Ann Wilson Recalls Having ESP with Chris Cornell & More

In September 2018, Heart's Ann Wilson released her solo album, Immortal, on which she covers late music icons who have passed away like David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, Tom Petty and more. Immortal features songs like Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane," Audioslave's "I Am the Highway," Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black," Tom Petty's "Luna" and more.

Wilson has said of her album, "It’s not a tribute, but rather a chance for me to honor these great artists … to thank them for their messages they left while they lived." She added, "It has been a wonderful experience for me because I'm not only singing, but directing, too. I was able to see the project grow from an idea to a finished song, with no compromises to the original vision. My team and I did not hold back, and you can expect the unexpected on the tracks. The album is a collection of songs by artists who have departed in the last several years: David Bowie, Chris Cornell, Tom Petty, Glen Frey, and Amy Winehouse to name a few. These artists may have left their bodies, but their souls and craft live on today."

Although she remembers the work of such legendary musicians on Immortal, Wilson herself is an icon too. With a long career as part of such a powerful female rock band, especially after Heart was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, Ann has accomplished so many incredible milestones, including releasing music and touring as a solo artist.

So, with such an illustrious career under her belt, we took a trip back in time with Wilson via the iHeartRadio Box, which was filled with memories and artifacts from over the years. Read on below.

Heart's "Dog & Butterfly"

"'Dog & Butterfly,' that's the name of a song that I wrote with my sister, Nancy, for Heart way back when, like '77 or something like that. And I was just looking out the window one day, and I used to have a sheepdog, and she was chasing a butterfly. You see that all the time, in the springtime with dogs. But at that moment, I thought, boy, that's a metaphor. That's like me and my trying to capture the ideal song or the ideal man, or something. You never quite seem to do it. But, you keep on. So yeah, there's a dog and there's a butterfly right there."

Heart's Bébé le Strange Album Cover

"Oh, god, album covers. That's me and my sister. The shot was taken in 1978 or 1979, and to get this shot, just this way, we were standing with a photographer who was kind of an a**hole, you know. He was just a weird guy and he was kind of sleazy, and we started gossiping about him to each other really quietly on this side of the camera. And, one of the times we gossiped was this. She was saying something to me, and there it was. So, I suppose you can say this is evidence of girls whispering together."

Big Hair in "The Fakey '80s"

"See, here is another one. This is a promo shot from the 1980s. I call them the fakey '80s because, well, obviously. Because of the hair. I mean, this hair is like a foot high. But anyway, there it is, the fakey '80s."

Heart's First Album: Dreamboat Annie

"That's Dreamboat Annie, our very first album. This is shot up in Vancouver, BC, just, just up in somebody's loft, a guy who didn't charge us anything, you know, just [to] take a picture of us. And, he had to say, 'Well, what you're wearing is freaking out my light meter, so pull down your top,' you know. So we're like, 'Okay.' And so, we get this shot here of these two innocent girls who were just, we have a band and here's our album cover. And, this has been misconstrued so much over the years to be some kind of hypersexualized thing. But it really never was. It was just, we were just kids, so."

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction with Chris Cornell

"This is Chris inducting us into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. What a sweet guy. He really had the it factor. He just had this soul that was just miles, miles deep. Didn't know if he was too complicated to live on this planet or not, though. I always thought Chris was ... we really go along on this level where we hardly even had to speak. I do believe in ESP and he and I definitely had it. There's me at the Rock Hall wearing a bowler hat like Gunner Fox. I love speaking at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You get a chance to get up there and just orate, you know. I've never heard this speech, so thank you for letting me see it again."

The Kennedy Center Honors Honoring Led Zeppelin

"Here's these boys, the Kennedy Center. Here's Led Zeppelin, the the princes of party. Such bad boys all dressed up in their, you know, getting rewarded for that behavior, and of course, for their incredible music. They were rewarded for how much they influenced other people. And that's the real point. That was a great night. That was a sublime night. Nancy and I, before we went on to sing 'Stairway to Heaven,' we both had this little jag of nerves and we just looked at each other, went, 'Okay, don't think about this right now. Think about this after. Let's just go and just keep our eye on the ball, and just do the song. Don't freak out.' So, we did and it worked and it was great."

Covering Amy Winehouse "Back to Black" on Immortal

"Amy, Amy, Amy. Yeah. This, this chick, had she lived ... I think right now, the fact that she is gone, when she went and what she left when she was here, was just about up there with Judy Garland. She really put her soul on display and it was beautiful, that burning down, that sunset thing when somebody's just about to burn out, you know, there's a moment where it's just fantastically beautiful. That was Amy. And I did one of her songs on my new solo album, Immortal. I did 'Back to Black' in a whole other way. It was really a great experience."

First Solo Album: Hope & Glory

"This is my first solo album when I dared to go out on my own, and yeah, there're some good ... It was a good start. It was the first time I ever really put a toe out there by myself, with Ben Mink, of course ... good record. Now I have two solo albums. This was the first."

The Upcoming Heart Tour with Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile & Elle King

"This is the announce that happened just a couple of days ago for the, for the 2019 Heart tour. And people are calling it a reunion tour, but really it's just, we took a couple of years off. We needed to get out of each other's company for a while. But that served to really produce sort of a vacuum that we wanna go into now. So, it actually worked out really great. So, this is for this Heart tour that is gonna also feature Sheryl Crow and Joan Jett and Brandi Carlile, and Elle King. And it's an all woman show, but there'll be plenty of men up there on stage. Strong women need men behind them, I believe. So, it's gonna be a really great lineup substance, and it's not just gonna be one more, 'Okay, stack up the classic rock bands and just send them through so they can take your money, and you can have your memories for 60 or 90 minutes or something.' It's gonna actually have substance. It had to be that way for me to wanna do it, and so we found Brandi and Sheryl ... great artists in their own right. And Elle King, my favorite new artist. It's gonna be amazing."

Photo: Katherine Tyler