Remember Tracy Chapman? For a brief while, 14 years ago, she was everywhere — a powerful, clear voice talkin’ about a revolution at a time when Reagan, Thatcher, the Berlin Wall and apartheid all appeared indestructible. Performing at Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday concert at London’s Wembley stadium in 1988, Chapman seemed to speak for a generation of would-be radicals who came of political age too late for Paris 1968 and too early for Seattle 1999.
Aged only 24, she produced not just a one-off memorable song, but a body of work — including Fast Car, Behind The Wall and For My Lover — on an album that many of us still play.
”People really wanted what she had,” said David Kershenbaum, who produced her first, eponymous album. ”And they weren’t getting it. She got there at the right moment with stuff that was good.” But it was a music and a message that managed both to be of their time and to endure beyond it. We carried on listening to her early work even as her face faded from view. Her second album, Crossroads, released just a year after that memorable debut, failed to lodge itself in the collective memory in the same way.
For those who have been following Chapman’s career over the past decade, she never went away; there have been tours, four albums and a raft of benefit concerts. But the rest of us are stuck with a sound and an image of her that dates from the late 1980s: all pert dreads and protest lyrics.
Today, aged 38, she boasts a mane of hair that comes halfway down the back of her corduroy jacket. With high cheekbones and smooth, dark skin, you might recognise her in the street, but it would take you a short while to riffle through your mental Rolodex before you matched the face to the name. For the past three months she has been working on her new album, Let It Rain, in Sausalito, near San Francisco.
Chapman emerged at a highly politicised time for pop music. With little organised, effective opposition to the reactionary drift in politics on both sides of the Atlantic, musicians became a key mobilising force in countering the greed-is-good consensus that had taken root during the 1980s. Through Live Aid, the Mandela concert and the Amnesty tours, these people — among them Bob Geldof, Sting, Youssou N’Dour, Bruce Springsteen — espoused the return of morality to public discourse when everything seemed to be subordinated to the pursuit of private affluence.
Songs such as Chapman’s Behind The Wall spoke directly to these popular concerns. The track’s description of a neighbour listening to the domestic violence next door, too jaded to do anything about it, only to see the ambulance coming to take the victim away, is powerfully understated: ”And the police said/I’m here to keep the peace/Will the crowd disperse/I think we all could use some sleep.”
As recently as three years ago, Chapman said, ”I think it’s important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.” Today, it’s a statement that she would rather qualify; she is less keen to single out herself or her profession for any particular political responsibility. ”That’s what everyone should do with their lives,” she says, ”stand up for what they believe in, or try to do some good in the world. I don’t think artists have a greater responsibility than anyone else.”
Chapman’s voice remains the most distinguishing feature of the new album — to be released at the end of the month — but the same cannot be said of her lyrics. If the dominant mood of her early work was political, the overriding impression of this album is more spiritual.
None of which should suggest that Chapman has become apolitical. Her views on the fallout from September 11, for example, reveal a mind that continues to be critical and inquiring. ”It almost seems to me there are no words for the horror, not just for that particular day but even now … I think we’re screwed … globally. This particular turn of events, and everything that comes with it, it’s set us back culturally, socially, 100 steps.”
The only overtly political song on the new album, the one most reminiscent of her earlier work, is also the best — Hardwired is a broadside against the pervasive nature of consumerism.
”Maybe it’s naive to say,” she says, ”but it almost seems like, in the past, people tried to sell you something you would actually need, like a broom or a toothbrush. But now there’s this notion that they can sell you anything. And all they have to do is convince you that you need it”.
Cleveland, where Chapman was born in 1964, was, she admits, a very particular time and place to grow up. With the focus shifting from civil rights in the south to economic rights in the north, industrial cities such as Cleveland were the new focal points for both racial tension and black progress. ”It was a very racially divided city,” she says, ”and in most places public schools were forced to desegregate, and white people protested and tried to stop buses. That was a controversial time. We always had trouble. Teachers weren’t paid very well and they went on strike.”
Her parents divorced when she was four. Tracy and her older sister lived with her mother, who, having refused child support from her father, raised them on welfare while working in low-paid jobs. Her mother would explain the political context for their poverty. ”As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations,” she told Rolling Stone. ”I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me. A lot of people in similar situations just have a sense that they’re poor or disenfranchised, but they don’t think about what’s created the situation or what factors don’t allow them to control their lives.”
Chapman was awarded a scholarship to an Episcopalian prep school and from there went to Tufts University. She chose Tufts because she wanted to fulfil her lifelong ambition to be a vet, but soon after she arrived there she changed her degree to anthropology and African studies, graduating in 1986. One summer, when she could bear her job mowing lawns no longer, she started busking.
Her contemporaries noticed her potential. A fellow student recommended her to his father, Charles Koppelman, then president of SBK music publishing. He in turn introduced her to Kershenbaum, who produced her first album.
A few months after the album’s release, Chapman appeared at Wembley stadium in the tribute to Mandela, who was still behind bars. The event was televised, and Chapman was the star of the show. Two days later, her album had sold 12 000 copies and topped the British charts.
When recording her other albums, Chapman travelled to Los Angeles and went home to a hotel room every night; this time, she got the other musicians to go north to San Francisco. ”It’s all about finding the balance, and I’m just working on that,” she said recently. ”If I don’t take time for that part of my life [walking the dog], then I don’t have anything to offer musically, because I don’t think most people want to hear songs about life on the bus or in the hotel.”
Making music remains an essential component of who she is. ”Right now, it’s my vocation and it’s my passion. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to do my work and be involved in certain organisations, certain endeavours, and offered some assistance in some way. Finding out where the need is — and if someone thinks you’re going to be helpful, then helping.” And who does she think needs most help at the moment? ”I don’t know … The thing is, unfortunately, it never ends.” — Â