park, which attracted more than 14 million viewers.

"Never will you hear me say the word 'satisfied,' " he says. "If you're given one more day, you have to do something else. Now, I have to beat the test of time."