Tracy Chapman on the show that changed her life

“To this day I don’t really know how I ended up on the stage, there at Wembley Stadium,” says Tracy Chapman. “It was completely overwhelming and completely unexpected.”

I’m recording an interview with the US singer-songwriter for BBC Radio 4’s arts programme Front Row. It’s to coincide with the re-release of her debut album, Tracy Chapman, which came out 37 years ago, in 1988, when she was just 24, and could be just as often found busking on the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts and in Boston’s coffee shops.

It’s a brilliant record. Songs such as ‘Talkin’ Bout a Revolution’, ‘Fast Car’ and ‘Baby Can I Hold You’ have become classics. ‘Across the Lines’, an anguished chronicle of racial violence, remains as urgent now as when it was written; as does her account of domestic violence and police inaction, ‘Behind the Wall’, which is bravely delivered, a capella. The album has recently been added to the US’ audio treasury, the National Recording Register at the Library of Congress.

Presenter Kate Molleson and I are taking Chapman back to the time when she went from being almost unknown to world famous in a moment. Tracy Chapman was launched in London on March 20, 1988, when Chapman played at the Donmar in Soho to a full house of 251 people. A few weeks later she got the chance to play to a few more people, as on June 11, there was what Songlines contributor Robin Denselow once described as the “biggest and most spectacular pop-political event of all time, a more political version of Live Aid with the aim of raising consciousness rather than just money.” This was the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert at Wembley Stadium. The line-up included Whitney Houston, Bee Gees, Sting and (of more interest, perhaps, to readers of Songlines) Salif Keita, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and Youssou N’Dour… and Tracy Chapman. She is still bewildered by this.

“I really can’t recall what brought the people who put that show together… what brought me to their attention… I think you can see it in my face when I’m standing up there… There’s”, she laughs, “some shock.” That’s true. It’s worth going on to YouTube to see her concentrate on plucking out the now instantly recognisable riff of ‘Fast Car’. As she starts singing, her voice quivers for a moment.

Chapman is daunted because this shouldn’t be happening. She has already played her scheduled slot. Now it’s Stevie Wonder’s turn. His gear is set up, ready to be rolled onto the stage. Everything is prepared… except the hard disc for his Synclavier, on which can be found all the synthesised music he needs for his set. It is nowhere to be found. Wonder says he can’t play without it and leaves, in tears.

The hiatus has to be filled: as Stevie Wonder walks out of the stadium, Tracy Chapman walks back out onto the stage. The audience is chanting, oblivious of her presence. She sings ‘Fast Car’. “I had trained myself to just focus, to deliver the song as best I could… to try to sing on key, play in time and hope that will carry the day. So, I think playing on the streets as a busker was pretty good preparation for playing in front of a stadium crowd.”

Soon the audience is paying attention, drawn by that insistent guitar line and Chapman’s delivery of the story of the young woman who quit school to look after her alcoholic father, and is now stuck with a man going the same way. He has a fast car, but not much else, he drinks, sees more of his friends than his children. It’s just Chapman with her acoustic guitar, giving a great performance of a great song – holding an audience of 100,000 in Wembley Stadium and 600 million in 67 countries around the globe.

It changes everything. Two million copies of Tracy Chapman are sold in the next fortnight. By the time, 35 years on, she decides to re-release the album on vinyl, 20 million copies have been sold, and Chapman has sustained a long, fruitful, international career as musician and activist.

“My hopes for the record and my career… were modest,” Chapman muses. “I was just thinking; it’ll be great if I can make a living doing this. And if I can develop a bigger following than the one that I had when I was busking on the streets in Cambridge and playing coffeehouses in Boston.”

As told by Julian May