Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman

11 June 1988 and a twenty five year-old woman walked out onto a stage in front of 60,000 people with just a guitar and her voice. Without any ceremony she launched into three songs and the crowd went silent. In that moment, Tracy Chapman demonstrated the power that a can be wielded by a guitar and a voice and in doing so went from an obscure singer-songwriter to a household name. It is a moment that I will never forget.
PW and I had decided long before this date that we wanted to attend the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Party Concert at Wembley - not due to any political reasons but because our beloved Dire Straits were topping the bill. As usual our very accommodating parents bought the tickets and dropped us at the bus station where a coach would take us down to London. It was our first 'proper' gig and what an event it was. Looking back, we were so fortunate to have seen such a wide range of performers including Simple Minds, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Midge Ure, Al Green, Bryan Adams, Whoopi Goldberg, UB40. Eurythmics, Bee Gees, Fry and Laurie, Eric Clapton, Johnny Marr, Dire Straits and Salt-N-Pepa. Ok maybe not so much that last act! It was though a roster of the big acts from the 1980s.
But surprisingly, what I remember from that day is not the big-names and headline performers but how this unknown singer-songwriter stood up and sang her songs; even doing a second set to save the organisers' embarrassment when Steve Wonder refused to play as a hard disc containing his backing tracks had gone missing.