July 9, 2021 • 17 mins
Ann and Nancy Wilson fronted one of the most successful hard rock bands of the 70s and 80s at a time when, as Nancy put it, “women normally did not rock and women were not expected to be leaders.” Chris Cornell deemed them the “hometown heroes” of his Pacific Northwest city and helped the Rock Hall add two more rock goddesses to its pantheon.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Welcome to Induction Vault, a production of I Heart
Radio and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame M hmmm.
(00:29):
In two thousand thirteen, the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame added two Goddesses of rock to their pantheon with
the induction of Heart Anna Nancy Wilson, front of one
of the most successful hard rock bands of the seventies
and eighties, at a time when, as Nancy put it,
women normally did not rock and women were not expected
to be leaders. After the band gave their acceptance speeches,
(00:53):
the pioneering Seattle based rockers brought members of the grunge
generation on stage, including Alison Chains, Jerry k Trow, Pearl Jams,
Mike McCready, and Sound Gardens Chris Cornell. They performed a slower, radio,
even more guitar driven version of Barracuda. Bring the event
full circle to when Cornell inducted them, deeming them the
(01:15):
hometown heroes of his Pacific Northwest city. Thank you everyone.
My name is Chris Cornell, and I am here tonight
to induct an amazing band that has thrived and survived
(01:36):
for four decades. Over four decades, and they also happened
to be my hometown, Euros a band called Heart in Seattle,
listening to rock music and what was a very guitar
oriented town, you got the sense that all of these
bands and people on the radio making these using vivid
(02:01):
songs were actually superheroes somehow in dad with the sort
of power that we mere mortals would never have. UM
Hard demonstrated those powers immediately and unquestionably for sharing their
powers with us and rocking the rest of the world.
Let us now praise sisters Anne and Nancy Wilson, as
(02:21):
well as guitarist Roger Fisher, bassist Steve Fawson, guitarists and
keyboardists Howard Lee's and drummer Michael de Rosier. Together, these
people made magic so awesome and so powerful. It's somehow
(02:51):
it never occurred to us that Anna and Nancy Wilson,
we're women existing authentically in a world dominated by men.
That's because I don't think Heart rock less than any
of the other great hard rock bands out there. Somehow,
even with raging hormones of a twelve year old boy,
the subject never even came up. Um. A little thing
(03:13):
like gender wasn't ever mentioned, because right there on the radio,
Heart felt very clearly held their own and that is
how hard with two joan of Arcs standing up front,
kicking total ass, backed by a surprisingly powerful and unique band,
blasted down any sexist barriers in front of them, armed
with pure balsy power of rock and roll. To those
(03:39):
of us in Seattle, then we didn't perceive our hometown
is a place where rock gods would live and work.
With heart, the whole story felt very close to home.
The truth is that Heart really put the Pacific Northwest
on the rock and roll map in a big way.
Before that, about the only cultural reference to Seattle was
(03:59):
the song Seattle, made famous by Perry Como UM and
then Bobby Sherman Uh. And that song clearly wasn't written
by anyone that had been there, because attained perhaps the
stupidest line that we could ever hear, someone actually bragging
about the bluest skies you've ever seen in a city
where you could easily get in nine months of seasonal
depression disorder without ever seeing a blue sky. Heart was
(04:24):
important to us not just as musicians, but also as
proof of the fact that Seattle could produce something beautiful
and rocking that the rest of the world might actually
care about that hard could tour the world with other
world class bands and live in that universe of rock
heroes inspired a lot of us. They always maintained their
(04:44):
roots and had a presence right there at home, something
that would be echoed in the future by a wave
of Northwest bands that would break out later in the nineties,
and the Seattle scene was exploding and an ant. You
were there as almost elder stateswomen who seemed to have
a calm and confident understanding of what we were up against.
(05:06):
We were young, idealistic musicians, songwriters trying to balance art
and music with the demands of the big business poison
oozing around every corner. They were in our survivors. I
once remember a time when I was in an alley
behind the club in downtown Seattle loading my gear after
playing a gig with one of the first bands I
was in, UM, which I then quit immediately. As I
(05:29):
was cramming my gear into the Ford Galaxy that I owned,
I was overwhelmed the feeling that I was wasting my
time and that somehow I didn't have the strength or
vision to create something truly my own. Just at that moment,
a garage door opened from what I guess was the
back of a private studio recording studio. Out came the
slipstick red Porsche with huge eighties flared fenders, and the
(05:53):
driver was a woman who, unlike me, seemed to know
exactly who she was and where she was going. That
woman was Anne Wilson. She had the aura of a
person who would let nothing stand in the way of
creating her own reality and an absolutely and perfect moment
in my life to see that person, that was a
(06:15):
sign that I needed to see and to keep me
on the path of trying to be a musician and
to try to find my own voice. When you first
heard the great albums these men and women wrote and
played and sang like Dreamboat, Annie, Little Queen Dog and Butterfly,
you had the sense that here's a band that knew
exactly what they were doing, where they were going, taking
(06:36):
a cue from Zeppelin and displaying astonishing range. And when
I say range, I'm not just talking about Ann Wilson's epic,
soulful voice, but also the wide range of what they
could do musically. They naturally rocked hard and their folk
here songs seemed to me to reflect a genuine love
and understanding of folk. This was not just the standard
(06:57):
hard rock band pulling out an acoustic guitar to part,
and they were heavily influenced by the great classical masters.
Heartfelt truly in touch with their musical heroes in a
way that felt and still feels to me completely authentic
heart as a band. But for this fan, it must
be said that the heart of that band that has
kept this heart beating for decades comes from the singular
(07:19):
synergy in the sisterhood of Anne and Nancy Wilson. There
are a lot of theories on why siblings have that magic,
and in this case they do without question. They have
some unknowable connection emotionally that makes them so great when
they sing or play together. Imagine siblings being together that
(07:43):
much for that long and having such harmony. Who can
pull that off years of touring, writing, reinventing themselves and
surviving all the crazy ups and downs that a long
career like There's always throws at you. Yet And and
Nancy have stuck together and have done even side projects together.
Is a testament to how close they really are and
(08:05):
how deep their relationship is tied to their love of
rock and roll. Having worshiped these women from afar and
now close up. I have to say that Anne Wilson
is a uniquely great vocal force of nature. I've I've sing,
(08:25):
I've seen her sing in many different contexts. I've sat
in the living room with Anna and Nancy and acoustic guitars,
and I can tell you it's some of the best
lives singing I've ever heard from anyone in my entire life.
And listening to Anne sing heart songs she sang is
a very young woman. Than hearing her sing them now,
I can say her singing is even better now. There's
(08:46):
a maturity that comes with mastering her craft, and as
a vocalist, she stands out. She stands out as one
of those few vocal role models I look to and think, Wow,
it is possible to get better with age and sing
on and on allays, reaching for more and actually finding it. Sometimes.
(09:07):
I love it. I love Nancy Wilson equally as a
singer for kicking ass on guitar and singing. Hart has
had a series of great lead guitar players, of course,
starting with Roger Fisher, but Nancy is amazing. She's an
amazing guitar goddess. Even when Hartwood go into acoustic mode,
Nancy would bust out this beautifully complicated flat picking and
(09:28):
then turn on a dime, dig in and grind out
man size riffs that can leave many guitar dudes humbled.
Nancy's voice is beautiful, and when these sisters sing together,
it's truly like anything I've ever heard. I remember one
time performing a song within and Nancy I love Monger Show,
and of course I was super nervous, uh, And I
(09:48):
was singing and I forgot the words. Uh. I was
totally lost, and leaned in slightly um and just started
feeding me the lines to to the next line while
she is still singing and playing bass. And I lost
my wife. She'd never did. She was so far ahead
of me. She could feel that I was going to
tank it, even before I knew that I was going
(10:09):
to do it. But then again, from me and countless
other men and women's heart has always been so far ahead.
That's one more reason why they have more than here
in this moment to at long last stand with all
the other rock odds and take their rightful place in
the rock and roll Hall of Fame. Copy After the break,
(10:37):
we'll hear from members of Heart on the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame induction Bault. We would like to
thank our families, our friends, and our fans. Thank you
very much, Thank you. It is tremendously beautiful to be
(11:14):
included here in this eagle's nest of incredible fellow muses.
Our long and winding road has always been about the
magical power of love and the enduring strength of family.
(11:35):
We came from an era when women normally did not rock,
and women were not expected to be leaders. They were
mainly four jobs for us to choose from them teachers, mothers,
nurses or waitresses. And becoming mothers has been the greatest,
(11:56):
most unbelievable gift of all, the biggest of all. Thanks
then goes to our kids tonight, our best beloved little
road orphans who loved us and forgave us for most
of our sacrilegious absences as working moms, who have also
(12:20):
seen a few parent teacher conferences. I'm even more sure
that we deserve this medal of honor. So these days
are modern women are becoming strong and ferocious leaders from
the boardrooms to the bedrooms. Equality is coming right along
(12:48):
for us. Music is the real church. It's a life calling.
It's bigger than men and women put together. Music makes
us all equal and perfectly human. Lost angels maybe, but
lifted up by the absolute million soul thrills of music.
(13:10):
We're here to celebrate our lucky and perilous past. There
were countless times of insanely extenuating situations where Anne and
I just stopped and looked at each other and said, well,
you wanted this, but we're not finished rocking just yet.
(13:32):
M h. We're looking straight into the face of the
future and we say, turn it up. M h. Whoa
(13:58):
than you know? You know not everyone gets a chance
to embody a dream of a life in music. It's
a dream that's not unique just to the young men
and many of the old men that um, who's who
are on this stage tonight. Um. It's also a dream
(14:22):
young women have, and it's a dream shared by any
musician who has a message, a voice, and a muse
inside them. It's the same dream whoever you are and
wherever you are, even if you happen to be a
young woman growing up outside Seattle, Washington, back in an
(14:43):
era when Seattle was not the center of the rock
and roll universe. If you can believe that, particularly after
you see some of the talent up here tonight later
and uh not, every musician gets to feel what it's
like to climb on stage, open up your soul and
let it ring out like clear old belts, send out
(15:04):
your heart like a javelin, and feel that love returned
to you like a wildfire, burning you all the way
down down down to the ground coming back. Now. We
got the chance to be heard, or we made the
chance when we didn't get it. We were lucky enough
to be heard and to be understood, and to connect
(15:27):
with our audience, and to feel the love return from
all our fans, our audience, and not to be forgotten
from our band, our band three. We grew up in
a world and a time when music was full of laughter, dancing,
(15:52):
harmony and love, and maybe it still is. But I
I personally had the wrong gender, the wrong looks, the
wrong d n A, in the wrong hometown for a
music business successful career in that era. But then again,
aren't the sweetest parts of music sometimes about what's wrong? Yeah?
(16:18):
So I got a chance to sing, to find my
voice on stage, and I took it and I still
take it every single night. In front of every single audience,
and I never ever take it for granted. When I
leave this earth, I will look back with great love
(16:39):
because I got the chance to sing. Thank you. Thanks
(17:03):
for joining us on this week's episode of Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame Induction Vault. For more on your
favorite inductees, to shop inductee merch or to plan your
trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, visit
rock hall dot com plus Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame Induction Special on demand on HBO Mats. Our executive
producers are Noel Brown, Shelby Morrison, and Esa Gurkey. Supervising
(17:27):
producer is Taylor Shakoin. Research and archival assistants from Isabelle
Keeper and Shannon Herb. Thanks again for joining us on
this week's episode of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Induction Vault. Induction Ball is a production of I Heart
Radio in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For
(17:48):
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
M Welcome to Induction Vault, a production of I Heart
Radio and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame M hmmm.
(00:29):
In two thousand thirteen, the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame added two Goddesses of rock to their pantheon with
the induction of Heart Anna Nancy Wilson, front of one
of the most successful hard rock bands of the seventies
and eighties, at a time when, as Nancy put it,
women normally did not rock and women were not expected
to be leaders. After the band gave their acceptance speeches,
(00:53):
the pioneering Seattle based rockers brought members of the grunge
generation on stage, including Alison Chains, Jerry k Trow, Pearl Jams,
Mike McCready, and Sound Gardens Chris Cornell. They performed a slower, radio,
even more guitar driven version of Barracuda. Bring the event
full circle to when Cornell inducted them, deeming them the
(01:15):
hometown heroes of his Pacific Northwest city. Thank you everyone.
My name is Chris Cornell, and I am here tonight
to induct an amazing band that has thrived and survived
(01:36):
for four decades. Over four decades, and they also happened
to be my hometown, Euros a band called Heart in Seattle,
listening to rock music and what was a very guitar
oriented town, you got the sense that all of these
bands and people on the radio making these using vivid
(02:01):
songs were actually superheroes somehow in dad with the sort
of power that we mere mortals would never have. UM
Hard demonstrated those powers immediately and unquestionably for sharing their
powers with us and rocking the rest of the world.
Let us now praise sisters Anne and Nancy Wilson, as
(02:21):
well as guitarist Roger Fisher, bassist Steve Fawson, guitarists and
keyboardists Howard Lee's and drummer Michael de Rosier. Together, these
people made magic so awesome and so powerful. It's somehow
(02:51):
it never occurred to us that Anna and Nancy Wilson,
we're women existing authentically in a world dominated by men.
That's because I don't think Heart rock less than any
of the other great hard rock bands out there. Somehow,
even with raging hormones of a twelve year old boy,
the subject never even came up. Um. A little thing
(03:13):
like gender wasn't ever mentioned, because right there on the radio,
Heart felt very clearly held their own and that is
how hard with two joan of Arcs standing up front,
kicking total ass, backed by a surprisingly powerful and unique band,
blasted down any sexist barriers in front of them, armed
with pure balsy power of rock and roll. To those
(03:39):
of us in Seattle, then we didn't perceive our hometown
is a place where rock gods would live and work.
With heart, the whole story felt very close to home.
The truth is that Heart really put the Pacific Northwest
on the rock and roll map in a big way.
Before that, about the only cultural reference to Seattle was
(03:59):
the song Seattle, made famous by Perry Como UM and
then Bobby Sherman Uh. And that song clearly wasn't written
by anyone that had been there, because attained perhaps the
stupidest line that we could ever hear, someone actually bragging
about the bluest skies you've ever seen in a city
where you could easily get in nine months of seasonal
depression disorder without ever seeing a blue sky. Heart was
(04:24):
important to us not just as musicians, but also as
proof of the fact that Seattle could produce something beautiful
and rocking that the rest of the world might actually
care about that hard could tour the world with other
world class bands and live in that universe of rock
heroes inspired a lot of us. They always maintained their
(04:44):
roots and had a presence right there at home, something
that would be echoed in the future by a wave
of Northwest bands that would break out later in the nineties,
and the Seattle scene was exploding and an ant. You
were there as almost elder stateswomen who seemed to have
a calm and confident understanding of what we were up against.
(05:06):
We were young, idealistic musicians, songwriters trying to balance art
and music with the demands of the big business poison
oozing around every corner. They were in our survivors. I
once remember a time when I was in an alley
behind the club in downtown Seattle loading my gear after
playing a gig with one of the first bands I
was in, UM, which I then quit immediately. As I
(05:29):
was cramming my gear into the Ford Galaxy that I owned,
I was overwhelmed the feeling that I was wasting my
time and that somehow I didn't have the strength or
vision to create something truly my own. Just at that moment,
a garage door opened from what I guess was the
back of a private studio recording studio. Out came the
slipstick red Porsche with huge eighties flared fenders, and the
(05:53):
driver was a woman who, unlike me, seemed to know
exactly who she was and where she was going. That
woman was Anne Wilson. She had the aura of a
person who would let nothing stand in the way of
creating her own reality and an absolutely and perfect moment
in my life to see that person, that was a
(06:15):
sign that I needed to see and to keep me
on the path of trying to be a musician and
to try to find my own voice. When you first
heard the great albums these men and women wrote and
played and sang like Dreamboat, Annie, Little Queen Dog and Butterfly,
you had the sense that here's a band that knew
exactly what they were doing, where they were going, taking
(06:36):
a cue from Zeppelin and displaying astonishing range. And when
I say range, I'm not just talking about Ann Wilson's epic,
soulful voice, but also the wide range of what they
could do musically. They naturally rocked hard and their folk
here songs seemed to me to reflect a genuine love
and understanding of folk. This was not just the standard
(06:57):
hard rock band pulling out an acoustic guitar to part,
and they were heavily influenced by the great classical masters.
Heartfelt truly in touch with their musical heroes in a
way that felt and still feels to me completely authentic
heart as a band. But for this fan, it must
be said that the heart of that band that has
kept this heart beating for decades comes from the singular
(07:19):
synergy in the sisterhood of Anne and Nancy Wilson. There
are a lot of theories on why siblings have that magic,
and in this case they do without question. They have
some unknowable connection emotionally that makes them so great when
they sing or play together. Imagine siblings being together that
(07:43):
much for that long and having such harmony. Who can
pull that off years of touring, writing, reinventing themselves and
surviving all the crazy ups and downs that a long
career like There's always throws at you. Yet And and
Nancy have stuck together and have done even side projects together.
Is a testament to how close they really are and
(08:05):
how deep their relationship is tied to their love of
rock and roll. Having worshiped these women from afar and
now close up. I have to say that Anne Wilson
is a uniquely great vocal force of nature. I've I've sing,
(08:25):
I've seen her sing in many different contexts. I've sat
in the living room with Anna and Nancy and acoustic guitars,
and I can tell you it's some of the best
lives singing I've ever heard from anyone in my entire life.
And listening to Anne sing heart songs she sang is
a very young woman. Than hearing her sing them now,
I can say her singing is even better now. There's
(08:46):
a maturity that comes with mastering her craft, and as
a vocalist, she stands out. She stands out as one
of those few vocal role models I look to and think, Wow,
it is possible to get better with age and sing
on and on allays, reaching for more and actually finding it. Sometimes.
(09:07):
I love it. I love Nancy Wilson equally as a
singer for kicking ass on guitar and singing. Hart has
had a series of great lead guitar players, of course,
starting with Roger Fisher, but Nancy is amazing. She's an
amazing guitar goddess. Even when Hartwood go into acoustic mode,
Nancy would bust out this beautifully complicated flat picking and
(09:28):
then turn on a dime, dig in and grind out
man size riffs that can leave many guitar dudes humbled.
Nancy's voice is beautiful, and when these sisters sing together,
it's truly like anything I've ever heard. I remember one
time performing a song within and Nancy I love Monger Show,
and of course I was super nervous, uh, And I
(09:48):
was singing and I forgot the words. Uh. I was
totally lost, and leaned in slightly um and just started
feeding me the lines to to the next line while
she is still singing and playing bass. And I lost
my wife. She'd never did. She was so far ahead
of me. She could feel that I was going to
tank it, even before I knew that I was going
(10:09):
to do it. But then again, from me and countless
other men and women's heart has always been so far ahead.
That's one more reason why they have more than here
in this moment to at long last stand with all
the other rock odds and take their rightful place in
the rock and roll Hall of Fame. Copy After the break,
(10:37):
we'll hear from members of Heart on the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame induction Bault. We would like to
thank our families, our friends, and our fans. Thank you
very much, Thank you. It is tremendously beautiful to be
(11:14):
included here in this eagle's nest of incredible fellow muses.
Our long and winding road has always been about the
magical power of love and the enduring strength of family.
(11:35):
We came from an era when women normally did not rock,
and women were not expected to be leaders. They were
mainly four jobs for us to choose from them teachers, mothers,
nurses or waitresses. And becoming mothers has been the greatest,
(11:56):
most unbelievable gift of all, the biggest of all. Thanks
then goes to our kids tonight, our best beloved little
road orphans who loved us and forgave us for most
of our sacrilegious absences as working moms, who have also
(12:20):
seen a few parent teacher conferences. I'm even more sure
that we deserve this medal of honor. So these days
are modern women are becoming strong and ferocious leaders from
the boardrooms to the bedrooms. Equality is coming right along
(12:48):
for us. Music is the real church. It's a life calling.
It's bigger than men and women put together. Music makes
us all equal and perfectly human. Lost angels maybe, but
lifted up by the absolute million soul thrills of music.
(13:10):
We're here to celebrate our lucky and perilous past. There
were countless times of insanely extenuating situations where Anne and
I just stopped and looked at each other and said, well,
you wanted this, but we're not finished rocking just yet.
(13:32):
M h. We're looking straight into the face of the
future and we say, turn it up. M h. Whoa
(13:58):
than you know? You know not everyone gets a chance
to embody a dream of a life in music. It's
a dream that's not unique just to the young men
and many of the old men that um, who's who
are on this stage tonight. Um. It's also a dream
(14:22):
young women have, and it's a dream shared by any
musician who has a message, a voice, and a muse
inside them. It's the same dream whoever you are and
wherever you are, even if you happen to be a
young woman growing up outside Seattle, Washington, back in an
(14:43):
era when Seattle was not the center of the rock
and roll universe. If you can believe that, particularly after
you see some of the talent up here tonight later
and uh not, every musician gets to feel what it's
like to climb on stage, open up your soul and
let it ring out like clear old belts, send out
(15:04):
your heart like a javelin, and feel that love returned
to you like a wildfire, burning you all the way
down down down to the ground coming back. Now. We
got the chance to be heard, or we made the
chance when we didn't get it. We were lucky enough
to be heard and to be understood, and to connect
(15:27):
with our audience, and to feel the love return from
all our fans, our audience, and not to be forgotten
from our band, our band three. We grew up in
a world and a time when music was full of laughter, dancing,
(15:52):
harmony and love, and maybe it still is. But I
I personally had the wrong gender, the wrong looks, the
wrong d n A, in the wrong hometown for a
music business successful career in that era. But then again,
aren't the sweetest parts of music sometimes about what's wrong? Yeah?
(16:18):
So I got a chance to sing, to find my
voice on stage, and I took it and I still
take it every single night. In front of every single audience,
and I never ever take it for granted. When I
leave this earth, I will look back with great love
(16:39):
because I got the chance to sing. Thank you. Thanks
(17:03):
for joining us on this week's episode of Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame Induction Vault. For more on your
favorite inductees, to shop inductee merch or to plan your
trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, visit
rock hall dot com plus Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame Induction Special on demand on HBO Mats. Our executive
producers are Noel Brown, Shelby Morrison, and Esa Gurkey. Supervising
(17:27):
producer is Taylor Shakoin. Research and archival assistants from Isabelle
Keeper and Shannon Herb. Thanks again for joining us on
this week's episode of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Induction Vault. Induction Ball is a production of I Heart
Radio in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For
(17:48):
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.