The song Ann Wilson called the “ultimate rock anthem”
Having to stand on stage with the beady eyes of the world watching is nerve-shredding enough. Doing it while delivering one of the greatest cover versions of all time might mean you’re made of steel. Just look at Ann Wilson.
In fairness, that’s a motto which the sisters of Heart have lived by all of their lives. But it was never more so called into action on one winter’s night in 2012 when they were summoned to the Kennedy Center Honors to serenade Led Zeppelin, who were among the recipients of that evening’s awards.
Maybe the pressure might have been less if they’d been told to perform some ancient gem of a deep cut from the band’s back catalogue; an effort to prove they knew their stuff, but equally acting as a masquerade for their own creative license. But no, they had to get the big guns, so ‘Stairway to Heaven’ it was to blow away the masses.
Even for a woman with the most unshakable spirit like Wilson, it was hardly surprising that she would be nervous. Right to the very second, she can recall “the moment when we were standing backstage just about to walk on to do the ultimate rock anthem. We looked at each other, I remember just before we walked on, and we both kind of went, ‘Ah, jeez.’ We had two skull rings that we bump together like a kind of talisman for power, bringing power in, and we took a really deep breath.”
All these years later, Wilson’s recollection of the night is visceral. But in other ways, it depicts the very human condition of that moment. The only things that really mattered were the power of connection and remembering to breathe. With those things set in place, she could go and conquer anything in the world, even singing Led Zeppelin’s biggest hit to their faces.
Looking at the band’s reactions, it’s clear that the usual monsters of heavy metal were reduced to blubbering messes, to a certain degree. That was literal in Robert Plant’s case, as the eagle-eyed would have witnessed a few tears shed. But Wilson being Wilson, she was more humble about the reasons behind this.
“[Robert Plant] wells up a little bit. He’s emotional, but my theory is he gets emotional for a bunch of reasons,” she mused. “Like, he looks down and sees Jason Bonham playing drums, who was probably just a little kid running around at their band practice when they were writing ‘Stairway to Heaven’.”
Modest as she may feign to be, it wasn’t as if Led Zeppelin weren’t impressed. “Plant let us know he usually hated people’s covers of ‘Stairway’, but he liked that one,” she confessed. But, of course, she couldn’t just hog the moment in the spotlight all to herself, as her sister Nancy chimed in: “Jimmy Page goes, ‘You nailed the guitar part!’”
Heart are a band who have blasted through preconceptions for the entire course of their lives and careers. They’re probably a little sick of having to keep doing it now. But when it came to the typically mountainously daunting task of performing a pinnacle of rock to the very same rock gods who made it, it was child’s play. All they needed was each other.
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