“Time in a Bottle,” a fan in the balcony called out. “I wrote that,” Brooks joked. He then played the song and a couple other Jim Croce songs for good measure. The audience loved it. I lost count of the standing ovations. By any standards, Garth Brooks opening in Vegas was a huge success.

Country performers, more than most entertainers, must be friendly and smiling for their fans. Rock stars, movie stars and especially (our least talented celebrities) reality stars are all able to be jerks and fans call that a cool image. Country performers are expected to maintain down home, I-am-just-one-of-you, charm. I remember many years ago LeAnn Rimes expressing amazement to me at how peers who she did not name– but likely, at the time, meant Britney and Christina—seemed to feel so little obligation to project a certain wholesome image.

And,  it is also in the nature of performers to be liked. Yet, by whatever standard you want to use Garth Brooks takes his nice guy image to an extreme. Charming and self-effacing, yes, of course. Forget the shirt off his back, the man gave an expensive acoustic guitar to a thrilled audience member. And, offstage Garth Brooks  walks that walk as well, in ways that matter far more than winning over an audience as when he underwent tests to see if he could donate part of his liver to Chris LeDoux. And, the audience knows their man and loves him. Near the end of the show, I even saw Steve Wynn rocking out in the audience singing along word-for-word to “Friends in Low Places.”

Before the shows one long time Vegas writer was shocked that Brooks was actually planning to just walk out with a guitar in jeans and a hoody, Where was the Vegas spectacle, the dressing-up in lush costumes, the slick entertaining pacing that marks successful shows on the Strip? Brooks offering is the opposite of Celine Dion’s successful “A New Day.” And, it all works for him just as “A New Day” worked for Dion by being an authentic expression of each performers’ appeal. Dion is about the dramatic gesture and the glitz and the notes that reach the stratosphere. Brooks was offering a tutorial on how his songwriting proccess works along with honest and heartfelt offerings of songs that move him by James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Bob Seger (Hollywood Bob vintage–not “Back in ’72″) and others.

The truth is that the cloning and bandwagon mentality of Vegas entertainment often result in our greatest failures, because you can not duplicate something truly special. There is only one Celine Dion and her name is not Bette Midler. Garth Brooks might be one of the few performers in the world who could make this show work on the Strip. But it works perfectly.

Garth Brooks is offering something truly special at Wynn. He (joined for a couple songs by his wife, Trisha Yearwood) is playing exactly what he wants to play for a tiny audience that loves to hear him. “You think I am doing this for you,” Brooks told the audience. “I am doing it for me.” But when a performer is so clearly enjoying himself, that feeling infects the audience. In that way, if no other, Brooks’ show reminded me of the Prince residency at the Rio a couple years ago. Prince broke the Vegas rules, too. Prince started after midnight, tossed in some hits, but mostly held wondrous jam sessions for those lucky enough to see one of those performances.

I could not be further from a Garth Brooks fan (or for that matter the mostly second rate Bob Dylan clones whose songs so move him). But I am a huge fan of this show. The focus is music in its purest form and Brooks clearly feels liberated from promoting singles and big touring apparatus. He has the star clout and audience sympathy to really go in any direction on Wynn’s stage and he is banking that freedom for this residency. This is the sort of special entertainment that allows Vegas to sometimes live up to the billing of  Entertainment Capitol of the World.

Party on Garth!

(Courtesy Photo by Henry Diltz)