Ann Wilson | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Summary

The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Guest: Ann Wilson (of Heart)

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this heartfelt, wide-ranging conversation, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan sits down with Ann Wilson, legendary vocalist, songwriter, and co-founder of Heart. The discussion is centered around Ann’s new solo documentary, her journey as a pioneering woman in rock, personal and professional triumphs, the complexities of sibling artistry, and the state of music past and present. The tone is candid and warm, with Billy offering both fan admiration and a musician’s insight, while Ann reflects deeply on her life and career.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Importance of Ann’s New Documentary

• Personal storytelling: After years of band-focused biopics, Ann wanted to share her story apart from Heart, showing the personal ups and downs that made her who she is.
  • “I felt at this time in my life and in my career that it would be refreshing to people to know something about me personally, apart from the band.” – Ann Wilson [01:54]
• Roadshow & audience Q&A: Ann and documentary director Barb Hall are hosting live screenings with post-film Q&As so fans can ask the questions the documentary might have missed.
  • “To give people a chance to see it on a big screen ... and then let them just ask us … questions that they might have had that weren't covered enough.” – Ann Wilson [03:43]

2. Ann’s Musical Roots & Early Influences

• A “lifer” in music: Ann describes herself as someone committed wholly to a life in music, echoing Billy’s use of the term “lifer.”
  • “I'm a lifer.” – Ann Wilson [04:49]
• Discovering her rock voice: Originally shy and singing in choirs, Ann found her signature power only when a lack of male vocalists in her bands pushed her to cover Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.
  • “There was no one else in the band who could sing in those ranges ... so it fell to me and I started trying it. And it just sort of came out of me.” – Ann Wilson [05:35]
• Influences:
  • Cites Aretha Franklin as a primary inspiration: “She inspired me and gave me goosebumps first. She was the first one that really knocked my hair on end.” – Ann Wilson [08:54]

3. Songwriting & Lyrics

• Family influence: Ann’s father, an English teacher and poetry enthusiast, instilled in her the value of lyrics from an early age.

  • “Our father was a word man ... so lyrics to me are everything.” – Ann Wilson [16:01]

• Autobiographical writing: Songs like “Dreamboat Annie” are deeply personal metaphors.

  • “Oh, totally. Yeah. Just arts. It's the metaphor for us. Just little wooden ship, you know.” – Ann Wilson [16:53/17:03]

• Philosophy of authenticity: Ann maintains a suspicion of “art that doesn't seem authentic.”

  • “I've always been really suspicious of any music or art that doesn't seem authentic. That just seems formulaic or no substance. And that's how I view pop. Yeah, it's there to entertain. Yeah, strictly to entertain.” – Ann Wilson [69:23]

4. Building Space as Women in Rock

• Creating a “parallel universe”: Ann reflects on the challenge of gaining recognition in a male-dominated field and how women needed their own infrastructure.

  • “Women had to build their own universe, a parallel universe in rock ... they had to make a new infrastructure that understood women ... accepted women as people. Of different sizes, shapes, looks, personalities.” – Ann Wilson [19:09–19:59]

• Navigating double standards and image scrutiny: She candidly discusses discomfort with focus on looks and the enduring double standard faced by women artists.

  • “Sometimes really comfortable, sometimes highly uncomfortable. Because there's such a double standard for women.” – Ann Wilson [18:12]

• Progress in body positivity: Ann sees genuine change in the music industry's attitude toward image:

  • “I think there is a pretty imperceptible, almost, but very real change now. Like, you see people like Lola Young, you see Lizzo ... people who are being accepted even though they don't fit the mold.” – Ann Wilson [42:39]

5. The Band Dynamic, Fame, and the 1980s

• Early Heart: hard touring, male-female microcosm: The original Heart played hundreds of dates per year, with a unique blend of male and female perspectives.

  • “Back then, you had to build your rep on the road. There was really no ... It was radio and the road.” – Ann Wilson [26:01]

• Conflicts and fame: As attention focused increasingly on Ann and Nancy, tensions grew, sometimes splitting the band along gender lines.

  • “The very thing that made Heart interesting ... became the thing that ultimately kind of destroyed that first lineup.” – Ann Wilson [27:19]

• Creative compromises of the 1980s: Ann is honest about the pain of ceding creative control to outside writers, calling it “a complete devil's bargain.”

  • “...the songs that we were presented with, you just kind of had to swallow real hard and go, well, there's something about the song I like, but it hasn't got any substance...” – Ann Wilson [34:56]

6. Crises and Transformation

• Changing eras: The ‘90s saw Heart branded a '70s relic, but being embraced by the Gen X/Seattle music community gave Ann new connections and validation.

  • “Everyone thought of Heart as being a relic from the 70s ... but we actually found a lot of good friends in that community.” – Ann Wilson [38:56/40:13]

• The solo vs band dilemma: Despite opportunities to go solo, Ann always preferred the ‘band person’ identity.

  • “I've had that offer many times along the way, but I've always been a band person. I want to be in a band.” – Ann Wilson [45:59]

• Battling personal demons: Ann attributes her sobriety to her children, recalling a life-changing moment for her health:

  • “My doctor said, your liver ... you've got to change your ways ... But the thing that really got me to stop was my children.” – Ann Wilson [49:47]

7. Refinding Creative Voice and Current Work

• Songwriting revival: Recent solo and band work has let Ann reconnect with her authentic voice, free from 1980s constraints.

  • “The songwriting that I've been doing lately with Trip Sitter is really rewarding. I mean, it's because anything goes ... doesn't have to be within the confines of what's acceptable in the 80s.” – Ann Wilson [31:18]

• Ambition for a concept album: Ann reveals she’s never tackled an old-fashioned narrative concept album and still wishes to try it.

  • “I'd like to do an old fashioned concept album ... like Wish You Were Here and that has ... a through line, running through.” – Ann Wilson [72:04/72:21]

8. On Sibling Bonds and Heart’s Sisterhood

• Complex sibling dynamics: Ann discusses the deep and occasionally fraught relationship with Nancy Wilson, highlighting unique strengths and the inevitability of some jealousy.
  • “No one sings harmony like her. And there are things about what she does ... that nobody else can bring ... maybe they could, but it would take three guys to replace her.” – Ann Wilson [63:54]
  • “I think sometimes it's frustrating to her that, you know, I can do the things I do and she can't be the lead singer because ... it's not there.” – Ann Wilson [66:07]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why she finally did a solo documentary:
  “I felt at this time in my life and in my career that it would be refreshing to people to know something about me personally, apart from the band.” – Ann Wilson [01:54]

• On women in music:
  “Women had to build their own universe, a parallel universe in rock.” – Ann Wilson [19:09]

• On her music career:
  “I'm a lifer.” – Ann Wilson [04:49]

• Reflecting on losing creative control in the '80s:
  “It was a complete devil's bargain.” – Ann Wilson [34:46]

• On sobriety:
  “My doctor said, your liver ... you've got to change your ways ... But the thing that really got me to stop was my children.” – Ann Wilson [49:47]

• Songwriting advice for pop artists trapped by industry expectations:
  “You've got to hang on to your identity. That's all you can say.” – Ann Wilson [70:41]

• On sibling collaboration:
  “If I had my perfect band, she [Nancy] would definitely be in it as the…” – Ann Wilson [66:49]

• Personal view on pop’s dominance:
  “I've always been really suspicious of any music or art that doesn't seem authentic ... that's how I view pop ... strictly to entertain.” – Ann Wilson [69:23]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Documentary and Q&A live tour: [01:23–04:13]
• Ann’s discovery of her unique rock voice: [05:12–06:39]
• Influence of Aretha Franklin: [08:54–10:41]
• Early songwriting with Nancy (“Through Eyes and Glass”): [11:51–12:31]
• Mother’s and father’s reactions to a music career: [12:54–13:26]
• Building new infrastructure for women in rock: [19:09–19:59]
• Pressure and loss of creative autonomy in the 1980s: [33:08–36:41]
• Resurgence and acceptance in the ‘90s (Seattle scene etc): [38:45–41:20]
• On body positivity & cultural change: [42:39–44:16]
• Refinding her songwriting essence in recent albums: [29:48–31:18]
• Sisterhood and rivalry with Nancy: [63:41–67:32]
• Views on AI’s implication in music: [56:04–59:03]
• Ann’s ambition to create a concept album: [72:04–73:37]

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Final Thoughts

Ann Wilson’s appearance on The Magnificent Others is a richly detailed, introspective conversation filled with anecdotes, insights, and musical wisdom. From the struggles and breakthroughs of forging a place for women in rock, the challenges of fame and authenticity, to her enduring creative partnership (and rivalry) with her sister and her vision for her future work, Ann’s candor and resilience shine throughout, making this a compelling listen for fans and artists alike.

Transcript

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[Ann Wilson]

Women had to build their own universe, a parallel universe in rock.

[Interviewer]

It seemed to me from the very beginning you guys were a big band.

[Ann Wilson]

Me are everything.

[Interviewer]

You weren't just a pop act.

[Ann Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Like you meant something to that world.

[Ann Wilson]

You've got to hang on to your identity.

[Interviewer]

It never struck me that you were afraid of sort of taking things head on.

[Rula Therapy Announcer]

No.

[Ann Wilson]

I've been pretty much wearing my life on my sleeve the whole time.

[Interviewer]

Anne Wilson, thank you for being here. So nice to see you.

[Ann Wilson]

My pleasure. Thanks for asking me.

[Interviewer]

So you've had, you know, never quite sure when these things are going to come out, but generally speaking, as we're talking, your doc is just coming out or you're promoting it. Yes, in my voice.

[Ann Wilson]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

I was curious. You're certainly worthy of your own documentary, but, you know, the heart docs have been done and the behind the musics and all that stuff. So what about wanting to do your own story was important for you?

[Ann Wilson]

Well, I felt at this time in my life and in my career that it would be refreshing to people to know something about me personally, apart from the band.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

What's. Why am I interesting otherwise if it's not all about heart, you know? And so we found that my life really was worthy of a documentary. Yeah. A lot of stuff has happened in there.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's interesting. Right. Because I've been listening to you for. I think the first time I heard you was probably 77. Right, so.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, right.

[Interviewer]

For almost 40 years of being a fan and. But, you know, you're one of those people that even though you've been in my life as a. As an artist and somebody I admire, I don't feel I know that much about you.

[Ann Wilson]

Right. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And of course, it's always most of what I know at least colloquially, is within the context of being in a band with your sister and, you know, what happened in the 70s and what happened in the 80s. But I feel like I don't know that much about what you actually went through.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Does the DOC kind of get into that?

[Ann Wilson]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

That's great.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. It goes through every decade and what was happening. And it's not a whitewash either. I mean, it doesn't just show the good stuff, it shows all the stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

The ups and downs and, you know,

[Interviewer]

it never struck me that you were afraid of sort of taking things head on.

[Ann Wilson]

No, I've been pretty much wearing my life on my sleeve the whole time.

[Interviewer]

Talk about a little bit, if you don't mind, because you're doing this thing as we talk where you're going to all these different cities. So you're showing the DOC and then you're doing a Q and A afterwards.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

What was the thinking behind that?

[Ann Wilson]

Just that. To give people a chance to see it on a big screen, for one thing, but then to let them just ask us, me and the director, Barb hall, to ask us questions that they might have had that weren't covered enough.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Because I guess that's the hardest thing, right? Because a doc usually 90, 100 minutes, but how do you put a person's life into. Yeah, you can't really.

[Ann Wilson]

Lars is 75 minutes, and that's.

[Interviewer]

That's a lot of life in the 75 minutes.

[Ann Wilson]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

You strike me. I guess we were talking before we rolled. You know, my. My. My dad was a musician, and my dad, like a lot of musicians, you know, he looked at musicians sort of like you either could play or you couldn't. And there were those in it because they were serious, and there were those in it because they liked the party.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You always struck me as somebody who's, like, in it because that's what you do and you're in it till the end. Is that a fair thing to say?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah, that's a fair thing to say. I'm a lifer.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I was. That's the term I was going to use. That's the term my daddy used is lifer. I feel like I'm a lifer.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

We're not there yet, but close enough, right?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. I'd say starting at age 14 and still doing it when you're 75, that's. That's like, pretty much.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

That tells people that you're into it.

[Interviewer]

I'm in awe of someone with Your talent, because. And. And I haven't known a lot of people, like, with your gift, but it seems like. And I've listened early recordings with you, it's like it just comes out of your mouth. Right. What was the first time you sort of realized that you just had this ability to just sing like that?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. That was a really strange thing because, you know, I was always in choirs in high school and junior high and everything, but I was never the girl that got the solo. I was. I didn't really have the courage to come out and sing in front of people, really, until I joined bands. And then suddenly there was this day where we were working out. Back then, you just did songs that were on the radio. It was all covers in our set, and we wanted to do Led Zeppelin songs and Deep Purple songs, and there was no one else in the band who could sing in those ranges, especially in Robert Plant's range. And so it fell to me and I started trying it.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Ann Wilson]

And it just sort of came out of me.

[Interviewer]

It was.

[Ann Wilson]

It was there.

[Interviewer]

So even before then, because you'd done stuff with your sister, kind of folk duo stuff, it never really occurred to you that there was this other thing happening.

[Ann Wilson]

Right. The folky stuff is more soft and gentle.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And then when you attempt something like Highway Star, it comes from a whole different place, as you well know.

[Interviewer]

Well, that's. I. At least I've found with. With great rock singers, something about pushing the voice up.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

That's where it's sort of like, wait, what is that?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But if I listen early recordings of you singing rock, it's like you sound like you. Then this is before fame, before radio success.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

That's pretty shocking to me, speaking strictly as a musician to another musician, it's like, how does that happen? But obviously it came to you naturally.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. I don't know how it happens either. It's just something that's in there that's so deep in the child of you, I think.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And so much personality, too. Does it make sense? The way I say it, Only you sing like you.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But it never sound. I can't find a recording of you where you don't sound like you.

[Ann Wilson]

It's funny because at the very beginning, when we were just doing all covers, the first thing you do is you try and imitate the singer in that band, like Ian Gillan or Robert Plant or whoever it was. But no matter how hard you try to imitate somebody else, you end up sounding like yourself.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. I had the same problem, unfortunately.

[Ann Wilson]

Did you.

[Interviewer]

Did you have ambitions when you were young to. I mean, not just to be a musician. Did you have ambitions that I wanted to be successful? Like some people have a vision of fame or. Or did you just wanna be a working musician? Like, what was the process in that?

[Ann Wilson]

I thought that I wanted to be a musician for sure. Cause it was the only thing that interested me. And when other girls were so excited about boys and clothes and stuff like that, I was only excited about playing music.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And Nancy was the same then.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

In your formative years before this rock voice emerges, like, who in your mind was somebody that you would have loved to have been as a singer? Like.

[Ann Wilson]

Well, Aretha Franklin, of course. She was my. She inspired me and gave me goosebumps first. She was the first one that really knocked my hair on end. I would like to have been her.

[Interviewer]

Do you. Have you seen that film that came out recently? It's the concert film where she sings in the church.

[Ann Wilson]

No.

[Interviewer]

Oh, you haven't seen that?

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, I gotta see it.

[Interviewer]

What happened was. I can't remember. Somebody paid for the film to be made. It's her singing spirituals in a church somewhere here in la. And whatever happened, the sync for the film was messed up. So the film never got released. And now with computers, they were able to line up the film with the soundtrack. And it's unbelievable.

[Rula Therapy Announcer]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

Bernard Purdy's playing the drums. Like, she has a real band playing with her in the church, full choir and her singing spirituals. And she's just sit. She's standing at the. I'm getting chills, telling you. She's just standing at the lectern singing. And it's about an hour of her singing spirituals at her at her absolute physical peak, like 72.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's jaw dropping.

[Ann Wilson]

And she came from the church, so.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Her dad was a big preacher, I think, in Detroit.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But to see her at the height of her pop career.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Go into a local church and sing just straight spirituals.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

With the choir. It is. You got to see that.

[Ann Wilson]

It divine.

[Interviewer]

It's unbelievable.

[Ann Wilson]

I saw her once here in LA at the. Was it the Rainbow? It was a little cameo thing.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Ann Wilson]

And she was just on this little pie crust stage and we were sitting at a table right by the stage and, you know, Aretha comes on and by the time she'd gotten through one song, I was just bawling, I was crying, you know, because it was just too great. It was so wonderful.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Some people have a Level.

[Ann Wilson]

She had a glow coming off her that was just.

[Interviewer]

Well, some people, it's. It's almost godly. The talent.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Rula Therapy Announcer]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

She definitely was one of those people.

[Ann Wilson]

Transcendent, for sure.

[Interviewer]

Did you. When. When you found you the singer, did you. Did you understand that's what had happened, or were you still kind of like. Because at that point, you're. You're just a club singer.

[Ann Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Did you feel like, whoa, I've tripped into something special, or. Yes.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And I always thought that it was special and that it was, like I said a second ago, that it was somehow divine and spiritual. And so I was serious in that way about even just singing a who song or something like that. To me, that was a really spiritual thing.

[Interviewer]

I found this song, Daybreaks was the band.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Through Eyes and Glass.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, yeah. That's. That's the first real song that Nancy and I ever wrote.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And see, we're already on this high horse about. In that song. It's about a couple who are just fakes. They're phonies.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Ann Wilson]

They're just acting their roles in their life.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And the chorus is get off the train. Get off the train. The train of fakeism.

[Interviewer]

You know, there's a lot of lines about the train.

[Ann Wilson]

I remember be real, you know. Yeah. And we were probably. I was probably about 16 when we wrote that.

[Interviewer]

So what's crazy is, like, I listened to it this morning. I mean, it sounds like you today. Yeah, it's crazy to me. It is. Sorry to go on about it.

[Ann Wilson]

No, that's. That's good.

[Interviewer]

When you. When you went down this path, that it was going to be music that was going to be your life's path. How were your parents with that?

[Ann Wilson]

They were split. Our mother was very suspicious of it and worried that, you know, we were going to fall into the entertainer archetype where you take drugs and drink yourself to death.

[Interviewer]

You know, they weren't wrong.

[Ann Wilson]

Like Judy Garner.

[Interviewer]

They weren't wrong. Right, right.

[Ann Wilson]

But our father was, from the first moment, was really behind it, really very proud of us and, you know, drove us to gigs and.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, all that. That's a beautiful.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

There's this because when I interviewed your sister in that chair, we talked about this time where you guys were kind of working as a folk duo, and then you went off with the band Seattle up to Vancouver, something like that. Right. That's the general. Yep. Hocus Pocus was the band, if I remember correctly, before Hart.

[Ann Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Once you weren't working with your sister, how Instrumental. Were you with bringing her into the group?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. She was still at university, and I'd gone up to Vancouver following a man.

[Interviewer]

And this is the guy who was the. Was the manager of the band, or was it that guy?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, Michael Fisher. And he'd gone up there to not participate in the Vietnam War. So we were Americans up there. And I was loving it, just being up there, being romantic, just the two of us. But the band followed me, so pretty soon all of them were up there, too. And so we formed a band and I. The only thing that was missing was a good, strong backup harmony and the acoustic guitar. So I kept inviting Nancy to come up to Vancouver, and she did whenever she got a break from school, and she started to come up more often, and she would sit in with us because we were playing all kinds of clubs in those days, and high school dances and stuff like that, but was a stage. It was a way for us to get up there and work on it. And she finally came up enough that Mike Flicker, the producer, heard us with her on stage and wanted to give us a record contract with all of us.

[Interviewer]

This mushroom was mushroom. Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

So she stayed.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Wow. It strikes me that lyrics were hugely important to you from the beginning. Is that a fair. That's true, yeah. Where did you think that came from? Was it the singer has to believe what you're singing, or. It's unusual that the lyrics were that important to a young artist? I think.

[Ann Wilson]

I think it was because our father was a. Was a word man, and he was also an English teacher, and he would get a few beers in him and he would recite poetry at cocktail parties and at the dinner table. And so it was.

[Interviewer]

Is this Irish or Scottish solo we're talking about?

[Ann Wilson]

Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Very much used to be in those families, very emotional. And so that was the language spoken in our family. So lyrics to me are everything.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I love Dreamboat Annie. I'm a sucker for that song.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, thank you.

[Interviewer]

Warmwind Caress her. Her lover, it seems oh, Annie Dreamboat Annie Ship of dreams I'm sure you've been asked, but I can't resist. How autobiographical is that?

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, totally. Yeah. Just arts. It's the metaphor for us.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Just. Just little wooden ship, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Growing up and listening to rock radio in the 70s, you know, your emergence on the radio, of course, regional radio was so regional back then.

[Ann Wilson]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

We didn't always understand in Chicago that, you know, hart necessarily wasn't popular in other cities, but in Chicago, it seemed to me from the very Beginning, you guys were a big band. You were on the radio constantly.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. There were a few cities, especially in the Midwest. St. Louis was another one.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

That started out just, you know, getting us. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So there were kind of two stories that were presented to us as Fans in the 70s about your band. One was, this is a credible band fronted by women. So the cool thing was the rock crowd in Chicago accepted you guys from the very beginning, which I think is cool. But the other thing, there was a lot of focus on your looks. You know, how comfortable, uncomfortable were you with that? From the beginning

[Ann Wilson]

it varied. Sometimes really comfortable, sometimes highly uncomfortable. Because it's. So there's such a double standard for women.

[Interviewer]

Absolutely. Even to this day. For sure.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And it's just something you have to live with. And when you get the bad comments, you know, you just have to go, well, okay, how about the rest of what I do, you know?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And you just have to go on.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I mean, I remember talking about it with your sister a bit, but it's almost like you two almost had to build a business that wasn't there before.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

There had been, of course, credible female rock stuff. Right. But something about your emergence into the American rock scene when you emerged signaled that, okay, this isn't just the same stuff. I don't want to be pedantic about it, but it's felt different. And it. And now we see historically it was different.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, it was different. And a lot of people in the industry didn't know what to do with us. Oh, I'm sure from the get go.

[Interviewer]

Especially a male dominated industry.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. The big question back in those days was, why aren't there more women in rock? And I think the answer was that women had to build their own universe, a parallel universe in rock.

[Interviewer]

I know what you mean, but I actually want you to talk more about it. It's very interesting to me. Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Women couldn't go by the same rules. They had to make. Make a new infrastructure that understood women.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And accepted women as people.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Of different sizes, shapes, looks, personalities, and

[Interviewer]

probably almost have to prove more than male counterparts many times.

[Ann Wilson]

There's a lot of truth in what the first line of feminists always used to say about you have to do everything better than men and do it in high heels, backwards.

[Interviewer]

That was the Ginger Rogers line. Right. What was her great line? People always talk about Fred's dancing. I had to do it in heels

[Ann Wilson]

backwards and high heels. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

We can look back now because obviously in many ways it was a more Innocent time. I'm not. I know it wasn't mean. Doesn't mean it was innocent. But it's more innocent now because we understand that what you did really was trailblazing. How do you feel now looking at the incredible crop of female led rock artists that are out there now accepted by the male audiences, are able to compete basically peer to peer on the charts?

[Ann Wilson]

Well, it's really amazing how many examples there are of women that are just going for it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And I'm not saying that every one of them is incredible because there's a lot of. When there's so much, so many examples of people doing it, pretty soon people get lost in the crowd. They become anonymous kind of. And there's too many, too much saturation.

[Interviewer]

What is the stat now? 200,000 songs are released a day. Oh God. Makes you want to get into studio and record, doesn't it? Here's another one. Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just. It just strikes me that, that that's what I mean in a way. It's. We can look back in those times in the 70s with some sense of innocence because you, you got there in a way first. And there's always the first mover advantage of being there first. But we can also see that it opened the doors to so many artists that followed.

[Ann Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

It shouldn't really be a sexist business. It's the strangest thing to me that it is a sexist business. It's always struck me as odd.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. It probably won't be forever though. I can see it sort of well though I must say that women have always been the biggest, the ones who are the most anti woman. They set the bar so high.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I see.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And so it's just really hard for women who aren't maybe super talented or super courageous.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Ann Wilson]

To go in there and succeed.

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[Interviewer]

Talk a little bit about because that the set like Heart. I call it heart 1.0. But that, that, that early version of the band, that band was so good. What a great. What a great rock and roll band.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. That. That band really played a lot.

[Interviewer]

And just you guys doing like 200 dates a year type tours.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And in those days it might have been even more because we did sometimes two things a day all over the place.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And it's just ridiculous shows.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, back then, you had to build your rep on the road. There was really no. It was radio and the road.

[Ann Wilson]

And that's how you got good as a unit. As a playing unit.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But what a great thing. How did. How did the. Because obviously all bands have their testosterone, including the ladies involved. But how did the band deal with so much of the focus being on you and Nancy? Like, were they cool with it?

[Ann Wilson]

They were at first, because they could see that it was bringing us success. But after a while, they got really tired of it and it became a thing. Like, for instance, when Rolling Stone wants to do a cover story, or on Heart, they only want to talk to Nancy and Ann. And that, after a while, really got under the guy's skin. And it became the thing that separated the people in the band right down gender lines, really. So the very thing that made Hart interesting and unusual, the microcosm of men and women working together, became the thing that ultimately kind of destroyed that first lineup.

[Interviewer]

That's a shame.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And it's weird how that happened.

[Interviewer]

Did you feel like they almost kind of blamed you and your sister, even though. Like, what are you supposed to do about it?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Well, I was a real pariah then for a while because I was the one that was speaking the most for the band and the press. And so the guys were not happy about all that. The bass player didn't understand why it wasn't him speaking for the band.

[Interviewer]

You know, we all have had these similar problems in our lives.

[Ann Wilson]

I'll bet you understand.

[Interviewer]

Do. Well, I understand my band used to get mad at me for similar things. And I used to say, I don't know what you want me to do about that. You know what I mean?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Say no. Yeah, say no.

[Interviewer]

No. They would want me to turn interviews down, turn photo shoots down, turn. Insist that interviews could only happen if everybody was present. And then if everyone was present and then the interviewer didn't ask them all the same amount of questions. They were mad at me.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Because I hadn't pre negotiated, like, stuff like that. Like, you're just kind of like, wow, this is pretty bizarre. Like, I got. This is the. I have. This is the. Where I have the least amount of control with the media.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, and you know what that feels like? It's like.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's not like it looks. It can look shiny from the outside, but from the inside, it's.

[Ann Wilson]

It's.

[Interviewer]

It's. It's hard to be vulnerable. It's hard to have people picking you apart.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And Talking about a lot of stuff you don't even necessarily want to talk about.

[Ann Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

In your mind, at least. In my mind. I was thinking, well, I'm promoting the band.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know what I mean?

[Ann Wilson]

And this is all interesting.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit?

[Ann Wilson]

There's.

[Interviewer]

There's a deeper point I'm after. But can you talk about your songwriting philosophy? Because I. I was impressed because, you know, the. The general story, and correct me if I'm getting the general story wrong, the general story is you have this integral band, great rock band, 70s, you're writing your own music. The 80s comes Colin. You end up using all these outside writers. You've been very vocal about how you don't necessarily love all that stuff, although you appreciate that the fans love it.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But I was impressed because I listened to some of your recent albums, and it's like, I was like, wow, that songwriter is still there. And I felt like I found something beautiful in checking out your more recent work, because I was like, there's the writer that I grew up with, and she's still talking.

[Ann Wilson]

That's amazing. Thank you.

[Interviewer]

Do you feel that? Is that.

[Ann Wilson]

I do. I do.

[Interviewer]

I was like, now more than ever. What was the song? I listened to Greed on Fierce Bliss.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I was like, I know that person. I grew up listening to this person's writing. I know this voice. Not just the singer in you, but this voice.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I thought that was so cool that you kind of found your way back to that.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And it was really something that was really important to both Nancy and I after the 80s was to come crawling out of that. It was one of those devil's bargains you always see.

[Interviewer]

You definitely made it for sure.

[Ann Wilson]

Make it in the music world.

[Interviewer]

But

[Ann Wilson]

to come out of that and come back to ourselves was not easy.

[Interviewer]

It strikes me. And I did talk about it with your sis a bit, but it struck me as particularly painful because you guys were so good and you really were your own music. Yeah, that. That transition is so strange to me. And I. I'm not judging it because I know that those pressures are not easy to navigate. But the fact that you have this recent. This last two albums that you put out, like, there's that writer, that same person who wrote Dreambone Annie, like, she's still writing music. I was like, wow, this is cool.

[Ann Wilson]

That's great.

[Interviewer]

I really enjoyed that.

[Ann Wilson]

So that's so great. Thank you.

[Interviewer]

I hope you feel that, because it's important to me, even to hear it,

[Ann Wilson]

you know, well, songwriting that I've been doing lately with Trip Sitter is really rewarding. I mean, it's because anything goes doesn't have to be within the confines of what's acceptable. In the 80s.

[Interviewer]

Did you have to almost kind of refind your songwriting voice?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

[Interviewer]

Can you talk about, like, how does that work for you, or how did it work for you?

[Ann Wilson]

Well, I think. Well, the song Greed, for instance, was. I just wanted to come and write something that was happening currently. And so I was thinking about, you know, the corporate greed and all that kind of stuff that was. That's so rampant in our country. And I was just trying to think of a way to talk about that without being preachy.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And just. So the stuff I'm writing now is

[Interviewer]

about all kinds of things, but I guess it's the. I don't know, the je ne sais quoi. It's the essence of you as a writer. I don't know what that is because, you know, heart 1.0, there's, like, weird info. There's folk, there's Zep, there's Prague, there's God knows what else. You know what I mean? Janice, Ian. I don't know. You know what I mean? There's, like, an interesting mix of influences there, and it seems like somehow you've kind of come back to those influences in a way, but it doesn't sound dated.

[Ann Wilson]

Well, that's good. Thank you.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. That's so important, too, because.

[Interviewer]

Well. Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Especially if you got to sing it. Right.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

When it's like, I feel like we're talking about a decade when the 80s happened. Can you talk a little bit about that first time that you felt like, okay, we're in this situation. We have this big business. There's all this pressure on us to continue to be on the radio, or we haven't had the radio success. And now they're putting all this pressure. Talk about that. Because that's something I think most people don't understand in the modern world.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah,

[Interviewer]

like 80. It was about 82 or something, I feel like.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, it was 82, 83.

[Interviewer]

Like, suddenly, like, they kind of put the pins on you guys.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. We had a record contract with Capital at that point, and it was the thing that picked us up from not being able to be arrested. You know, I think we got dropped from Epic, and we met this guy, Don Grierson, who's no longer with us, but he was A and R at Capital at the time. And he said, well, I really believe in you guys, so come to Capital and I'll help you find the right songs, you know. And so it was come hither, you know, and it was sort of presented like, you can do this or you can just say bye bye.

[Interviewer]

They presented it to your management, sort of translated the. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Because at that point we were. We were using big time corporate LA management.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Ann Wilson]

And. Which is scary enough on its own. Yeah, but. But yeah, it was a complete devil's bargain.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And it really. The songs that we were presented with, you just kind of had to swallow real hard and. And go, well, there's something about the song I like, but it hasn't got any substance. Yeah, that was the problem I had with most of the songs that we got in the 80s that we did. Even the hits.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, even I listened to that one today. That. It's like, I know you flipped the gender, but like, you're the hitchhiker picking up.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, yeah. All I want to do is make

[Interviewer]

love to you what a weird.

[Ann Wilson]

No substance and God, what a brutal, mean thing to do to a. Another person.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, but did you. I mean, I talked with your sis about it a bit, but at the end of the day, I mean, I know she sang the one song, but I mean, at the end of the day you're the singer and you know, I. I guess maybe I'm. Excuse me for overly projecting, but as a singer who writes his own song, it strikes me as. It must have been very painful for you to be in this position. Like, why doesn't my own song work in this dynamic anymore? Is that fair to say that?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And that was a clear case of me not understanding the zeitgeist of the 80s at all. Because if I had understood that, I would have known that the songs I was writing, we were writing together were just. They were somewhere else.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Ann Wilson]

And they weren't artificial, they weren't glossy, all those things that the 80s music was.

[Interviewer]

So if you had to do over again, would you. Would you have come at it differently?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How? Just indulge me on.

[Ann Wilson]

I would have understood. I would have spent more time listening to the radio, for instance, and understanding what it was that was turning everyone on so much, and not just the sound of it, not to copy other records, but to get a feeling about the soul of what's there in the soul.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Because I once, Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick, they had that number one hit with the song the Game, if you remember that song. Robin delivers this incredible vocal as only Robin could. You know, he's a great singer and I know you guys did a song together, but Rick was the main writer for Cheap Trick. And I remember being in Rick's house one time and saying, did that kill you? And he kind of had this attitude like, well, you know, same thing we were with Epic and the pressure, and you have to. We used an outside writer, and we had a big hit, and suddenly we were playing bigger places. So he had kind of processed it.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But I still, to this day, as someone who loves Rick as a person, I still feel like it hurt him in a way that he never totally recovered from.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

He may argue with me on that. I mean, I'm not in his brain. I don't know if anybody's in Rick's brain, but point being is you're a great songwriter. Rick's a great songwriter. And as somebody who writes for a living, it just strikes me as just so hurtful. I don't. I don't even know if I even have the words to put it.

[Ann Wilson]

Way hurtful. Yeah. Because we had some really cool songs. We thought some. Some really deep, like, emotionally fulfilling songs that could have been great if they would have been listened to and given a chance, but they weren't.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Is it just wrong songs for the cheese of the time?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

But coming out of that was. Was pretty inspiring.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Ann Wilson]

When it got to the 90s, and. And of course in the 90s, nobody wanted to hear our kind of stuff. Either.

[Interviewer]

You talking about the 70s version or the 80s version, or.

[Ann Wilson]

I think everyone thought of hart in the 90s. Everyone thought of Hart as being a RELIC from the 70s.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Except for a couple things like Barracuda and the things that were more heavy.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, to be fair to you, I think it was such a time of change that it's. It's common to just want to wipe everything out.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And that's. That's really what happened in the 90s. It was like this giant tsunami.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And there went the 80s. It was gone.

[Interviewer]

You know, but of course, you had that moment where you. Sagan. The Jerry song. The rooster. Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Brother, too.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's right. And I think for all of us in Gen X, it was a beautiful reminder of, like. No, actually, heart's part of our world. Somehow it brought you back into our world. And I know you guys started doing other side projects. I can't remember the names of the. You started doing those other records. Like, you know what I'm talking about. You weren't heart. You were love mongers. Thank you. Isn't there somewhere But I'm saying is. It seemed to kind of. I don't know, did it help kind of wake you guys back up, too? Like.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

There's a community out here that actually does really love and celebrates us.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And we. We actually found a lot of good friends in that community.

[Interviewer]

Well, yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And. And because.

[Interviewer]

Because. Because maybe on this. On the surface, it might have seemed like, oh, yeah, this is the band that did Barracuda. But you had a lot of love from the Gen X community.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Because we'd grown up with you, and you were so important to that world. You weren't just a pop act.

[Ann Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Like, you meant something to that world.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And that was so surprising to me that people like Jerry Cantrell and everything would be so. They would. He would always tell me how much he loved certain ones of our songs, and they were.

[Interviewer]

One song is basically an Alice in Chains song of yours. It's like. It's Alice in Chains 20 years before Alice in Chains.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, you mean.

[Interviewer]

I can't think of the. You know, the song. It's. It's. It's a very interesting kind of gothic ballad you have. It's just like, very musical. Chain crazy. I can't remember the title of it.

[Ann Wilson]

Is it Rage?

[Interviewer]

Can't remember. It's a very. It's. It literally sounds like Alice in Chains, but you guys had done it in, like, 80 or something. It's more of an album cut.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But Jerry talked about how he. Basically, that song's, like, part of his inspiration for.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, that's. That's cool. Yeah, I saw him the other night.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

He actually came to the. The first time we did the DOC show. The doc.

[Interviewer]

Oh, okay.

[Ann Wilson]

Because he speaks in it.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's fantastic. And very fond of Jerry.

[Ann Wilson]

He's doing so great. Yeah, he's really doing great.

[Interviewer]

Well, see this? Songwriter. Yeah, right. Real songwriter.

[Ann Wilson]

Yep. So

[Interviewer]

I don't want to belabor the issue with everybody focused on your image. I mean, that's been off. Explored.

[Ann Wilson]

But

[Interviewer]

what struck me that might be interesting to talk about from a different perspective is there's such a different attitude towards. I mean, the common thing is body positivity. But there's such a less. I'm not saying there's less focus on female artists looks, but there's a different mindset in the musical community. Like, you cannot judge people on these things. Like, they would have judged people in the past.

[Ann Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Do you at least see that now? Do you? Because you were. You were. Obviously, you were treated very roughly in those times.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. I had to go through some.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, for sure.

[Ann Wilson]

But, yeah, I think there is a pretty imperceptible, almost, but very real change now. Like, you see people like Lola Young, you see Lizzo, I mean, you see people who are being accepted even though they don't fit the mold.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I think it's powerful.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I'm not the wokest person in the world, you know what I mean, as it's commonly defined, but I think of all the things that have come out of the social movements of the last 10 to 15 years, I think the body positivity movement is the one that's, to me, one of the most powerful.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. It definitely opens up the souls of a lot of people to actually try to write music and sing and speak, you know, who never would before because they were just scared that they would be rejected.

[Interviewer]

To me, that's one of the legacies of the Gen X alternative community is that generation which I was a part of, we brought in a lot of, like, you really need to look at these things a lot differently.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And that was one of them.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, I agree with that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Very, very.

[Interviewer]

So if there's any legacy there, that's a proud one. Because music really should be the great equalizer. It should really just be, how talented are you? And can you emotionally connect to an audience? All the other stuff is really more the product of capitalism.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, exactly. Right. The entertainment rules. The rules of the entertainment rules world.

[Interviewer]

Well, oftentimes dictated by men to women.

[Ann Wilson]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

By the way.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Not that you've ever been through that.

[Ann Wilson]

Never.

[Interviewer]

There's this mo. There's this moment in your. In your historical lore where, you know, somewhere in the 90s, your sister comes to you and says, I need a break.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, and when I asked her, she said, you were not happy. No, about that.

[Ann Wilson]

I was not. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Because. Oh, please.

[Ann Wilson]

Because at that moment, Hart was in a very precarious state of, are we going to exist or not? And if we were going to exist, we had to pull together and just rally everything we had to make it happen. And she chose that moment to say, no, I want to take a break. I want to start a family. And there was nothing I could do to persuade her. I pleaded, I cried, I did everything. But she was set on it. I mean, she was married to Cameron. They were happy. They wanted to do this thing. So I eventually just accepted it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I wanted to come at it slightly differently because it struck me that somewhere along the way, between 1970, whatever and this moment where your sister says, okay, I need to take a break. I mean, somebody must have whispered it in your. At some point, said, you know, you can go solo. You don't need Heart. You don't need your sister. It can be all about you. I mean, somebody must have offered you that along the way.

[Ann Wilson]

Well, I've had that offer many times along the way, but I've always been a band person. I want to be in a band.

[Interviewer]

But that's kind of what I was after was part of your frustration, like, look, I stayed here to do this thing with you together that we call Heart.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. And. But sometimes.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

There might be something that's bigger than the band.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Ann Wilson]

Can you believe that? You know? I mean.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Do you think if you'd gone solo somewhere in that arc, you know, do you ever think about that?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And I did try to do some solo stuff during that time.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And it was fun, but.

[Interviewer]

But you know what I mean. Yeah. It wasn't working, but you know what I mean? Like, if you'd said, right, okay, I'm gonna be a solo artist now.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I mean, look at the success of Phil Collins. Look at the success of other people who kind of broke out of their bands.

[Ann Wilson]

Stevie Nicks, huge solo.

[Interviewer]

Well, I. I mean, I love Stevie. I'm gonna assume you do too. I mean, no one would say that you're not the equal or greater than a vocalist than Stevie, and she's one of the greats of all time. So I'm saying is it's not to play Monday morning quarterback and say, well, this could have been. But it strikes me that if you would at some point in that arc, focus strictly on a solo career.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. It could have happened. I was just never interested in it, you know, I never had that. Oh, it's all about me. Like the. It's gotta be the Ann Wilson show, you know, Like, I never had that. Nowadays, I don't even really have that, but I'm working with a band where it's called Ann Wilson and Trip Sitter. So it's kind of all about me songwriting. Yeah. Than this great band, you know? So.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

That's about the closest I've ever come to being a solo artist.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I'm just. It's. Oh, that's because we. I was in the same mentality. It was band, band, band, band.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So even when people would say that stuff, it's like, no, no, the band.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Like, that's my whole thing.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. But then when the ultimate Thing happens and somebody doesn't want to do it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Or, or somebody dies or something like that. You've got to figure it out.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Like think of, think of what it was like for Alice in Chains when. When Lane went past.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

That was a huge kick in the stomach for them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, actually, when Alice reformed with William, their singer, ever since I actually joined them in LA at a show and sang on stage with them because they were so great, but they were kind of doing this. Okay, now this is going to be the new version, Alison Chains. And as you can imagine, there were many people that were skeptical.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, of course.

[Interviewer]

You know, like, why are you continuing and what are you doing?

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, people always are.

[Interviewer]

No, I get that. But in. You know, as you can imagine, it's particularly difficult if you don't have the singer.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know what I mean? Because the singer is. The public just identifies with that voice.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And of course, in the case of Lane, when an incredible.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Gifted talent.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I saw, I saw mention where, where, you know, you. You obliquely referred to excess. You know, excess in your life. Meaning, like I don't know if it's. Or alcohol or self medicating.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How'd you kind of find your way out of that?

[Ann Wilson]

Well, I. It was two things. It was. My doctor said, your liver, I've never seen numbers like this. You're. You've got to change your ways because your. Your liver is not happy. And so that scared me. But the thing that really got me to stop was my children. They were. My daughter was born and I realized in a flash that I could not relate to her if I was altered and even a little bit, like not even alcohol, nothing, you know. And so that sort of got me off it. And then when my son was born, he mentioned something to me because I had gone back to, oh, I'll just have a little bit, you know. He mentioned something to me and it just humiliated me and made me feel awful. So I decided just to stop everything.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Ann Wilson]

It was really them.

[Interviewer]

Wow. I want to play a small game. I thought you're so uniquely voiced to play this game with me because we've seen such massive changes in entertainment over the decades, so. And you could take it however you want. It struck me that you're the perfect person to play this game. If it's silly, you can tell me. It's silly. So what was your perception of music and the community of the music business? However you want to take that, whether it was on television or what you were listening to on the radio. What was your impression of music as a business or as an artistic way of expressing oneself in the 60s?

[Ann Wilson]

Oh. Oh. I thought it was the most glamorous thing I'd ever seen. And all those people, those long, shaggy people who were doing it were just gorgeous to me, and I wanted to be part of it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so now fast forward to the 70s. Now you're in it.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Now what's your impression?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, well, it was pretty glamorous and glorious. Yeah. In the 70s. And of course, you're in your 20s, so you've got all that physical energy. You're at the height of your physical beauty, your power.

[Interviewer]

And by the way, there's live clips of you guys from playing from the 70s, and you guys are rocking.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I mean, you're just rocking.

[Ann Wilson]

Well, we. We played so much that we were just current within, but, you know, you

[Interviewer]

can't fake that, man.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I mean, you're just killing it.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Ann Wilson]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

Okay. 80s.

[Ann Wilson]

80s was. Was like somebody put a gag on you, kind of on your true feelings. And it was all about mtv, so it was more about stylists. And so a lot of the things that. That made you. You were not cool. Like, you know, you had to be styled by somebody else.

[Interviewer]

Yes. Uh, there's a lot of big hair going on.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, a lot of big hair. And you don't know what it took to get the hair like that. I mean, it was amazing. And you had to sing somebody else's song, so. So it was almost like being just being a hireling.

[Interviewer]

Wow. 90s, 90s.

[Ann Wilson]

We didn't have the big, huge success, commercial success, but the 90s was one of the most satisfying times ever because there was so much amazing music going on in Seattle. And being a part of that community was just great. And I did work for a couple of years at Teatro Zanzani, which. Do you know what that is? It started in Seattle. It's Norm Langel. It's a kind of a cabaret drag show, but it's scripted, it's a play.

[Interviewer]

Okay. I have heard about this.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And the guy who started at Norm Lando went to Spain to the clown bar and got hired a bunch of clowns from different countries. So it was a cast of 13 people. I was one of them. And there were only two of us that were American. The rest were, like Russian and French and.

[Interviewer]

And was it. You were just part of the show?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. And I played the strolling chanteuse where I sang jazz. Jazz songs and stuff like that. Yeah, I did that for a couple years in Seattle and in San Francisco.

[Interviewer]

Oh.

[Ann Wilson]

So that's how I spent the 90s. It was pretty. Pretty fun. Yeah, it was really fun.

[Interviewer]

Okay. 2000s.

[Ann Wilson]

In the 2000s, I started to really, really want to get back to art, the. The bigness of it all.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And so Nancy and I started out the 2000s by going on a duet tour, just the two of us.

[Interviewer]

I've seen clips of that. Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And that was great. That was right down to the core of everything.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, back to where you started, really.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, that's right. And so we did that, and then we started putting the band back together. Mic Inez played bass with us for a while.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Ann Wilson]

For.

[Interviewer]

What a great human being, by the way.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, God, yeah.

[Interviewer]

What a lovely just person.

[Ann Wilson]

Amazing comedic timing. Just one of the funniest guys. Yeah. And so we started getting heart back together with new people.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And that sort of opened up to what we have now.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So having lived it both from a fan to a performer, and then, you see, with what's coming with technology and AI, were you falling on all that? Because, as you know, it's the number one topic.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, we're all sitting around dinner tables wondering what's coming.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And I'm scared.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Tell me why.

[Ann Wilson]

Because I feel that not about the AI itself, but about how much the world is accepting it.

[Interviewer]

That's. I'm with you on that.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It shocks me how there's no discussion on, like, where's this going?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

There's kind of a general, like, whoa. But, like, not the real discussion.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. And I. I'm just afraid that, like, any worker whose job might be taken by a machine, I think you're safe.

[Interviewer]

But.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, but. But I mean, you have those examples of songs that have been written by AI.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Ann Wilson]

And how absolutely despicable the lyrics are and the way they sound. But the thing that pisses me the most off about that is it's. There's no soul. There's no humanity. It's.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. I had.

[Ann Wilson]

I'm scared about that.

[Interviewer]

I had a group dinner about a month ago, and I happened to be sitting next to a guy who's an AI engineer for a big tech, and he was basically telling me what's coming. Like, the stuff that's not out. And he said that the progress is so frighteningly fast that they're even almost trying to hold it back, because at some point, once it reaches a point of singularity, the progress will be so fast that the human mind won't be able to keep up.

[Ann Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

With it. The other thing was, I got an email the other day from an intellectual property lawyer that I work with on other stuff, and he said that artists are now starting to explore because it's. It's not in law yet, the ability to trademark your voice, the way you speak, the way you sing.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And your mannerisms. Because families are going to have to start protecting the intellectual property of talents because no one knows where this goes.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, Yeah. I know. Everyone in our legal and management world is upset about that whole.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, thank you.

[Ann Wilson]

But there's no way to control it right now. It's like playing whack A mole.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Ann Wilson]

You see one and you beat it down and another one pops up.

[Interviewer]

Have you had people do the fake songs with you using your voice yet?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

That's a weird one. I've happened to me, too.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. It's so weird.

[Interviewer]

It's out there, right?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Since you're a lifer and since you've spent most of your life on the road, is there anything that you've learned, like, any life lessons? Because it's a. It's a lonely gig. I think, singers, it's. Everybody has a sort of idealized idea what it means to be the singer in the band. My personal opinion is it's kind of a solitary gig.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. And you have to rely so much on your physicality to come through for you.

[Interviewer]

Can I ask you a question?

[Ann Wilson]

Sure.

[Interviewer]

Since you're somebody I admire so much, do you think part of that is because we have to work with the breath so much?

[Ann Wilson]

Yes, the breath and just the whole mechanism from ABS all the way through. But the way I think about the whole breath thing is I think that it's the divine wind that we singers get. And if we can go like this, we're laughing. It's. When we try to sing from here, it doesn't work.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

It's gotta come through.

[Interviewer]

So for you, from a almost spiritual perspective, it's gotta come this way.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. There's this beautiful quote I read once. Allen Ginsberg was talking about Bob Dylan at the height of, like, Bob Dylan 65. And the phrase that Ginsburg used was he called Dylan a column of air. Because Dylan was singing those crazy, you know, blonde and blonde songs where, you know, these impossibly long sentences, you know, songs with 14 stanzas, that he memorized them all. And he said Bob was just this column of air.

[Ann Wilson]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

I thought it was such an interesting description of Dylan in that time. This just one guy on stage with a guitar, but this ability to just move air.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, amazing. Don't you wish everything was more rewarding with Rakuten? Almost everything is. You can earn cash back on those new shoes you've been wanting. You can save on the next trip you book. You can cash in on groceries. Just join, shop your favorite brands and save Target, Instacart, Expedia, Macy's, Sephora, cvs. The list is long. Save online, in store and at over 22,000 restaurants. And when it's time to redeem those rewards, get your money exactly how you want it. Choose PayPal, check, Bilt points or cash out with gift cards. Eligible American Express card members can choose to earn membership rewards points instead of cash back. Terms and conditions apply. So go ahead, take a trip, fill a cart, order dessert. Rakuten is a world of rewards. Join today for free. Go to rakuten.com or get the app that's R a K u T E

[Interviewer]

N I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Ray Davies, you know, another famed sibling.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Situation. I don't do gossip, so I'm not asking for gossip. It's more of like, what's it like to play in a band with your sibling? I guess the, the. The. The. Not the gossip version. Like, Like when I asked. When I asked Dave about working with Ray, I mentioned something about an interaction I'd had with his brother and he. He stopped me and didn't want to hear the story. Oh. Because he sensed it was going to be somewhat negative.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, right.

[Interviewer]

And then he said, no, go on, go and tell me. And I told him it wasn't. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't anything bad. I wouldn't have brought it up if it was terrible. And he said something along the lines to me, like, that's just the way my brother is. And he defended his brother in only a way that a sibling would defend a sibling, not how a bandmate would defend a bandmate. Because, as you know, most bandmates will throw their bandmate under the bus.

[Ann Wilson]

Of course they will. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So just if you could just give us a little bit of a three dimensional look, because you've had this incredibly long artistic relationship that goes obviously parallel to your relationship as sisters. Yeah, well, sorry for the long winded question. Oh, no, I just. I didn't want it to come across as what's it like to be in a band with your sister?

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, right. Yeah. No, I get that. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

That's what I mean. To me, that doesn't have the heart in it. And no pun intended. You know, it strikes me as such a deep thing to share an artistic life with a sibling.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And we most of the time, finish each other's sentences, especially where music is concerned. No one sings harmony like her. And there are things about what she does, what she can bring, that nobody else can bring. I mean, maybe they could, but it would take three. Three guys to replace her.

[Interviewer]

Well, I've only met your sister a couple times. I've been with her since a couple times. But she strikes me. She's kind of like some people. They have that kind of magical fairy creature thing.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Is that a fair. She's kind of got that magical fairy creature thing. I don't know what that is, but

[Ann Wilson]

it's like, oh, like, love, everybody, love wins. You know, I mean, she's really got that, and she always has. She's always very Pisces, you know,

[Interviewer]

I know you're Gemini, so.

[Rula Therapy Announcer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

I really miss her when we can't be together. And so we've had a tough time because we both got married to these very different people. And the men are kind of like dogs sort of circling each other. You know, they don't hate each other, but it's very different because now it's not just the two of us.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Ann Wilson]

And when it's just the two of us and I can get her to calm down enough, we have a great time. I saw her last night at the rehearsal for the Grammy thing we're going to do, and she's just. She's just out there running everything and telling everybody what's what and telling the Grammy people how long this is going to be. And she's got that in her. That administrative type desire. I don't have that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I don't know if this is fair, but I got the feeling, talking to her, she truly admires you. Do you feel that?

[Ann Wilson]

I do. I do. And it's a strange line to walk because I know she admires me and I admire her, but I think she. And she's always copying me. She always has. But I think sometimes it frustrates her that, you know, I can do the things I do and she can't be the lead singer because it's just. It's not there.

[Interviewer]

You know?

[Ann Wilson]

She plays an acoustic. Original acoustic guitar.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

And nobody else plays like her.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

I wouldn't want anybody else. If I had my perfect band, she would definitely be in it as the.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. See, the reason I resonate so deeply with that is. I have a brother. He's not a musician, he's an artist. But people always ask me, like, how's your brother with you? Because you've had so much success and made money and all that stuff. And I'm like, I have the greatest brother in the world. Totally supportive. So I guess, in a way, when I interviewed your sister, I was sensitive to that. I wanted to see is there a hint of jealousy or a shadow over that?

[Ann Wilson]

Sometimes I think there's a little jealousy. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I didn't see it, but, I mean, you would. You would know. You know what I mean?

[Ann Wilson]

It's something you feel. Yeah. Like, of course, in our family, you would never say that kind of thing out loud, but. Yeah, I think sometimes it's frustrating to her.

[Interviewer]

Well, the way I resonate with that is when people are freakishly talented like you, the jealousy is not, in a

[Ann Wilson]

way, personal, and there's nothing I can do about it.

[Interviewer]

That's kind of what I mean. I play in a band with somebody who's freakishly talented, and it's like, how did you get that?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, it's.

[Interviewer]

It's. It. If it makes any sense, and I'm not trying to interject myself in your family politic, it's more the idea of, like. It's almost like the jealousy is like, well, why did you get that? That look. You make it look so easy.

[Ann Wilson]

Right. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know what I mean? What's your. What's your view of. I call it pop hegemony. We've had 20 years of just pop overload.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And we all know what that means. We don't even have to define it.

[Ann Wilson]

Oh, pop. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What's your feeling? I'm kind of. This is my own personal rant, but I feel like it's collapsing now. I think we're finally at the end of it. I think the public's reached a point of exhaustion.

[Ann Wilson]

I hope you're right.

[Interviewer]

I would bet good money that I am right. Historically, as you know, music, for some reason, you know, would flip over every seven years.

[Ann Wilson]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Something happened with social media where pop didn't flip over. Right. We almost had this, like, 15, 20 years. It was, like, the same, but different.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. And now it's becoming more international, too.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Ann Wilson]

So it got a transfusion.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Sure.

[Interviewer]

But what's your perspective? Because you've been a student of the game, you know, like, what's your view on that?

[Ann Wilson]

Well, personally, I've always been really suspicious of any music or art that doesn't seem authentic. That just seems formulaic or no substance. And that's how I view pop. Yeah, it's there for a. To entertain. Yeah, strictly to entertain.

[Interviewer]

You know, not to be as lame as this, but I mean, is there like recently somebody said to me, we were talking about a particular pop singer who seems to be struggling publicly. What would you say to a pop singer that. That would hear what you're saying and they would say, I know, I know that's the situation. Am I'm in. But that's the world that I'm in. Do you know what I mean? Like, I mean, and to be fair, you have expressed your own feeling of being trapped in the 80s by some of those pressures. So what would you say to them as somebody who's actually lived through it? You know what I mean?

[Ann Wilson]

Well, I think I would have sympathy. I mean, empathy for them because I do understand the pressures and what they can do to you. I would just say you've got to hang on to your identity. That's all you can say.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Like someone like Chapel Roan. I think that kid is really smart and she's so young and she's so successful already. Just if she keeps a hold of herself, just imagine where she could be when she's 40.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I think that's. We would have similar advice in this regard, which is pop affords you. You know, you kind of call it like a deal with the devil. Pop is the deal with the devil. But the true artist, they can do pop, but they don't. They don't. They're not bound by pop.

[Ann Wilson]

They don't live there. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know what I mean? Like even the true innovators in pop, whether it was Michael Jackson or Madonna or whatever, they were able. Prince, they were able to evolve the game around them. Somehow in the last 20 years, the producers became dominant, the writers became dominant. Now you see it now with 20 people on a writing credit.

[Ann Wilson]

I know. That is so amazing to me.

[Interviewer]

Can you believe that?

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So, okay, last thing. What's. What's the one thing that you still want to accomplish musically that you. You set aside and you just haven't done it?

[Ann Wilson]

Wow. Well, I'd. I'd like to do an old fashioned concept album.

[Interviewer]

Really? Yeah, like a Prague type record. I saw you covering a yes song and I was like, see?

[Ann Wilson]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

There is the Prague thing in there.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah, well, like concept in the sense of like some of the old concept albums in the 70s, like Wish youh Were Here and that has. There's a Through line, running through.

[Interviewer]

So why haven't you?

[Ann Wilson]

I don't know.

[Interviewer]

So I've done three concept records.

[Ann Wilson]

You have?

[Interviewer]

Yeah. The last one I did was a triple. 33 songs.

[Ann Wilson]

Wow. Triple album.

[Interviewer]

I did it during COVID to be fair. I mean, it sounds crazy, but I. I was sitting at home in covet. I was like, I need something to do. So I did a triple. Triple record. Wow. Yeah. So I've done three. 95, 2,020 something. 20, 20 something. Yeah.

[Ann Wilson]

Wow. That's a lot of work.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But it's very rewarding. And I think the thing I would recommend writer to writer is you end up writing songs different than you would normally write because you're more in service to the story than your own. Your own emotions.

[Ann Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Because, you know, most songwriting is just indulgent. This is what I feel. Here's the song. There's something about writing to a narrative that is a different discipline.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And. And sometimes you get surprised things come out of you that you didn't know were in there because. Because of the. You're trying to serve this narrative.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So I hope you do that.

[Ann Wilson]

Yeah. Well, it just sounds like the most incredible, interesting. It's fun to take on.

[Interviewer]

It's fun. It's fun. And. And. And I think in a world of so much noise and so much music, sometimes having a narrative allows people a different entree point into the music.

[Ann Wilson]

True.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Thank you so much.

[Ann Wilson]

Thank you for having me.