“Impressive and brave”: the two British albums that influenced Heart the most
When you look at all the reasons why the Wilson sisters of Heart fell in love with The Beatles, one thing remains clear: they viewed their albums as revolutionary cornerstones of musical art and culture, each as “mind-altering” as the last in ways that no one will ever be able to replicate.
The band’s opus, 1975’s Heart, saw a sonic culmination of all of the sisters’ heroes, with a string of career-defining tracks that placed them at the heart of the rock scene, including ‘These Dreams’, ‘What About Love’, ‘Never’, and ‘If Looks Could Kill’. The record reignited their power, mainly due to pop-leaning rock power ballads, but it also saw them leaning on many of their favourite Beatles-esque tropes, no matter how unintentional.
Perhaps this was because they’d already been emulating their heroes in previous work, right from the debut, Dreamboat Annie, which saw them taking their love for the Fab Four’s knack for extensive concept-led storytelling and spinning it into their own version. They also took similar melodies and song structures, a choice that producer Mike Flicker credited to their not being as easily defined by solely the pop or rock genres.
He also claimed that the two albums that influenced them the most during these seminal moments were Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and, of course, The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “We wanted to be artsy and have a concept album,” Nancy Wilson told Louder.
Adding, “In the mid-1970s, that was happening. Songs with lots of departures and recurring motifs. So on Dreamboat Annie, we were ready to take on the world and be impressive and brave.”
Elsewhere, Nancy praised Sgt Pepper, describing it as one of those records that, quite literally, changed everything, arriving at the perfect time and showing everybody the way when it came to artistic world-building and world-class storytelling. It “descended like a Technicolour epic on an otherwise black and white world,” she once said, adding that it was a “masterpiece” that spoke the “language that our mind-expanding brains were ready to receive”.
Wilson experienced a similar state of transcendence while listening to other records, namely Revolver and Abbey Road, but it was Sgt Pepper that opened their eyes to the unrestricted nature of music itself, pushing them to reach for their own version of greatness. You can hear these influences across songs like ‘(Love Me Like Music) I’ll Be Your Song’ and ‘How Deep It Goes’, especially with their blend of “artsy” styles and the more melodic-leaning structures that can be found across much of the Fab Four’s work.
Mostly, however, they taught them the power of being brave and pushing themselves. At that point, they didn’t even know if they’d be lucky enough to make another record, so their mindset centred around raising their own bar to create something powerful. From The Beatles, they learned how to implement these risks and make them work, without losing sight of everything that made them great to begin with.
The record isn’t their best, but it was certainly a major statement as a debut that sought to set them apart from their peers. It also gave them an edge that most didn’t have at the time, one that made it clear that they not only utilised old, familiar tropes, but were looking forward to the future, pulling out all the stops with material that had the best chances of withstanding the test of time.
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