Garth set to make new records
Tuesday, May 26, 1998. Toronto Sun
Story by Story by Jane Stevenson

Box set, The Limited Series, will bring country superstar closer to No. 1 in sales

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Garth Brooks has no complaints. Why should he?

The country music superstar's first box set, The Limited Series, has ruled the top of Billboard's album chart for the last two weeks, selling an astonishing 562,000 copies overall. It doesn't even hit stores in Canada until today.

"I'm very happy," says Brooks, 35, lounging backstage before the second of four sold-out shows at Freedom Hall in this southern U.S. city. "We're now getting close to being half sold -- 'cause there are only two million made worldwide."

The widely-hyped, budget-priced, six-CD, 66-song collection is made up of Brooks' first six studio releases -- Garth Brooks, No Fences, Ropin' The Wind, The Chase, In Pieces and Fresh Horses. There are also six bonus tracks, including the first single, a cover of Bob Dylan's To Make You Feel My Love, which is also featured on the soundtrack for the Sandra Bullock film, Hope Floats.

But like almost every one of Brooks' releases -- most recently his 1997 album, Sevens, which was delayed after Brooks had concerns about marketing -- there's been controversy surrounding The Limited Series.

One report said Brooks ordered his record label to stop manufacturing his first six albums after the box set was released, so if you wanted to buy one of those albums, you had to buy all of them.

"Billboard ran an article linking the box set coming out and taking the CDs out of circulation, which they're not," he insists. "The retailers should have enough product to get them to April of 1999. In April of '99, the first album, and hopefully the other six, are reissued in the new CD-DVD (digital video disc) format. I think if we're going to compete, music's got to start being visionary."

Another report said The Limited Series was a way for Brooks -- the second highest-selling artist in the U.S. with sales of 67 million -- to get closer to reaching the Beatles' top seller record of 105 million.

When it comes to box sets, the Recording Industry Association of America counts each CD separately, so presuming all two million copies are sold, it will add 12 million to Brooks' sales total.

"Any time we've done anything, there's always been a left-handed slam," he says. "It's not that," says Brooks of the Beatles angle. "It's really weird. The 100-million mark, I mentioned that in an interview in '92 -- but for some reason Newsweek picked up on it and now everyone focuses in on that, saying, 'Oh, that's why he's doing all of this.' And it's like, 'Guys, you don't understand.' It's all about the music.

"Try to sell 100 million records and not have the music there."

Brooks wraps up his current tour in November after three years on the road and will not be hitting Toronto again this year. (This isn't a huge loss, since it's the same show that played SkyDome in September, 1996.)

The upside for Brooks fans is that during the tour, the singer recorded as many shows as he could for a "20 to 26" track live album he hopes to have finished by July for release in the fall.

In fact, the Kentucky shows were probably the last concerts recorded, given the amount of material already compiled.

"We just dumped it -- it was a little bit over 2,000 tapes -- into the studio about two months ago," says Brooks. "There were tapes everywhere you walked -- the place was just tapes, tapes, tapes."