CAPITOL GAINES; AS LABEL'S BIGGEST STAR, BROOKS HAS BACKING FOR NEW PERSONA.

Byline: Fred Shuster Music Writer

You get used to hearing superlatives around Garth Brooks.

Spend any time in his circle, and you'll pick up phrases like ``artist of the decade,'' ``more records sold in America than any other artist,'' and even ``the greatest communicator of human emotions'' repeated with straight, sometimes dour faces.

Then, Brooks himself walks in wearing a pose of self-deprecation designed to counteract all the platitudes he apparently insists on in private.

``Look at me,'' he says, patting his belly and running a hand through gray, thinning hair. ``I'm 6-foot-1 and weigh 220 pounds. Does this look like a rock star to you?''

Complicated? Yup. And to make matters worse, you don't know if you're talking to Brooks or his pseudonym, Chris Gaines, a fictional Australian rocker who's the subject of an album, TV special and planned feature film.

Ready to give up? Don't - yet.

Pear-shaped, balding, superstitious about his success yet widely feared inside a certain circular tower at Hollywood and Vine, Brooks is the music business' own 600-pound gorilla.

A few years ago, he single-handedly caused a restructuring of Capitol's Nashville division. When he revealed he would morph into Gaines, a pop, rock and r&b singer with a highly detailed fake biography and non-existent back catalog, there were some puzzled expressions around the old conference table.

Only for a second, though. You can almost hear the chorus kicking in: ``Great, Garth!'' ``You betcha!'' ``Can't wait - let's get it out for Christmas.''

And so they did. Brooks-as-Gaines' album, ``Garth Brooks ... in the Life of Chris Gaines'' (Capitol), due Tuesday, is a Don Was-produced 13-song ``greatest hits'' collection from a career that never was.

Brooks didn't write the songs, which touch on '80s rock and r&b styles. Instead, the Nashville songwriting team of Gordon Kennedy, Wayne Kirkpatrick and Tommy Simms (best-known for the Eric Clapton/Babyface smash ``Change the World'') did the honors.

Further, the Oklahoma-bred Brooks doesn't sound like his usual ``Friends in Low Places'' self on the record. In fact, he manages to smooth out his country twang in favor of a rocker's falsetto and r&b delivery.

If you're dying to know more (and even if you're not), Gaines, er, Brooks is going to blitz TV in the next few days, appearing on ``The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,'' ``The Rosie O'Donnell Show,'' ``Late Night With Conan O'Brien,'' ``Today,'' ``Later Today'' and ``Showbiz Today'' between Monday and Wednesday, which is also the day his NBC special based on the Gaines album airs.

It's called promotion. Others call it synergy. At NBC's Gaines taping last month, Pat Quigley, president of Capitol Nashville, summed up, pointing out that Brooks was ``a Capitol artist on the Sony studio lot making an NBC special for KIIS-FM listeners with the president of Warner Bros. in the audience.''

In other words, when you've shifted more than 95 million units and the Beatles are the only act to top your sales, the big guns come out - even when you've created something as odd and potentially confusing to fans as Gaines.

For his part, Brooks says there's nothing to worry about.

``It's not a shift, it's a stretch,'' the soft-spoken superstar says after the taping, wearing a backward baseball cap and Nike T-shirt. ``The character came to life, and I thought, `Why not?' But the true thing is the music - that's the thing that really kills me, and I'm proud of that, so we'll see what happens.''

To prepare for the project, Brooks went on a diet, donning wig and makeup to give Gaines a face for the album cover.

So far, Gaines is apparently a hit, while ``Lost in You,'' the r&b-tinged first single, has moved Brooks into new territory. In the pop and new adult contemporary radio format, the song was the No. 1 most-added recently while continuing its climb up the plain old adult contemporary and Top 40 charts.

Meanwhile, country stations, including influential local outlet KZLA-FM (93.9), are playing the more straightforward album track, ``It Don't Matter to the Sun.''

The question is, are people simply digging the tunes, or are they buying the whole Garth-as-Gaines persona?

``Our listeners are big fans of Garth, no matter what he does, or who he says he is,'' said Marida Petitjean, KZLA's operations manager. ``If you love Garth, you're gonna love his album, because you love him. I don't know if the audience has put two and two together and realized there's this alter ego. They'll probably be surprised when they figure it out, because it hasn't been fully explained to his core country audience.''

Brooks, who likes to refer to himself in the third person as if he were an imaginary character like Gaines, has agreed to cut one more Gaines disc, the soundtrack to the planned film of ``The Lamb.'' If these records are hits, he could go off the deep end - and cut the five albums that supposedly predate Tuesday's ``greatest hits'' effort.

Brooks isn't 100 percent positive his massive fan base is going to take the plunge with him. And he's not going to tour as Gaines, because he doesn't trust his fans not to demand ``If Tomorrow Never Comes,'' ``The Dance'' and other Garth chartbusters.

``The key word is gonna be education to give the buyer the most information they can to make the best decision they can,'' he said, sounding like a marketing director rather than a singer-songwriter. ``I have to take the fear away that this is some place where Garth is gonna leave everything else behind. And if they just realize it's a ride we can go on, we'll all have fun. If they don't bite, well, I can't really complain after what they've given me over the past decade.''

The Gaines character will be seen in the planned Paramount film, with Brooks and Babyface serving as co-producers. The film is still in the writing stages, and casting is up in the air.

``I'm not sure I'm going to be in the movie,'' Brooks, 37, says. ``I don't have gorgeous movie-star looks. I'm not that gorgeous guy. If the director can get past the fact it's me - so people in the theaters won't be saying: `What's Garth Brooks doing in the middle of this movie?' - then hopefully there'll be something for me to do in it. But it's not going to be a Rutles or Spinal Tap-type thing.''

When performing the rock-oriented ``Chris Gaines'' material for Wednesday's NBC special, Brooks says he felt like a kid practicing rock-star moves in front of a mirror.

``When I play country, I don't feel like Hank Williams or George Jones or Merle Haggard,'' he said. ``Those guys are gods. So with rock, I didn't expect to go out there and feel like Steven Tyler. I felt like a guy playing music who wishes he could feel like Steven Tyler or Freddie Mercury.

``Rock 'n' roll is hip, and hip is not how I would describe me. Never has been. It's not a state of humbleness, it's just a state of honesty. I just never thought hip was my thing.''

Maybe not - even if he is a superstar. Hipness isn't gauged by how many records you sell. But if his latest gambit works, Brooks could well make some real Gaines as an artist.

The facts

The show: ``Garth Brooks ... in the Life of Chris Gaines.''

What: For his seventh NBC special, Garth Brooks mixes pop, rock and r&b in this hourlong musical tribute to fictional rock star Chris Gaines, the subject of a forthcoming feature film.

Starring: Garth Brooks and band.

Where: NBC (Channel 4).

When: 8 p.m. Wednesday.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

PHOTO (1 -- 2 -- cover -- color) Garth makes Gaines.

(3) You'll be seeing a lot of this guy in the next few days - it's Chris Gaines ... or Garth Brooks in a wig.

(4) ``Look at me. I'm 6-foot-1 and weigh 220 pounds. Does this look like a rock star to you?'' says Brooks, whose country fans seem to be following him into the world of a fictional Australian musician.