Rare Tracy Chapman interview gets reprint
“Say Hallelujah!”
The title of Tracy Chapman’s gospel-fueled 2002 song perfectly captures how many of her fans were feeling last week. They were justifiably thrilled by the reclusive singer-songwriter’s mesmerizing surprise performance Feb. 4 at the Grammy Awards, where she gracefully performed with country music star Luke Combs, a longtime Chapman fan who scored a major hit last year with his reverent cover of her 1988 breakthrough hit, “Fast Car.”
It was an unexpected but thoroughly welcome return by the self-effacing Chapman, whose rise to prominence in the late 1980s defied expectations and the stifling stereotypes of the pop music industry. Or, as Chapman noted in her in-depth 1990 San Diego Union-Tribune interview: “The way I see it, there certainly was a time when people saw cultural backgrounds dictating how they created music. But I think at this point, with mass communications, people are exposed to all different styles of music and culture. Your race or heritage is no longer relevant, or it’s as relevant as you choose to make it.”
Chapman has not toured since 2009 or released a new album since 2008. She has lived quietly in the San Francisco Bay Area for years.
JUST THREE APPEARANCES
So far as can be determined, prior to Feb. 4’s Grammys telecast she has made just three public appearances in the past 15 years: at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors, where she saluted blues legend Buddy Guy; on one of David Letterman’s farewell shows in 2015; and on TV’s “Late Night with Seth
Meyers” in late 2020 to perform her 1988 song, “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution,” and encourage viewers to vote in that week’s U.S. presidential election.
Then, as now, Chapman valued her privacy. But she was not the stoic, almost grim figure many in the media painted her to be.
“People have this impression I sit around all day moping or crying about the state of the world. I guess I can say I don’t spend most of my time doing that,” Chapman said in our 1990 interview, during which she was warm, engaging and laughed easily.
“There are some people who choose to make their private lives public information,” she noted. “That’s not my choice.”
Will Chapman, now 59, come out of retirement to tour or record following her commanding Grammy performance with Combs, who looked both thrilled and stunned to be singing alongside her?
That remains to be seen. But with her original 1988 version of “Fast Car” having hit the top of the Spotify charts the day after the Grammys, she has earned droves of new fans. They, like Chapman’s veteran admirers, are clearly eager to hear more from her.
Here is our complete 1990 interview with Chapman.
May 28, 1990
... Tracy Chapman and Jimi Hendrix?
What could the 26-yearold urban troubadour, best known for her stirring, socially inspired songs “Fast Car” and “Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution,” possibly have in common with Hendrix, the pioneering electric-guitar virtuoso who turned instrumental rock inside out in the 1960s before choking to death at age 27 in 1970?
A lot more than you might think.
Asked to comment on Hendrix’s musical legacy recently, Chapman inadvertently illustrated the similarities between the two trailblazers whose music is so dissimilar and yet surprisingly alike in at least one key way.
“It’s funny that you ask me about him,” Chapman said.
“Because I asked my mother about him — she was actually around when he was popular — and she said most of the people she knew in the predominantly Black community she grew up in were not into Jimi Hendrix and did not find his music accessible.
“I think it’s really interesting because he was doing his own thing, instead of what was expected of Black musicians at the time. I have a lot of respect for him.”
CRITICAL RESPECT
Since emerging, suddenly and surprisingly, in 1988 as one of pop music’s most unexpected but welcome new stars, Chapman has earned considerable public and critical respect herself. Ironically, her description of Hendrix as an artist who didn’t do what was expected of Black musicians of his era also fits her current position exactly.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I think by virtue of who I am, I’m doing that. As a conscious decision, no. But I love what I do and the kind of music I make, and I wouldn’t change that to be someone I’m expected to be.”
The kind of music Chapman makes, as evidenced by her two multiplatinum-selling albums (1987’s “Tracy Chapman” and last year’s “Crossroads”), is deeply felt folk with a bluesy edge that is simple in instrumentation and rich in soul and lyrical imagery.
Like such enormously gifted Black female folk artists as Odetta and Elisabeth Cotton before her (“I’d also add Memphis Minnie to that list,” Chapman interjected), she creates music at once intimate and universal, intensely direct and — depending on the song — either bleak and forlorn or tough but tender.
DIAMETRICAL OPPOSITE
What results is powerful, moving and almost the diametrical opposite of the popular stereotype of a Black singer in this era of fluffy dance-pop, histrionic rhythmand-blues and self-obsessed rap. Never mind that Chapman’s exquisitely crafted songs, such as “Fast Car” and “Crossroads,” chronicle the realities of everyday inner-city life as vividly and insightfully as any rap tome by Public Enemy or NWA.
“I’ve been asked the question, ‘Why aren’t you an R&B singer?’” said Chapman, a touch of incredulity rising in her voice. “And the people who ask me that question don’t even realize they’re being racist by asking that! It’s hard for me to accept that, here we are in the 1990s, and people haven’t gotten past that way of thinking.
“The way I see it, there certainly was a time when people saw cultural backgrounds dictating how they created music. But I think at this point, with mass communications, people are exposed to all different styles of music and culture. Your race or heritage is no longer relevant, or it’s as relevant as you choose to make it.”
Surely, no enlightened individual would argue her point. But don’t tell that to programmers at so-called “Black radio” stations, who have repeatedly shunned Chapman’s music despite her chart-topping success. As a consequence, her exposure to Black radio audiences has been severely limited, a situation that clearly annoys her.
“Yes, it does frustrate me,” she said, “in the sense that I think their format is much too limited. I think they do a disservice to their audience by only presenting certain types of music. (But) I have an understanding of the fact that the music I’m making doesn’t fit their format and, therefore, there’s no place for me.”
‘MONEY TALKS’
Even in light of her extremely high visibility and No. 1 records?
“I don’t know if that’s something I can change,” she said. “In the music industry, money talks, and I guess if they felt like they would get (listener) support if they played Tracy Chapman, Living Colour, Jimi Hendrix or any other style of music for that matter, like music from Africa, they might make changes. But at this point, economically, it doesn’t mean anything to them.”
She sighed. “I guess I find it interesting and, on a certain level, frustrating that they’re comfortable being called ‘Black radio’ stations. You’d think that might mean they would be supportive of Black artists and culture, and therefore interested in introducing new styles to their audiences, but they’re not. So I don’t see how I can” bring about a change.
Nevertheless, Chapman has brought about a change, in music if not Black radio formats. For listeners too young to recall the galvanizing protest songs championed by Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Joan Baez in the early ’60s, her timely songs decrying social and racial injustice and economic deprivation have struck a loudly resounding chord.
INTERNATIONAL TOUR
A triple Grammy Award-winner last year, she gained even greater public prominence when she was featured on the all-star Amnesty International world tour. Armed with just her guitar and her husky contralto voice, Chapman won over stadium audiences that had come largely to hear Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel.
The Amnesty exposure propelled Chapman’s record sales even higher. But being the focus of so much public and media scrutiny wasn’t easy for the Cleveland-born singer-songwriter, who admits to being an extremely private person. Being thrust into the spotlight only a short while after she finished attending college near Boston was a tumultuous change for her.
“It seems as if there should be a course that the record companies put together called: How to be a Rock Star, 101!” she said, laughing. “Because they take someone — a musician, a songwriter, a person who has basically created an image for themselves — and, aside from making music, thrust them into this new environment where they have to be charismatic on TV and seem intelligent and knowledgeable in interviews.
“I guess there probably are people who get coached on these kinds of things, but I think it’s a situation most people aren’t prepared for; I know I wasn’t. I knew I’d have to do interviews but, in some ways, it doesn’t make any sense to me. Why should anyone care what I think? I can understand why people want to know about the person behind the music, but I don’t know if it tells them anything. I don’t even know if they find the truth, or if they actually learn anything useful when they read what they read.”
DAILY LAUGH QUOTA
When Chapman’s caller remarked, with some surprise, that the reportedly stoic singer had laughed at least four or five times since the interview began, she quipped, “I’ll only laugh four or five times.”
Is that her daily laugh quota?
“That’s right!” she said, rebutting her ultra-serious image with another quip and a quota-breaking laugh. “People don’t know me. I am a serious person, when the situation calls for it. It’s such a ridiculous question; it’s like people are asking you, ‘Who are you?’ ‘Explain yourself.’
“I don’t think it’s necessary. People have this impression I sit around all day moping or crying about the state of the world. I guess I can say I don’t spend most of my time doing that. …
“There are some people who choose to make their private lives public information. That’s not my choice.”
What is Chapman’s choice is to continue making real music that matters, no matter how much at odds it may be with popular trends in these lip-synced, video vixen-dominated times. And, she stresses, despite her considerable success thus far, she is not at a pinnacle but merely starting out — a talented newcomer with much she still wants to learn and do.
“That’s what I hope,” she said, with a quota-doubling burst of laughter. “That’s what I hope.”