Nancy Wilson of Heart | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Summary

The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode: Nancy Wilson of Heart

Release Date: February 11, 2026
Host: Billy Corgan
Guest: Nancy Wilson (Heart, The Love Mongers)

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Episode Overview

In this heartfelt and far-reaching conversation, Billy Corgan invites Nancy Wilson—guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of Heart—to reflect on her musical journey, the creative partnership with her sister Ann, the evolution of Heart, the challenges of the music industry, gender in rock, and the enduring magic of sibling harmony. With warmth and candor, Nancy shares formative stories, behind-the-scenes insights, industry commentary, and personal turning points across five decades of songwriting, performance, and survival in rock and roll.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Impact of The Beatles and Early Musical Awakening

• Formative Influence: Both Nancy and her sister Ann were inspired by The Beatles' Ed Sullivan appearance.
  • "We became the zombies for guitars, you know." (01:18, Nancy)
• Family Roots: The Wilsons were like “the von Trapps,” constantly making music together (“car rides, ukuleles, harmonies”) (01:27, Nancy).
• Learning Guitar:
  • Nancy’s determined pursuit began with a rented “3-quarter size plywood guitar with a dowel neck” (03:44)
  • The struggle with bad instruments and difficult chords (“Life without F... No bar chords allowed.”) (03:57, Nancy)
  • Ann received a better guitar from their grandma, which Nancy would sneak the use of to practice (04:13–04:34).
• Gender and Aspiration:
  • “Not like the guys or the girlfriends of the guys, but be them.” (04:31, Nancy)
    The sisters wanted to be musicians, not just “the girl version” or companions.

2. Ann Wilson’s Voice & Early Collaborations

• Ann’s Vocal Power:
  • “She just like pyrotechnically... and it's effortless.” (05:16, Nancy)
• Influences:
  • Elton John, Robert Plant, and elements sourced from the 1970s rock pantheon (05:56)
• Stage Family:
  • Their parents would have the sisters perform at family parties ("Ethel Merman imitation," "Hawaiian wedding song") (06:32).
• Ann’s Early Struggles:
  • Overcoming insecurity: “Ann was kind of the ugly duckling… so I think a lot of her pain was part of the muscle she put behind her vocalizing—to prove she was lovable. And she proved it.” (07:21, Nancy)

3. The First Bands: Viewpoints & Beyond

• “The Viewpoints”:
  • A protest folk group: “Four little white chicks from suburbia called the Viewpoints… singing about Vietnam.” (08:04, Nancy)
  • Matching Beatles-style uniforms sewn by their mom (08:19).
• Branching Out:
  • Nancy’s time in college before joining Ann’s bands allowed her to assert her independence (“read Dostoevsky... college girl stuff.”) (09:27, Nancy)

4. Family, Moving, and a Military Upbringing

• Background:
  • “A lot of Marines in the family”—resilience, adaptability from moving often (14:25–15:53).
• Parental Support:
  • Despite a military grounding, their parents evolved with the times and were supportive—even as Nancy fell for a draft-evader (the “Magic Man” story).
    • “He [dad] said, you know, you tell that young man that I wouldn’t fight that dirty war.” (17:00, Nancy)

5. The Formation of Heart

• Band Evolution: (18:44–19:10)
  • Ann’s earlier bands: A Boy and His Dog, Daybreak, Hocus Pocus, White Hart (which became Heart).
• Nancy’s Audition:
  • Proving she belonged—learning Yes’s “The Clap” to join the band:
    • “That’s a pretty impressive thing to sort of show up and play.” (19:57, Billy)
    • “I had to just prove it real hard.” (31:35, Nancy)
• Club Band Grind:
  • “You played almost an hour, a break, almost another hour, another break, almost another hour...” (21:28, Nancy)
  • Importance of learning live craft—something many young artists now miss.

6. Artist Development: Then and Now

• Changing Industry Models:
  • Major labels once built artists; now it’s about “getting over” on social media without support (25:02, Nancy/Billy).
  • The challenges and pitfalls of “TikTok culture” for authentic artist development (26:00, Billy): “You’re asking the audience to tell you which version of yourself to be.”
• Nancy’s Role as a Mentor/Manager:
  • Road Case Productions: Developing young artists and artists like Sketchy Goat (22:49–24:31).

7. Mushroom Records, Legal Battles, and Major Label Transition

• Vancouver Scene and Mushroom:
  • Label was a side project of a paint company (27:01)
  • Connections to “vanity labels” and quirky histories.
• Breakout:
  • Landing the deal after Mike Flicker and Howard Leese heard Heart at Oil Can Harry’s (29:48–30:12)
• Legal Tensions:
  • Mushroom’s mishandling of the “Magazine” album led to court and industry war stories (48:21–50:33).

8. The Magic and Challenge of Sibling Harmony

• Sibling Sound:
  • “When the sisters sing together, there’s this thing that happens.” (12:12, Nancy)
  • The unique “blood harmony” of siblings—likened to Everly Brothers, Bee Gees, Beach Boys (47:12, Billy)
• Family Dynamics Inside the Band:
  • “My own self-definition has been as Ann’s sidekick ever since I was born.” (10:37, Nancy)
  • Ann as “initiator,” driving creative projects even as children (10:37–11:44).

9. Navigating Sexism, Band Dynamics, and Public Image

• Industry Sexism:
  • The balancing act of being credible musicians and navigating industry/promo expectations (39:25–41:59)
• Band Tensions:
  • The focus on the sisters created internal friction:
    • “We always had to deal with—the attention just naturally would fall on me and Ann…” (41:59)
    • Album covers favoring the sisters sparked resentment (41:03–41:55).
• Democracy vs. Reality:
  • The “democratic” ambitions of band life vs. the reality that the public focuses on the main songwriters/fronts (“the public chooses your journey”; 42:18–47:03).

10. Gender, Genre, and Breaking Barriers

• Heart as Trailblazers:
  • Being a heavy rock band fronted by women—“built a different type of business that didn’t exist before” (55:26, Billy)
  • Midwest rock radio’s openness—accepting Heart as a “real band” (54:21, Nancy)
  • “We were just coming through the door of being good musicians first. The image-making stuff started with MTV.” (56:44, Nancy)

11. From Rock Authenticity to 80s Reinvention

• Rise of Image and Commercial Pressure:
  • Early Heart (“Heart 1.0”) was organic, folky, and self-written. But by the 80s, new pressures emerged (59:15–63:07).
  • Outside writers, MTV image-making:
    • “The artifice part, living behind the imaging, was really not our natural state…” (61:19, Nancy)
    • The “costume party,” the “devil’s bargain” of massive commercial success (62:04–64:31).
• Artistic Crisis:
  • Hits like “These Dreams,” “Alone” were not self-written; internal conflict about identity and integrity (63:07–65:57).
• Ann’s Struggle:
  • “Her own artistic integrity was pushed to its limit” by having to sing externally written lyrics (65:32).
  • “It was kind of heartbreaking. It was kind of soul-bending.” (66:05, Nancy)

12. Image, Industry Pressure, and Body Shaming

• Ann’s Public Scrutiny:
  • The stress of 80s imaging (stretching Ann in videos, cruel reviews about her weight) (71:49–73:11)
  • “I would go around and try to stick up for her: is Aretha Franklin too fat? It doesn’t matter if it’s Aretha Franklin.” (72:54, Nancy)

13. Reconnecting with Community and Authenticity in the 90s

• Homecoming to Seattle:
  • After the artifice of the 80s, Nancy and Ann returned to the Seattle scene, forming The Love Mongers (78:14).
  • Finding community at Andrew Wood’s wake—connections to Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains (79:30–80:25).
• Accepted by the Next Generation:
  • Nancy found kinship with younger Seattle musicians:
    • “Jerry was the first sweet soul to kind of make me feel like, oh God, they don’t hate us… after the 80s.” (81:52)
    • “It felt like a music community.” (80:51)
• Magic of Enduring Family Bonds:
  • Sibling magic persists, despite decades of change and personal trials (93:00–96:41).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Sibling Harmony

"When the sisters sing together, there’s this thing that happens."
— Nancy Wilson (12:12)

"It's a God-given kind of spookiness."
— Billy Corgan (16:16)

On Being Musicians, Not Just Women in Rock

"Not like the guys or the girlfriends of the guys, but be them."
— Nancy Wilson (04:31)

On Band Dynamics and Public Perception

“The public kind of chooses your journey... It became about you two.”
— Billy Corgan (43:01)

"You have to kind of relinquish the idea of complete democracy... because you are the songwriter... the expressiveness that carries the message."
— Nancy Wilson (44:55)

On the Struggle with Image and 80s Industry Machine

“The artifice part of it, just living behind the imaging making part of it, was really not our natural state.”
— Nancy Wilson (61:19)

"It was kind of heartbreaking. It was kind of soul-bending. Because inside, you're just kind of like, I'm smiling and I'm really happy for the great success. But living behind the image..."
— Nancy Wilson (66:05)

On the Enduring Partnership

"But then we get up on a stage together and there's this bubble and there's this safe zone and there's magic there..."
— Nancy Wilson (89:50)

"It's blood harmony at the end of the day."
— Billy Corgan (90:15)

On Returning to the Seattle Music Community

"It was the perfect blessing inside of a huger curse, you know, was the blessing of coming together at a wake for a really great local guy... and Jerry was kind of the first sweet soul..."
— Nancy Wilson (80:59)

On Living Up to the Band’s Name

"It's heart, right? You know, I know. Still always trying to live up to the name."
— Nancy Wilson (82:38)

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• 00:00–02:49: Musical origins, family band, The Beatles lightning bolt
• 07:45–09:27: “Viewpoints” band, protest music, early independence through college
• 14:25–17:00: Military family, parents’ evolution during Vietnam, relationships
• 19:16–22:42: Nancy’s initiation into Heart, proving herself, demanding club work
• 25:02–26:33: Music industry changes, TikTok generation, role of A&R, Nancy mentoring new artists
• 29:48–30:12: Vancouver, label signing, first major gigs
• 39:25–41:59: Navigating sexism, sisterly focus, and role friction in the band
• 54:21–55:11: Heart accepted as real rock in the Midwest—a trailblazing moment for women in hard rock
• 59:15–65:57: Heart’s shift in the 80s—outside writers, image, internal costs
• 71:49–73:36: The pain of 80s body shaming and fight for authenticity
• 77:38–79:26: 90s Seattle reconnection, returning to roots and community
• 82:20–93:00: The magic and difficulty of the sibling creative partnership; personal and musical reconciliation
• 93:00–96:56: Enduring bond, true gratitude, and the closing reflection on luck and legacy

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The Episode’s Tone & Style

Authentic, candid, soulful, and reflective. Both Billy and Nancy are unguarded, willing to discuss moments of vulnerability and triumph with a sense of humor (“I’ll trade a steely for a puri...like trading marbles” 02:10), familial warmth, and deep knowledge of music and the industry.

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For Listeners Who Didn’t Tune In

This episode tells the nuanced story of how Heart was forged not just on stage and in the studio, but in the messy, beautiful, and at times painful crucible of family, shifting cultural norms, and unblinking ambition. Nancy Wilson gives rare access to a five-decade journey marked by immense highs, hard-won lessons, and the irreducible magic of making music—and living life—with her sister Ann. The conversation is laced with industry wisdom, anecdotes about Beatles-inspired childhoods, battles with record companies, the pitfalls and rewards of fame, and the personal price (and privilege) of making music in harmony with your kin.

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Closing Thought

At its heart, this episode is a testimony to the unique power of sibling artistry, the strength it takes to fight for integrity, and the grace in rediscovering your community and self—time and time again.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Nancy Wilson]

Nobody knows where they're going at the beginning of their life like that. I feel like, way too lucky.

[Interviewer]

You were really accepted by a rock audience wholeheartedly.

[Nancy Wilson]

When the sisters sing together, there's this thing that happens.

[Interviewer]

There's something magical about when siblings can put their voices together. It's a God given kind of spookiness.

[Nancy Wilson]

It is kind of spooky.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It's like beauty, charisma, sass, fire. A voice. And not just a voice of voice. Voice that means something to people.

[Nancy Wilson]

It sounds great on the radio. And you just want to roll down your window, you know, and chew gum or something.

[Interviewer]

Nancy, thank you for being here.

[Nancy Wilson]

I'm happy to be here.

[Interviewer]

It's such a big story. So I'm going to start in a very obvious spot. I'll try to avoid all the obvious. But it. It seems such a watershed moment when the Beatles start appearing at Ed Sullivan. How many musicians they inspired to say, I want to do that completely. And you and your sister kind of

[Nancy Wilson]

had that moment that was the same lightning bolt that hit the planet, you know, hit us as well as musicians.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And we were like. We became the zombies for guitars, you know.

[Interviewer]

Were you already playing or.

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, musical family.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

So kind of the von Trapps in a lot of ways. We were all singing together in the car and ukuleles and pianos and harmony.

[Interviewer]

So you're already in a musical mindset. And then you see that and you think, okay, that sort of organizes where I want to go.

[Nancy Wilson]

That completely organized, you know. Yeah. Focused in our attentions on the rest of our lives, what we wanted to do, but what. We're so lucky that way.

[Interviewer]

What was it about the guitar for you that, you know, because, you know, guitar players are a particular breed.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. They're weird.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Thank you. It's a kind of a nerdish thing that goes on.

[Nancy Wilson]

Have you got a guitar pick on you?

[Interviewer]

What's that?

[Nancy Wilson]

Do you have a guitar pick on you?

[Interviewer]

I think I do, actually.

[Nancy Wilson]

I'll trade. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. A steely for a puri.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's kind of like trading marbles.

[Interviewer]

What was it about the guitar that spoke to you?

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, it's. I have a musical facility, I guess, as a. I'm just a musical person born into it with parents, you know, that taught us harmony singing and piano lessons and flute and clarinet and so when the Beatles showed up, it was like, must have guitar. And I just took to it, you know, I just. I just. It absorbed me.

[Interviewer]

It.

[Nancy Wilson]

It still does.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

But when I was nine, it Was like I must. This is my purpose is to be. To learn how to play every Beatles song.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Nancy Wilson]

And every hit song that was on the top 40 radio station. You know, the terrestrial radio station. And you know, I learned how to read music a couple times, but it never. I need. Never needed it really. I just. Use your ears. When you have good ears, you have good ears.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

So you can imitate what you hear and approximate what you want to hear.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

But the guitar was. I got the worst guitar of all time was the first $1 30 rental from the bandstand music store down the street. And it was a Lyle.

[Interviewer]

I was gonna say. You remember the brand.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. It was like a 3 quarter size plywood guitar with like a dowel neck, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And the strings were about that far off the. The fretboard.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

So it was like the. It was life without F. You know, you cannot.

[Interviewer]

You can't play F. There's a guitar player joke. I know exactly what you mean.

[Nancy Wilson]

No bar chords allowed.

[Interviewer]

I didn't play any F's for like the first 10 years of my life. It was like, this is too hard. Right? Y.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's a true. Truly is. But Ann got a good guitar from our grandma because we were all interested in being like. Not like the Beatles. We wanted to be the actual Beatles. You know, have a band. Be like the guys. Not be the guys.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Not like the guys or the girlfriends of the guys, but be them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And her guitar was playable. So I would sneak off with her guitar and she'd get really pissed off at me. You took my guitar. Give it back. Yeah. So. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's striking that you were so young and both you kind of arrived at this.

[Nancy Wilson]

She had this facility for. Vocal facility. Like God given or. From the great.

[Interviewer]

It is kind of frightening how.

[Nancy Wilson]

From the great. It came from above, you know, but

[Interviewer]

it is kind of frightening as somebody who sings and you sing that.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's.

[Interviewer]

It sounds so easy for her. I know she hits like crazy notes and it's just like.

[Nancy Wilson]

She just like pyrotechnically.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And it's effortless.

[Interviewer]

And even if you listen to your first record, which we'll get to in a second. But it, it's. It's. She's already there. It's not like you're. You don't hear somebody in development.

[Nancy Wilson]

No, no. It's just. Sorry, but you hear. Well, I'm an expert on the topic.

[Interviewer]

Yes, please.

[Nancy Wilson]

But during. During the course of our little. Our little run here for 50 years. One time you can hear the Elton John influence and her accent of singing on, like Dreambo, Danny, she'd go like, you know, she'd have like that little country slang kind of vocal accent.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, right. And I get that.

[Nancy Wilson]

And then of. Of course, Robert Plant was massive influence, you know, on. But not pretty slick. Not, you know, the females of the time. They were more R B or psychedelia gray slick.

[Interviewer]

But like all great artists, it sounds like her no matter what it is. Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And she. We'd have. My parents would be having a party downstairs and it's like, come on down and girls come on down and entertain the. You know, entertain the party.

[Interviewer]

Oh, okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

So they go, yeah, do your Ethel Merman imitation, you know, and she'd sing Hawaiian wedding song. Like.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, like with the big.

[Nancy Wilson]

Like there's no business, like show business. That was the Ethel Merman sound.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

That as a little kid, she was like able to belt, you know, and just entertain.

[Interviewer]

Well, Judy Garland had the same thing, you know, I think Judy Garland started on stage when she was four.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And I think by the time she was six, she was appearing on, you know, big old school, 2,000 seat theater,

[Nancy Wilson]

born in a Trunk.

[Interviewer]

She. She had that big voice. Right.

[Nancy Wilson]

She just had that projecting, you know, but the. But all of the kind of emotional muscle behind it too, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Because Ann was kind of the ugly duckling, you know, the little fat chick with the braces. And so I think a lot of her pain was part of the muscle that she put behind her vocalizing to prove the point, you know, that she was kind of lovable. And she proved it. She totally proved it.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong, because, you know, you have to do your research. But the band Viewpoint. Yes, you were in Viewpoint at some point.

[Nancy Wilson]

We were called the Viewpoints.

[Interviewer]

Okay, The Viewpoints.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, the. Because we were a little collective of four.

[Interviewer]

All female. Right.

[Nancy Wilson]

All four girls. I was in junior high and they were in high school and we were doing Bob Dylan protest music. Right. So like four little white chicks from suburbia called the Viewpoints, you know.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's a very.

[Interviewer]

What a name now. I know, I get it.

[Nancy Wilson]

Such rebels, you know, with our skirts and our jackets that match the Beatles uniforms, actually, because our mom would us those uniforms to match the Beatles outfits. So, yeah, we were our little folk quartet called the Viewpoints, singing about Vietnam and stuff like that. From middle class, lower middle class suburbia.

[Interviewer]

So this would be like late 60s.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. Right after the Beatles.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, right before the Big Summer of Love.

[Interviewer]

And I saw some indication where you also would play solo, too. Solo acoustic? Is that. Is that.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. I knew I was always going to be in Anne's band because of bands like the Viewpoints and the Little Rapunzel. We had a band once for a while, and then we were. But she's being four years older than me. She got into bands that had drums and amps and stuff first, and she was able to play at places that served alcohol first.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Nancy Wilson]

So I had to hang back for a couple of years and decided, even though I knew I was going to join her band, obviously I went to university first to kind of declare my independence as an individual from being her little shadow for all those years. And so I'm real happy I did that because I read all about, you know, Dostoevsky and I got into Goethe and Nietzsche and all that stuff. All that college girl stuff. Wouldn't you love Todd Rundgren? Stuff like that?

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

You know, every college girl must love Todd Rundgren. Yes, Right.

[Interviewer]

A wizard and a true star is Todd Rundgren.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right, right.

[Interviewer]

I think that's interesting, though. So you, you had a sense of destiny with your sister Rung, what was your relationship like then? I mean, because, you know, the focus always is on the. The relationship within the context of the band.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Because that's where the most people go. Yeah, but, but what was your. Like, if there wasn't a band, if there wasn't music, what was your relationship like then?

[Nancy Wilson]

That's an interesting question I've never been asked, you know, but because my own self definition has been Ann's sidekick ever since I was born, basically. We have a third sister who's eight years older than me, and so I'm the youngest, but she. Ann always was kind of like the, the. The initiator. She instigated, like before we even had rock bands or the Beatles came along, she was like, well, let's make a play in the garage. And you know, like, charge, charge for Kool Aid and have the neighbors come over and have a little comedy show. And we did. Our dad had a real surreal Sony two track and we'd make little comedy records. And I still have those things for the documentary that's coming up. But, you know, it's really fun, clever stuff that young people are capable of when given the right tools. We had guitars and we had humor. We had. We had a solid family life.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

With musical people, you know, that we. Family that we came out of. And I think, I mean, even when I got real angsty and the port, the hormone poisoning started to kick in. You know, when you're like 16 and 17, you know, and you get, you know, it was like, oh God, my family's too happy. Like I'm not cool enough because my family is tightened together, you know, because we're military and so we stick together like a troop, you know, and pull the wagons in a circle of a little love circle in our family because we had to move and move and move and move and be the newcomers everywhere and have our little musical tribe. And so I'd be like really embarrassed that my parents were not divorced. You know, stuff like I don't have anything to.

[Interviewer]

Not enough trauma.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. Not enough trauma to like whine about, you know, so, so we had a really solid family.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

For, for like being little productions and the joy of our parents, like helping us out, making costumes and.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, all that stuff. I, I was going to ask you because you have these experiences of living in Taiwan and I think Panama or.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, Panama.

[Interviewer]

It's not, not, not everyone's experience to kind of live.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, well, I was born into, I came after Panama, but they lived in the Carolinas and Taiwan when I was really a kid.

[Interviewer]

Do you have any memory of those times?

[Nancy Wilson]

A lot of home movies that jog your memory, I think.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. And I think I do remember a few things. Yeah. Pretty well actually. A lot of sense memory. And the water buffalo and you know, the, there was a walled in safe compound where the military families were living, where there was shooting outside the walls and stuff like that. And you know, there was a hired staff inside of our compound to help us cook and the nanny and. But you know, it was, there was typhoid and there was all kinds of, you know, all kinds of tropical sudden downpours and just a really rich sense of memory of being a little kid in all that humidity and turmoil and stuff.

[Interviewer]

Color. And color and sound.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, I know.

[Interviewer]

So your father was a marine?

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, he retired as a, as a major.

[Interviewer]

And your grandfather? Brigadier general.

[Nancy Wilson]

Then his dad retired as a four star brigadier general.

[Interviewer]

That's crazy.

[Nancy Wilson]

John Bushrod Wilson Sr.

[Interviewer]

Isn't there a military base named after your grandfather?

[Nancy Wilson]

I don't know.

[Interviewer]

I read that somewhere.

[Nancy Wilson]

Really?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, if, if AI says it, then I'm going to believe.

[Interviewer]

I don't know. I mean, some things, I read stuff all the time. That's not correct. I thought that's an interesting detail. They said it could be. It was connected to 29 bunch palms out there by Joshua Trevor There is.

[Nancy Wilson]

There is. You're right. We got a little flag memento that they gave us out there. That's why. And, yeah, when my dad actually passed on the color guard came out to the house and did the salute and all of that in the proper way. But, yeah, my granddad, my uncle, my dad. A lot of military. A lot of Marines in the family, and from my mom's side, the World War I military, a lot of fighters, a lot of warriors in my family.

[Interviewer]

So is there any, as you're moving into music in this intense countercultural time, kind of like what we have now?

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. Okay.

[Interviewer]

You're coming from a traditional military background, and yet you're. You're also in step with your generation. You're singing protest songs. Was there any. Was there any consternation on your. In your parents part that you're gonna misrepresent something, or was that it? Was that at play at all?

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, you know, it was really amazing what. How my parents evolved through the late 60s, where Vietnam got more like a dirty war. My dad had just retired and an English teacher because he had a sense of higher learning and poetry that he wanted to pursue after all the horror that he'd seen in World War II. And so he became kind of a peaceful. He was enjoying his peacetime that he fought for.

[Interviewer]

Right, I see.

[Nancy Wilson]

And then fell in love with the magic man, who was a draft evader. This is.

[Interviewer]

This is Michael.

[Nancy Wilson]

Michael Fisher.

[Interviewer]

Thank you. Yes.

[Nancy Wilson]

The brother of the guitar player that, you know, that I unwisely walked into a relationship with.

[Interviewer]

But anyway, never date a guitar player.

[Nancy Wilson]

Never date a guitar or a drummer or a bassist.

[Interviewer]

You definitely don't want to date a drummer.

[Nancy Wilson]

Don't date a drummer. No. Yeah. But do not lie down with drummers. Yes. As they say. So my dad was enlightened enough at the time and disagreed enough about the Vietnam War, how that was being handled and not. They called it a military action instead of a war.

[Interviewer]

Was that something he talked openly about?

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. And he stopped recruiting for the Marines because of Vietnam.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Nancy Wilson]

And he then became an English teacher instead. And so when Ann moved up to Vancouver from Seattle, where we lived, you know, hitchhiking with a backpack and a guitar, basically in the day when you could trust an unknown driver, maybe he was okay with it. He said, you know, you tell that young man that I. I wouldn't fight that dirty. Worried or, oh, I see. You know. So he agreed with, you know, being a. Basically, he was a conscientious objector about the way that War was being handled.

[Interviewer]

War, yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So it's a little unclear. There was a band, Hocus Pocus, or it was White Hart.

[Nancy Wilson]

So she's kind of after the Viewpoints and Rapunzel. Then Ann launched into garages that had drums and amps and stuff before I could go play those clubs with her.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

So she had a boy and his dog. She had Daybreak. She had the one you just said

[Interviewer]

it was Hocus Pocus, White Hart and

[Nancy Wilson]

White Hart, which then became Heart. About the same minute that I joined Heart.

[Interviewer]

Okay, I gotta stop here. This is to me, one of the funniest stories of your life. So they weren't sure about you joining, so they made you learn the yes song, the Clap, which you got to be a yes fan to know what that is. But like, I, when I read that, I thought, this is so crazy, you know?

[Nancy Wilson]

You know that song?

[Interviewer]

Of course. Yeah. This is kind of Steve Howe's kind of show offy.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's a real show off acoustic ep.

[Interviewer]

I actually saw Steve Howe play the Play the Clap with Asia in 1981.

[Nancy Wilson]

You did?

[Interviewer]

Yes. Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

Of course the crowd went crazy, you know.

[Nancy Wilson]

Of course they did. Well, you know, I could still play most of the Clap, but that's why

[Interviewer]

I reach for a guitar.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. Like here.

[Interviewer]

Here you go.

[Nancy Wilson]

I need a little practice, a little warm up first.

[Interviewer]

But, but that's. I could never reply. Sorry. But I could never replay that. That's a pretty impressive thing to sort of show up and play.

[Nancy Wilson]

Thanks. Well, you know, I already was really proficient because, like guys like Paul Simon, you know, all that great finger style.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. You learned all those.

[Nancy Wilson]

I learned all that stuff right off the bat. Because that was country.

[Interviewer]

Country blues too. Or just more the folky.

[Nancy Wilson]

All of the above.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Nancy Wilson]

All country music, you know, pretty much everything except jazz, I guess.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Because jazz is more like a reading music type of playing.

[Interviewer]

But did you see them kind of. Okay, jump over this wall. Let's see if you can jump.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Was it? Was, was it, Was it. Was it because you were the sister? Is it because you were female or all of the above or. Or they just like you. What was the.

[Nancy Wilson]

I think it was because I was the little sister and the nepotistic aspect of, you know, just because she's your sister doesn't mean she's good enough to go play cabarets in Vancouver with us. The number one cabaret band in Vancouver called. They just changed our name to Hart.

[Interviewer]

They were good musicians. I will.

[Nancy Wilson]

They were really good.

[Interviewer]

I mean, they, they, they come Off. There's a serious vibe to their. To their thing.

[Nancy Wilson]

We were. They were seriously good club band. Really good.

[Interviewer]

But back then, you had to be. My father was a club musician too. You probably don't know, really.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So I grew up in that world where it's like you had to be able to play.

[Nancy Wilson]

And you played a lot. Long sets. You played like almost an hour a break, almost another hour, another break, almost another hour a break. And then the last short set.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. My dad used to take five and

[Nancy Wilson]

then kick every five drunk people.

[Interviewer]

Five 45 minute sets is what he would do.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, five 45 minute sets.

[Interviewer]

That's what I. Yeah, so imagine. But.

[Nancy Wilson]

But that was my initiation.

[Interviewer]

The upside is when these bands, like your band, broke into the world, they know how to play, they know how to speak to an audience.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right. It's the experience of the live experience that I think a lot of people are missing out now. I mean, one of the reasons in our social media, you know, infused world right now is people don't have that experience that record companies used to help, you know, develop their artists and make their. I'll pay for rent. If you go on the road and learn your craft, you know, we'll subsidize you to go learn the live craft of playing live music and sounding as cool as your recording sounded. Yeah, that kind of stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's why I have a management company now helping young artists do that. But.

[Interviewer]

Oh, okay. That's interesting. Do you want to talk about that at all?

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, I will. I mean, happily.

[Interviewer]

I don't mind derailing it for a second.

[Nancy Wilson]

Okay. Let me be derailed. Yeah, please let me derail myself. I have a little company called Road Case Productions, Road Case Management. And we've got a graphic artist named Sketchy Goat. She's from Texas, but she does a lot of the Seattle musicians like Jerry Cantrell and. Okay, she does Weird Al and she does Nancy Wilson and she does. Yeah, she's done a heart T shirt for us. And you obviously worked with Sketchy Goat.

[Interviewer]

Did I?

[Nancy Wilson]

You did.

[Interviewer]

I don't remember that.

[Nancy Wilson]

She made you some. I think it was really cool posters and stuff. But she works with you.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

I don't know.

[Interviewer]

This is a.

[Nancy Wilson]

But anyway, now she has management and.

[Interviewer]

Oh, okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, so that's part of that. And then. But for the music side, right now I have Deloitte lz, who's got an album, Rite of Passage, that's amazing. Digital twang, very country, very Americana, with digital interference sort of stuff. And another developing girl who's an amazing singer songwriter too. Madison xoxo.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

And I'm getting her. Trying to help get her out on the road and get her album out soon. But Deloitte LZ just got signed with Concord Records.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow.

[Nancy Wilson]

And he's touring now, too.

[Interviewer]

Wow. So are you taking more of a development position? Helping and seating.

[Nancy Wilson]

Develop young, talented singer songwriters.

[Interviewer]

Wow. Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

And a graphic artist.

[Interviewer]

I didn't know that. That's cool.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. So I got to derail myself and do, you know, shameless promotion.

[Interviewer]

But it kind of. It dovetails into. Because this is the point in your life where it's like, here comes the management, the record label.

[Nancy Wilson]

You know, this going back to like the great spirit of art. You know what I mean? Like, that's been my.

[Interviewer]

Well, we. We both know that, you know, record companies don't do A R anymore. There's no.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

That's no talent development. I mean, you ended at it. But I'm talking about the actual reality. They. They don't even have a department. There's nobody. They just.

[Nancy Wilson]

There's no artist relation department. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

A R. It's strictly. You have to figure out how to get yourself over on social media. If you get enough numbers, they might sign you.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. And rate where. You know, radio is not helping. I mean, programming.

[Interviewer]

TikTok probably, right now is probably the greatest driver for young people to find music.

[Nancy Wilson]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

But Jimmy Chamberlain from the Pumpkins was telling me recently that they did a study and found that there's actually not a ton of conversion from people liking stuff on TikTok to actually going and listening to it on a streaming platform.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So. So they'll.

[Nancy Wilson]

When I go through my Instagram, I'll buy albums.

[Interviewer]

Me too.

[Nancy Wilson]

That I hear about.

[Interviewer]

But isn't it interesting that if TikTok is the greatest sort of marketing tool for young artists to reach people.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

There isn't necessarily a conversion to get those people to go listen to those people on streaming services. They'll listen to them on TikTok.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. So they'll just watch what they like on TikTok some more.

[Interviewer]

It become. Yeah, yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Instead of like, go, I want to see them live or I want to

[Interviewer]

go, I don't remember this artist's name, but I heard this thing the other day where an artist will put up a 30 second clip of a song. He'll only record 30 seconds of a song, and if people like it and he gets enough traction, he'll go and record the song.

[Nancy Wilson]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That blew my mind. Attention span Theater I don't know, but that blew my mind because it's unfathomable to me, at least in the world we grew up in, that you would ask the audience to tell you who to be. Of course the artist would say, well, I'm being who I want. No, you're asking the audience to tell you which version of yourself to be.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's right. That's what that is.

[Interviewer]

That's kind of weird because here's a.

[Nancy Wilson]

Here's a color swatch. What color do you want this room to me to paint your room, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's wild. It's really wild. I've never heard that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Mike Flicker, Mushroom Records, kind of. Take me through that.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so wait, I saw this and tell me if this is true. So were they in the paint business or something? Right, Somebody was in the paint business. And they had a little label in a studio.

[Nancy Wilson]

They had a little studio down by the river. Exactly.

[Interviewer]

Down by the river, yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Oh, it is one. But down by the river in Vancouver that a paint company family had as kind of like a vanity side project thing. Like, oh, we could make a. I don't know, we could, you know, record some local artists and make singles and stamp out some, you know, vinyls and see what happens. And so they were making Mike Flicker at the time with Howard Lease were little production team there making Switched On Bach records and stuff like that. So electronic musical instrumental, stuff like that. Switched on Beatles, you know, which was a big rage at the minute.

[Interviewer]

I have all those records, so I know exactly what you're doing.

[Nancy Wilson]

You have them on vinyl.

[Interviewer]

I love all that stuff. All the vinyl stuff I did. No, I just. I don't know. There's that moment where because of. Because of the success of Wendy Carlos, there's all those weird.

[Nancy Wilson]

Like you have Edgar Versailles.

[Interviewer]

I don't know who that is.

[Nancy Wilson]

The Electronique. Strange.

[Interviewer]

Are you talking about electronic? Is it Varese or.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Okay. I don't know how to say the name, but yeah, I don't. Wasn't Zappa obsessed with him?

[Nancy Wilson]

Yes, I think so. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, he would. He would write like two symphonies and have two orchestras play them at the same time and.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yes, yeah, yeah. And all the experimental electronic stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But I love the conversion of classical to electronica.

[Nancy Wilson]

Me too.

[Interviewer]

And even like synthesizer Beatle records where, like, they take like, Eleanor Rigby and be like.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's what. That's what Mike Flicker and Howard Lees were.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so they were doing all that.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's what they were doing, yeah. They were here come.

[Interviewer]

Here come. You last.

[Nancy Wilson]

Here comes, you know. Hart now called Hart into the club scene there at, you know, at the. What was it called, the Aquarius Room or something at the. I forget the name. Big. Big. The big showplace cabaret that had the small room downstairs and the other room over there and the big showroom upstairs where all of the review type bands and all, you know, all the African American revue with horn part bands would come out.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

Big, Big, you know, touring bands.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And Hart got gigs at Oil Can Harry's is what it was called. And so one of my first gigs was playing at Oil Can Harry's with Hart. And I'd only been in coffee shops, like one little acoustic chick, you know, with like doing, you know, I don't know, Jethro Toll and you know.

[Interviewer]

What Jethro Toll song were you playing?

[Nancy Wilson]

I did Locomotive Bread.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

I love that song. It's a really good song. I didn't do Aqua Lung, though. It's a little graphic for me. But anyway, so it was the Trial by Fire and Mike Flicker happened to come and see Hart play at Oil Can Harry's.

[Interviewer]

And that was it.

[Nancy Wilson]

And heard Anne's voice and that was it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And I was joining soon thereafter after I did my stint in university, you know, just for my own, you know, edification. And so when I joined, he was like, I think just the. And the. And version of this band is better than the two chick version of this band. And so let's, like, let's have some opinions about how they sound together. And so my addition into the band was really scrutinized, heavily scrutinized. And I had to kind of. That's. So put the mat on a little bit.

[Interviewer]

That's so crazy to me.

[Nancy Wilson]

I'm good enough for this.

[Interviewer]

And you would have been how old at the time? Like 19 or something. 19, yeah. That's crazy to me.

[Nancy Wilson]

But I was good, you know, and I could pull a. Ann used to call it, like, do the cow show, like at a, like at a county fair. Like the cow that could dance, you know, like. So I'd play Angie by Paul Simon, you know, like some really complicated cow.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I see. You know, prove your.

[Nancy Wilson]

Prove my guitar prowess.

[Interviewer]

But is it.

[Nancy Wilson]

And harmony singing and stuff.

[Interviewer]

But I mean, to me that's just so crazy that you would want a sibling out of a group, especially when you talk about singing.

[Nancy Wilson]

Oh, I know. Well, I had to just prove it real hard.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And.

[Interviewer]

But did Anne stick up for you or what was her position is she kind of in the.

[Nancy Wilson]

She. She really stuck up for me, you know, which once in a while she will do and not as often as I would like. But she said, no, I'm not going to do this without my sister. Which was amazing. It was amazing. And so I was in tong hell or high water and it all came.

[Interviewer]

I went back and listened to the early records because I think it helps sometimes because you as a fan, you think you know what the records sound like or because of the hits. But I actually went back and listened.

[Nancy Wilson]

I don't know what you mean.

[Interviewer]

But then when you go back and you listen, I go. I didn't remember some of this folky stuff you guys were doing. There was like more Prague elements in there.

[Nancy Wilson]

There were some Prague moments and there was almost like a. A, you know, Carpenter's song.

[Interviewer]

I'm so glad you said that because I didn't know if you would because.

[Nancy Wilson]

What was it called? Love Me like music.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Because there is a kind of a Carpenter's esque quality to your sister's voice. And I actually heard it listening to that record, the first, especially the first one. And I thought, wow, they're weird. They're like. There's like part Carpenter, part Led Zepquin. It's kind of a weird.

[Nancy Wilson]

And a little bit of Elton John.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

When she goes wild in and wow, you know, she got the Elton John accent for a second. A little Karen Carpenter over here, a lot of Robert Plant everywhere else. Yeah. But. But she really. But still sounds like herself because that's what great singers.

[Interviewer]

It's crazy.

[Nancy Wilson]

You can always, you know, identify as

[Interviewer]

a voice as soon as she opens her mouth.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's like, like a Chris colonel and your voice too.

[Interviewer]

Oh, God bless you.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's very identifiable as you. Only you have your sound, which is really cool.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it's a weird. It's a weird. Speaking personally, it's a weird thing because I wanted to sing like other people. You know what I mean? I just didn't have the ability.

[Nancy Wilson]

I always. I've never been a born singer, so I'm really put here for guitar playing mainly, I guess. But I love singing and I love harmony singing. And so, you know, lead singing is a challenge, but I enjoy the effort that it takes to do it.

[Interviewer]

But just take us into the kind of like, did you guys sit around and talk about this is what we want to sound like or did it just kind of happen through work? Was there an intellectual overlay on that? Was. It was just the musical output. It's a weird to me as a music fan. And again I'm a fan, so. But it's a weird stew of influences. And I even found this weird clip of you guys. It must have been right around the first album. But you're playing. I don't want to say it's cable access, but it kind of feels like a local TV show that was in Spokane, Washington. Okay, right. And at some point you're going to say we're from around here. And you opened with some kind of weird Prague intro with synthesizers and Anne's playing the flute. I remember she kind of remembered like she's playing like Jethro told flute solos. And I was like, wow, this is really out there.

[Nancy Wilson]

Exactly. Exactly as you described it is every like influential element that we're put together in the rich protein stew called Heart, you know, starting out and that we had a reel to reel tape recorder that we would push play at the beginning of all of our cabaret shows at that show that you saw from Spokane, the university there. And it was like a public access thing with. And it was called Mainstage and it was an edited together little introduction. The sound of a rocket launch, a countdown to a rocket launch. And then the band starts. So then the flute part comes in and it's this big long. Like in the 70s, in the middle to late 70s, there was such a. An epic thing going on with Zeppelin and songs that in Rush and songs that would go on all these departures.

[Interviewer]

Chicago, we had sticks was doing stuff like that too do that.

[Nancy Wilson]

Of course, you know, it would be the epic, you know, Boston, you know, these kind of. Boston would go off of departures, the baroque departures and the long solo over here and then back to the other part. And so songs could go for. Well, Mr. All wind was one of those songs that Hart did, which is still my favorite song. Maybe. But.

[Interviewer]

But I have to go listen to that.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's like seven minutes, you know, but it's a big journey that you go through and. But it was the times where you would, you know, you just. You're really just kind of tributing everybody that you love.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

When you're trying to write new stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And I think you just nailed it. You just said it sounds a little bit like Jethro Tull. It sounds a little bit like Elton over here, the accent over here, the Zeppelin ish thing there. But. It was not constructed that way.

[Interviewer]

That's what I was asking. Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Just kind of the thought construct on it was pretty much off the cuff and on the spot, as it happened.

[Interviewer]

So I know you said you kind of had a fight for your spot, but, like, what. In the early stage. Because I think this has a lot to do with what follows. Like, what was the balance of power in the. In the group? Like, who's making the decisions? Was it a democracy? Like, how did that work?

[Nancy Wilson]

That's a tough question because it's always been. There's always been a balancing act between. We want it to feel like a family, a democracy with everyone's vote, and it just sort of never worked very well that way, to be quite honest with you.

[Interviewer]

I'm laughing because I've lived this movie.

[Nancy Wilson]

You've seen that movie too. I've seen that movie too. But we still kept. Always still now, even now. Do try to keep the democratic vibe in the band, though. Anne and I equally. Or partners. Half and half. Partners of the corporation called Heart.

[Interviewer]

Sure. You know, but I always think it's interesting to look at these things because we have the. We have the luxury of hindsight of seeing all the success. Right. But in the beginning, you know, you know, you're. You're just basically a club band.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, touring. It looks so. It looks so obvious in hindsight. Right. But, but, but at the time, you know, there's insecurity, there's. I've got to get my guitar solo in.

[Nancy Wilson]

And there's egos. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Oh, please.

[Nancy Wilson]

Like, turn me up louder.

[Interviewer]

You know, the, the. You know, remember when you'd mix on an analog board, everyone would just keep just pushing themselves up to make sure they were going to get hurt.

[Nancy Wilson]

We totally. I've seen that movie.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

A few times over.

[Interviewer]

So we don't have to get too into. Because it's a somewhat explored history in your life, but you're on this label, Mushroom from the Paint people. And then the record comes out and it happened in 75. But in those days, records didn't sort of light on fire necessarily right away. It took time.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. We. Region by region, it sort of spread out and we got in a. In a rent a car with an agent guy and went to radio stations, me and Anne, and schmoozed the program director with our cute tops on, you know, and kind of fluffed up and.

[Interviewer]

Did you. Sorry, because. Because I. I was going to get there. But I want to ask. Because two things. One is, you know, are you having to sort of deal with. Because in my mind, and this is my memory from the time, because I was listening then, you always came across as a credible band that you're being attractive and female wasn't necessarily a negative, but the band was a band because it was a good music band.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

So on one hand you're over here like you're dealing with this kind of. I mean, it's still sexist, but I mean, it was probably 10 times worse back then. So you're dealing with how do we present ourselves as credible, but we have to get attention. And the other hand is the band, the guys in the band, are they. Are they almost trying to prove something because they're fronted by two women? Is, is. Does that make sense, that question?

[Nancy Wilson]

That's a great question. It's very relevant and it's very. A tricky eggshell walk to do emotionally when you're friends. And in my case, I was with one of the. I was with the guitar player unwisely in the band then. And so. And the other guys in the band, you know, we knew their wives and their girlfriends, but we would see them with the groupies and not tell the wives or the girlfriends code of the road.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

So there was a brother sisterhood where, you know, what's, you know, what happens in the band stays in the band. And we've honored. Respected their privacy on those issues and didn't tell the wives about the girls.

[Interviewer]

But then the wife is mad at you.

[Nancy Wilson]

The wife gets mad for not, you know. And so there was all kinds of drama that you can only imagine. Half of that was always going on, not to mention the fact that the attention just naturally would fall on me and Anne together as a focal focus point. So the album cover, where it wasn't democratic with the whole band on the front cover, where the guys were on the back cover of Baby Lestrange and just me and Anne, the big black and white close up of me and Anne on the front cover really pissed them off. And it was the back of our heads with their hair and their pictures were inserted on top of the back of our. In our hair.

[Interviewer]

So it's like.

[Nancy Wilson]

So we're just the out of focus guys in the background. In your hair.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And so that we always had to deal with.

[Interviewer]

I'm going to ask you something to opine on because it's something. I think that it's something that most people, if they don't play in bands, especially successful bands, wouldn't understand. But I'm curious for your take on it. I found that in a weird kind of way, the public chooses your journey. Once you figure out who you are and what you are.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

The public kind of chooses Your journey. Like, in hindsight, because you.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Let's call it Heart 1.0. Very credible band. Yeah, really good band. I mean, great drummer, great guitar parts. I mean, very credible band. Truly. Like, I say that without reservation. That's a great band.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Alice Cooper's original band. Great band.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Like all those guys. Great band. But at the end of the day, in hindsight, we can see that. That in the case of the Sisters, it was ultimately gonna be about you two.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Right. It's not a slight against the band. It's just the public chooses the story that they want, and it became about you. That's what I remember. It was about you two.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's right.

[Interviewer]

It doesn't mean I didn't like the band. I just saw it was about you in my mind. Maybe it was the album covers. Who knows? But it was the same thing with Alice Cooper. Right. You know, at some point, it's like it was about the band. They were a great band. But at some point, it becomes about Alice Cooper, and 50 years later, literally, we're still talking about you and your sister.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's true.

[Interviewer]

And the public knows your names. And it's no disrespect that they don't necessarily know their names. I might know their names because I'm a nerd. But what I'm saying is. But the reason I'm asking this. And this is where I'm asking for your.

[Nancy Wilson]

Another great question.

[Interviewer]

Thank you. But the reason I'm asking for your insight, because it's a particular spot that people like us occasionally find ourselves in, where the band is, or your fellow members, they're mad at you for what the public is interested in, and you're in this weird position where you're like, I kind of get it. But at the same point, I'm not the one choosing this narrative. The public is choosing this narrative.

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, yeah. You know, it's an interesting. Well, again, it's a walking on eggshells type of democratic internal struggle that you can have with people you love that you play good music with.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

That you feel tight with.

[Interviewer]

And you're like, they really are a family.

[Nancy Wilson]

It is really a family. And it's your camaraderie, and it's. It's your little, you know, platoon that survive together. And. But. But what the public perception wants to focus on is something as simple as you at the center of it or me and my sister at the center of heart. You have to kind of relinquish the idea of complete democracy in many ways, because you are the songwriter. You wrote the lyrics, right?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

You wrote those songs. That was your soul coming through that speaker that put your own melancholy into the world, you know, and that's what. Me and Ann were the songwriters, and we. We brought the guys in their jams. Cool jams, and made them songwriters with us. But they never wrote the words either. You know what I mean?

[Interviewer]

Or the melodies. Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Or the melodies in words and. Or the actual expressiveness that carries the message into the world where it touches people. And the guy and his girl proposes to the lady. He proposes at the prom when he's hearing Dog and Butterfly, for instance. And so that moment is caught in the music, into the great collective consciousness of where music actually sits in people's souls. And that's me and my sister. So every band member, first we had the. Made the mistake of being their girlfriends. And then there was a lot of different lineups after that, you know, after the first lineup.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

But this lineup today, for instance, is. Is the best lineup ever. A lot of these Nashville cats and some Seattle guys are in it, and they get it. And, you know, they're. They're more like studio guys. They're like having the blast of the river. The. The most fun on big stages now.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

So there's this beautiful freshness in democracy that's totally different from any other lineup that ever happened, but still the focus remains on at the center. When people say, you know, oh, when you sing together, you know, when the sisters sing together, there's this thing that happens and we can't avoid that or try to pretend it's just a democracy,

[Interviewer]

you know, if you think about it, because you and your sister singing together. The Beach Boys.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Everly Brothers, Bee Gees.

[Nancy Wilson]

Blood harmony.

[Interviewer]

That's what I was after. Yeah. There's something magical about when siblings can put their voices together. It's a. It's a God given kind of spookiness.

[Nancy Wilson]

It is kind of spooky.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. Because people go. When I talk on the phone, people say, God, you sound exactly like your sister when you speak. And I go, I just wish I sounded like her when I sang, too. Because, you know, she had that. She has that one gift. But I guess my gift is the counterpart, you know, it's the accompaniment.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, but that's the magic, right?

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. That makes magic happen.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, for sure. I found myself in going back, listening to all the records, trying to pick your harmony out because, you know, you tend to focus on the lead singer harmony. But I was trying to pick out what you Were doing.

[Nancy Wilson]

Oh, that's so good. Yeah, Yeah, I love that. Weird harmonies.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Almost Gaelic. A lot of Gaelic harmonies.

[Nancy Wilson]

A lot of Gaelic. Yeah, A lot more of that stuff, for sure.

[Interviewer]

So you're catching traction. You're opening for Led Zeppelin. I mean, stuff is happening. But you get in this. This squabble with Mushroom Records because you guys want to get the hell out of there. They're just this little label.

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, our album called Magazine that we were planning to do, they just threw

[Interviewer]

the tapes out, basically. Right.

[Nancy Wilson]

They got some lives. They just decided to release it before it was ready, against our will.

[Interviewer]

And people wonder why record companies get a bad reputation.

[Nancy Wilson]

So they put a live version of I Got the Music in Me.

[Interviewer]

You know, what a weird one that is.

[Nancy Wilson]

A TV song. And. And Mother Earth Blues, I guess it was. And I played blues harp solo. And it was. We didn't want to release those songs. Those were club songs.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

We wanted to be doing a concept album and it was going to be a gatefold, and it was going to be like a fashion magazine with stories and pictures and glam and, you know, stories we would write. And we had a bunch of the songs written already, but it wasn't finished. Yeah, but they just wanted to push that out there and get the, you know. Yeah, they were just being crass, you know, suits. And so we took them to court. There was a Mike Fish Flicker was the. The key man clause where we got out of it. But the compromise was that we had to release it, finish the album.

[Interviewer]

Officially.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, officially. Release it with the existing cover and the artwork that existed. But finish recording. Leave the track list, but finish recording anything new in two weeks only and then release it. So the first copy had the stamp on it that was like the first batch of them before there was a disclaimer. Anyway. It's a really boring one. Litigate.

[Interviewer]

But I think it's kind of similar, what I'm saying. It's like, even that situation, you're in a cool situation, they give you a little record deal. You do it takes off, and then they're trying to drag you by the ankles and say, no, you got to stay in this small situation, even.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Sam Phillips knew he had to sell Elvis's contract. Rca. I mean, yeah, you guys were ready to take off. And even that weird record, which really wasn't a true record, that thing sold too.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. It happened to Bruce Springsteen, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But you ended up. Was it Epic you went to. Right.

[Nancy Wilson]

Then we went over to Epic, a subsidiary. Okay.

[Interviewer]

Now, but now. Okay, major label, here you go.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Was the. Was okay? Because I know how those people think. You walk in those. Okay, but when you walk in those meetings, are they. Are they suddenly they're gonna make it all about you and your sister? Like what. What's the stress of that moment?

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, the stress of that moment is kind of like we'd been a touring company so much. We'd been touring nonstop for 200 shows in that first.

[Interviewer]

And opening for everybody. Right?

[Nancy Wilson]

Opening for everybody.

[Interviewer]

Supertram.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

And Turner Overdrive, Todd Stewart. I'm sure there was a bunch that aren't even listed.

[Nancy Wilson]

A whole bunch of boogie bands from the south and all of them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And every. Every festival known to man, you know, with everybody in there and you know, and we were so. There was a pressurized situation to get another album finished and written and finished and recorded pretty quickly after. We just needed a break from touring for like a two year, two album. I think it was a contract where you've got to churn them out, you know, crank em out on a timeline. And so our writing, our songwriting got a little more stressy and so it was hard, harder to get the flow, the energy without feeling like, okay, Mr. Man in the Suit, I'm gonna write you a hit song on your timeline as you require them. And so we felt really a lot of. We just felt stuck about it. And so we were in a hurry and we weren't being as we were being kind of bitchy with our songwriting and we were biting the hand that feeds bas a little bit there. Oh, how punk of us to. You know. And so we had a couple of turkeys along the way. It didn't really work out until the MTV 80s and the, you know, the stable of LA songwriter hit.

[Interviewer]

I can only speak for Chicago because they played all that stuff. So yeah, let's call it heart 1.0. I mean that stuff was on Chicago radio constantly. So I grew up hearing all that stuff.

[Nancy Wilson]

There were some good songs, very good songs.

[Interviewer]

But I'm saying it's like I say it occasionally on this podcast that it's hard for people to understand in the modern age that rock back then was very regional. So a band might be huge in Cleveland, in Chicago and Akron, Ohio, but that would be it. Yeah, they couldn't get arrested in la and there were bands that were huge in LA that couldn't get arrested in Chicago. And that's why there's so much touring went on because you had to kind of build your relationships and build your Audience.

[Nancy Wilson]

You'd work with the radio guys to play the album, to play your song before you got to. Before you would play the.

[Interviewer]

So you were huge in Chicago.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's all I knew.

[Interviewer]

Chicago, you guys, Chicago was big market.

[Nancy Wilson]

We always had a great relationship with Chicago and Detroit.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Midwest.

[Interviewer]

I mean, my memory. And I was, you know, I was. This would have been like I'm whatever 10 years old. But my memory is that for whatever reason, it kind of shocks me because again, there's a lot of acoustic stuff on the records.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

You were really accepted by a rock audience wholeheartedly. And I think it's the way you were positioned on those stations. There were two stations in Chicago, WLUP and wmet. But they played. Even though they played like Zeppelin and Sabbath. They would play the Cars and Hart.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right, right, exactly.

[Interviewer]

They told their audience we were crossover. Yes. You belonged in this tradition of rock

[Nancy Wilson]

that told the audience where to place us in their category.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Nancy Wilson]

Which compartment we belonged in.

[Interviewer]

But in the Chicago market, you were present. A credible rock band.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It was less about being good looking or whatever. I don't know how it worked everywhere, else, but in Chicago it always was presented as. This is a great band.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

No, you know.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, it's. It's a rock. It's a real rock show. I mean, they're still. Even to this day, there's not a lot of girls in rock bands like heavy rock bands. Heart's a heavy rock band.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

We do a lot of romantic ballads and moments and, you know, Led Zeppelin, Rain Song or Going to California or whatever. Because that's really satisfying stuff to play. But we also. We put the hammer down as well. So.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And it makes us different, I think, from a whole bunch of other bands, especially having women in it. So I guess so. I think that helped us stay in that category because it was actual rock.

[Interviewer]

It's not so much to make a social point as much as it is that you were in a place where there really wasn't a business for women fronting rock bands. I mean, yes, there were women that fronted rock bands, but you kind of built a different type of business that didn't exist before you.

[Nancy Wilson]

I think that's right. I think that's what radio was really, especially in the Midwest. Starting out was even the most helpful for us because of those radio stations that put. Helped put us in that demographic, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Along with other.

[Interviewer]

I mean, I have very strong memories.

[Nancy Wilson]

Rock bands.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But I mean, I have such strong memories of having having you marketed amongst these Greats, you know, it was very interesting.

[Nancy Wilson]

Really cool, though. I mean, I feel really. I have so much gratitude around that. Gratitude that, you know, we didn't just intentionally break some glass ceiling for women, but we were just there being competent to begin with.

[Interviewer]

That's kind of my point. You didn't market it as, hey, we're two hot chicks fronting a band. It's like, no, we're a credible band. This is what we do. We have our own musical style. And I think that's part of why it resonated with the Chicago rock crowd or the Midwest rock crowd, because it wasn't about anything other than we play great music.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right. We were just coming through the door of being good musicians first. And the image making stuff that started up with MTV was after that, so.

[Interviewer]

Well, we'll get there. That's a whole nother.

[Nancy Wilson]

There's a whole.

[Interviewer]

There's a story to tell, but we'll get to that story. This is my little note, but I'm going to just tell you what I wrote because it makes me laugh. We're actually born one day apart on March 17th. You're March 16th.

[Nancy Wilson]

Oh, you're St. Patrick's Day.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Nancy Wilson]

Oh, my goodness.

[Interviewer]

But it makes me laugh because I'm also in a band with a gem. I'm also in a band with the Gemini. So it's like when I think of you in a band with the Gemini sister and you as a Pisces, this makes me laugh. Oh, well, because you're talking about two twin signs, right.

[Nancy Wilson]

Anne is June 19, the day after Paul McCartney's birthday.

[Interviewer]

There you go.

[Nancy Wilson]

And she's a double Gemini. So she's at least four people. The twins.

[Interviewer]

Which one do you get along with?

[Nancy Wilson]

A couple of them.

[Interviewer]

A couple?

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, a couple.

[Interviewer]

I always say with Geminis, it's like

[Nancy Wilson]

the main two twins.

[Interviewer]

I always say with Gemini, there's the person out front that sort of does about 95% of the work. And then occasionally the other one shows up and you're like, who are you?

[Nancy Wilson]

Exactly?

[Interviewer]

There's this other person in there. I don't really know you, but. Hi. You're here. Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Like, where were you? Yeah, you know, like. Yeah, exactly.

[Interviewer]

You can take this however you want. I. But I did see where you. You. You were talking about the, you know, the beautiful cocaine heydays of the 70s. And you. You talked. And your sister talked about. I think she was talking more about Al, but you were talking about cocaine. And it's not really a question. It's just to Illustrate that.

[Nancy Wilson]

You mean the 80s.

[Interviewer]

Well, but were you partying in the 70s or is the. Is it.

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, the mind expanded part was the 70s after the late 60s. That was the mind opening times and the human potential.

[Interviewer]

Are we talking pot mushrooms?

[Nancy Wilson]

Pot mushrooms and psychedelia, you know, lsd.

[Interviewer]

Okay, right.

[Nancy Wilson]

And so I saw God a few times in the late 60s for sure. With the right music on in the right setting and the right dosage and all the things that you never would ever, ever folks ever do again today because there's no control over anything anymore. But then when cocaine started taking over with MTV in the 80s.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so that's an 80s, that's an 80s thing. Okay, so we're at the 80s.

[Nancy Wilson]

So it's. Then it's the ego 80s.

[Interviewer]

Sure. What year in your mind, you know, does. Does the. Let's call it the original blueprint of the brand band stop working as effectively? And then you're kind of put in this position. I know you switch record labels, but you're put in this position now where it's outside writers and.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, well, the first, like 1975, back in the year of our Lord, 1975, until about five years later when it was turning into 1980.

[Interviewer]

So somewhere there you start to feel

[Nancy Wilson]

that the five year lifespan of heart was pretty much over.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Nancy Wilson]

Like they say, every rock band has a five year lifespan.

[Interviewer]

I go seven, but it's. It's seven. Yeah, it's. You know, I think seven's the magic number there for me.

[Nancy Wilson]

I remember with five it was like, you too. It was like everybody. It was cool for about five or seven years and then not. And then you have to kind of prove it all over again.

[Interviewer]

You gotta be cool again. Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Gotta get cool somehow again. Am I cool yet?

[Interviewer]

You know, but what's the year they sit you down and say, by the way, you've got to come at this.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's about 1970. I mean 84. 3 4. Because we'd done the Private Audition album of the early 80s, which was a Turkey, has some good songs, but it was a turkey. So then we had no. We ran out of our contract and management and everything and record label and everything kind of dropped off. So to get back in the game around 80, mid-80s, we resigned. We took on outside songwriters, we put on the, you know, the corsets and did the videos.

[Interviewer]

Big hair.

[Nancy Wilson]

The Big hair and you know. And got some really great songs out of that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, for sure.

[Nancy Wilson]

I mean, that we still love to do.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

But the, the artifice part of it just living behind the imaging, making part of it was really not our natural state of being.

[Interviewer]

It strikes me as odd.

[Nancy Wilson]

It was just like little, little barefoot flower children from Seattle, basically. And tomboys, you know, so.

[Interviewer]

Because it strikes me as odd because again, I was listening. Let's call Heart 1.0. So. So when this other heart shows up, it's like, well, it's not that it's bad, it's just not the heart that I know.

[Nancy Wilson]

When you're in Africa, you put on the African clothes. You know, it kind of felt like when in Rome, you put on the toga.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Like the whole culture had moved.

[Interviewer]

But did you into this internally? It's kind of a place. I don't want to cut you off.

[Nancy Wilson]

One word I was trying to come up with, it was a. It was. When you try, when you go. It was a costume party.

[Interviewer]

Okay. But internally and because you're siblings, I think it seems to be more intense in my mind. But you tell me. No, but I'm saying is you're sitting there, this is my fantasy scenario. And you take it from here. You're sitting there and like, okay, they want us to do this. They're putting pressure on this. And we can take this lane or we can keep doing what we're doing. What is the cause? To me, knowing how important music is to you and your sister and your family and that you had won by being an integral artist, it's a weird thing to sort of flip the switch down the road, you know, some eight to 10 years later and be like, okay, now we're gonna become more of a commercial entity and sort of subsume ourselves in this greater force. And the thing that really jumped out at me as a fellow songwriter is five hits on the big record, the Heart. I think it's just self titled Heart.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So five songs, five singles on the record. You guys, you and your sister didn't write one of those songs.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's right.

[Interviewer]

Did that do something to you or you were cool with.

[Nancy Wilson]

Did something to us as songwriters, we had like artistic integrity. Our precious artistic integrity was really poked at by that, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Because. And you know, because we'd been such a hard working touring company, such a touring act, you know, we, we'd been, we just didn't have. We felt like we'd been kind of shoved into a conveyor belt, kind of commercially a conveyor belt of hit making machinery where we didn't have time to really search our own souls and to, you know, get our next better songs written. Yet, yeah. Because we were so busy churning out the hits that other people had written and, you know, and the money was bigger than ever, and it was bigger than the first big success we ever had. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I mean, when it hit, you guys were massive.

[Nancy Wilson]

It was massive in the 80s and. Sorry. Fiddling with the sound meds. The.

[Interviewer]

Like, you'll come out here with a

[Nancy Wilson]

stick if you don't touch your. Don't touch your top. But it was kind of like a real devil's bargain. I mean, in.

[Interviewer]

But did you feel. Did you feel that at the time?

[Nancy Wilson]

Totally, yeah. I mean, I think Anne in particular, I guess the perfect. One of the more perfect examples is the song All I want to do is make Love to you, a Mutt Language song that was our biggest ever massive smash global hit around the world. And it's a great song. It sounds really cool. It's a really great track. And I love the track. The, you know, the hook is there. Like, the production just kicks. It sounds great on the radio. And you just want to roll down your window, you know, and chew gum or something, you know, when you hear that on a summer day, you know, and. But Ann had to sing the lyrics right. And her own artistic integrity was pushed to its limit where she had to tell this story song that felt more like a country western story song.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Nancy Wilson]

About this rainy night where some. Some. We changed the gender on the song.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And they banned us in Ireland, consequently, which was kind of. We were kind of proud of that, actually, but so it just wasn't a fit, you know?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

The com. The commercialism, the corporateness of it all was just on our bag.

[Interviewer]

I don't mean this as a joke or a pun, but the phrase comes to mind. Is it like, did it break your heart? I mean, it did, though.

[Nancy Wilson]

It. It was kind of heartbreaking. It was kind of soul bending.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Because you just, you know, like, inside, you're just kind of like, I'm smiling and I'm really happy for the great success. But living behind the image, the look and the stilettos and the hair and the hairspray and the. And trying to make it look like an MTV video on live stages, then I see, was even harder.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And the acoustic guitar was so out, man, during that time, it was like, no, nobody wants to hear that folky now.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

So I wasn't really kind of encouraged or. Or kind of even in some ways, allowed to put anything acoustic on a lot of those songs, unless it was just like, oh, just the little spice that you leave Way up in the top, way over there in the upper register that you don't even hear. And so when I had the kind of fluke, first number one single, these Dreams, that I sang myself, I didn't have a guitar in my hands to sing it with.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Nancy Wilson]

So I was like, what am I supposed to do with my hands?

[Interviewer]

It is weird when you're used to playing guitar on stage and suddenly you got to stand there.

[Nancy Wilson]

I have no idea what to do. And so, like, I was trying to be like Joni Mitchell, you know, like, she has the coolest expression, you know, when she was up and not playing guitar, you know? And my mom came to one of our shows, she goes, so when you sang these Dreams, you look like you're doing the hula. I'm like, oh, yeah, I should at least hold the guitar. So then I just learned it on the mandolin. And then we've done different ways of making. Being able to play it while I sing it anyway. But the 80s was not a perfect fit. But there were the songs. Some of those great songs, like Alone in particular and these Dreams, But Alone sounds to me like it could have been one of those French Cafe, World War I, in black and white, you know, kind of a crooner, like a woman singing about her soldier, you know,

[Interviewer]

in the war, did you. Compromise may not be the right word, but let's just say call. It's a form of compromise. You're in this situation, but did you see it at the time as just survival? Was it like, look, this is kind of what we gotta do to stay in the game?

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. I think, honestly, we felt like we have to wear these clothes and we need to make these videos, and we have to take. Take the suggestion of the record company and try out these songs. And we would go. We listened to stacks of demo songs by all these hit songwriters, and some were the ones that obviously were a fit, were a great fit. But when we went into rehearsals and tried to learn all these songs, like song after song after song, it was like. It felt like we were giving up our territory as artists because it was someone else's style that they were like, what color do you want to paint this room? You know, the 32nd. Like, listening to demos is like, the 32nd. Well, what character would you like me to become?

[Interviewer]

I see. Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And especially for Anne, singing the words, like, you know, when she. She. She started having this big reaction towards a lot of these songs, feeling like a victim. Like, these are songs written like, why do you lie? You know, Even what about love has got a lot more of a punchy kind of I'm angry at you thing.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

But. But like he left me. Now what do I do? You know, the victim songs were just not her way of expressing rock music.

[Interviewer]

It hurts to hear you tell it. I don't know. I mean, you know what I mean? It's not my. Not my, not my story.

[Nancy Wilson]

She's not a whiny singer, so she just could not get behind the girly. Girly stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Because to the Gen X generation, you know, that grew up hearing those earlier songs, it was so. The empowering is a weird word. Cause it's very coded in this world. But it was like, this is our music and this is who we are and this is what we do. And your sister has a very unique stage charisma, you know?

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, kind of like almost like a darker Stevie Nicks or something. You know what I mean?

[Nancy Wilson]

Like more like she's quite the storyteller.

[Interviewer]

Yes. And.

[Nancy Wilson]

And she means it. And phoning it in is never what she's.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so that's what I'm saying. So suddenly you put a person who's used to singing their own lyrics songs they believe in stories from their own life. You know, some of your biggest 1.0 hits are, you know, they're based on things that actually happened.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And suddenly you're in this weird spot where you're like, what happened to the band? What happened to the story?

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

I don't want to. I don't want to connect this, but. But you tell me if there's any connection, because much was made in this era about your sister's parents. It was a huge. I can't imagine it was very comfortable for her.

[Nancy Wilson]

No, that was painful stuff. Definitely. And in the ego, sort of cocaine ego driven image driven. 80s was way less mind expanded from where we came from. And the corporateness was kicking in all levels, on every level. And so they would put her stretch the frame in the video and it was really obvious they were trying to make her look skinnier. And a lot of the live reviews of our live shows would really, really trash on Ann. You know, just trash talk about her weight. And so we just never even looked at reviews anymore. We. It was just really rough time for her emotionally to just be this amazing singer. Like, I would go around and try to stick up for her and go, so is Aretha Franklin too fat? You know, it doesn't matter if it's Aretha Franklin, you know.

[Interviewer]

Well, now it seems even Sillier because you see with body positivity movement, there's. Some of the biggest artists in the world are People have a little bit of size in them, and it doesn't diminish them in the eyes of the audience. In many ways, the audience says you. You're a real person who's not trying to be somebody you're not like Adele.

[Nancy Wilson]

When Adele first made a big splash, she wouldn't lost weight and looked great. But, I mean, people loved her for her talent. And it was a great lesson in the culture for that reason, when Adele made a huge hit out of her talent because the sound of her voice was so relatable and so emotional and real and so, you know.

[Interviewer]

But was there any connection there between this circumstance you found yourself in with having success but feeling somewhat disassociated with it and her own. And her own issues was like, did that connect or they just ran on two separate tracks?

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, there's where you have to learn your compartmentalizing skills, you know, in your life, because these things are running over these. All this painful kind of is over here.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Nancy Wilson]

And then. But still there's this compartment where it's really fun to be in Rock Band and really fun to be on a big rock stage and. But my feet hurt because I don't like wearing these shoes, you know? And then there's this other compartment where, you know, you've got your family and you've got a beach house because of all the success that all this other. These other compartments have provided you with. So it's, you know, I think it's just kind of dangerous to compartmentalize your life too much.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

But it's also a skill that it's a survival mechanism at the same time.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. This is more of a personality artistic question than a life question. I hope that makes sense. But, you know, you were in a marriage with somebody who's a very famous writer director, you met when he was doing Fast Times at Ridgemont High somewhere around there. It's Cameron Crowe we're talking about. So it strikes me that you have these two very strong personalities in your life. You know what I mean? That seems to come out.

[Nancy Wilson]

I'm a collaborator. I love collaborating. And with Ann. I love collaborating with Ann. And our friend sue from when I was 12, we met, wrote a bunch of heart songs with me and Ann, Sue Ennis, and then with Cameron. You know, I'd been with guys in the band, which was really a bad idea. And so here's this really cool kind of nerdy smart writer type guy, you know, who could. Really. Had a real grasp of words and wrote for Rolling Stone magazine.

[Interviewer]

But also a sense sergeant. But he has. He has great sense of cultural zeitgeist stuff, which is.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Which is rare.

[Nancy Wilson]

The. The cultural zeitgeist about music, but culture, too. And the whole culture.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And how the culture feels and how to feel.

[Interviewer]

That's a rare talent.

[Nancy Wilson]

You know, That's a huge talent to see where the culture's. What the culture's feeling or about to feel.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And hear. Want to hear, you know, what they hear, what they want to hear. And so that's a rare gift.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Too. So I love collaborating with really gifted, talented.

[Interviewer]

Because the obvious question, I think, is, you know, most people want to make things about themselves.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know what I mean? But in your life, you haven't necessarily made it about you. You've always worked in a more like a collective frame.

[Nancy Wilson]

That is true with me, but I like being a leader and I like being decisive, like executive decisions to make. I do that. I'm okay to jump at that and just. Okay, everybody shut up. Here's what it's going to be. Because too many cooks in the kitchen. I can't do that either.

[Interviewer]

So let's put a blue little smiley face on this. The 80s talk. So, like many in. In. In the Gen X generation, when you showed up on Alison Shane's song the Rooster, it was kind of a really interesting thing. Not only was it a beautiful song and it's a classic and it's such a beautiful song that Jerry wrote about his father's experiences. I love Jerry. I think Jerry's one of the great.

[Nancy Wilson]

I know.

[Interviewer]

Writers of all time.

[Nancy Wilson]

My brother.

[Interviewer]

I'm always at the.

[Nancy Wilson]

The. Me too.

[Interviewer]

At the altar of Jerry, you know.

[Nancy Wilson]

Me too. I am, too.

[Interviewer]

I'm not one to hand out a lot of praise in that. In that regard, but Jerry, he's a

[Nancy Wilson]

great writer, great player.

[Interviewer]

Please.

[Nancy Wilson]

And singer. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yes. So. But the. The other, I think, and I'm sure it wasn't intentional. It was kind of like for someone like me, it was kind of like, oh, yeah, they're cool. It was like a. It was like a moment to remember.

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, that. That's, you know, in the 90s then. Now.

[Interviewer]

93, 94.

[Nancy Wilson]

We've arrived at the 90s.

[Interviewer]

Yes. Yes.

[Nancy Wilson]

And I thank God we're out of the 80s now. And that's what it felt like coming back to Seattle then.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And I got to meet you around that time at some club.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

We were upstairs, like, crammed into some smoky club, and I was like, hey, it's you. And you're like, hey, it's you.

[Interviewer]

Well, you know, I talked to you about the heartless Seven Inch Buddha. That's what I remember.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's what it was. Oh, doing it again. That's what it was. I remember that really well. And I was like, oh, man. Oh, my God. I love his music. And, you know, I was mutually impressed with you. But we came home and guys like Jerry, we came back out of the LA 80s kind of to. Back to Seattle to take a break and start a band called the Love Mongers. That was just a side project, just for fun. Yeah. No managers, no record companies. Just go play and sing in clubs, whatever covers we wanted to do or whatever we wanted to do. But when Andrew woods died from Mother Love Bone, right around the same time, my friend Kelly Curtis, who's still my

[Interviewer]

best friend, was and is still Pearl Jam's manager.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. Was still, I think, still doing Pearl Jam. Said, you gotta come and meet the community at this house where we're gonna have, like, a wake for Andrew Woods. Bring the dogs. And so we loaded up the dogs, me and Cameron, and we went to, I think it was Andrew woods house in Seattle. Big, big, huge, old kind of a band house. And his wife or girl was grieving there and all the dogs were running around and everybody was getting crying and laughing and loving the dogs together. And that's where I met Jerry and Mike Vanez and, you know, Lane and great people. All those guys. The Screaming Trees guys.

[Interviewer]

Great, great guys.

[Nancy Wilson]

Great band, great guys. You know, the whole scene really came out for that.

[Interviewer]

Did it night.

[Nancy Wilson]

That was a big party.

[Interviewer]

Is it too obvious to say you were kind of like, oh, this. This is what I remember, you know, not.

[Nancy Wilson]

Not from being in.

[Interviewer]

No, no. But the. So it's. It's like. This is the music I remember, like people together.

[Nancy Wilson]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

That's what I'm saying.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's like.

[Interviewer]

It's like. It's like, oh, oh, this is back.

[Nancy Wilson]

This is. Well, I'm back where it feels like a music community. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So there's so the unintended consequence, I think, of you guys.

[Nancy Wilson]

It was the perfect blessing inside of a huger curse, you know, was the blessing of coming together at a wake for a really great local guy. And I'd seen Mother Love Bone at the. I think it was the off ramp or something. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And. And he would have probably been fairly. Fairly very successful.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. And he. He chugged On a big pitcher of beer and spit it out in the crowd. And I spit beer all over me because I was up in the crowd and I was like, yeah, you know, I've been anointed, you know. And then he died. And so we all met there and. And Jerry was kind of the first sweet soul to kind of make me feel like, oh, God, they don't hate us. After the 80s, after the.

[Interviewer]

No, you were. You. You were beloved by that generation. That's. That's.

[Nancy Wilson]

Which I. We didn't understand that. We just thought. We. They think we're sellouts because of all of the, you know, the corporateness that they were all.

[Interviewer]

That's what I mean about a reminder.

[Nancy Wilson]

It was kind of like, here's a community.

[Interviewer]

You know. To hear your voice is in that context, especially being in the generation. It was like that was the moment

[Nancy Wilson]

where it kind of, you know, we kind of melded into the 90s.

[Interviewer]

But I think it might sound trite to say, but it sort of reminded me that you were one of us or we were one of you.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's what it felt like. Exactly.

[Interviewer]

Like you'd kind of come home back to music.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. And, you know, real guitars and real drums, real garages that sound.

[Interviewer]

No, but. But it's in the name. It's heart. Right.

[Nancy Wilson]

You know, I know. Still always trying to live up to the name.

[Interviewer]

Well, that's a tough. That's a tough.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's hard to live up to the tough times.

[Interviewer]

So I think that's a nice bow on that story. Right. Because we know after that, it kind of. It. It balances itself out.

[Nancy Wilson]

When Jerry Kadrill came up to me in one in the corner with a guitar and sit at Anne's house at a party and said, how do you play the beginning of Mr. Hall win? I'm like, okay, this is good. This is a good thing. I've got a family. I got a family now.

[Interviewer]

That's beautiful.

[Nancy Wilson]

Back with my family,

[Interviewer]

I saw you interviewed by Dan Rather, and he asked you some interesting questions. But there's that moment in. It's mid-90s where you meet with your sister and you say, look, I got a kind of. To put this thing on pause. I gotta have to try to have a family. And that's gotta be a tough, tough moment.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, that was really a tough moment. She didn't understand what I was, what I want, why I wanted to step away and try to start my family. She didn't get it. And she. She never did. I don't think she Never got it.

[Interviewer]

What if it's too personal? Just you can skip past it. But what, what, what didn't she get? Like, which part of that didn't she get?

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, I think nurture. Like I'm a nurturing person just by nature. Nurturing, nature person. And she's more of. She defines herself more by the actual job and that. The. The work of it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's how I am, so that makes sense to me.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, well, you're Pisces, though.

[Interviewer]

I'm a weird, but you're a weird Pisces. I'm a weird Pisces. Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

No, I get that though.

[Interviewer]

But I get the idea of being defined by your work.

[Nancy Wilson]

Just defined by the work. But I think in Anne's case, just personally, she really feels alone and lonely and not okay without it. It. So she. She leans. She. She. She's not okay without it. So she has to have the stage to be okay. To. To get the love back from an audience is how she's gonna be okay. And, you know, I've done a lot of therapy over the last few years, and it's really helped me figure out stuff like that. But I think in Anne's case, you know, she relies her own definition of who she is. She has to have an audience and she has to be on a stage. And that's the only way she feels like she really gets love in her life as much as I love her. And I always will love to be on stages with her or any room with her.

[Interviewer]

Let me take a guess and see if this resonates with you. You. Again, if it's too personal, you can skip past it. I think for people who are the best at what they do, I think it's very confusing for them when either through life or health, limitations or circumstance, they don't have access to the thing that sort of, you know, connects with the thing that they do.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

On one hand. And it's a gift because like I said, your sister's the type of person, she just opens your mouth and it works. Yeah, it's crazy, right? I watched a bunch of old live clips of you, and there it is. I mean, it's. It's not like. It's not studery studio trickery. It's like. No, it is there.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's just.

[Interviewer]

And you've heard it more than anybody else in the whole world.

[Nancy Wilson]

True.

[Interviewer]

But. But there's that. There's that thing where I think for people who are extremely gifted, they don't totally understand the nature of the gift and the closest thing they can get to understanding the nature of the gift is when it's in action.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Because. Because when it's not an action. And again, I'm asking your opinion, I'm just giving mine.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

When it's not an action, it's sort of confusing because that. That is the thing that defines everything. It's the Promethean fire without the Promethean fire. It's kind of like, well, who am I?

[Nancy Wilson]

You couldn't say it better than that. I mean, I couldn't say it better than that. You're spotted. Not. You're exactly on the crux of it all with her. Her need to be fulfilled in her life by doing the work.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Nancy Wilson]

And when I needed to take for myself, needed to step away from that, she took it as punishment or something

[Interviewer]

and never got over jealousy or. What's the punishment? Is it.

[Nancy Wilson]

I think, well, punishing her by not being there to support. Continue to support. You know, the beautiful habit of we have in heart that supports her. Well, being her sense of purpose and being at all, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Her life. Her life that. Her fulfillment. But I think punishment. I mean, I was just trying to just like, this is a sabbatical. I'll be right back. Nothing is changing. I'm just going over here. There's a pause, then we're back. You know, but sort of a jealousy, too, because she doesn't have the. She didn't want to naturally do that for her own. She wasn't as interested in having kids as I was. She didn't have a husband either at the time, so. So I think she wanted to have everything I wanted, but not without losing the job at the same time. So just kind of an impossible scenario for her to grasp or for us to balance with each other over. But then we've sort of pushed through some really rough stuff and got back where the safety of the two of us, like, regardless of. It's like being in the eye of a hurricane when we're together. Because there's all the trips, the power trips that swirl around. There's cows flying by, you know, there's tractors, management, all that bull. All that stuff that can go so wrong for so long will and has been going wrong for a long time. But then we get up on a stage together and there's this bubble and there's this safe zone and there's magic there, and it's just bigger than it's. You know, it's like the songs themselves are larger than life. It's what the songs Inform us all. You know, like the songs. We love your songs. You know, that people hold in their souls that help them through their lives. That it's the healing power of music. Right. You know, I'm preaching to the choir here. I know, but it's what good music can do.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But what strikes me when you're talking is it's that you're sisters.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

It's blood hearted at the end of the day. It's the bond.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's the bond of family.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, you're right.

[Interviewer]

That's the beauty in the end of the day.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. Hopefully the day's not ending anytime soon.

[Interviewer]

I just want to say thank you for sharing all that. It's really beautiful.

[Nancy Wilson]

No problem.

[Interviewer]

The one thing I want to say about this or the Promethean gift, it's more an off told story. When somebody has the Promethean gift and they throw it away. The other side of that story is the person who wants to continue to use that Promethean gift, their life is defined by the use of that gift. And again through circumstance or health or life, we just. Whatever life happens, they're not able to apply it in the same way. That's a less told story. But in many ways it's. It. There is an honorable aspect to it because it's like I've been given something and I want to use it.

[Nancy Wilson]

That's right. And. And being kept from using it, you know, can be just like being wounded.

[Interviewer]

That's kind of what I'm trying to say.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Because I've. Because I've been lucky enough to play with really incredibly people that are talented in a way that I find sort of shocking. And that's why I even use the word with your. Like your sister. There's a shocking talent there. It's like, how does that work?

[Nancy Wilson]

Very well said.

[Interviewer]

Because it's more than just winning a genetic lottery.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You got the right set of pipes.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, like it's all there. Like whatever. If you want to make a star in a test tube, there it is. It's like beauty, charisma, sass, fire. A voice. Not just a voice. A voice that means something to people. And you were part of that, that beautiful organization of that.

[Nancy Wilson]

No, I know I get to accompany that fire. You know, I'm part of the fire.

[Interviewer]

Absolutely.

[Nancy Wilson]

I make part. I make. Well, I think I fuel the fire.

[Interviewer]

This is a bit therapy. But I mean I think what she was saying, what she was saying in her own. Where now we're talking Pisces talk I think what she was saying to you in her moment was. Was I, I need you.

[Nancy Wilson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Which is really, if you think about. It's ultimately an endorsement.

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, it was an endorsement, but it's like, you know, don't leave me.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Nancy Wilson]

Like she felt abandoned.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

Because I needed to do something with my life that wasn't the two of us doing it together.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Nancy Wilson]

And I get that. I've come to.

[Interviewer]

You must be a really good supporter because she probably didn't know how much she needed you until she was going to lose you.

[Nancy Wilson]

Well, I never wanted to make her feel left either.

[Interviewer]

Well, you proved that over time.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah, she did. And, you know, and we've still got probably a victory lap to do or two.

[Interviewer]

I hope so.

[Nancy Wilson]

Maybe more than that. But, you know, as long as we both can do this together. It's like I said, it's just this. It's a space unto itself. It's the family place, it's the blood harmony. It's the cause. Like your own DNA is also their DNA. So it's a cellular level.

[Interviewer]

That's why I brought up Everly's and Bee Gees. There's something there. Kinks. There's something there that's so deep that I think the public doesn't understand on how intense it must be.

[Nancy Wilson]

It's kind of intense.

[Interviewer]

That's what I'm saying. There's a level of intensity that I don't feel. I understand. But I've talked to enough of the people or the families along the way, mostly privately, to get a sense of what did that really feel like. I mean, look at the Everly Brothers. Probably the greatest harmony singers ever, who the Beatles idolized. I mean, the ability for them to harmonize. Phil. And don't.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And there was such an intense attraction and repulsion between the two guys over 50 something years.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And. And I saw them play once and of course, you know, you hear the legend of the stories and. And I was watching them and they were so good.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

At one point. Because you'll appreciate this because you sing harmony. They were so good. I thought, I'm just gonna. Every time they hit a bum note, I'm just gonna make a note of it. Because they're not hitting any bum notes. And over a 90 minute show, they hit four bum notes. And all those harmonies.

[Nancy Wilson]

A tiny bit sharp, tiny bit flat over here.

[Interviewer]

Four out of 90 minutes. And this is when they're like in their 50s, you know what I mean?

[Nancy Wilson]

And no pre record. No.

[Interviewer]

This is just two. Two guys at one point they did a thing we would like to sing it. You know, we grew up with their parents singing on radio shows. We like to sing some songs about old Kentucky and stuff like that. And they did a little portion of the show where they did like 10 minutes and they had that weird mic where they would, you know, it was like a mic with a U. So they were both could look at each other when they sang. So they did about seven or eight minutes of just acoustic, just the two of them. I mean it was insane. But when you think of the alchemical dynamic of being from the same parent, from the same genetic, you know, helix.

[Nancy Wilson]

Like singing harmony with your sister and

[Interviewer]

to choose a life together.

[Nancy Wilson]

Yeah. And like when I like when you know someone that well from on a DNA level like that and you sing harmony together and I'm singing, for instance, on a song like Dog and Butterfly. I could just look at. Watch her sing it and know what to do, what not to do and exactly on the spot do it the same. Just on the spot because of the way they're breathing, just, you know, how they're singing that particular time. And it's just, just. That's pretty cool thing that I feel lucky. Another thing I'm super grateful to have in my life is, you know, that blood harmony and having seen the Beatles on Ed Sullivan show like every other rock person ever did. And just follow that course all the way, all the way through and have that same course that I'm on today from that. From when I was nine. That's like insane. Like that doesn't. Nobody knows where they're going at the beginning of their life like that. I feel like way too lucky. Like my parents should have been divorced, you know, we should have been poor, you know, should have never picked up a guitar.

[Interviewer]

You don't want the trauma.

[Nancy Wilson]

I should have had all the pain.

[Interviewer]

You don't want the trauma.

[Nancy Wilson]

I had plenty of trauma, believe me.

[Interviewer]

Well, you don't want that trauma. Maybe that's.

[Nancy Wilson]

But that particular other trauma I never got, never was forced to have have or I was lucky enough to not have.

[Interviewer]

Thank you so much. Lovely talking to you.

[Nancy Wilson]

You.