PHOENIX — I saw Garth Brooks live only once, way back in 1994 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, New York.
It was the first night of a three-night run in the Queen City and Brooks put on a show that, for me, was life-altering.
I became a country music fan that night, seduced by Brooks’ outsized personality, infectious and frenetic energy on stage and a catalogue of rocking country songs, most of which I had never heard before that night but have since committed to memory.
On Friday night at Talking Stick Resort Arena, I felt like I was back at the Aud. Never mind that a lifetime had passed, most of which Brooks has spent off the road raising his three kids. But you couldn’t tell from his performance — his first in Phoenix in 19 years and the first of six concerts he will perform at Talking Stick through next Saturday night — that he had ever taken a sabbatical.
Brooks on Friday night was the same rowdy, unbridled artist from his 1990s heydays, the guy whose engine constantly revs on high. From his entrance with the industrial rock anthem title song off his year-old album “Man Against Machine,” he established a pace that never slows. He raced around a circular stage singing “Two of a Kind, Workin’ On a Full House” to all sides of the full arena, leaping around with an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder. He two-stepped at a runner’s pace during the murderous tale of “Papa Loved Mama,” then pumped his fists in the air to emphasize the urgency of “Thunder Rolls.”
He grabbed the stage camera from its operator during “Ain’t Going Down ’Til the Sun Comes Up,” sprinting the length of the stage then racing around the back as he aimed the camera into the crowd, their images blasting on the big screen overhead.
He got momentarily winded, bending over to catch his breath, just before launching into the ballad “Unanswered Prayers.” The audience took over, singing impressive harmonies loud enough to fill the arena and silence their host. Throughout the night, the audience sang along, sometimes so loud that Brooks could easily have stopped singing and the music would have continued uninterrupted.
Brooks slowed down when his wife, fellow country superstar Tricia Yearwood, joined him for the couple’s Top 5 duet “In Another’s Eyes.” When they finished, he turned the stage over to Yearwood, who found that the crowd that loved her husband also had a crush on her and her impressive soprano. They sang along to her hits “X’s and O’s” and “She’s In Love With the Boy,” and her most recent single, “PrizeFighter.”
Brooks returned to the stage and blasted into his rocking “Shameless,” the Billy Joe-penned song that was one of Brooks’ early hits. And once again, the audience chimed in with their thousands-strong chorus, their voices harmoniously echoing throughout the arena. Then Brooks took them on a raucous ride to “Callin’ Baton Rouge” and his ubiquitous drinking ode, “Friends in Low Places.”
He feigned shock when the audience wanted him to sing the third verse of “Friends,” the one that tells the ex-lover what she can do with her rejection.
He said he had decided on this leg of his 2015 world tour that he would forgo that verse. But what the heck, he said; let’s break some rules, and the audience all too happily joined in.
It made for one of the night’s defining moments.
From the scorching encore “Standing Outside the Fire” to the heart-tugging ballad “The Dance,” Brooks captured many defining moments, little flashes of time that folks in that arena will be recalling 20 years from now.
