Has there been another summer when Garth Brooks has learned so much? After 13 years out of the spotlight, his comeback tour was due to begin in Dublin's Croke Park on 25 July and sold out within minutes, so two more dates were added, bringing ticket sales to a staggering 400,000. To put that number in perspective, it means that roughly 9% of the population of the Republic of Ireland had a ticket for Garth Brooks.
But troubles were brewing that two pina coladas couldn't fix. Due to legal issues, Dublin city council denied permission for the extra dates, meaning that 160,000 tickets would have to be refunded. Brooks couldn't do that to his fans! It wouldn't be fair. If he couldn't play five dates, he'd rather have nothing.
Social and political meltdown ensued, with public protests, calls for the taoiseach (our prime minister) to talk with Brooks, an offer of diplomatic help from the Mexican ambassador to Ireland, politicians gearing up for talks, and the Lord Mayor of Dublin claiming that residents planned to ask President Obama to step in. The White House graciously informed an Irish Independent reporter that it would leave the issue to Mr Brooks and the City of Dublin to resolve. Americans are very polite.
Obama won't be helping out, but don't worry: Brooks still has friends in high places. Piers Morgan – a renowned authority on Ireland's planning laws – has called on the taoiseach to address the problem. Thank you, Piers. What would the Irish nation do without you?
Brooks promised that, should the taoiseach meet with him, he'd "crawl, swim and fly", he'd drop down to his knees to beg that the concerts went ahead. Allowing 160,000 fans to be disappointed would be like "asking to choose one child over another". Yet when Dublin city council proposed the compromise of holding the five concerts over three days, meaning two matinees, Brooks said he didn't want to play two "half-assed" daytime shows. Utterly Shameless!
In a press conference on his decision to cancel the Irish dates, Brooks expresses bewilderment that the Irish "powers that be" won't fix things. "I wish I could tell you where that came from," he said, "I wish I saw it coming." His confusion and sadness is as heartbreaking as that of a small child with chocolate all over his face telling you how much he wishes he could find your missing Easter egg.
But it's OK, Garth, your pleas for understanding won't be unanswered prayers.
I'll explain: Croke Park has planning permission for one concert a year. That's the law. But it also has an agreement with the local residents that it can hold three. That's pretty cool of the residents. I lived by Croke Park for two years and, trust me, when there's an event on, it's wild. But the residents are great people, who understand that concerts bring in money, and thus they've agreed to have their kids kept up until all hours by dodgy music and dodgier drunks three nights annually.
Between five Brooks gigs and three One Direction gigs in March, Croke Park would host eight concerts in 2014. That's 2.6 times the number agreed by the residents, which, you'll remember, is three times what they're legally required to tolerate. Your event promoter, Peter Aiken, and the Gaelic Athletic Association, who run the stadium, knew this. They took a gamble that the €50m likely to be generated for the Irish economy would trump all that inconvenient legal stuff. One might say that they had three of a kind, but were working on a full house. And I know Brooks finds it confusing because, as he said, he's "always been treated like a king by the Irish".
But we're not, in fact, a nation that's historically been terribly fond of kings. It's time for a last ditch gambler's trick – all or nothing! But I call the cowboy's bluff.
What's €50m to a country that was forced to borrow €31bn from Europe to pay private bondholders, anyway? A government's job is to protect the rights of its citizens, not the gargantuan egos of country and western singers. If I were a gambling woman, I'd say: "Garth, you've got to know when to fold 'em." But then, I always did prefer Kenny Rogers.
