Outdoing Himself Country Music Superstar Garth Brooks Is Determined To Challenge And Overcome A Tough Competitor: Garth Brooks

“We’re in trouble, man,” an earnest Garth Brooks exhales as he contemplates the making of his new album.

Two songs have been completed for a project with the early working title of “Cornerstone,” its name being only one of the devices with which one of the most successful country music artists of all time is putting pressure on himself.

Another is a self-imposed deadline to have it out in time for the Christmas retail season.

“It’s going slow - extremely slow,” Brooks said in an interview at GB Management, the company he formed when his management team - Bob Doyle and Pam Lewis - broke up and headed to the courtroom.

“I truly think if this album is accepted, we stand a good chance of being around awhile,” he said. “If it’s not, I think it’s over for us.”

Brooks, born 32 years ago in Tulsa, Okla., was the first country artist to sell like a pop star in the early 1990s, foreshadowing the now almost commonplace multi-platinum success of younger artists like John Michael Montgomery and Shania Twain.

Today, along with Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, Reba McEntire and Clint Black, Brooks is part of the old guard.

A limited edition greatest hits record, “The Hits,” was a major success, but he buried the glass master of the recording under his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in California in a public ceremony last June.

It was Brooks’ way of making sure he doesn’t rest on his laurels. The original idea was to drop it from the top of the Capitol Records building in California, symbolically shattering the songs that took him to superstardom.

Brooks wants to stay at the top without repeating himself.

“As the years go on and the song list piles up, you can’t do another ‘Shameless,’ you can’t do another ‘Friends in Low Places’ ‘cause you’ve already done that,” he said of a couple of his hits.

The summit was the “No Fences” record in 1990, which sold more than 13 million copies. “The Chase” in 1992 sold about 6 million, and his last album of original material in 1993, “In Pieces,” has sold about 7 million. “The Hits” will sell out its limited 10 million run this fall.

Brooks wonders what happened to the 5 or 6 million people who bought “No Fences,” then dropped out. “The Hits” was one way to recapture those folks, but Brooks would rather do it with new material.

“Listen to me. I’m crazy, you know?” he said. “My confidence was shook when we sold 6 million.”

“I would like to make ‘No Fences II’ in sales,” he said. “I’d like to blow the hell out of ‘No Fences’ - ‘cause I just enjoy competition, especially with myself.”

During a 1994 spent mostly off the road and with his family, Brooks says he began seeking inspiration.

“I’m just hearing the old Hag (Merle Haggard) stuff again,” he said, “the old George Jones, the Lefty (Frizzell) stuff, the Jerry Jeff Walker. And yeah, that’s probably gonna influence me.”

He caught the Page-Plant tour, and has been listening to a collection of old material by mellow California singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff. He also surveyed more than 2,700 songs written by Nashville tunesmiths, since he wasn’t doing very much of his own.

“Man, my writing is just not - it’s all in there, I just can’t find it,” he said.

One of the two songs he has completed for “Cornerstone” was inspired by the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

(Brooks is also privately helping the victims, but swears, “You’re never going to know anything about it. My people will pull it off where no one will know.” Like other country stars with Oklahoma ties, he does not want to be perceived as capitalizing on the tragedy.)

As for finishing more songs, Brooks says the rift between his managers has affected him, as has a shakeup at his record label. He’s kept a studied public neutrality regarding the managers, though GB Management is housed in the same building as Doyle’s company.

Helping wife Sandy tend their two small children, Taylor and August, also preoccupied him.

“By the time they go to bed I’m worn out, so I don’t stay up ‘til 4 a.m. writing like I used to,” he said. “So you just dig a little deeper and the albums take a bit longer.

“I’ve never had a Christmas go by without a new piece of product. I’d be scared to death to go this Christmas without a new piece of product, but if it keeps going the way it is now, we’ll never make it.”