The Women of Heart Rock On: Ann Wilson

This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing from iHeart Radio. The signature howl, hard driving rock, licks, intricate harmonies. That sound is, of course, the band Hearts, fronted by sisters Anne and Nancy Wilson. Here they are with straight On from their nineteen seventy eight album Dog and Butterfly. The Ann's power and dynamism helped sell over thirty five million records, produced seven top ten albums, and

They're headed out on a world tour.

Last week I spoke with guitarist and vocalist Nancy Wilson. My guest today is Heart's lead singer Ann Wilson. Anne Wilson's signature vocals have solidified her place in rock history. She's a true pioneer, with her wide range, strength and control, giving Robert Plant a run for his money at the Kennedy Center Honors. I wanted to know when Anne discovered that she had the.

Voice well It wasn't until much later, like when I was about twenty two, I think, yeah, just like in band practice. And I'd been in bands, but I was always like the chick singer who just did the ballads, you know. And then we got to this place in the band where we wanted to do led Zeppelin stuff and right, you're doing covers deep yeah and deep purple stuff, and the guys, the guys in the band could not master that. So I tried it, and it's up in my range and it kind of cut me loose in a way.

Right.

It's amazing because I mean, obviously you've been redefined again and again during your career. We were all talking about this, my producers and huh, we were talking about what that was like back then, seventies eighties. Roseanne Cash came on the show and said her producer sat her down in the early days and said, we got to sex this up a bit. You got to pop another button, you gotta do this, You got to do that. Is that what they did to you?

Oh?

Of course. Yeah. It was always wet your lips and you know, undo the top button and where a French maid's outfit, you know.

Right, you and Nancy. Yeah, they wanted this just everything sexed up all the time. Oh yeah, yeah, how did that make you feel back then?

Mad? Worthless? So yeah, A couple of good songs came out of those emotions, like Barracuda and a few of the other ones that are pretty angry stuff, you.

Know, But when you are there, does that eventually change? Like I see some young actresses I've always said this, where they want them to pop another button and do this and do that, and once they make a couple of hit movies, they're like, no, no, no, never again.

They button that button all the way to the top and like we're done with that. Now.

That's like a phase, right, And that's very very smart because if only we're brave enough at the very beginning to know that, right and just like keep it buttoned up, you know, and so and so it doesn't want to cast us, then so be it.

Right.

Barry GiB came on the show and we had a wonderful interview with Barry. But the Beg's and a solo career and so forth.

I love oh And I.

Think even in the documentary that they had an HBO, they talked about DNA harmony. Yes, they're your siblings. So you sing, you can really sing together in a kind of unique way. Did you and Nancy have that?

Yes, we did, and we still do, and it's it's just something that is unnameable. It's just I don't know. Maybe it comes from the family, from riding in the car as little kids and just harmonizing in the back seat or whatever, but it's just this way of knowing what to do when and the other person knows exactly that too at the same moment.

You know, your dad was in the military, Yes, and you grew up for a lot of big chunk of your childhood before you you headed to the Washington suburbs. You went to Bellevue when you know.

How old eleven. So before that, it was San Diego, It.

Was many places, but it was yeah, Camp Pendleton, Quantico, Kemp, Lajun, Panama, Taiwan.

So your dad sounds like he was a pretty straight guy and you know, no nonsense guy.

Is that true?

Or was he a little bit more of a free spirit? What did he think of the music you eventually made with Nancy?

What was his attitude?

He was a free spirit and he he wasn't really cut out for the Marine Corps. In fact, he walked away from the UH. He retired during the Vietnam War because he did not believe in it, and he became a teacher and loved to read poetry at parties and sing and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, so he actually did. Really he loved the fact that Nancy and I were doing it. Our mother wasn't so sure. She was a little bit more ambivalent because it was two of the three daughters, you know, going into showbiz.

Now, when did the two of you decide this is something you wanted to do professional was the setting of that. When that becomes other people beckoned you, other people summoned you and said you got to do this legit, or you both pursued it.

Mostly it was me pursuing it. I had this thing inside my chest that was just like this burning coal, and I was kind of driven. I just wanted to be in bands from the time I was fourteen, and folk groups, any cocktail party, any church service, anywhere I could get up in front of people, you know, And one thing led to another, and pretty soon it was real bands, and then it was more professional sounding bands, and then it was bands.

And it was you alone and Nancy came along later, or both of you together. From the start, I dragged her. You didn't know. Why did you have to drag? Or is she shy?

She's shy and she's more college material. She was in university and she wanted to study, and I was like, no, no, no, no, come on, I need you to harmonize it.

Yeah, you're not doing that, you're not going to college. What was your first band?

The very first one she and I had was called The Viewpoints in Bellevue, when we were living just this comfortable life at our parents' house, but yet writing all these protest songs against culture and mister Jones, you know, and the man the Man, Yeah, the man reeling against the man.

Yeah.

And then when do you start to get closer to what you're most known for. She's playing guitar, she's harmonizing, and you're just ripping these rock songs. When does that start?

She went to college and I went off and got into a rock band. I ripped her out of college, said get up here. That was maybe four years later.

When she came and joined you. Did she just fold right in? Did she even realize herself it was meant to be this way?

She did, you know, in spite of herself, she was torn. I think she has a dichotomous nature where she wants to study and read Gerta and all this kind of stuff, but she also wants to play acoustic guitar and sing folk songs. And so we took that and we folded it and made it into the songs that we first wrote for Heart.

Musician Ann Wilson. If you enjoyed conversations with some of rock and roll's greatest lead vocalists, be sure to catch my episode with Roger Daltrey of The Who.

Can you imagine what it felt like to be presented with those songs for the first time, to see what you can do with this? We just slammed away. We used to go into the studio and we used to have to mate those records in probably two hours.

Max.

Yeah, you know, you made the whole album in four hours, But that's how it well. And then it was only once I got presented with Happy Jack I had to think totally different about how I, as a singer, was going to sing Townsend songs and present them in any kind of way that I could hold my head up in the streets.

Hear more of my conversation with Roger Daltrey that hears Thething dot Org. After the Break. Anne Wilson shares how finding love changed everything for her, including her approach to music. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the.

Thing Inside a Hurricane.

Win and.

Live Good Child.

No.

Other Way Tass to.

High Can.

This is Ann Wilson and the band Trip Sitter, with the song Trip Sitter from the twenty twenty three album Another Door. Wilson is a performing and recording veteran, having showcased her powerhouse voice since Heart's debut in nineteen seventy five. I wondered what was the very first song she recorded with the band?

That was probably crazy on you?

Right? That was your first song recorded.

Professionally, Yes, up in Vancouver.

So when you recorded that, how did you feel you? Did it feel right?

It was really exciting and I knew nothing. I knew absolutely nothing. I'd never been in front of a mic in a studio before, and I didn't know anything about it or how to confront the mic or anything like that.

Did somebody teach you?

Yeah?

Our first producer, Mike Flicker was really patient.

He was helpful.

Oh yeah, he gave me confidence, and he just said, yeah, do more like that? You know.

And when you did more like that, did you start to access parts of yourself that you didn't even know you had.

Did you just start becoming somebody else?

No? I think I didn't become somebody else. I think I just kind of shed one skin and stood there in another. It was let's shed the folk music skin and sort of stand there in a rock skin.

You know. Did you like one? Did you like them both? Did you like one one more than the other?

I liked them both, you And in fact, I think that's what was always different about Heart and cool about Heart is that it had both. It had softness and it had this acoustic center, but yet it could go just as hard as you please, you know.

And what about I mean, I'm assuming that all the songs that I would know of the most famous of your recordings, you guys wrote them, or you wrote them with other people, Like who wrote Dog and Butterfly?

Oh, Nancy and I wrote that, You wrote that?

Uh huh?

And then Nancy and I and Roger Fisher wrote Barkuda. But the two songs oddly fit together, the Dog and the Butterfly, you know, right.

The dog, the butterfly and the barracuda, right, yeah, yeah, right now? Who wrote Dreamboat?

Annie?

I did.

God, that's a beautiful song.

Thank you.

You play that song and you're like, wow, man, that's so pretty. And then this is this range thing of yours. My producers and I were reading about your if you want to call it homage to Robert Plant and you trying to kind of take on and learn some of his vocal approaches, you know what I mean. And then here you are, years later, this is where I last saw you at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Oh yes, yes, And isn't it magical?

That is whatever you felt about Plants and wanted to emulate about Plant.

Here you go on.

Stage and sing a Stairway to Heaven and I think I've seen one other person in my life try to sing that music the way you did, and you blew the roof off the building, you know I mean. And even those guys are sitting up there in the box with the President, I think even they were like, holy shit, you know, this is the person that could sing this song in the world.

How did you feel going out.

There to do that song that experience had the potential of being extremely nervous, and it would have been easy to take my eye off the wall and just get all nervous and lose it, you know. So I made up my mind just to only be in the song. Just be in the song. That's it, and no other world existed in that seven minutes.

Is that what it takes? Is that what it takes?

Yeah? It does for me.

Do you sometimes go do a show. I'll never forget when I would perform live and do Broadway. Not a lot, but there was sometimes I'd sit there and go, oh God, please don't make me go do this.

Show right now?

Yeah, yeah, I want to lay down and take a nap, you know. But you got to find a way to get your seat draggers. You got to become the guy that drags yourself out there, you know.

That's right. Yeah, and just you've got to show up and actually be there.

Yeah, put it out there.

Otherwise it's not fair to the people that are sitting there watching you. I mean, you ask them to come and sit and watch you, and then you phone it in. I mean that's really lame. O. You know, don't do that.

You're a mother. You adopt the two kids, but you're nonetheless on the road. And I always feel like, whether you have the kid yourself or they're surrogate so they're adopted, you're still a mother. What did you have to do to kind of protect all that when you.

Were working and you're on the road? Old? I mean, your kids are how old now?

Twenty five and thirty three, so.

They're still young, but there were they But when they've been around you and in the business, what did you try to protect them from or teach them about who you are and what you do.

I shielded them from public view. I didn't want pictures of them going up on the internet or anything like that, and I'm glad I did because they have a chance of being normal people. Now my son is a corrections officer and my daughter is a mother of six.

No, she has six kids.

She just kept on going, yeah.

Yeah, I got seven kids. Wow.

Did you find that in your life that songwriting was something you enjoyed or was it?

Was it an effort?

For me? It was always an effort. It was until recently, and I think it was because in the past I always wrote with other people, and so I was always secretly trying.

To please them, you know, and did and did right.

But now I write by myself, and like the last bunch of songs I wrote for Another Door, it's just a joy. It's so fun. Just write everything down that you're feeling, and then go back and tweak it and lift out the good stuff and get rid of the bad stuff.

You know, you're married now, when you're married before, this is your one marriage. This is my one marriage. So all those years, I mean, I'm gonna put the cards on the table. You're one of the most smoking hot women in all of rock and roll who's also talented. Ps is also mega talented. How did you resist all the men just ladling jewelry at your feet and begging you to marry them?

God, if that had been the case, I don't know whether you mean it wasn't like that ladling jewelry. Wow, you know I had my fair share of flings, you know.

Yeah, but you didn't. But that didn't fit into your plan, No, it didn't.

I was always more mission oriented about the band and about music and everything until this one guy came along and just suddenly that was irrelevant. Really, it's just like everything just changed, you know, I'm sure you know what I mean. It's it's it's just like the thing that happens when the person comes along. When do we ever think smart when we're in love? I mean, does that exist?

Hearts Ann Wilson.

If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. After the Break, Anne Wilson shares what it was like to be estranged from her sister for a time and how they were able to come back together. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the.

Thing bar and wait.

Started pleaseing my song always Top.

This is Ann Wilson with Miss One and Only, from her twenty twenty three album Another Door with her band Tripsetter. Anne Wilson has been praised as one of the greatest singers in the history of rock, and thanks to her legendary voice, found decades of success with her band Hearts. However, Wilson revealed in the autobiography Kicking and Screaming a story of heart, soul and rock and roll, but she has

A feeling of alienation. The drug itself has magnetic properties, yeah, but above and beyond that, it was the thing to do. And if you're a cool person, you did it. It gave you this feeling of super confidence, blows up your ego to this huge.

Did you energy?

Yeah?

And then when when it came time to stop, was it enormously difficult or did you stop? And because it all kind of came together and you knew that was right as well.

Well, I'll tell you it's kind of funny now. At the time, it was probably scary to other people. But Nancy and I decided to stop doing cocaine, and so we stepped down onto ecstasy and we did that for a little bit, down shifted, yeah, yeah, right, and then after a while that wore within and so then it was just no more.

Many of the biggest bands in the world, I mean, obviously the Beatles and things like that, they go for whatever period of time.

In the Beatles case, you know, not that long, you know, eight years.

Yeah, they crank out all that unique music in eight years. But for you, your sister is your partner and then for a while your sister is not partner.

Was that difficults It was difficult because we've always been tight. We never allowed other people to come into our relationship until then, and then we had we had other people saying, well, she says this, and she says that, You know, so it got to be a little bit of a drama. Things have really straightened themselves out now.

Right when you got back together with her, did it seemed like it was? Right?

Yeah, it's feeling more and more righteous all the time because she's been places too, so she has to soften up too. It's not just me, right, of course, we both have to soften back into our relationship together.

Talk about your solo work. When you started doing solo work, was that all you did?

You say?

Did you want to stop for a while and take a breath, or and did other people say to you, no, man, you got to get back out there and keep doing this, or did you know you had to go out there and keep doing it?

Well? You know hard it come to a natural stopping point, not a breakup point, but just like a point where it was out of gas right right, and I wasn't gonna let it just become a jukebox. So that was my cue to go out there and do something on my own and get some new chops, you know, and sing some news songs and figure some new stuff out. You got to do that, I'm sure you know that. As an actor, I mean, you can't just rehash the same old ideas again and again and again.

Well also can as an actor. The condition is about the quality of the material. Where you might go do a revival of a famous play and put your touches on that of that role.

And the interesting thing is, you know the material works like this is classic literature.

Williams shaw Miller, and you want to get out there and have a whack at that material because in the movies, you know, they're in the potato chip business man. There are not that many serious roles and there aren't that many serious projects. Did you ever contemplate doing something for a living ever in your entire life since you became a musician, a professional musician.

That's what I wanted to do.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, there was a time when I considered trying to act a little bit. But I don't have that. I don't have that in me. For me, music is the thing, because that's the that's my literature.

You know.

I look at videos of you when you're younger and you're singing crazy on you and you're singing Barracuda and you're flicking that hair, you're tossing that hair and like a little banshee. It'she You're this gorgeous little banshee. And what would Anne Wilson now tell that girl back then?

Oh?

I would say do what you're doing, I mean your gut.

You know.

I may have seemed one way, but I felt ways that were really strong back then, right, such as, you don't treat us this way, right because we're girls. You don't just you know, drop us by the door.

No, you had to fight.

You had to fight, Yeah, you had to fight the way you were treated by a male centric business.

Correct.

Yes, but the type of fighting was very careful, because you don't just want to alienate people and have them just hate you.

When you talk about putting into your music some of these feelings you had. Do you think your audience got that? I think they picked up or you didn't really care? You got it and that's all that mattered. Did the audience pick up on it?

Well?

I always really hoped that the audience got it, and I think they did from things people have said to me in later years, you know, like men and women alike. I think that when they look back on some of the songs, you know, and some of the stuff we did. There were no other women out there except Suzi Quattro when we started. She was the only one and she was awesome. But that's one, you know.

My last question for you is you write songs about what you wrote about back then? What songs do you want to write about now when you sit down, whether you succeed at it yet or not, or these songs are yet to come during your solo years, what do you want to write about now?

Well? I wrote one called This is Now. I wrote one called Reign of Hell, which is an anti Wars creed. Just all different kinds of subjects, like I wrote one about a botched back alley abortion. Wow, it's kind of gently it is poetic, but that's what it's about, you know. It's called the Little Things. When are you going down on tour in April?

Where are you going?

Everywhere?

Man?

Everywhere?

Everywhere?

Man, I gotta tell you something. You're so great, Thank you, thank you. You're such a great singer. You blow my mind when I watch you, I listen to you, I mean you blow. You can do everything, you can do everything my best you and thanks for doing this with me.

Oh well, thanks for having me. I really really had.

Fun my thanks to Ann Wilson. You can find more information about Heart's world tour at heartdash music dot com. I'll leave you with a little more of straight on from their nineteen seventy eight album Dog and Butterfly.

I'm Alec Baldwin.

Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

Man, Stay down, stand up for use me, stay.

Say up, Stay up.

You need

Stay up.