On This Date in Country Music History: Nearly One Million People Showed Up for Garth Brooks in Central Park

Twenty-eight years ago tonight, the North Meadow of Central Park held something it had never held before and has not held since. Nearly one million people standing on the grass in the summer heat, waiting for a boy from Yukon, Oklahoma to walk out and prove that country music belonged in the capital of the world. I was there to take in the amazing event myself.

The morning of the concert, Garth Brooks was staying at a hotel right next to the park. His then-wife Sandy could not resist looking out the window to see how many people had already gathered. Brooks did not want to know. "I said, 'Don't tell me,'" he recalled in his 2019 A&E documentary The Road I'm On. She got up and looked anyway and came back in tears. He still did not look. He just went to work.

Garthstock

On August 7, 1997, an estimated 980,000 people crowded the iconic park's North Meadow for what fans had already nicknamed Garthstock, after Woodstock. The concert was free of charge and became the largest concert ever held in Central Park. It was also the only New York City date on Brooks' massive second world tour, which had been running since 1996, which made the stakes feel even higher for everyone in attendance.

The New York media had not been entirely convinced the whole thing would work. Paul Simon had drawn 600,000 to Central Park in 1991 and set a high bar. Some outlets openly questioned whether a country artist could pull comparable numbers in the most rock-and-pop-centric city in America. Brooks answered the question before a single note was played simply by looking out the window at what had already gathered.

Billy Joel and Don McLean Walk Out

The setlist was everything a crowd of that size needed it to be. "Callin' Baton Rouge" and "Friends in Low Places" anchored the hits portion of the night. But the moments that made the evening genuinely historic came from the guests. The crowd erupted when Billy Joel appeared to perform "New York State of Mind" and "You May Be Right," two songs that could not have been more perfectly suited to the borough they were playing in. Then Don McLean led nearly a million people in a massive sing-along of "American Pie." Standing on the grass in Central Park, watching a country superstar trade verses with the man who wrote the longest song in American radio history, surrounded by a crowd that stretched further than most people could see. It was a magnificent gift to the City of New York.

The HBO Numbers

The HBO special, Garth: Live from Central Park, was nominated for six Emmy Awards and was 1997's highest-rated music special. The special garnered 14.6 million views, making Brooks an even bigger superstar than he already was at the time. When Brooks celebrated the 25th anniversary of the concert in 2022 with a live-stream rebroadcast, over 1.09 million viewers tuned in. He looked at those numbers and laughed. "How crazy is that?" he said.

Nashville Conquers New York

The Central Park concert did something that no amount of Billboard chart history or album sales could have accomplished quite as cleanly. It made the case, visually and unmistakably, that country music was not a regional genre for a specific kind of American. It was simply American music, and nearly a million New Yorkers had come out on a summer Thursday to prove it.

"Time is a friend to all things good, and the Central Park concert will forever remain a GREAT chapter in our story," Brooks said on its 25th anniversary.

Twenty-eight years ago tonight, he walked out onto the North Meadow and looked out at the crowd he had refused to look at from the window. Whatever he saw, he delivered. Read Garth’s full bio on our website.