Garth Brooks Stories

(written by Tony Arata)

 Garth Brooks (#1, 1990)

 The way “The Dance” was written and recorded was almost like a movie script, which was ironic because the song’s composer got the idea for it after watching one of the popular films of the day.

 Novice songwriter Tony Arata was attending college in Statesboro, Georgia in 1983 and playing in a band in his spare time. After graduation, he continued to perform in the local clubs. Tony heard that Jim Glaser was looking for material for his next album. Glaser’s record company, Noble Vision Records, was located in Atlanta, and Arata worked up a cassette demo of his song “The Man in the Mirror,” and took it over there. After Jim recorded the tune (and scored a mild hit in the process, reaching #17), Tony and his wife decided to move up to Music City for good in 1986.

 One night the couple drove over to the Bluebird Café in the Nashville suburb of Green Hills, a well-known “listening room” in the city where many music executives often hung out to watch non-established songwriters perform their new material, hoping to catch an extraordinary song or performer. Arata was blown away by the talent he heard, thinking that there was no way he could write songs as good as those guys. He was ready to move back to Georgia, but his wife talked him into staying in Nashville.

 Several weeks later, Tony’s wife was out of town on a business trip and he decided to take in a movie. The picture he selected was “Peggy Sue Got Married,” starring Nicholas Cage and Kathleen Turner. In the film, Peggy Sue gets divorced when she’s in her 40s and then has a chance to go back to high school and change her decisions. When Nicholas Cage asks her to dance, she starts to say no, then she looks down at the locket with the pictures of her kids in it. She realizes if she says no and doesn’t marry him, the kids’ pictures will fade.

 Tony went away from the theater thinking about that scene for a long time. He thought about the times in life when we want to avoid the pain, but if we do, many times we will have to miss the joy in life also. The lyrics started coming and “The Dance” was born soon afterward. A few weeks after Arata composed it, he was singing at an “open microphone” event at a little club called “Douglas Corner” on Eighth Avenue in Nashville. Sitting at the bar that night was this stocky guy wearing a cowboy hat. Tony had observed a lot of fellows who look like fake cowboys with their hats on, but this guy didn’t. He looked like the real deal. Tony struck up a conversation with him and found out that he too had his sights on a country music career. His name was Garth Brooks.

 Later, the two men found themselves performing on the same bill at the Bluebird Café. It was a Sunday night, and they were scheduled to do the early show. Nobody had arrived yet and Arata started singing “The Dance.” Garth listened intently and after it was finished, he walked over to Tony and said, “Man, if I ever get a record deal, I want to record that song!” Tony replied, “Okay, sure,” thinking the chances for that ever happening were slim. At the time, Brooks was selling boots for a living and Arata was lifting fifty-pound boxes to put groceries on the table.

 Amazingly though, about a year later, Garth called Tony with the news that he had just signed with Capitol Records and asked again about “The Dance.” It was still available and he was excited about recording the song for his debut album, appropriately titled “Garth Brooks.” A couple of months passed while Brooks completed the album and when it was finished, Garth telephoned Tony again, inviting him down to his manager’s office to hear it. Arata didn’t recognize “The Dance” at first because of the long piano intro, but once he listened to it, he agreed that Brooks did a magnificent job of singing, and Allen Reynolds’ production was superb.

 In a span of ten months, Capitol issued three singles from the “Garth Brooks” album to launch his career, and each one made the Top Ten. The second Brooks single, “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” even reached the #1 spot on Billboard’s country chart.

 Generally, a country album produces two or three singles, and by the time this collection’s third single, “Not Counting You,” was issued, work had already begun on Garth’s second album “No Fences,” (which in the long run proved to be one of the biggest-selling albums in music history). However, producer Allen Reynolds was adamant about a single release for “The Dance” and campaigned for it directly with label head Jimmy Bowen, but Bowen turned him down. Allen said, “Would you just do me a favor and go see Garth sing it live before you make your final decision?” Bowen went to one of Brooks’ concerts, and when Garth sang “The Dance,” the crowd went wild. Jimmy came back to the office and gave Reynolds a “thumbs up” for the fourth single. “The Dance” became Garth’s second Billboard #1 hit on July 14, 1990, staying at the summit for three weeks.

 A great video was made for “The Dance,” incorporating footage of several American icons and examples of people who died for a dream, including President John F. Kennedy, world champion bull rider Lane Frost, the crew of the ill-fated space shuttle “Challenger,” actor John Wayne, country singer Keith Whitley and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the end of the video, during the piano fadeout, Brooks appears on screen with a statement about how his life was just like the song – that he could have skipped the problems he had encountered while chasing his dream for a career in music, but he “wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

 “The Dance” won trophies for “Song of the Year” from both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music (where it also won for “Video of the Year”) and was also was nominated for a Grammy award. It was the most-played song on country radio that year. Since its 1990 release, “The Dance,” has also become one of the most popular songs played at funerals. Garth Brooks performed it on the final episode of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on February 6, 2014.