‘I’m in the country of love’: Garth Brooks holds court before playing in front of 400,000 fans at Croke Park

Garth Brooks has come to Dublin a lesser man than the one who arrived on Irish shores in November with unfinished business.

He has lost 50 pounds (22kg) since then. The combination of a marathon US tour and the prospect of a film about his Irish adventures have concentrated his mind and body.

He had a look at the footage from when he and his band played Croke Park in Dublin and Central Park in New York in 1997, some 25 years ago now.

Many of his band members, who have been with him since the beginning, look exactly the same. “What’s wrong with your fat ass?” he asked himself. “I am going to give myself credit for this. I was for 16 years a soccer dad. It has taken me eight years to get back to the same weight I was in 1997.”

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In November he announced two shows at Croke Park and declared it would be “impossible” to sell out five shows Two turned into three and three turned into five and now 400,000 tickets have been sold for the three concerts this week and the two the following weekend.

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In between he hopes to have a “second honeymoon” with his wife of 17 years and fellow performer Trish Yearwood.

He was woken up in the middle of the night by Peter Aiken of Aiken Promotions in November to be told that he sold five nights, the same amount as in 2014 for the concert series that never was.

“To whoever stopped this in 2014, I’d like to say thank you for allowing this to happen in 2022. I wasn’t being modest or humble. I was going to put money on that I wouldn’t sell five nights.”

The equivalent of one person in 14 on this island will attend over this weekend and next. In Monaghan it is almost one person in three and Tyrone one in five. Being Croke Park it is aptly an all-Ireland affair with more than 100,000 fans coming from the province of Ulster.

“I’m in the country of love,” he said. “Ireland is love.” It’s sentimental Americana to a few, but hundreds of thousands of his fans will bear happy witness to it at Croke Park.

They won’t just be from Ireland either. Some 20,000 tickets have been sold overseas. One superfan, who is going to three Croke Park concerts, from New Jersey has attended 175 shows. Two women from Canada are attending all five nights

“How can these people afford it? Have they done the math on this? How do you get off so much?” the multimillionaire country singer asked. Aiken Promotions have sold 93 tickets in Palestine and 35 in Afghanistan, two places not known for being hot beds of country music.

Brooks held court in the sweltering confines of the GAA Museum on Thursday afternoon. One journalist said her parents had attended his last concerts in Ireland in June 1997. She was born in March of the following year. “Garth I owe my life to you,” she told the singer. “I’m still processing that thought,” he replied.

He doesn’t know the set list yet but Calling Baton Rouge will certainly be on it as will be his most famous ballad If Tomorrow Never Comes, an apt song, given all that happened in 2014.

Brooks was asked what he hoped would be the headlines when he is finished his Croke Park concerts. “Wow!” he responded, “what a thin, beautiful young looking guy.”