Nancy Wilson compared her favourite Heart song to ‘Ulysses’: “A life-threatening wild ride”
While Heart split up numerous times throughout their 50-year tenure, Nancy and Ann Wilson always find a way to share a stage once more. A duo bonded by familial ties as well as a musical desire to create classic songs, Heart have outlived countless contemporaries.
The classic rock outfit were pioneers for women in a male-dominated genre, and together, they showed that females were equally as competent at rock ‘n’ roll as their male counterparts, paving the way for an entire generation of acts to follow suit. It might sound like a high-concept, but it cannot be overshadowed. Without Heart, there are hundreds of bands you would have never heard today.
The band were no overnight success and, instead, needed to work for many years before Heart finally took their deserved place at the top of the pile. Their self-titled 1985 album changed the trajectory, a project which became their first to top the charts in the United States, and at this stage, everything the Wilson sisters touched turned into gold.
During the mid-1980s, Heart had plentiful international hits and were finally reaping the rewards for their years of doing the hard yards out of view from the masses. However, Nancy’s favourite track by the band isn’t one of their most well-known creations. Additionally, Wilson previously expressed hatred toward the best-selling ‘All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You’, which Heart refused to play live.
Instead, her personal favourite from their collection of tracks was never even released as a single, but in Wilson’s opinion, it typifies everything magnificent about Heart. The song in question is ‘Mistral Wind’, which appeared as the closing track on their 1978 album Dog & Butterfly.
During an interview with Vulture, Wilson explained why it sits in first place in her rankings. She said: “I think there’s a special iconography about ‘Mistral Wind’. It really paints the whole picture of what Heart’s capable of doing, because there’s storytelling and poetry to it”.
Wilson added: “There’s a sweeping philosophical symbolism to it.” It’s proof that Heart were far more than the ‘Barracuda’ riff and the rock sound they became known for. But they did have guitars at the centre of all their tracks: “It’s also got this dissonance of a guitar intro, which gives way to a big storm that sweeps you through the song and leaves you out the other side of the song as if your life has changed. I realise that’s a lot of highfalutin imagery, but I do think that’s what the song achieves.”
With a running time lasting almost seven minutes, Heart expresses the full brilliance of their songwriting and the impressive dynamic between the Wilson sisters. Unconventionally for a Heart song, ‘Mistral Wind’ is credited to four individuals, including their old childhood friend Sue Ennis, who has never been a band member.
Explaining the meaning behind the song, Nancy said: “It’s a Ulysses-type song.” Now, we can’t exactly say that the track naturally aligns with the grand work of James Joyce, but Wilson certainly can. “It describes the journey of waiting for the wind to kick up in your life, and then it does, and then it takes you on more of a wild ride than you ever expected to be on — a life-threatening wild ride. And you’re a changed person forever. You’ll never look at life the same way again. ‘Mistral Wind’ represents all cylinders of Heart.”
Wilson concluded: “We’ve always tried to be heavier and more poetic and life-affirming. Maybe even bird’s-eye-view in certain ways, not just on the ground singing about boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. That’s never been our forte.”
Although ‘Mistral Wind’ was never released as a single, it has been played close to 300 times by the band since 1978. Despite being left on the shelf during the ’90s, the track was reintroduced by Heart in recent years, demonstrating the re-affirmed love they have for the song.
