Ann Wilson’s favourite Heart song of all time
We often underrate Seattle as being a home of musical innovation. Heart, Jimi Hendrix, and the majority of grunge bands hail from there, and yet it’s not celebrated as the birthplace of great music as much as it should be.
When speaking about growing up in Seattle, Ann Wilson credited the city with contributing towards the versatility of Heart. Given there was no scene present in the city, people were happy to branch out and make whatever music moved them. Without such freedom, Heart might have been confined to one specific sound that had no longevity.
“I think that Seattle is full of outliers and misfits, especially in those days,” said Wilson, “It’s a seaport, it’s a place that rains maybe nine or ten months out of the year. It’s grey and dreary. That does have an effect, especially on sensitive people. So, I think if you’re an outlier and you’re a singer…you’re from Seattle!”
When Wilson writes songs, she doesn’t restrict herself, because her creative inhibitions weren’t devised in a town that imposed restrictions. Going to a local gig was always unpredictable, and as such, when she started making music, what she came up with was equally as unpredictable. This wasn’t always a good thing, as creative visions often didn’t align. Both Nancy and Ann Wilson have admitted that Private Audition was made during a period of transition and subsequently it never landed. However, that open approach to creativity also helped Wilson make some great music.
You want to talk about abstract inspiration? One of Wilson’s favourite Heart songs of all time came to her when she was staring out the window and watching her dog playing. Yes, the song ‘Dog & Butterfly’ is appropriately named, as the inspiration for the track came when Wilson saw those two animals outside one night.
“It started really simply, of course, with just me seeing a sight. Somehow, sometimes that’s how I get an idea for a song as I just see something, and it goes ‘Hey’. In this case I was looking out the window in my music room one day, and my dog was chasing after butterflies,” explained Wilson, “Never gonna catch these things, never ever, but my dog showed this sense of purpose, and also playfulness, and she chased after and after and after and wouldn’t stop and wouldn’t stop, and it didn’t take long for me to go all metaphoric with it, you know?”
Upon seeing her dog playing, Wilson was able to somehow relate to it. The rewardless task of chasing the butterfly seemed to line up perfectly with a lot of life’s other complexities. In Wilson’s case, she associated the action with love, creativity and finding inspiration.
“I just thought, well, you know, that’s kind of how I am with love, and how I am with music, and trying to find ideas for songs,” she said, “You know, sometimes they’re really elusive, but if you keep on and keep on, if you’re patient. Well, my dog never did catch the butterfly, but, you know, I kind of came up with a quatrain or something for the song about opposition and just staying the course.”
When picking her favourite songs from Heart, Wilson listed ‘Dog & Butterfly’ and ‘Barracuda’. ‘Barracuda’ is a fairly obvious choice, given it’s the band’s biggest hit and is still considered a classic by many. However, her adoration for ‘Dog & Butterfly’ comes from the reaction it gets from fans when she plays it live.
“It’s one of those songs that, when we do it live, you look down and you see the people reacting to it,” she said, “And you see girls, if they come with a man they’ll take the man’s arms and get all soft and cuddly, and the guy will kind of go, ‘Well yeah, yeah, I guess I kind of like this too’.”
