The album Ann Wilson didn’t have her heart in: “We were over it”
It can’t be overstated how much of a boy’s club the hard rock world was when Seattle’s Wilson sisters first fronted Heart. While barriers had long been broken in most of popular music around it, 1970s classic rock had become dominated by a machismo that saw wielding the electric guitar as for men only.
Suzi Quatro had forged a respectable role for herself in the UK’s glam charts, and Grace Slick was leading Jefferson Starship. The Runaways had yet to drop ‘Cherry Bomb’—let alone punk’s upending attack on gender norms off by a good few years yet.
Both graduating from the same Sammamish High School four years apart, Nancy and Ann Wilson continued a musical relationship throughout their respective further studies—youngest Ann singing lead and Nancy playing guitar and piano plus backing vocals. Becoming acquainted with the rock group Hocus Pocus, the band’s draft-dodging brother of guitarist Roger Fisher brought the Wilsons over the border to Vancouver, bringing along bassist Steve Fossen, too. Ann and runaway conscript Mike Fisher became a couple, as did Nancy and Roger, and Heart was born at the beginning of 1974.
Signed to Canadian label Mushroom Records, their 1975 debut Dreamboat Annie was a sluggish seller, only selling 30,000, but a last-minute support slot for Rod Stewart that October at the Montreal Forum and US radio airplay picking up saw Dreamboat Annie swiftly reach number seven on the Billboard 200. This accelerated success was soured by label boss Shelley Siegel’s full-page ad of the Wilsons back-to-back and bare-shouldered with the caption “‘It Was Only Our First Time!”, a lascivious implication never approved by the band.
“We were getting tired of it because we were touring so extensively…”
Ann Wilson
Immediately ditching Mushroom Records, Heart decamped to CBS’ Portrait Records and cut their official sophomore LP, Little Queen, featuring the monster hit ‘Barracuda’. The lead single was written in fury over a reporter’s probing as to an incestuous relationship fuelled by the sleazy advertisement.
Despite having to wade through the industry’s toxic chauvinism, Heart oversaw further success with Dog and Butterfly, yet as the 1980s arrived, both relationships with the Fishers disintegrated, and the new decade’s evolving trends demanded a new look for the MTV age. Embracing glossy power ballads and big hair, Heart recruited new members and invited outside songwriters such as Bernie Taupin to pen much-needed hits, heralding their comeback with 1985’s eponymous album and topping the Billboard charts once again.
“The first, self-titled album was fun,” Ann told Classic Rock in 2024. “The big hair and the wild clothes. It was theatre. Having wanted myself to be a fashion designer, to have stylists heaping clothes on me was great. I loved it. By Bad Animals, we were getting tired of it because we were touring so extensively. When you try taking these incredible costumes out into the sweaty country, where it’s a hundred degrees, and you’re dancing around in stiletto heels… So by Brigade, we were over it.”
Brigade was still wildly successful, but as the 1980s came to a close, new relationships and resulting family commitments forced Heart into a series of on-off half-commitments for the 1990s. In the 2010s, Chris Cornell inducted Heart into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, and Metallica lent his vocals to the title track of 2016’s Beautiful Broken. About to embark on a tour of North America, Nancy and Ann’s Heart shows no sign of slowing down yet.
