Live: Garth Brooks

From 6 p.m. Friday to 11:30 p.m. Saturday, the country star interrupted his retirement to play five concerts at Staples Center in front of nearly 100,000 people, and for a national TV audience in the first hour.

He gave away two guitars and his hat to audience members, showcased his wife, Trisha Yearwood, and bar-band-belter buddy Huey Lewis, and he shared the stage with a Staples concession-stand worker.

He raised a substantial, still undetermined sum for California firefighters and fire victims (the benefit concerts were co-sponsored by The Times), and he filled the neighboring restaurants and bars with whooping, cowboy-hatted celebrants either winding down from or gearing up for the shows.

Brooks never does anything in a small way, and this endurance test -- five concerts in two days is an unprecedented schedule for a modern arena-rock performer -- is the kind of thing that challenges his competitive spirit and fills his need for attention, two of his defining traits.

His last tour ended a decade ago, and he formally retired in 2001 to be a family man. But he clearly savored this return, his only planned performances following a series of nine shows in Kansas City, Mo., in November.

Brooks is the biggest-selling solo artist in the U.S., and the rare blend of energy and intimacy he brought to the concert stage made him one of pop music's most successful and appealing attractions in the 1990s.

So his fans' desire for that experience matched Brooks' hunger to deliver it, giving the weekend's shows the charged intensity of a lovers' reunion that both know will be brief.

What would it be like to sit -- sorry, to stand -- through all five? Would the 45-year-old Brooks have the stamina to scamper and sing for 10 hours? Would he and his band need time to get the feel back?

More important, would the magician's secrets become clear and spoil the magic?

Well, not to worry. Although the concerts drew from the same pool of material with just a few variations, each had its own personality. None of them opened or closed with the same songs, and Brooks rarely repeated a riff. At Saturday's first show, he did a lot of playful pouting about the attention his band members were getting, but there wasn't a trace of it at the following concert. On each audience sing-along of "Unanswered Prayers," he added his own vocal at different points, always zoned in on how it was unfolding.