biography
(
©
Nigel Williamson, Kent England,
from
the Collection booklet, 2001)
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Ever
since she burst upon the musical world in 1988 with
her warm and magical debut album, Tracy Chapman has
been one of our finest contemporary songwriters and
a performer of striking originality, grace and charm.
But she has also become much more than that.
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| When
you walk out of a record store with a new Tracy Chapman
album, you are not merely buying a collection of finely
crafted and elegantly executed songs. You are also somehow
entering a better world in which-for an hour’s worth
of music at least-the values of compassion, honesty and
humanity are restored to their rightful place in an otherwise
increasingly giddy and trivial global culture. |
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Born
and raised by her mother in Cleveland, Ohio, she began
writing poetry and short stories at an early age. Tracy's
first instrument was a ukulele that her mother bought
her at three years old because she recognized that she
loved music, and was later stolen by the girl across
the street from them. There wasn’t much
money in the family but her mother saved money from
the household food money to purchase it from a neighborhood
store.
An
academic scholarship sent her to high school in Connecticut,
where she played at chapel services, Her mother bought
her first guitar when she was away in boarding school
when she started playing coffee house at school with
a borrowed guitar. Later, the school chaplain Reverend
Robert Tate organized a collection to buy her a new
guitar. (He was thanked years later in the credits on
her first album.)
At Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, she studied
anthropology and honed her musical skills on the Boston
folk circuit, playing guitar and singing on the streets
of Harvard Square and performing at local coffeehouses
and the campus folk club. |
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By
1987, she had signed to Elektra, a label with a proud
singer-songwriter history dating back to the 1960s heyday
of the genre. Her self-titled debut album, produced
by David Kershenbaum, was released in early 1988 and
its warm, passionate and heartfelt songs announced the
arrival of a compelling talent. At the time, the record
was a breath of fresh air. By the late 1980s, music
was dominated by synths and drum machines and the simplicity
and sincerity of Chapman’s approach was hugely
refreshing. The songs themselves were full of sharp
observation, deeply rooted in her personal experience
of growing up poor in a working-class community in the
inner city.
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The
album met with immediate critical and commercial success,
but it was an appearance at the Nelson Mandela 70th-birthday
tribute concert at Wembley, London, in June that year
that introduced her to a mass global audience. “They
didn’t have a slot for me and I was kept waiting,”
she recalls. “It was just me and my acoustic guitar
and I think they called me three times hoping to put
me on while the next act was getting ready.” On
each occasion it didn’t happen, and three times
she was sent back to the dressing room and told to wait
again.
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| Then,
just as Stevie Wonder was due to go on in a prime time
slot, he told dismayed organizers that his computerized
programs had gone missing and he could not appear without
them. In a panic, they called for Chapman. “I literally
had to run to the stage, dragging my guitar cable,”
she recalls. “When I look back at the footage I can
see how unprepared I was. But I think it also meant I
had no time to feel the pressure.” |
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Her
spontaneous performances, seen by millions on television
around the world, was a sensation and the reaction was
instant. She won so many hearts that the following week
the album soared to the top of the charts in both Britain
and the United States. Elektra had believed in her from
the outset and hoped the album might sell 200,000 copies-a
highly credible performance for a debut of basically
acoustic songs. Instead, it went on to sell more that
10 million copies and win three Grammy awards.
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But
Tracy Chapman has never been an artist whose value can
be measured in statistics and chart placings. For her,
the awards and accolades have always been second to
the integrity of her songwriting and the emotional honesty
of her voice. Drawing on the songs she had written over
the previous nine years, seldom can there have been
a more perfectly formed debut album.
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The
irresistible Fast
Car gave her her first hit single, a sharply
observed tale of hope for a better life. It’s a
powerful and moving performance, the infectious melody
and jaunty rhythm juxtaposed dramatically with the seriousness
ot its message about the difficulties of breaking the
cycle of deprivation.
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Baby
Can I Hold You
is simply on of the most beautiful love songs ever written,
its perfect simplicity matched by its overwhelming poignancy.
Astonishingly, Chapman was just 18 when she wrote the
song. Talkin’ Bout A Revolution
is another early composition and its deliberate positioning
as the opening track of her first album announced her
immediately as a songwriter with a passionate commitment
to the causes of truth and justice, and who was not
afraid to speak her mind. “Poor people gonna rise
up and get their share,” she sings with such unswerving
conviction that you believe implicitly in the inevitability
of those tables turning. She’s
Got Her Ticket,
with its attractive reggae lilt, takes a similar theme
to “Fast Car,” but is full of bright
optimism-a fervently expressed hope that we all leave
behind the “hatred, corruption and greed”
and find our own “place in the sun.”
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By
the time of Crossroads, her second album released
in the fall of 1989, Chapman was a platinum-selling
superstar. But she had also earned huge respect as one
of the most committed artists of her generation. The
songs on her debut had dealt with such issues as violence
against women, institutionalized racism and living on
welfare. She had played the six-week long Amnesty International
Human Rights Now tour with Bruce Springsteen, Peter
Gabriel, Youssou N’Dour and Sting, and also lent
willing support to a large number of other fund-raising
benefits for good causes. “I’m a musician
and a songwriter rather than an activist,” she
says simply. “But I think it’s important if
you are an artist to use your music to stand up for
what you believe in.”
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Crossroads
immediately went platinum, although ultimately its sales
did not match the success of her first album. Yet, in
retrospect, as a collection of songs it is another towering
achievement-rich in the depth of its emotion and acute
in its social observation. Her strongly developed social
conscience is evident in Subcity,
in which she gives voice to the hopes and fears of the
underclass who are too often denied of their own. The
title track, Crossroads,
is a more personal song that deals with maintaining
a sense of self. “All you folks think you run my
life, say I should be willing to compromise,” she
rings a voice that leaves no doubt she won’t be
compromising her beliefs for anyone.
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The
theme of the struggle to maintain integrity in a corrupt
world has become a central pillar in Chapman’s
work and All That You Have Is Your
Soul, the third song included here from Crossroads,
similarly urges us to “hunger only for a taste
of justice.” The sentiments are offset by a simple
but striking arrangement, which also features Neil Young,
whom she had supported on tour.
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It
was almost three years before her next album, during
which time there were further appearances at concerts
in London and New York for Nelson Mandela (she had written
“Freedom Now” on Crossroads for him),
Farm Aid benefits, and an appearance at a Martin Luther
King celebration. Matters Of The Heart, her third
album, appeared in May 1992. Helmed by Jimmy Iovine
(a more rock-oriented producer who had worked with Tom
Petty, Simple Minds and Patti Smith), it featured many
of the musicians she had met on the Amnesty tour.
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As
the title implied, Matters Of The Heart contained
a greater preponderance of personal songs and several
tracks appeared to deal with the loss of innocence.
But it was another winning collection, represented here
by Bang Bang Bang, the album’s
most powerful song about the social hypocrisy regarding
gun violence, and the gentle Open
Arms, which contains perhaps the record’s
most stricking melody. The latter includes soul legend
Bobby Womack on guitar, a collaboration that was a particular
thrill for Chapman. “I grew up listening to soul
music and I was always drawn to songs that had a social
commentary-like the music of Stevie Wonder, Harold Melvin
& The Bluenotes, Marvin Gaye and Bobby Womack,”
she says.
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After
a sabbatical, her fourth album, New Beginning,
was released at the end of 1995. Co-produced by Chapman
and Don Gehman, it was to rival her debut in terms of
commercial success, selling within a year three million
copies in America alone. It was also her most mature
collection of songs to date, characterized by subtle
arrangements that emphasized the immediacy of the melodies
and the depth of her lyrical emotion.
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New
Beginning took as its themes change, growth and
renewal. It was also a record imbued with healthy doses
of idealism and hope. “We’re at a place right
now, approaching the new century, where we could find
new solutions to old problems,” Chapman declared
optimistically at the time of the album’s release.
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Four
tracks are included here. The Promise
is a song of gentle longing with a lovely string
part counterpoised against her own delicate acoustic
guitar. I’m Ready has
an almost mantra-like quality that reflects the song’s
spiritual themes of yearning and redemption. Smoke
and Ashes is more up-tempo, with one of her most
sensual vocals and a stirringly soulful chorus. But
it was the bluesy Give Me One Reason
that was to prove the album’s biggest hit single.
She would later perform it at the 1997 Grammy awards
with veteran bluesman Junior Wells on harmonica.
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There
was to be more than a four-year gap before her next
album, but Chapman was not idle. She joined the Lilith
Fair tour, played Tibetan Freedom Concerts, participated
in a Bob Marley tribute in Jamaica and even performed
at the White House in a benefit concert for the Special
Olympics. Finally, her fifth album, Telling Stories,
followed early in 2000. It was more than worth the wait.
A subtle and lyrically complex collection of songs that
reached new heights of poetic expression, the album
found her reunited with producer David Kershenbaum for
the first time in more than a decade.
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Most
of the songs appeared to have a loose theme. “They
touch on different perceptions of reality-how we define,
change, manipulate and corrupt it,” she explained
on the album’s release. The driving title track,
Telling Stories, has a memorable
melodyand deals with the complexities of truth and its
many different layers. The selections from the album
included here are completed by Speak
The Word, an elegant ode to the power of love,
and the entrancing Wedding Song,
with its striking imagery and haunting vocal.
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Of
course, a single album is hardly sufficient to contain
all of the best songs of Tracy Chapman. Think of this
rather as a collection that seeks to represent the best
qualities of her songwriting-fearless insight, compelling
social relevance, keen intelligence, emotional resonance
and lyrical compassion.
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In
these songs, you might say, all that we have is her
soul. And that is a very precious gift, indeed.
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©
Nigel Williamson
Kent, England
July 2001
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