‘Bébé le Strange’: How Heart created the ultimate rock icon
Musicians are known for developing personas all the time, whether as a conduit for their own creative expression or as a complete detachment from who they are as individuals. The many guises that David Bowie created over the years were indications of his forever-changing artistic ambitions, and it wouldn’t have felt right to see the glam rock superstar Ziggy Stardust release Station to Station – that album exists to be performed by the Thin White Duke only.
However, while some choose to develop and adopt alter egos to obscure who they really are or to draw a distinction between their art and their personal lives, others develop them as exaggerated versions of themselves, and this is exactly what sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson did with Heart at the start of the 1980s when they created ‘Bébé le Strange’.
The Wilson sisters had no real need to be camouflaging themselves behind a dual persona at this point of their career – they were already a prominent band who had attracted a significant fanbase due to how they offered an unapologetically feminine antidote to the incredibly macho rock scene. However, the group did have another member on their first four albums that was just as integral to the development of their sound in guitarist Roger Fisher.
His departure from the at the end of the ‘70s left a gaping hole in Heart, but this is where the Wilsons’ need to establish a new identity arose from. Determined to further assert their authority as strong women in rock, they chose to create a character that embodied this femininity and united the characteristics of both Ann and Nancy into one mythological being, and from this, Bébé le Strange was born.
Giving her name to their fifth studio album, and naming the second single from the record in her honour, Bébé le Strange became a huge part of the band’s identity during this period, and while it could’ve been a difficult transitional period due to the sudden lineup shift, the emergence of this defiant rock and roll goddess that encompassed the personalities of both sisters showed that they were the true driving force behind the project, and that united as one, they were a force to be contended with.
Speaking to Sounds Magazine, Ann Wilson claimed that she had inadvertently turned herself and her sister into a Mick Jagger or Elton John-esque character. “She’s a kind of mutated rock and roll creature,” Wilson explained. “That’s what I consider myself.”
Ann and Nancy Wilson were already being regarded as icons in their own right, but while young female fans were idolising them, they recongised that they didn’t stand out enough with their own identities, and therefore in order to push themselves to the next level, they created this hybrid identity with a more outlandish name, image and personality.
The eponymous track, ‘Bébé le Strange’, may not have been their most successful hit, but it did push them towards perhaps their most fruitful period in the mid-1980s, where they achieved mainstream success and found themselves gaining a litany of new fans through honing this artistic change. ‘Bébé le Strange’ was ultimately the catalyst for Heart’s rebirth, and a grand representation of how the Wilson sisters asserted themselves as feminine rock role models.
