May 7, 2024 • 51 mins
Ann Wilson is the powerhouse lead singer of the band Heart, whose celebrated classic debut album, Dreamboat Annie, came out nearly 50 years ago. Last week we featured an interview with her sister and longtime bandmate Nancy Wilson, so make sure to check that out if you haven’t already.
Today we’ll hear from Ann, who’s responsible for belting out and co-writing some of Heart’s most iconic early hits, like “Magic Man,” “Barracuda,” and “Crazy On You.” Four years older than Nancy, Ann was the first Wilson sister to join Heart, a band that started out as a cabaret cover band. Despite undergoing multiple lineup changes since the '70s, Heart has released top 10 albums in nearly every decade in the last 50 years, and sold over 20 million albums worldwide.
Outside of Heart, Ann has also released solo material, including an album in 2023 with her band, Tripsitter.
On today’s episode Leah Rose talks to Ann Wilson about Heart’s current world tour, and the Elton John album she sings before every show to warm up her voice. Ann also explains how she would strategically place guitars around her house when having parties at her Seattle home in the '90s to encourage jam sessions with guests like Lane Staley and Chris Cornell. And she remembers singing on stage with Grace Slick and Stevie Nicks, who Ann says really is a good witch.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Heart songs HERE.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Ann Wilson is the powerhouse lead singer of the
band Heart, who celebrated classic debut album Dreamboat. Annie came
out nearly fifty years ago. Last week, we featured an
interview with her sister and longtime bandmatee Nancy Wilson, so
make sure to check that out if you haven't already. Today,
(00:36):
we'll hear from Anne, who's responsible for belting out and
co writing some of Heart's most iconic early hits like
Magic Man, Barracuda, and Crazy On You. Four years older
than Nancy, Anne was the first Wilson's sister to join Heart,
a band that started out as a cabaret cover band.
Despite undergoing multiple lineup changes since the seventies, Heart has
released top ten albums in nearly every decade in the
(00:59):
last fifty years and sold over twenty million albums worldwide.
Outside of Heart, Ann has also released solo material, including
an album in twenty two three with her band Tripsitter.
On today's episode, Lea Rose talks to Ann Wilson about
Heart's current world tour and the Elton John albums she
sings before every show to warm up her voice. Anne
(01:20):
also explains how she would strategically play guitars around her
house when having parties at her Seattle home in the
nineties to encourage jam sessions with guests like Lane Staley
and Chris Cornell, and she remembers singing on stage with
Grace Slick and Stevie Nicks, who Anne says really is
a witch, but a good one. This is broken record
(01:41):
liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's
Lea Rose's conversation with Ann Wilson of Heart.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Have you reimagined the band at all this time going out?
I know it's been five years since Hart has toured.
How has the band changed?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Will the band has changed completely? Because nothing about it
is the same except me and Nancy. Well, Ryan Waters
was out in twenty nineteen, and this time we have
the Tripsitter Band, which is my solo band as part
with Ryan Waters and Nancy and I and it is
(02:21):
a fantastic group. It's just wow. Blows me away every
time we go and play some of these old Heart songs.
You know, with this group of people, they just they
understand the music and they just totally explode into it.
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
And the trips that our guys are. From my understanding,
they originally were session players in Nashville.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
They were, and they have reached a point in their careers,
all of them where they don't want to do that anymore.
Is a way of life. They want their own band.
They don't want to just be working, you know, working
for other people, doing what other people tell them to do.
They want to be in a band where they have
a say and they have ideas that get used and
(03:10):
you know, it's a real band. And that's what we
have with Heart at this point. You know, Heart's had
many many iterations over the decades, different lineups and different
kinds of things. Sometimes it's more acoustics. Sometimes it's way
rock and grungy, almost like in the early two thousands,
(03:33):
and sometimes it's pretty traditional a classic art. This is
something completely new. I mean, it's huge in some points,
really passionate. The dynamics are incredible. I mean, I can't
say enough good stuff. I guess I'm just waxing.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
How do you practice when you're in a rehearsal space
before you go out on tour? How can you practice
to play arenas since the physical space is so different.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Well, what we hear is what we have in our heads.
So that's what we practice, not trying to go out
and address every foot of airspace in those places because
that's impossible. And all the different minds, I mean, if
it's a full house in a big place, it's it
(04:23):
can be up to twenty thousand different minds you know
that are out there. Yeah, and how do you talk
to that? So you can't. You just have to get
out there and be completely inside the music and inside
the lyrics and be there, really mean what you say,
be present, be authentic, be all the way there. You know,
(04:45):
that's the only thing you can do.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
When you're performing. Do you tend to lock eyes with
certain people in the crowd or do you find yourself
just looking past the audience?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Well, I don't make an effort to lock eyes with
any one person because they think that you mean something
by it. You know, maybe you do, maybe you do
mean so thing by it. But I tend to be
in my head sort of and fluid inside of this
big sound pool that we're creating.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
It sounds awesome.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah, so I'll look out and I'll look at the
whole panorama. Yeah, if they've got things lit or if
it's all twinkle here or something that's pretty amazing to
see from the stage.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Heart's getting ready to celebrate your fiftieth anniversary. You've seen
the crowds change so much over the years, and now
everybody has the cell phone. Yeah, does that change the
performance for you? The energy of the crowd?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It does change things, I gotta say, especially when they
come up to the front of the stage and they
turn around so that you're in the backdrop and they
want to take a selfie with you as a background,
you know. I mean, that's that's really distracting, you know,
because you just want to sort of jump out of
the way, you know, because it's it's yeah, I'm not
(06:09):
a backdrop, you know. But I mean, to be fair,
it's a big night for them and they want to
preserve some little memory of it, so right, why not
let them have it.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I think I've read that you have an extensive vocal
warm up before you go on stage. Can you share
some of that with us? What you do to get ready?
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, I warm up for about forty five minutes to
an hour, and I used to try and do classical
like ruin scales and stuff like the vocal coaches teach
you to do. But I couldn't sustain that. It's just
too boring. So I finally found out that my throat
and soul are just as warmed up if I find
(06:54):
a couple of records that I love and just sing
along with the whole thing. Like for a while last
year I was doing Elton John Captain Fantastic in the
Brown Dirt Cowboy, just sing along with the whole record
every song, and then if there's still some more time,
find another one. Sing along with that. Wow and lo
(07:16):
and behold, your throat is warmed up. It's not just
your throat, it's your whole ability to just be open,
you know, your soul.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
When did you realize that you had such a powerful voice.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I've never thought it was that powerful myself, except for
a few moments in a few of the songs like
Crazy and You that are high and sustained notes. And
it's different when you hit a note and just hold it,
then if you hit a high note and just go
all squirrely all over the place. And I've never been
(07:51):
much one for vocal gymnastics.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
They're like Mariah Carey runs right.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah. I like to sing them just simple. So when
I realized I could do that I thought, most people
don't do this this way, so I must have something.
But I don't sit around on my some kind of
laurels going wow, you sure have a strong voice. I
think my kids would tell you that I have a
strong voice. Or people at a birthday party when I
(08:25):
sing Happy Birthday along with the crowd.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Oh, I would love to hear that. Wow, So that's fascinating.
You don't think you have a strong voice.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Well, I mean there's some mighty fine singers out there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Who are some of your favorite singers right now?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, I always loved Uton. I think he in the
early days. He was one of the people who influenced
me the most. Right now, I would think that Billie Eilish.
I love the way she sings. I mean it's so
refined and so restrained and just calm, you know, beautiful. Yeah,
(09:05):
so that I admire that, I really do.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Have you tried to do something like that just to
play around and see how it would sound.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
It's all in the song. Yeah, if you hit the
right song that has that in it, then you can
do it. I think. Yeah. And she and her brother,
I mean the stuff they write kill her stuff. I
love to see them at these big awards shows, just
cleaning up, you know, because it's so you know, anti establishment,
(09:33):
you think so. Yeah, I mean, here she comes wearing
this total alternative outfit whatever it is, whichever thing she's at,
and she looks beautiful. Her brother is just there to
support her. They're just you can tell that they're friends, yeah,
and that they're they're really tight, you know. I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I listen to you and Nancy's audiobook Kicking and Dreaming
and was just sort of amazed at how strong the
family mythology is in your family, and it really seems
like you kept going back to the early days of
(10:18):
your family and the stories that were shared in your
families when it came to songwriting and decisions you made
in your life. And at one point you were talking
about this letter that your dad wrote to your mom
where he was basically proposing to her, and how that
was like the single most foundational work that sort of
kept inspiring your songwriting.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Do you still feel that influence now?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah, I'll always feel influenced by both my parents because
they were liberal, they were bohemian, they were romantic, and
they were smart. You know, they were both intellectuals and
they managed to find each other, you know, and their
love of poetry and literature really inspires all my songwriting,
(11:06):
and I think Nancy's too. Were both we're both pretty romantic.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, when you left home, when you left the Seattle area,
you moved to Canada, right when Heart was hocus focused,
before the band was even called Heart, and you were
living with your first boyfriend, your first love. Did that
live up to this mythology in your mind of your parents'
(11:33):
bond and their romantic love.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Boy, Yeah, it sure did at the beginning. Yeah, it's
just like all love affairs, you know, at the very start,
it's so as Joni Mitchell says, it's so righteous at
the start, you know, yeah, and just powerful and beautiful.
But you're young, and your expectation makes it be just
(11:57):
that makes it be mythology. It can't survive in the
real world, you know, it has to. It has to
break down because it's too perfect and that's not what
this world is like and what people are like. Especially
when you fall in love with somebody, you idealize them
to the point where they're just gonna do everything for you,
(12:18):
They're going to be your everything. And the minute you
do that that's when it starts to break down. I think, Yeah,
you got to let people have space, give them the
right to be human and the right to be imperfect
and not do everything for you.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
When you wrote Magic Man about that relationship, were you
ever embarrassed or did you find yourself holding back because
you didn't want your mom to see things that might
have been a little bit scandalous at the time.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Well, holding back. I think that leaving home and running
off to another country with a man was about was
not holding back. But yeah, you know, like I didn't
rub it in her face that suddenly I was just
off sleeping with somebody, right, And she was, for all
(13:15):
her romanticism and love she had for our father, she
was pretty victorian when it came to sex and stuff.
So that was not something that went down easy between us.
She just didn't want to think that I was up
there blowing it. And that was in the pre Roe v.
Wade days before it was legalized. We're back there now.
(13:38):
But so mothers were extremely fearful of their daughter's running
off and getting into wild sexual relationships and ending up pregnant,
not knowing what to do about it, and you know,
basically their lives being ruled by that fact from then on.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Do you remember having conversations with your mom about that
where she was warning you, like, look, this is what
could happen to your life.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, she put it differently, though she couched it more
in h well, this is not dignified. You know. She
didn't want to have the talk and get all clinical
and everything. She didn't really want to do that, but
she found a way to do it. And it was well,
(14:27):
if you just go up there and become barefoot and pregnant,
you know, that's like pretty trailer park trash. Oh and
I guess that wasn't enough to scare me off.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I thought it was interesting because some of the lyrics
and magic Man you it's almost like you're trying to
convince your mom about how wonderful this guy is. You know,
he's a magic man Mama.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yeah, Well we had many phone calls where she I
was up in Canada in the cottage with him, and
she wanted me to come home. She's, yeah, you got
to come home. You're too young for this. You know.
I was at nineteen, so I was old enough.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah. I was so surprised to too. And maybe it's
not surprising for the time. But while you were in
Hocus Pocus, you were the front person in the band.
After gigs, you would come home the band was all
living together. You would come home and cook everybody dinner
and do all the laundry and do all the like
homemaking duties.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Yeah, that didn't last that long. I mean, at first
I thought how how sweet it was to wash the
sheets and hang them outside in the fresh air so
that and then put them back on the bed, you know,
and try and make a dinner out of some brown
rice and a couple of onions, you know. But and
(15:53):
for a while we lived up there in a cabin,
a cottage thing with Roger Fisher and his wife who
had just gotten married and received for a wedding gift
of fifty pounds sack of brown rice, which we all
ended up living on because we didn't have any money
when we were putting the band together. So we just
(16:15):
date brown rice and drank water and called it the
Georgia Shawa brown rice diet, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And you can do that back then when you're twenty, yeah,
and everybody's fine with it, that's right. And that was
before Nancy joined the band, Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
She joined later in nineteen about seventy three.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
We have to take a quick break, and then we're
back with more from Anne Wilson and Lea Rose. We're
back with Lea Rose and Anne Wilson.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
How did the band change for you when Nancy joined?
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Well, I was really glad because I felt that art
had gone about as far as it could go. We
didn't have a very good vocal section. I mean, we
didn't have a very good ability at harmony singing, and
we did have an acoustic guitar player, so we were
stuck doing rock and roll songs, you know, like Johnny
(17:16):
be Good and Walking the Dog and all that kind
of stuff that the guys did, and there was kind
of almost a whole part of the soul of the band.
It was missing for me because I had come from
doing folk groups with Nancy, where we did heavy harmonies
and we both played acoustic guitars, and that's so when
(17:39):
she joined, she brought that element. She's a fantastic harmony
singer and a great acoustic player. So all of a sudden,
heart had a heart, you know, and we just got
kind of what Led Zeppelin had, which was it can
go as rock as you want, but it can also
go as tender as you want down at the very center. Yes,
(18:01):
and that was really satisfying to me.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Early on you talked about doing you have sort of
like a mini led Zeppelin cover section in your shows,
and one night led Zeppelin actually came and saw you play.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well, they didn't stop and watch us, They just walked
through the room.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Did you see them walking through?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yeah? It was a club in Vancouver called oil Can
Harry's and they had a big showroom and then they
had a big party room upstairs, and so we saw
them kind of trooping through after their concert at the arena.
You know, when they're done with the Glory gig, they
come and have a party upstairs and oil Cans and yeah,
(18:47):
we saw them and we all just about lost it.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I mean, I imagine they just looked like the sexiest
rock stars on the planet. Oh yeah, yeah. And then
the full circle moment of having performed at the Kennedy
Center for when led Zeppelin was getting honored. How did
you prepare for that show mentally? Was that completely intimidating
(19:11):
to you or are you able to just sort of
switch into show mode and go out there and do
your thing with full confidence.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I think that that night I needed an extra measure
of meditative calmness because I didn't want to go out
there and start to think about it. You know, that's
what you really don't want to do. Not only was
led Zeppelin in the audience, but the you know, the
President and first Lady, and the audience was just packed
(19:39):
with all these different luminaries and famous people of all ILKs.
So I just remember saying to Nancy, let's just pretend
like we have bowls of water in our heads and
we have to walk out there without spilling a drop
and just concentrate on the water on the song, right,
(20:01):
and nothing else, just be in the song. And so
we did, and it turned out to be a fun
experience and one that went really smooth, and nothing went wrong,
and it was great because you know, after all, what
could possibly go wrong in a situation like that.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
It's such an emotional performance, and the footage after where
you see you know, Robert Plant and the band, they're
sitting there with tears streaming down their face, and then
you see Barack and Michelle Obama sitting there and John
Bonham's son is playing with you all on drums. It's
just so incredibly moving. Yeah, what a feat. It's beautiful,
(20:46):
beautiful performance. You sounded incredible.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was. It was quite an experience,
never to be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I read at one point that you opened for the
bee Gees.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah, that was real early.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Did you have any sort of interaction with them another
family band?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
I don't think at that point we got to interact
with them. At that point we were pretty much a
little cabaret band in Canada, and the Begs were doing
across Canada tour and they needed an opener and we'd
only done one opening show before that for Rod Stewart,
(21:29):
so we were by no means ready for that kind
of exposure, but we got up and did it. You know.
I was always a huge Beg's fan. All their different
eras and their psychedelic era and even the disco time
and all that. I just thought it was all great.
(21:50):
So yeah, it was really fun standing on this side
of the stage and listening to them live after we
were done, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And so that was already after the first album was.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Out, Yes, pretty soon after the first album was out.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
What do you remember about recording that first album? Do
any of the session and stand out in your memory.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Yeah, I just remember going from zero, from knowing nothing,
absolutely nothing about being in the studio, to Mike Flicker,
who was our first producer, mentoring me to be able
to sing a lead vocal on the songs, Like the
first one I ever sang was Crazy on You, and
(22:32):
we were actually doing Crazy on You in clubs at
that point, and Magic Man. We hadn't written Barracoutie yet,
but those two other songs we would, you know, we'd
play our normal club set and then we'd sneak Crazy
on You in and we'd sneak Magic Men in and
see what the audience did. And at first they were
(22:54):
kind of like what, And then they never heard that
song before, so they were used to let Zeppelin and
Elton John and the other stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
We were playing the stuff they know.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, and then by bit they started to respond to
those two songs live till it happened that they were
actually coming unglued. They were applauding and standing up and
liking those. So we pulled him out to when we
went and opened for the Bechis and Rod Stewart, we
actually dared to play our original.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Stuff, and didn't you get a huge reaction when you
opened for Rod Stuart because it had been on the
radio at that point.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, we didn't really know it. The communications in those
days were not like they are now, where you know
everything that goes on with your record every minute, you know,
and we didn't really understand that dreamboat And he was
being played in Montreal by this disc jockey named Doug Pringle.
(23:57):
He believed in us and he played the record. So
when we got to Montreal opening for Rod Stewart, we
walked out on stage to a house full of lip
matches because they knew our recorda we were just this
little opener. But wow, you know. So that was just
a way that we started out in Canada.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Did that motivate you to want to go in and
immediately start writing more songs and continue with that specific
sound of the songs that were doing well at the time.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yeah, we wanted to just go ahead and keep on writing,
you know. And just the experience of writing the first
two songs was so great and just so much fun
that we just wanted to keep going. And some of
the songs we wrote were more rock, but then there
were a whole bunch of songs on Dreabo Eddie like
(24:50):
Dreamboat Eddie and love Me Like Music, I'll be your song,
how deep it goes, Soul of the Sea, ones that
are really soft at the middle. So it's a mixed
bag on that record. Nobody could really put their finger
on what we were going to be, whether it was
going to be a rock band or what.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Did you like that sort of keeping people guessing or
was that more like you didn't know what you guys were.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
We didn't know. We were just formulating, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, which album would you say, out of your entire
discography is the most true to what you think the
band does best.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Maybe a Little Queen because it has Right of Me,
go On Cry and Barracuda, and it's got good ballads
and it's got good gas rockers, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah. Do you remember where the photograph for the cover
of Little Queen was taken?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, it was taken in Elesion Park in LA and
they took us to Western Costumers and got the gypsy clothes.
In fact, I was wearing my own clothes that day,
but everybody else was dressed up like a gypsy and
rented a gypsy painted wagon and a goat and a
(26:07):
horse and all all this stuff and set up a scene.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
What were you listening to at that time? So that
came out in seventy seven? What was on the radio?
What were you into?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Wow? Seventy seven, still listening to Elton John, listening to
Steely Dan, listening to Moody Blues and Rolling Stones. It's
all kinds of cool things. You know.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
You grew up having hoot Nanny's in your house, playing
instruments with family, singing songs, and then later when you
lived in Seattle, you would have these big parties and
have a lot of the people who became like the
all stars of the grunge movement over and just jam
and have fun and play. Around that time in the seventies,
(26:53):
were you doing anything like that playing with other musicians.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
We were mostly playing with the members of the band
up in Canada. We didn't know a whole lot of
other musicians. It was different back then. We were kind
of we were the party and we would have more
fun just jamming together on stage. Off stage, it really
didn't matter. We've jam in the living room and then
(27:20):
back up and go out to the club and jam there.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
You know. Yeah, And at that point, so the late
seventies did you foresee a long career for the band
or was it sort of you know, day by day?
How are you thinking about the band's future.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Oh, we definitely had a five year plan. I mean,
our manager would not let us get out of bed
without a five year plan. But it was good because
it made sense. It wasn't just ambition. It was more about, Okay,
we've gone this far. Now we've got these songs, what
(27:58):
else can we make? You know, We've got Crazy on you,
We've got Barracuda, We've got all these songs that are great.
Now what you know?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
What did you do to stir up ideas for inspiration
for writing songs once those big hits were out and established?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I think that many of our songs start from the music,
and then once I, Nancy and I are just me
hear the music, it suggests something and then we start
writing words and then suddenly, lo and behold, you have
a song.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
You know, do you prefer to be by yourself at
that point or do you like to be with sitting
with the other musicians writing words.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
I like to be by myself, no doubt about it.
But jamming you have to be with other people. You
have your ideas and they have their ideas and how
they mix and you spark ideas off each other and
you can tell when you hit on something and it's great.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Would people in the band give you feedback on your lyrics,
say like, ah, maybe this line should be tweaked.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
A little bit occasionally.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
How would you take that as a writer?
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Well, if they did that, I would say, and what
would you put in its place? And if they had
a good suggestion, I go, okay, we'll use that. Maybe.
If they didn't have a good suggestion, I'd say shut up,
not literally shut up, but just we'll keep it my
(29:32):
way until you think it's something better. You know.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, after the first initial band disbanded, people left and
there was a new iteration of the group. Was that
really heartbreaking for you or did you have hope that
we can create something new and move on.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
It's hard to describe what it was like when that
lineup disbanded, other than to say that we couldn't get
along anymore and things got really difficult between us. You know.
It seemed like the that made heart unusual, which was
(30:12):
men and women working together as equals, was breaking down,
and that very thing was the thing that was driving
us apart from each other. We would just squabble and
write down gender lines. It would just be really difficult,
the men gossiping about the girls and the girls gossiping
about the men. And it didn't help that, you know,
(30:35):
Nancy and I never looked that fondly on the whole
world of groupies and having to explain to the band wives, no,
nothing goes on out there, you know, lie to them
all the time, and it just got to be weird.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You know, when you reformulated the band and then bring
in more men, did it feel like things are going
to end up differently this time or did it seem
like maybe it'll kind of play out in the same way.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Yeah. Well, I always go into every new iteration of
the band totally optimist, because the world is full of
good people and just because you play out your relationship
with some people doesn't mean you don't have one with others.
And we've been really fortunate to play with some great
(31:25):
musicians over the years, men and women. And it's not
really important to us, to me or to Nancy and
I which gender it is. It really isn't. It's just
who can do the job, who's a great player, who's
a great singer, who's a great writer. And we worked
with Holly Knight and Debbie Cheer and Denny Carmassi on drums,
(31:50):
and it's just some amazing players. But we never again
encountered the same kind of emotional hardship we did with
that first lineup. I think it was because we all
started out we were poor and destitute, and then we
had all the success and there was all this money
that came in, and money change everything, you know, and
(32:10):
everybody gets kind of different.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Do you think they start to resent you because you
were the front person and getting a lot of attention
and Nancy and you are getting a lot of attention.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Yeah, there were some of that because they were at
the men and the band were out there working just
as hard as us and putting their bodies on the
line too. But yet whenever we did an interview, Nancy
and I were the only ones that got talked to
and got all the attention, you know. And there's nothing
(32:42):
much that we could do about it. It's just how
it was. And it really hurt the men's feelings and
made them angry. So I don't blame them at all.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Really, Yeah, it's understandable.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Are you still in touch with the old members from
the original line up?
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, we saw him just a couple months ago when
we played in Seattle. They all showed up super cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
And then moving in to the eighties, that was when
you started the record label, when you signed to Capitol
started bringing in professional songwriters. Yes, how was that for
you as a songwriter and as somebody who had been
the face of this band for so long?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Yeah? I went back and forth on it. It depended
on the song. For instance, I thought These Dreams was
a really great song, just a beautiful song that fit
Nancy's voice just perfect. It was the ideal marriage, you know.
But some of the other songs that came our way
that we did during the eighties, I thought didn't have
(33:46):
much substance and were pretty calculated. They were just different
versions of what was being played on the radio right already.
And uh, I wasn't that fond of that, because you know,
I was there at the beginning when we had all
this this beautiful idealism about being poets and all that.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Are you glad now looking back that you did it
even though you were fundamentally opposed to it at certain times?
About what you were singing. Are you glad you tried
it and stuck with it?
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Sure? Yeah. It was a good experience and it did
teach me a lot about songwriting, just the basic lesson
of you don't tax people's attention span. You just don't
get all selfish and just go, well, this is my vision,
Like you want to talk directly to them, you know,
(34:42):
and connect with them. That's what a lot of those
songs in the eighties had. It was a good listen.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
I love those songs.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, some of them are cool.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Super cool, and I bet the crowd loves them when
you play them live.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, like we used to do at Lisa del Bello
song called Wait for an Answer that moves through five
keys and everything, and it's just amazingly powerful song. And
that taught me so much about how you can have
a very simple idea and just repeat it only take
(35:18):
it up a key and then up another key, up
another key, and then it just changes. Meaning every time
you go up with these dreams.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Is that the song that you said you can't sing
for whatever reason, there's something about that song that you've
tried it in karaoke and you can't sing it.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
I don't sound that good on these dreams. The times
I've tried it at karaoke. Yeah, it's just there's something
about it. It's I feel awkward singing it and I
sound awkward. That's Nancy's song.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Do you still not sing all I want to do?
We haven't done that for a long time. Is it
going to come back out?
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I don't think so. There's a lot cooler stuff that
we can bring out than that.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
That song had a big influence on my It was
very eye opening as a younger.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Yeah, and just not in a very cool way. But
now I'm being my mother. You know, that's my mother talking.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
We have to take another quick break and then we'll
be back with more from Leo Rose and Anne Wilson.
We're back with the rest of Leo Rose's conversation with
Anne Wilson.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
In your book, you talked about some of the compromises
you made in the eighties were a devil's bargain, which
you were wearing, the types of songs you were performing.
How did you manage to push past that era?
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Oh? You just live one breath after another, you know,
you just keep on going. And I always believed in heart,
I always believe that we would emerge from that, and
that we would come up again and be writing our
own type of music about the things we wanted to
(37:09):
write about, and that people would like them, maybe not
on the same massive level, but on a level.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Does that matter to you if as someone who as
a musician has experienced both the massive arena level and
then also you do a lot of small shows that
are very intimate as a songwriter, as a musician, as
a singer, does it matter to you? Or is all
that matters is just performing?
Speaker 3 (37:36):
When I'm doing it, It's all that matters is just
the performing. I think other people care more about the
level of success than I do. You know, I've been
accused of not caring enough about writing commercial songs, and
I admit I'm guilty. I just want to write lovely songs.
(37:58):
I want to write cool stuffs.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Are you writing right now?
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Yeah? I am, And I'm just about to go down
to Nashville and hang out with the Trip Sitters and
write some more songs.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
What about the love Mongers? Are they ever going to
get back together?
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Oh? Love Mongers? Yeah? Now that was a vocal group. Yeah,
that was some gorgeous vocals. I don't know, I hope.
So that was a fun band. It was really fun.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
So that was Nancy, yourself and your old friend Sue.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Uh huh, and our other friend Frank Cox. Frank has
a beautiful tenor voice, and I was playing bass and singing.
So we had really a good three part harmonies and
we could do whatever we wanted. We didn't do much
heart stuff. We used the Love Mongers as an escape
(38:52):
from heart for a while. Just after the eighties. We
just we went into lovemngerland for a while and just
did whatever we wanted.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Is that around the time that you were back in
Seattle and starting to hang out with some of the
musicians that were coming up, And.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Yeah, and oddly enough, a lot of those musicians that
were part of the Seattle community then loved the Lovemongers
and we loved them, and we'd all show up at
each other's shows and it didn't matter that it was
at this little club that it really didn't matter. Yeah,
it was just about the music and about playing camaraderie.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You've said that musicians from Seattle aren't just going to
be nice about a song because you're sitting there playing it.
They're really honest about their feedback yes, they are. Yeah.
Can you remember a time where you were had an
interaction with a Seattle musician and you're just like, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Jerry Cantrell, he told me on a number of occasions
it was one of the ballads, the more commercial ballads
from the eighties. Maybe it was all I want to do.
But he just said to me, that is such bullshit.
That is such bullshit now, Barracuda, That's great, that's the shit,
you know.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
And you're like, I agree with you, I agree with you.
When everybody would come over to your house and play
at those parties, what would you how does that happen?
Like people start out drinking and then eventually people pick
up instruments and are just playing songs or what was
this scene?
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Like?
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Well, I was no fool. I would always have in
my living room. I'd have guitars laying around casually, you know,
laying and a piano and a couple of little amps.
Usually it would happen after somebody's concert and everyone would
show up for the concert, and then whoever was free
(40:54):
afterward would show up at my house and they'd all
come in and start drinking beers and smoking Ciggi's and
sitting up on my counters and just then, pretty soon
somebody had start to blay, what do you remember being
played then? And who do you remember being there? I
(41:15):
remember one time John Waits was there, Lane Stay the Pearl,
Jam guys, the Artist's spoon man, Chris Cornell and Kim
Thale and oh them.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
What was it like singing with Chris Cornell?
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Beautiful? He's like one of those naturals, like he comes
from a musical family too. And not only did I
know Chris, I knew his sister Maggie, who's a great
singer too, So it was easy as pie to sing
with chris beautiful voice.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, was there ever any stories about Jimmy Hendrix, another
Seattle musician, Like was he part of the Laura at all?
Speaker 3 (41:59):
I never met Jimmy myself, but I did go and
poke my head into Jimmy's apartment one time.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Oh how did that happen?
Speaker 3 (42:07):
When he lived in Seattle, when he was just a
young guy before he blew the coop? You know. Yeah,
just I was going to art college and somebody wanted
to go pick up some weed or something, and we
stopped at this little apartment and they went look around
(42:28):
this is a famous apartment, you know. I mean the
people who were living there then were not Jimmy. But
look around. This place has much vibe, you know, yeah,
trying to feel the.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Vibe, Jimmy, that's so cool. What stands out in your
mind when you think about the seventies or eighties? What
was the biggest rock star moment that you had. Once
the band started to pick up notoriety, we looked at
maybe looked at Nancy, like, whoa, this is big time.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
As time goes along, you meet just about everybody. They
usually end up just being people, but that doesn't mean
they're disappointing. Meant a lot of cool people and some
who yes, we're just folks, you know.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
You think they're gonna be like so grand and everything,
and then they're just like, hey, Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Well. I know that there was stories about you hanging
out with Stevie Nicks. That's always seemed like.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Oh yeah, she jumped on her plane for a few days.
We had a number one record, that's what it was.
That was The Magnetism, and we were playing in San Francisco.
She came out to the show and got up on
stage with us and with Grace Slick to sing on
what About Love? And after the show she said, gee,
(43:50):
I kind of hate to say goodbye to you guys.
Where are you going next? And they said, well, we're
going to Phoenix, And it just so happened that Stevie
has another house in Phoenix. So she got on our
plane the next day and we all went out to
Phoenix and went to her house and hung out after
our show. And that's an eye opener. It's cool because
(44:14):
she's she's everything she says. I mean she's a white witch.
I mean she's definitely got her her self image down
and together. She's very smart, super creative.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Did you get to sing with her at all?
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Just when she got up on stage with us?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Okay, so when you're hanging out, you didn't sit around singing, And.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
No, we mostly listen to each other talk. I don't know.
You don't have that much to say really that you
don't all feel as a group because you are all
going through the same experiences.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
How is that for you coming home in between stops
on tour, when you would go home and see your
parents and see your older sister Lynn, was it hard
to relate to them and sort of come down from
being on the road.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, everyone tells you that you've changed and that you're
faking it, you're not the same person, and you know,
like everyone's always really disappointed in you because you're living
on this big, inflated level. But that's how it gets.
When you're out on those big doors like that, you
live in a bubble of safety and security and you're
(45:24):
protected from people just because, for one, you don't want
to get sick, and for two, some people can be dangerous,
so you have to have protection from all of that,
you know, And you get used to it and you
go home and you're kind of like, don't come near me,
you know.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, I imagine you need a couple of weeks to
kind of reformulate.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Yes, indeed, does that take.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
A lot of mental preparation for you to be removed
from your space, from your home and know you'll be
sort of a nomad.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Takes a lot of relaxation out there. That's the main
thing for me is just to relax enough to have
fun with it and not get all freaked out, you
know about not being home and being tired or whatever.
Like the things that are hard about touring, which is
the travel.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Are you traveling on buses mostly when you're in the.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
US, Yes, on buses. However, over in Europe they don't
do that anymore because of the European Union has broken up,
so you can't just go from country to country on
a bus. You have to go through customs and all that.
The bus can't leave the country, you know, So it's
much more complex now over there.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
After taking the five year break from touring with Heart,
how did you and Nancy come back together? Why did
you decide to tour now?
Speaker 3 (46:49):
It was time, There was no longer any reason to
hold off on it. I spent pretty much all of
last year touring with Trips that Are, and we did
a hundred shows and seven months. I thought, well, the
time is right. Let's see if we can bring back
the big guns. And she was into it. We had
(47:11):
some negotiations to do, who's going to be in the band,
what type of a show we're going to do, but
we we came to understandings and all that.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
I was looking through your Instagram and I saw that
you have some scattered posts about meditation and quotes from
Ramdas and other things. When you're talking about relaxation before
the shows, what are some techniques that you use to
get into a good headspace.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
I like to listen to music that is meditational, the
space around a drone, you know, just calming down that way, breathing.
I don't want to build up. I want to chill
down before a show, so I walk out there completely
calm and collected. And so those are the main things.
Is just relax into it.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
And then when you make that transition from backstage to
stepping out on stage in an arena filled with people,
filled with energy, is it hard to make that switch
for you?
Speaker 3 (48:12):
Well, it depends on how tired I am. I guess
if it's a good night and everything's clicking and I
feel good, then it's not hard. But if something's gone on,
or you know, something's wrong within the band, like someone's
sick or something like that, it's a little harder to
go out there with all the engines, the resting.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
At what point in the tour would you say is
the best to see heart Would it be in the
beginning parts of the tour, the middle, the ladder.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
And Oh, that's impossible to say. I think it's different
every tour. I don't know how this band is going
to develop because It really is like a development over
a tour. You go out and you're just you've fresh
aut rearsal and everything's just all perfect, and then you
(49:05):
start to open up like a big flower. Yeah, you
figure out where it is that the audience and yourself
really connect and grow with those places. So if you
see us halfway through the tour, it's going to be
different than the first couple of nights.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Yeah. Do you have the same set list every show
or does a set list change?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
It will change. We have a bunch of stuff worked
out that we can interchange whenever we like, and sometimes
we're writing so things can just be popped in. So yeah,
it'll change definitely.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Is there any sort of preview you can give us
about what type of show it will be.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
It's gonna look beautiful. It is gonna be a combination
of heart songs, no covers, all heart songs, and a
couple of new songs, a new Nancy song and a
new and song.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Tell me about the last thing you've written that you're
really excited about.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
Oh, I just got through making an album with Trips
that is called Another Door and came out so good.
That is what I'm really proud of. Right now, because
I was the sole lyric writer on all the songs
and it really taught me a lot. I learned a
lot about how to do it and just when to
(50:29):
edit myself and when not too. You know that's so important.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to
talk today.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Nice to talk to you. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
Thanks Dan Wilson for talking about heart storied history. You
can see Anna her sister Nancy on tour with Heart
through December, and you can hear our favorite songs from Heart,
along with their various side projects on a playlist at
broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel
at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you
can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
(51:01):
us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric
Sandler and Jordan mcmill. Our engineer is Ben Tollinday. Broken
Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love
this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
(51:23):
and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month.
Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions, and if
you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and
review us on your podcast app Our theme music's by
Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.
Pushkin. Ann Wilson is the powerhouse lead singer of the
band Heart, who celebrated classic debut album Dreamboat. Annie came
out nearly fifty years ago. Last week, we featured an
interview with her sister and longtime bandmatee Nancy Wilson, so
make sure to check that out if you haven't already. Today,
(00:36):
we'll hear from Anne, who's responsible for belting out and
co writing some of Heart's most iconic early hits like
Magic Man, Barracuda, and Crazy On You. Four years older
than Nancy, Anne was the first Wilson's sister to join Heart,
a band that started out as a cabaret cover band.
Despite undergoing multiple lineup changes since the seventies, Heart has
released top ten albums in nearly every decade in the
(00:59):
last fifty years and sold over twenty million albums worldwide.
Outside of Heart, Ann has also released solo material, including
an album in twenty two three with her band Tripsitter.
On today's episode, Lea Rose talks to Ann Wilson about
Heart's current world tour and the Elton John albums she
sings before every show to warm up her voice. Anne
(01:20):
also explains how she would strategically play guitars around her
house when having parties at her Seattle home in the
nineties to encourage jam sessions with guests like Lane Staley
and Chris Cornell, and she remembers singing on stage with
Grace Slick and Stevie Nicks, who Anne says really is
a witch, but a good one. This is broken record
(01:41):
liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's
Lea Rose's conversation with Ann Wilson of Heart.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Have you reimagined the band at all this time going out?
I know it's been five years since Hart has toured.
How has the band changed?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Will the band has changed completely? Because nothing about it
is the same except me and Nancy. Well, Ryan Waters
was out in twenty nineteen, and this time we have
the Tripsitter Band, which is my solo band as part
with Ryan Waters and Nancy and I and it is
(02:21):
a fantastic group. It's just wow. Blows me away every
time we go and play some of these old Heart songs.
You know, with this group of people, they just they
understand the music and they just totally explode into it.
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
And the trips that our guys are. From my understanding,
they originally were session players in Nashville.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
They were, and they have reached a point in their careers,
all of them where they don't want to do that anymore.
Is a way of life. They want their own band.
They don't want to just be working, you know, working
for other people, doing what other people tell them to do.
They want to be in a band where they have
a say and they have ideas that get used and
(03:10):
you know, it's a real band. And that's what we
have with Heart at this point. You know, Heart's had
many many iterations over the decades, different lineups and different
kinds of things. Sometimes it's more acoustics. Sometimes it's way
rock and grungy, almost like in the early two thousands,
(03:33):
and sometimes it's pretty traditional a classic art. This is
something completely new. I mean, it's huge in some points,
really passionate. The dynamics are incredible. I mean, I can't
say enough good stuff. I guess I'm just waxing.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
How do you practice when you're in a rehearsal space
before you go out on tour? How can you practice
to play arenas since the physical space is so different.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Well, what we hear is what we have in our heads.
So that's what we practice, not trying to go out
and address every foot of airspace in those places because
that's impossible. And all the different minds, I mean, if
it's a full house in a big place, it's it
(04:23):
can be up to twenty thousand different minds you know
that are out there. Yeah, and how do you talk
to that? So you can't. You just have to get
out there and be completely inside the music and inside
the lyrics and be there, really mean what you say,
be present, be authentic, be all the way there. You know,
(04:45):
that's the only thing you can do.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
When you're performing. Do you tend to lock eyes with
certain people in the crowd or do you find yourself
just looking past the audience?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Well, I don't make an effort to lock eyes with
any one person because they think that you mean something
by it. You know, maybe you do, maybe you do
mean so thing by it. But I tend to be
in my head sort of and fluid inside of this
big sound pool that we're creating.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
It sounds awesome.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah, so I'll look out and I'll look at the
whole panorama. Yeah, if they've got things lit or if
it's all twinkle here or something that's pretty amazing to
see from the stage.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Heart's getting ready to celebrate your fiftieth anniversary. You've seen
the crowds change so much over the years, and now
everybody has the cell phone. Yeah, does that change the
performance for you? The energy of the crowd?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It does change things, I gotta say, especially when they
come up to the front of the stage and they
turn around so that you're in the backdrop and they
want to take a selfie with you as a background,
you know. I mean, that's that's really distracting, you know,
because you just want to sort of jump out of
the way, you know, because it's it's yeah, I'm not
(06:09):
a backdrop, you know. But I mean, to be fair,
it's a big night for them and they want to
preserve some little memory of it, so right, why not
let them have it.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I think I've read that you have an extensive vocal
warm up before you go on stage. Can you share
some of that with us? What you do to get ready?
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, I warm up for about forty five minutes to
an hour, and I used to try and do classical
like ruin scales and stuff like the vocal coaches teach
you to do. But I couldn't sustain that. It's just
too boring. So I finally found out that my throat
and soul are just as warmed up if I find
(06:54):
a couple of records that I love and just sing
along with the whole thing. Like for a while last
year I was doing Elton John Captain Fantastic in the
Brown Dirt Cowboy, just sing along with the whole record
every song, and then if there's still some more time,
find another one. Sing along with that. Wow and lo
(07:16):
and behold, your throat is warmed up. It's not just
your throat, it's your whole ability to just be open,
you know, your soul.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
When did you realize that you had such a powerful voice.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I've never thought it was that powerful myself, except for
a few moments in a few of the songs like
Crazy and You that are high and sustained notes. And
it's different when you hit a note and just hold it,
then if you hit a high note and just go
all squirrely all over the place. And I've never been
(07:51):
much one for vocal gymnastics.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
They're like Mariah Carey runs right.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah. I like to sing them just simple. So when
I realized I could do that I thought, most people
don't do this this way, so I must have something.
But I don't sit around on my some kind of
laurels going wow, you sure have a strong voice. I
think my kids would tell you that I have a
strong voice. Or people at a birthday party when I
(08:25):
sing Happy Birthday along with the crowd.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Oh, I would love to hear that. Wow, So that's fascinating.
You don't think you have a strong voice.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Well, I mean there's some mighty fine singers out there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Who are some of your favorite singers right now?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, I always loved Uton. I think he in the
early days. He was one of the people who influenced
me the most. Right now, I would think that Billie Eilish.
I love the way she sings. I mean it's so
refined and so restrained and just calm, you know, beautiful. Yeah,
(09:05):
so that I admire that, I really do.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Have you tried to do something like that just to
play around and see how it would sound.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
It's all in the song. Yeah, if you hit the
right song that has that in it, then you can
do it. I think. Yeah. And she and her brother,
I mean the stuff they write kill her stuff. I
love to see them at these big awards shows, just
cleaning up, you know, because it's so you know, anti establishment,
(09:33):
you think so. Yeah, I mean, here she comes wearing
this total alternative outfit whatever it is, whichever thing she's at,
and she looks beautiful. Her brother is just there to
support her. They're just you can tell that they're friends, yeah,
and that they're they're really tight, you know. I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I listen to you and Nancy's audiobook Kicking and Dreaming
and was just sort of amazed at how strong the
family mythology is in your family, and it really seems
like you kept going back to the early days of
(10:18):
your family and the stories that were shared in your
families when it came to songwriting and decisions you made
in your life. And at one point you were talking
about this letter that your dad wrote to your mom
where he was basically proposing to her, and how that
was like the single most foundational work that sort of
kept inspiring your songwriting.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Do you still feel that influence now?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah, I'll always feel influenced by both my parents because
they were liberal, they were bohemian, they were romantic, and
they were smart. You know, they were both intellectuals and
they managed to find each other, you know, and their
love of poetry and literature really inspires all my songwriting,
(11:06):
and I think Nancy's too. Were both we're both pretty romantic.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, when you left home, when you left the Seattle area,
you moved to Canada, right when Heart was hocus focused,
before the band was even called Heart, and you were
living with your first boyfriend, your first love. Did that
live up to this mythology in your mind of your parents'
(11:33):
bond and their romantic love.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Boy, Yeah, it sure did at the beginning. Yeah, it's
just like all love affairs, you know, at the very start,
it's so as Joni Mitchell says, it's so righteous at
the start, you know, yeah, and just powerful and beautiful.
But you're young, and your expectation makes it be just
(11:57):
that makes it be mythology. It can't survive in the
real world, you know, it has to. It has to
break down because it's too perfect and that's not what
this world is like and what people are like. Especially
when you fall in love with somebody, you idealize them
to the point where they're just gonna do everything for you,
(12:18):
They're going to be your everything. And the minute you
do that that's when it starts to break down. I think, Yeah,
you got to let people have space, give them the
right to be human and the right to be imperfect
and not do everything for you.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
When you wrote Magic Man about that relationship, were you
ever embarrassed or did you find yourself holding back because
you didn't want your mom to see things that might
have been a little bit scandalous at the time.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Well, holding back. I think that leaving home and running
off to another country with a man was about was
not holding back. But yeah, you know, like I didn't
rub it in her face that suddenly I was just
off sleeping with somebody, right, And she was, for all
(13:15):
her romanticism and love she had for our father, she
was pretty victorian when it came to sex and stuff.
So that was not something that went down easy between us.
She just didn't want to think that I was up
there blowing it. And that was in the pre Roe v.
Wade days before it was legalized. We're back there now.
(13:38):
But so mothers were extremely fearful of their daughter's running
off and getting into wild sexual relationships and ending up pregnant,
not knowing what to do about it, and you know,
basically their lives being ruled by that fact from then on.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Do you remember having conversations with your mom about that
where she was warning you, like, look, this is what
could happen to your life.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, she put it differently, though she couched it more
in h well, this is not dignified. You know. She
didn't want to have the talk and get all clinical
and everything. She didn't really want to do that, but
she found a way to do it. And it was well,
(14:27):
if you just go up there and become barefoot and pregnant,
you know, that's like pretty trailer park trash. Oh and
I guess that wasn't enough to scare me off.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I thought it was interesting because some of the lyrics
and magic Man you it's almost like you're trying to
convince your mom about how wonderful this guy is. You know,
he's a magic man Mama.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yeah, Well we had many phone calls where she I
was up in Canada in the cottage with him, and
she wanted me to come home. She's, yeah, you got
to come home. You're too young for this. You know.
I was at nineteen, so I was old enough.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah. I was so surprised to too. And maybe it's
not surprising for the time. But while you were in
Hocus Pocus, you were the front person in the band.
After gigs, you would come home the band was all
living together. You would come home and cook everybody dinner
and do all the laundry and do all the like
homemaking duties.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Yeah, that didn't last that long. I mean, at first
I thought how how sweet it was to wash the
sheets and hang them outside in the fresh air so
that and then put them back on the bed, you know,
and try and make a dinner out of some brown
rice and a couple of onions, you know. But and
(15:53):
for a while we lived up there in a cabin,
a cottage thing with Roger Fisher and his wife who
had just gotten married and received for a wedding gift
of fifty pounds sack of brown rice, which we all
ended up living on because we didn't have any money
when we were putting the band together. So we just
(16:15):
date brown rice and drank water and called it the
Georgia Shawa brown rice diet, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And you can do that back then when you're twenty, yeah,
and everybody's fine with it, that's right. And that was
before Nancy joined the band, Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
She joined later in nineteen about seventy three.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
We have to take a quick break, and then we're
back with more from Anne Wilson and Lea Rose. We're
back with Lea Rose and Anne Wilson.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
How did the band change for you when Nancy joined?
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Well, I was really glad because I felt that art
had gone about as far as it could go. We
didn't have a very good vocal section. I mean, we
didn't have a very good ability at harmony singing, and
we did have an acoustic guitar player, so we were
stuck doing rock and roll songs, you know, like Johnny
(17:16):
be Good and Walking the Dog and all that kind
of stuff that the guys did, and there was kind
of almost a whole part of the soul of the band.
It was missing for me because I had come from
doing folk groups with Nancy, where we did heavy harmonies
and we both played acoustic guitars, and that's so when
(17:39):
she joined, she brought that element. She's a fantastic harmony
singer and a great acoustic player. So all of a sudden,
heart had a heart, you know, and we just got
kind of what Led Zeppelin had, which was it can
go as rock as you want, but it can also
go as tender as you want down at the very center. Yes,
(18:01):
and that was really satisfying to me.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Early on you talked about doing you have sort of
like a mini led Zeppelin cover section in your shows,
and one night led Zeppelin actually came and saw you play.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well, they didn't stop and watch us, They just walked
through the room.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Did you see them walking through?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yeah? It was a club in Vancouver called oil Can
Harry's and they had a big showroom and then they
had a big party room upstairs, and so we saw
them kind of trooping through after their concert at the arena.
You know, when they're done with the Glory gig, they
come and have a party upstairs and oil Cans and yeah,
(18:47):
we saw them and we all just about lost it.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I mean, I imagine they just looked like the sexiest
rock stars on the planet. Oh yeah, yeah. And then
the full circle moment of having performed at the Kennedy
Center for when led Zeppelin was getting honored. How did
you prepare for that show mentally? Was that completely intimidating
(19:11):
to you or are you able to just sort of
switch into show mode and go out there and do
your thing with full confidence.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I think that that night I needed an extra measure
of meditative calmness because I didn't want to go out
there and start to think about it. You know, that's
what you really don't want to do. Not only was
led Zeppelin in the audience, but the you know, the
President and first Lady, and the audience was just packed
(19:39):
with all these different luminaries and famous people of all ILKs.
So I just remember saying to Nancy, let's just pretend
like we have bowls of water in our heads and
we have to walk out there without spilling a drop
and just concentrate on the water on the song, right,
(20:01):
and nothing else, just be in the song. And so
we did, and it turned out to be a fun
experience and one that went really smooth, and nothing went wrong,
and it was great because you know, after all, what
could possibly go wrong in a situation like that.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
It's such an emotional performance, and the footage after where
you see you know, Robert Plant and the band, they're
sitting there with tears streaming down their face, and then
you see Barack and Michelle Obama sitting there and John
Bonham's son is playing with you all on drums. It's
just so incredibly moving. Yeah, what a feat. It's beautiful,
(20:46):
beautiful performance. You sounded incredible.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was. It was quite an experience,
never to be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I read at one point that you opened for the
bee Gees.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah, that was real early.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Did you have any sort of interaction with them another
family band?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
I don't think at that point we got to interact
with them. At that point we were pretty much a
little cabaret band in Canada, and the Begs were doing
across Canada tour and they needed an opener and we'd
only done one opening show before that for Rod Stewart,
(21:29):
so we were by no means ready for that kind
of exposure, but we got up and did it. You know.
I was always a huge Beg's fan. All their different
eras and their psychedelic era and even the disco time
and all that. I just thought it was all great.
(21:50):
So yeah, it was really fun standing on this side
of the stage and listening to them live after we
were done, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And so that was already after the first album was.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Out, Yes, pretty soon after the first album was out.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
What do you remember about recording that first album? Do
any of the session and stand out in your memory.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Yeah, I just remember going from zero, from knowing nothing,
absolutely nothing about being in the studio, to Mike Flicker,
who was our first producer, mentoring me to be able
to sing a lead vocal on the songs, Like the
first one I ever sang was Crazy on You, and
(22:32):
we were actually doing Crazy on You in clubs at
that point, and Magic Man. We hadn't written Barracoutie yet,
but those two other songs we would, you know, we'd
play our normal club set and then we'd sneak Crazy
on You in and we'd sneak Magic Men in and
see what the audience did. And at first they were
(22:54):
kind of like what, And then they never heard that
song before, so they were used to let Zeppelin and
Elton John and the other stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
We were playing the stuff they know.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, and then by bit they started to respond to
those two songs live till it happened that they were
actually coming unglued. They were applauding and standing up and
liking those. So we pulled him out to when we
went and opened for the Bechis and Rod Stewart, we
actually dared to play our original.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Stuff, and didn't you get a huge reaction when you
opened for Rod Stuart because it had been on the
radio at that point.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, we didn't really know it. The communications in those
days were not like they are now, where you know
everything that goes on with your record every minute, you know,
and we didn't really understand that dreamboat And he was
being played in Montreal by this disc jockey named Doug Pringle.
(23:57):
He believed in us and he played the record. So
when we got to Montreal opening for Rod Stewart, we
walked out on stage to a house full of lip
matches because they knew our recorda we were just this
little opener. But wow, you know. So that was just
a way that we started out in Canada.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Did that motivate you to want to go in and
immediately start writing more songs and continue with that specific
sound of the songs that were doing well at the time.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yeah, we wanted to just go ahead and keep on writing,
you know. And just the experience of writing the first
two songs was so great and just so much fun
that we just wanted to keep going. And some of
the songs we wrote were more rock, but then there
were a whole bunch of songs on Dreabo Eddie like
(24:50):
Dreamboat Eddie and love Me Like Music, I'll be your song,
how deep it goes, Soul of the Sea, ones that
are really soft at the middle. So it's a mixed
bag on that record. Nobody could really put their finger
on what we were going to be, whether it was
going to be a rock band or what.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Did you like that sort of keeping people guessing or
was that more like you didn't know what you guys were.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
We didn't know. We were just formulating, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, which album would you say, out of your entire
discography is the most true to what you think the
band does best.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Maybe a Little Queen because it has Right of Me,
go On Cry and Barracuda, and it's got good ballads
and it's got good gas rockers, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah. Do you remember where the photograph for the cover
of Little Queen was taken?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, it was taken in Elesion Park in LA and
they took us to Western Costumers and got the gypsy clothes.
In fact, I was wearing my own clothes that day,
but everybody else was dressed up like a gypsy and
rented a gypsy painted wagon and a goat and a
(26:07):
horse and all all this stuff and set up a scene.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
What were you listening to at that time? So that
came out in seventy seven? What was on the radio?
What were you into?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Wow? Seventy seven, still listening to Elton John, listening to
Steely Dan, listening to Moody Blues and Rolling Stones. It's
all kinds of cool things. You know.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
You grew up having hoot Nanny's in your house, playing
instruments with family, singing songs, and then later when you
lived in Seattle, you would have these big parties and
have a lot of the people who became like the
all stars of the grunge movement over and just jam
and have fun and play. Around that time in the seventies,
(26:53):
were you doing anything like that playing with other musicians.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
We were mostly playing with the members of the band
up in Canada. We didn't know a whole lot of
other musicians. It was different back then. We were kind
of we were the party and we would have more
fun just jamming together on stage. Off stage, it really
didn't matter. We've jam in the living room and then
(27:20):
back up and go out to the club and jam there.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
You know. Yeah, And at that point, so the late
seventies did you foresee a long career for the band
or was it sort of you know, day by day?
How are you thinking about the band's future.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Oh, we definitely had a five year plan. I mean,
our manager would not let us get out of bed
without a five year plan. But it was good because
it made sense. It wasn't just ambition. It was more about, Okay,
we've gone this far. Now we've got these songs, what
(27:58):
else can we make? You know, We've got Crazy on you,
We've got Barracuda, We've got all these songs that are great.
Now what you know?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
What did you do to stir up ideas for inspiration
for writing songs once those big hits were out and established?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I think that many of our songs start from the music,
and then once I, Nancy and I are just me
hear the music, it suggests something and then we start
writing words and then suddenly, lo and behold, you have
a song.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
You know, do you prefer to be by yourself at
that point or do you like to be with sitting
with the other musicians writing words.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
I like to be by myself, no doubt about it.
But jamming you have to be with other people. You
have your ideas and they have their ideas and how
they mix and you spark ideas off each other and
you can tell when you hit on something and it's great.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Would people in the band give you feedback on your lyrics,
say like, ah, maybe this line should be tweaked.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
A little bit occasionally.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
How would you take that as a writer?
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Well, if they did that, I would say, and what
would you put in its place? And if they had
a good suggestion, I go, okay, we'll use that. Maybe.
If they didn't have a good suggestion, I'd say shut up,
not literally shut up, but just we'll keep it my
(29:32):
way until you think it's something better. You know.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, after the first initial band disbanded, people left and
there was a new iteration of the group. Was that
really heartbreaking for you or did you have hope that
we can create something new and move on.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
It's hard to describe what it was like when that
lineup disbanded, other than to say that we couldn't get
along anymore and things got really difficult between us. You know.
It seemed like the that made heart unusual, which was
(30:12):
men and women working together as equals, was breaking down,
and that very thing was the thing that was driving
us apart from each other. We would just squabble and
write down gender lines. It would just be really difficult,
the men gossiping about the girls and the girls gossiping
about the men. And it didn't help that, you know,
(30:35):
Nancy and I never looked that fondly on the whole
world of groupies and having to explain to the band wives, no,
nothing goes on out there, you know, lie to them
all the time, and it just got to be weird.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You know, when you reformulated the band and then bring
in more men, did it feel like things are going
to end up differently this time or did it seem
like maybe it'll kind of play out in the same way.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Yeah. Well, I always go into every new iteration of
the band totally optimist, because the world is full of
good people and just because you play out your relationship
with some people doesn't mean you don't have one with others.
And we've been really fortunate to play with some great
(31:25):
musicians over the years, men and women. And it's not
really important to us, to me or to Nancy and
I which gender it is. It really isn't. It's just
who can do the job, who's a great player, who's
a great singer, who's a great writer. And we worked
with Holly Knight and Debbie Cheer and Denny Carmassi on drums,
(31:50):
and it's just some amazing players. But we never again
encountered the same kind of emotional hardship we did with
that first lineup. I think it was because we all
started out we were poor and destitute, and then we
had all the success and there was all this money
that came in, and money change everything, you know, and
(32:10):
everybody gets kind of different.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Do you think they start to resent you because you
were the front person and getting a lot of attention
and Nancy and you are getting a lot of attention.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Yeah, there were some of that because they were at
the men and the band were out there working just
as hard as us and putting their bodies on the
line too. But yet whenever we did an interview, Nancy
and I were the only ones that got talked to
and got all the attention, you know. And there's nothing
(32:42):
much that we could do about it. It's just how
it was. And it really hurt the men's feelings and
made them angry. So I don't blame them at all.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Really, Yeah, it's understandable.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Are you still in touch with the old members from
the original line up?
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, we saw him just a couple months ago when
we played in Seattle. They all showed up super cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
And then moving in to the eighties, that was when
you started the record label, when you signed to Capitol
started bringing in professional songwriters. Yes, how was that for
you as a songwriter and as somebody who had been
the face of this band for so long?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Yeah? I went back and forth on it. It depended
on the song. For instance, I thought These Dreams was
a really great song, just a beautiful song that fit
Nancy's voice just perfect. It was the ideal marriage, you know.
But some of the other songs that came our way
that we did during the eighties, I thought didn't have
(33:46):
much substance and were pretty calculated. They were just different
versions of what was being played on the radio right already.
And uh, I wasn't that fond of that, because you know,
I was there at the beginning when we had all
this this beautiful idealism about being poets and all that.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Are you glad now looking back that you did it
even though you were fundamentally opposed to it at certain times?
About what you were singing. Are you glad you tried
it and stuck with it?
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Sure? Yeah. It was a good experience and it did
teach me a lot about songwriting, just the basic lesson
of you don't tax people's attention span. You just don't
get all selfish and just go, well, this is my vision,
Like you want to talk directly to them, you know,
(34:42):
and connect with them. That's what a lot of those
songs in the eighties had. It was a good listen.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
I love those songs.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, some of them are cool.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Super cool, and I bet the crowd loves them when
you play them live.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, like we used to do at Lisa del Bello
song called Wait for an Answer that moves through five
keys and everything, and it's just amazingly powerful song. And
that taught me so much about how you can have
a very simple idea and just repeat it only take
(35:18):
it up a key and then up another key, up
another key, and then it just changes. Meaning every time
you go up with these dreams.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Is that the song that you said you can't sing
for whatever reason, there's something about that song that you've
tried it in karaoke and you can't sing it.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
I don't sound that good on these dreams. The times
I've tried it at karaoke. Yeah, it's just there's something
about it. It's I feel awkward singing it and I
sound awkward. That's Nancy's song.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Do you still not sing all I want to do?
We haven't done that for a long time. Is it
going to come back out?
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I don't think so. There's a lot cooler stuff that
we can bring out than that.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
That song had a big influence on my It was
very eye opening as a younger.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Yeah, and just not in a very cool way. But
now I'm being my mother. You know, that's my mother talking.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
We have to take another quick break and then we'll
be back with more from Leo Rose and Anne Wilson.
We're back with the rest of Leo Rose's conversation with
Anne Wilson.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
In your book, you talked about some of the compromises
you made in the eighties were a devil's bargain, which
you were wearing, the types of songs you were performing.
How did you manage to push past that era?
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Oh? You just live one breath after another, you know,
you just keep on going. And I always believed in heart,
I always believe that we would emerge from that, and
that we would come up again and be writing our
own type of music about the things we wanted to
(37:09):
write about, and that people would like them, maybe not
on the same massive level, but on a level.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Does that matter to you if as someone who as
a musician has experienced both the massive arena level and
then also you do a lot of small shows that
are very intimate as a songwriter, as a musician, as
a singer, does it matter to you? Or is all
that matters is just performing?
Speaker 3 (37:36):
When I'm doing it, It's all that matters is just
the performing. I think other people care more about the
level of success than I do. You know, I've been
accused of not caring enough about writing commercial songs, and
I admit I'm guilty. I just want to write lovely songs.
(37:58):
I want to write cool stuffs.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Are you writing right now?
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Yeah? I am, And I'm just about to go down
to Nashville and hang out with the Trip Sitters and
write some more songs.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
What about the love Mongers? Are they ever going to
get back together?
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Oh? Love Mongers? Yeah? Now that was a vocal group. Yeah,
that was some gorgeous vocals. I don't know, I hope.
So that was a fun band. It was really fun.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
So that was Nancy, yourself and your old friend Sue.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Uh huh, and our other friend Frank Cox. Frank has
a beautiful tenor voice, and I was playing bass and singing.
So we had really a good three part harmonies and
we could do whatever we wanted. We didn't do much
heart stuff. We used the Love Mongers as an escape
(38:52):
from heart for a while. Just after the eighties. We
just we went into lovemngerland for a while and just
did whatever we wanted.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Is that around the time that you were back in
Seattle and starting to hang out with some of the
musicians that were coming up, And.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Yeah, and oddly enough, a lot of those musicians that
were part of the Seattle community then loved the Lovemongers
and we loved them, and we'd all show up at
each other's shows and it didn't matter that it was
at this little club that it really didn't matter. Yeah,
it was just about the music and about playing camaraderie.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You've said that musicians from Seattle aren't just going to
be nice about a song because you're sitting there playing it.
They're really honest about their feedback yes, they are. Yeah.
Can you remember a time where you were had an
interaction with a Seattle musician and you're just like, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Jerry Cantrell, he told me on a number of occasions
it was one of the ballads, the more commercial ballads
from the eighties. Maybe it was all I want to do.
But he just said to me, that is such bullshit.
That is such bullshit now, Barracuda, That's great, that's the shit,
you know.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
And you're like, I agree with you, I agree with you.
When everybody would come over to your house and play
at those parties, what would you how does that happen?
Like people start out drinking and then eventually people pick
up instruments and are just playing songs or what was
this scene?
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Like?
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Well, I was no fool. I would always have in
my living room. I'd have guitars laying around casually, you know,
laying and a piano and a couple of little amps.
Usually it would happen after somebody's concert and everyone would
show up for the concert, and then whoever was free
(40:54):
afterward would show up at my house and they'd all
come in and start drinking beers and smoking Ciggi's and
sitting up on my counters and just then, pretty soon
somebody had start to blay, what do you remember being
played then? And who do you remember being there? I
(41:15):
remember one time John Waits was there, Lane Stay the Pearl,
Jam guys, the Artist's spoon man, Chris Cornell and Kim
Thale and oh them.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
What was it like singing with Chris Cornell?
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Beautiful? He's like one of those naturals, like he comes
from a musical family too. And not only did I
know Chris, I knew his sister Maggie, who's a great
singer too, So it was easy as pie to sing
with chris beautiful voice.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, was there ever any stories about Jimmy Hendrix, another
Seattle musician, Like was he part of the Laura at all?
Speaker 3 (41:59):
I never met Jimmy myself, but I did go and
poke my head into Jimmy's apartment one time.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Oh how did that happen?
Speaker 3 (42:07):
When he lived in Seattle, when he was just a
young guy before he blew the coop? You know. Yeah,
just I was going to art college and somebody wanted
to go pick up some weed or something, and we
stopped at this little apartment and they went look around
(42:28):
this is a famous apartment, you know. I mean the
people who were living there then were not Jimmy. But
look around. This place has much vibe, you know, yeah,
trying to feel the.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Vibe, Jimmy, that's so cool. What stands out in your
mind when you think about the seventies or eighties? What
was the biggest rock star moment that you had. Once
the band started to pick up notoriety, we looked at
maybe looked at Nancy, like, whoa, this is big time.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
As time goes along, you meet just about everybody. They
usually end up just being people, but that doesn't mean
they're disappointing. Meant a lot of cool people and some
who yes, we're just folks, you know.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
You think they're gonna be like so grand and everything,
and then they're just like, hey, Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Well. I know that there was stories about you hanging
out with Stevie Nicks. That's always seemed like.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Oh yeah, she jumped on her plane for a few days.
We had a number one record, that's what it was.
That was The Magnetism, and we were playing in San Francisco.
She came out to the show and got up on
stage with us and with Grace Slick to sing on
what About Love? And after the show she said, gee,
(43:50):
I kind of hate to say goodbye to you guys.
Where are you going next? And they said, well, we're
going to Phoenix, And it just so happened that Stevie
has another house in Phoenix. So she got on our
plane the next day and we all went out to
Phoenix and went to her house and hung out after
our show. And that's an eye opener. It's cool because
(44:14):
she's she's everything she says. I mean she's a white witch.
I mean she's definitely got her her self image down
and together. She's very smart, super creative.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Did you get to sing with her at all?
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Just when she got up on stage with us?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Okay, so when you're hanging out, you didn't sit around singing, And.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
No, we mostly listen to each other talk. I don't know.
You don't have that much to say really that you
don't all feel as a group because you are all
going through the same experiences.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
How is that for you coming home in between stops
on tour, when you would go home and see your
parents and see your older sister Lynn, was it hard
to relate to them and sort of come down from
being on the road.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, everyone tells you that you've changed and that you're
faking it, you're not the same person, and you know,
like everyone's always really disappointed in you because you're living
on this big, inflated level. But that's how it gets.
When you're out on those big doors like that, you
live in a bubble of safety and security and you're
(45:24):
protected from people just because, for one, you don't want
to get sick, and for two, some people can be dangerous,
so you have to have protection from all of that,
you know, And you get used to it and you
go home and you're kind of like, don't come near me,
you know.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, I imagine you need a couple of weeks to
kind of reformulate.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Yes, indeed, does that take.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
A lot of mental preparation for you to be removed
from your space, from your home and know you'll be
sort of a nomad.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Takes a lot of relaxation out there. That's the main
thing for me is just to relax enough to have
fun with it and not get all freaked out, you
know about not being home and being tired or whatever.
Like the things that are hard about touring, which is
the travel.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Are you traveling on buses mostly when you're in the.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
US, Yes, on buses. However, over in Europe they don't
do that anymore because of the European Union has broken up,
so you can't just go from country to country on
a bus. You have to go through customs and all that.
The bus can't leave the country, you know, So it's
much more complex now over there.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
After taking the five year break from touring with Heart,
how did you and Nancy come back together? Why did
you decide to tour now?
Speaker 3 (46:49):
It was time, There was no longer any reason to
hold off on it. I spent pretty much all of
last year touring with Trips that Are, and we did
a hundred shows and seven months. I thought, well, the
time is right. Let's see if we can bring back
the big guns. And she was into it. We had
(47:11):
some negotiations to do, who's going to be in the band,
what type of a show we're going to do, but
we we came to understandings and all that.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
I was looking through your Instagram and I saw that
you have some scattered posts about meditation and quotes from
Ramdas and other things. When you're talking about relaxation before
the shows, what are some techniques that you use to
get into a good headspace.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
I like to listen to music that is meditational, the
space around a drone, you know, just calming down that way, breathing.
I don't want to build up. I want to chill
down before a show, so I walk out there completely
calm and collected. And so those are the main things.
Is just relax into it.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
And then when you make that transition from backstage to
stepping out on stage in an arena filled with people,
filled with energy, is it hard to make that switch
for you?
Speaker 3 (48:12):
Well, it depends on how tired I am. I guess
if it's a good night and everything's clicking and I
feel good, then it's not hard. But if something's gone on,
or you know, something's wrong within the band, like someone's
sick or something like that, it's a little harder to
go out there with all the engines, the resting.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
At what point in the tour would you say is
the best to see heart Would it be in the
beginning parts of the tour, the middle, the ladder.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
And Oh, that's impossible to say. I think it's different
every tour. I don't know how this band is going
to develop because It really is like a development over
a tour. You go out and you're just you've fresh
aut rearsal and everything's just all perfect, and then you
(49:05):
start to open up like a big flower. Yeah, you
figure out where it is that the audience and yourself
really connect and grow with those places. So if you
see us halfway through the tour, it's going to be
different than the first couple of nights.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Yeah. Do you have the same set list every show
or does a set list change?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
It will change. We have a bunch of stuff worked
out that we can interchange whenever we like, and sometimes
we're writing so things can just be popped in. So yeah,
it'll change definitely.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Is there any sort of preview you can give us
about what type of show it will be.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
It's gonna look beautiful. It is gonna be a combination
of heart songs, no covers, all heart songs, and a
couple of new songs, a new Nancy song and a
new and song.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Tell me about the last thing you've written that you're
really excited about.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
Oh, I just got through making an album with Trips
that is called Another Door and came out so good.
That is what I'm really proud of. Right now, because
I was the sole lyric writer on all the songs
and it really taught me a lot. I learned a
lot about how to do it and just when to
(50:29):
edit myself and when not too. You know that's so important.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to
talk today.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Nice to talk to you. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
Thanks Dan Wilson for talking about heart storied history. You
can see Anna her sister Nancy on tour with Heart
through December, and you can hear our favorite songs from Heart,
along with their various side projects on a playlist at
broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel
at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you
can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
(51:01):
us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric
Sandler and Jordan mcmill. Our engineer is Ben Tollinday. Broken
Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love
this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
(51:23):
and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month.
Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions, and if
you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and
review us on your podcast app Our theme music's by
Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.
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