When Opportunity Finds You

What Tracy Chapman’s Wembley Moment Teaches Us About Being Ready

One of my favorite stories about luck, preparation and opportunity happened at Wembley Stadium in the summer of 1988.

Tracy Chapman was 24 years old and still relatively unknown. She had spent years playing coffeehouses and small clubs around Boston while attending Tufts University, slowly developing her craft and writing songs. Her self-titled debut album had only been out for about two months.

She was beginning to get noticed, but she was nowhere near the biggest name on the bill when she walked into Wembley Stadium for the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute.

And it was an extraordinary bill.

More than 70,000 people packed Wembley, with hundreds of millions more watching around the world. Sting was there. Dire Straits. Whitney Houston. Phil Collins. Peter Gabriel. UB40. Some of the biggest musicians in the world had gathered for what had become much more than a concert.

Chapman played her scheduled set earlier in the day and walked offstage.

Her part was over.

Then something went wrong.

Stevie Wonder was preparing for a surprise performance when a critical piece of equipment went missing. Suddenly the organizers had airtime to fill, in front of a massive stadium and a live global television audience.

They needed someone who could go on immediately.

Chapman could.

It’s hard to imagine what those next few minutes must have felt like.

She had spent most of her career playing rooms where she could probably see the faces of the people sitting in front of her. Now she was standing in the wings at Wembley Stadium, hearing the roar of more than 70,000 people on the other side.

No elaborate stage production. No huge band to disappear into. No time to spend thinking about whether she was ready.

Just a 24-year-old songwriter and her guitar, walking alone onto one of the biggest stages in the world.

You can almost feel the nervous energy when you watch the video. The crowd is restless and loud. Chapman looks impossibly small standing in the middle of that enormous stage.

Then she starts playing.

A few chords.

“I had a feeling that I belonged…”

And gradually, something changes.

The noise settles. The enormous stadium seems to get smaller. And for a few minutes, this relatively unknown singer with an acoustic guitar has Wembley listening to her.

That song was “Fast Car.”

It became one of those rare moments when opportunity and preparation collide.

I love this story because it’s easy to look at moments like this afterward and call them luck. And certainly there was luck involved. Chapman couldn’t have planned for Stevie Wonder’s equipment to disappear or for someone to suddenly need her to fill time on a global broadcast.

But she could control everything that happened before that moment.

She had spent years writing songs, playing tiny rooms, learning her craft and becoming good enough that when someone unexpectedly opened the door, she was ready to walk through it.

Within weeks, “Fast Car” was climbing the charts. Her album eventually reached No. 1.

There is always going to be some luck involved in getting the right opportunity at the right time.

But luck is a lot more useful when you’re ready for it.

In this case, it looked like an artist alone with her guitar on a massive stage before a worldwide audience, so clearly prepared that her song brought a reverent hush to a loud, energetic crowd.