Ann Wilson

Ann Wilson, vocalist extraordinaire, is the lead singer of Heart.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Podcast. My
guest today is Ann Wilson. A party and how are
you doing. I'm doing great. Good to see you now.
You say you're out in the country without giving us
your address. Generally speaking, where are you Northeast Florida close
to St. Augustine, the way out in the country in

(00:29):
a rural setting. If you're from the Pacific Northwest, how
did you end up in Florida with humidity? And which
do you prefer? I prefer the Pacific Northwest in the
summer and fall. I prefer Florida in the spring and winter.
So I guess that's kind of a snowbird thing, isn't

(00:50):
it right? Right? But we're talking in July, so it
doesn't quite make sense, right, Yeah, I know, But I'm
working right now. I can't just visit where I want
to visit, you know. Um, it's too hot here right now.
It's too hot and humid. Okay, So you say you're working,
what are you doing. I'm getting ready to start setting

(01:13):
up a new album that's gonna come out the first
quarter of twenty two, and I'm getting ready to go
out and do some more gigs. And uh, I'm just
involved in all this new music and gigs and stuff. Okay,
needless to say, the music business has changed from when
you started, and it's hard for any it's hard for

(01:33):
anybody to get recognition with their new recordings. So what
keeps you motivated? Well, I think what keeps me motivated
now that everything is so different is uh, kind of
the same um impetus that got me going in the
first place, which is just I had things to say,
and I had ideas that just keep banging around in

(01:56):
my head and in my soul that I want to
set to music. It's it's hard to describe why musicians
want to do it from the inside out. It's easy
to understand why they might want to create an image
and have fame and all that kind of stuff from
the outside in, But what makes you just scrape it
together and go from zero to something on your own?

(02:20):
And that's that's really what I've found since we've been
in lockdown and all that kind of stuff in the
music business shut down. There's no money to be made really,
you know. Okay, So so what motivates that creative process?
You're just lying in bed, something comes to you. What says, Hey,
I want to start. I gotta get my thoughts down.

(02:40):
I'm pretty emotional, and I guess I'm feisty. And so
you put those two things together, and you you need
an outlet, even though nobody might be listening. It's a
way to handle the energy and force of these emotions.
So I come from a family that loves poetry and

(03:02):
loves words. You know. My father used to stand up
after a few glasses of wine and recite poetry to
the to the friends and family and stuff, and a
tear would come down. And and uh, that's where I
come from, so that I love words. I love to write.
You say, you say your emotional and feisty. Yeah, since
you lay that out there, how does that manifest itself?

(03:25):
How do you describe yourself that way? What does it
ultimately mean? I guess it means I want my way
just and by that I mean I want to get
these things down and physicalize them, bring them into the world,
make them be. Do you usually get your way? Uh?
I don't get it my way all the time, but uh,

(03:48):
when I do, it sure feels good. It really really does.
And how does it feel when you don't get your way? Frustrating,
totally frustrating, and it just makes me want to try
harder to find another way to get it, you know,
and in writing songs and making music and everything. At
this point, after all these years of doing it, it's

(04:10):
interesting what I'm going through now because I'm working with
much younger people in the studio as players, and uh,
some of them at the technical level are much younger,
and so I feel kind of like in some cases
the wise old owl. Not not that I know everybody's business,
but I have to teach everyone my business. They weren't

(04:31):
around to understand what it was like at the beginning
and the feelings that we tried to access at the beginning.
You know, how did you get hooked up with these
younger people. I was just looking for fresh input and
players that were trying to push the envelope out and
level up and move forward, you know, and especially I

(04:52):
was looking for people that weren't dying on the vine,
who weren't just resting on their laurels. I was looking
for an escape from riding the old horse down, you know,
from getting into a cycle of just going out and
playing the sheds and repeating and repeating until there's nothing left.

(05:13):
I really didn't want to do that. So how did
you literally find these people? Oh? Literally just by asking around?
So you're in Florida. Now where you actually going to
record the record? I recorded a few of the songs
at Muscle Shoals, and a few of them in Nashville,
and a few of them in Seattle. And who's producing

(05:34):
the record? Well, it's produced by me, and by mostly
by me. I guess there's like, there's no set producer
except for me. I'm where the buck stops on this.
And where did you find the money to record? In
my pocket? So it's your money, so in your idea
and you're in your mind, what was the budget for

(05:55):
how much you wanted to spend for this new project?
Oh god, I never thought of it that way. I thought,
I'll pay as much as it takes to bring these
ideas to fruition. And luckily I'm married to someone who
really understands how to tighten the belt and uh cut
costs and do do things in a really smart way.

(06:16):
So it wasn't the big old lavish record recording experience
of the past, of the eighties or nineties. You know,
it was pretty close to the leather and and lean,
but I like the way it sounds. Okay, So how
far along are you in the project? Well, I'm done recording,
You're done? Yeah, so you have the record? Is not

(06:37):
gonna come out to the four first quarter? Uh? How's
it going to come out? As there a label? You're
gonna do it yourself? And why wait to the first quarter? Well,
we're dangling it around to all the labels. Now it's done.
I just wanted to say here it is. What do
you think it's the labels that want to wait until
the first quarter because they need to have actual time
to set it up. You know, you're gonna make a
deal with one label? Maybe, I don't know. It's still

(07:00):
depends on what they come back with. We only are
um showing it around, like starting right now, so I'm
sure it'll take a while for them to go through
their process where they go, let's see, do we hear
a single? You know if that's that old thing, you know,
the Wednesday morning singles meeting? You know absolutely? Are you okay?

(07:23):
Since you are you a student of the game or
the type of person who just makes the music and
let the business people take care of it, or you
know how the label works. You're talking to people. You're
in the woods in the weed. Excuse me. I don't
think I'm in the weeds that much. I think that
over the years I've gone in the weeds a little
bit and been frustrated the question. But you're you said

(07:43):
you're earlier, feisty person, and you know, you scratch the
itch and then sometimes things happen. The music is a
music similar to the music you've made before, rock music
or is it different? Oh, it's it's rock music for sure,
and it's it goes from soft emotional ballad all the

(08:05):
way up to pretty out there, balls out rock, you know.
I mean, I've got this great band that's called The
Amazing Dogs, and they they're just cooler than cool, just
so great players. Tony Lucido on base and Tombukavac on guitar,
and um young guy from Seattle named Shanty Lane on

(08:28):
drums and Paul Moke on keyboards. I mean, they're they're
really amazing. The rhythm section in particular so good. So
how old are these guys? I think they're in there
late thirties, mid forties. They're young. Yeah, when you reference
when you reference the seventies, whatever, they have any idea
what you're talking about. They're fans of the music. They

(08:52):
love Barracuda for instance. It's just it's sick how much
guys in bands, younger guys in bands want to play Barracuda.
They just want to play that song and a few
others like it, Magic Man, stuff like that. Do you
get tired of Barracuda? Yeah? So how do you cope?

(09:12):
How do you cope with that? Um? Well, I don't know.
Just it's only like four minutes. I like Veracuda. I
think that the the idea behind it is great. The
the Heart version with Roger Fisher playing guitar was pretty iconic.

(09:34):
So to me, it's it's just trying to recapture the
spirit of the song that makes it interesting to do
now because we don't have that Roger Fisher sound now.
And do you sometimes sing it and think about your
laundry or what you're gonna do after the gig? Or
you always invested in saying it? No, I'm always invested.

(09:58):
That's ah that that kind of split in your attention
is something that is a sin to me. When you're
up there on the mic. Okay, and so you're doing
this project independently, yet you still tour with Heart. So
how do you decide to do which one? Yeah, that's
a really good question because it's kind of just like

(10:20):
the the relationship between Nancy and I is good enough,
so we can if she gets her thing done over here,
I get mind done over here. We could just say
let's do this other thing and we can do it
in terms of our relationship. But it's it's just we
want to do a Heart tour when it really matters.
We don't just want to waste it. You know, who

(10:43):
knows how many more years we have left with it.
It's been together for nearly fifty years now. So you
have a big birthday this year. How's that messing with
your head? Well? Yeah, I had a seventy one this year,
so uh so, you know, I don't know. I had
a couple of things I got Lukibia ten years ago
that I knew I wouldn't really live forever. Then I

(11:04):
turned sixty and it really fucked me up. H'm not
quite as old as you are, but I was wondering
your perspective because one thing is for sure, we're not
gonna live forever. Yeah, that's that's dang sure, yeah it.
I think seventy messed with my head and set me
back on my heels, like my my bravado just wouldn't

(11:25):
even take it. Seventy was just one step too far.
But then I got over it, and I just I
feel the same. Um, yeah, I don't know, it's just
seventy one. I didn't even feel because it's not one
of those years with the zero after it. Eight will

(11:47):
be heavy, right, you know? Well, just you know, I
think a ringo is either eight one eighty two. Paul
McCartney will be a d hard to conceive. The other thing. Yeah, well,
I mean there are people Joe Walsh had, as somebody
else said, said, I'm too old to die young. It

(12:07):
used to be such a tragedy these rock stars would die.
But if you die when you're eighty, people die when
you're eighty. It's very hear that our generation is going yeah,
well except you know, eighties the new sixty. I guess so.
I think internally that's true. We just haven't learned that
physically in our bodies are bodies are not quite there.

(12:30):
I think that that the most challenging part of being
older in rock is just trying to figure out how
you can relate to the younger music that's coming out now,
because it's coming from people whose experienced levels are so
much different. And it's hard to get interested in somebody's

(12:53):
song about their boyfriend when you're seventy one, you know,
so I certainly understand that lyrically, but you know, it's
it's interesting. I have the perspective that, uh, you know,
our frame of reference with because he was the Beatles
of British Invasion, San Francisco, etcetera. But Mariah Carey came

(13:16):
out thirty years ago. A lot of people that's all
they know. Is some they don't even know what we
grew up with. So it's hard to hard to relate
in general, it is. And one of the things that's
really hard to relate to for me is is the
way of singing, the human way of singing, which is

(13:36):
a way that is un altered. It's not tuned without
a tune, it's it's a human way of singing, like
jan Is saying and like Jagger saying and stuff. Those
human ways that are out of tune and imperfect and
full of imperfection, um, and those are really that's the

(13:57):
that's the stuff that's it's range now in our time,
it's so easy to hear Mariah Carey, but it isn't
easy to hear Mick Jagger. You know, it's our imperfections
that make us lovable. Okay, that's right. You've cut a
lot of Zeppelin songs. What's your favorite Zeppelin song? I

(14:19):
think my favorite Zeppelin song is No Quarter? Really? Yeah,
I like No Quarter up. I like the stuff from
the Zeppelin four and Houses of the Holy era really
a lot. I think they really hit some real diamonds
and that that era, So No Quarter What else going

(14:44):
to California see in My Time of Dying? Yeah, God
for Sticks, just some of those songs that are just
a little bit more sophisticated but still just down, you know.
I like. I love that stuff. They get kind of tricky,
like on the Crunch, and they show that their their

(15:07):
intelligence but their insanity at the same time. I like that.
How did you discover led Zeppelin? M Well, my best
friend in high school, uh got a hole. She turned
me onto led Zeppelin when a whole lot of love

(15:27):
came out, and it's one of those deals where we're
high school girls, you know, sitting in her room listening
to Plant do a lot of of and just our
mind's going crazy and what does this mean? You know,
way down inside you need it and we're like what

(15:52):
But you can't look away from that when you're seventeen
or eighteen or something. That's how I got turned on
the ZEP one. Well, you know, certainly on that album. Uh,
they have the Lemons song and a lot of sexual references.
Were you were you? Were you a fast girul or

(16:13):
were you naive? I was super naive And I remember
too well going to a led Zeppelin concert in Seattle
at the Green Lake Aqua Theater. I think it was
nine or eight and so um with Nancy and the

(16:35):
two of us sat there listening to led Zeppelin and
the Lemon Song and all this stuff. And by the
time the Lemon Song was half half over, I was
headed to the car because it was just too much
for me. It was like, this is too much for
me to comprehend. I don't know whether this is dirty

(16:56):
or whether it's incredible or what okay was to say?
They say sex, drugs and rock and roll. Uh, you
were singing, how did the sex party end up? You know?
Being awakened by real life, you know, But just the
lovers that I had and experiences, especially when I got

(17:18):
into um road life with the band, and I was
old enough to be in a relationship in my own
that was full fledged, you know, real relationship. Plus being
on the road with all these dudes all the time.
That's where I got my education, I think. I mean,

(17:41):
long before Nancy joined the band, it was just me
and a whole bunch of men in vans, in busses,
you know. So yeah, I guess I learned quick. But
didn't you have Roger Fisher as a boyfriend through most
of that? Nancy had a boy friend named Roger Fisher.
Excuse me you his brother Michael Fisher. Weren't you involved

(18:03):
with Yes? I was, yeah, and we were together from
about seventy two to about seventy nine, and uh, yeah,
he he taught me everything I know. And do you
ever talked to him? Now? Occasionally will will connect on

(18:27):
UM line. I've he actually after we broke up, he
went on to have like eleven children with various other mayors.
And yeah, and a couple of times I've reached out
to him to ask him advice on parenting anyway, But no,

(18:49):
we don't really hang out or anything. So, uh, when
did you know you wanted to sing as a career
right off the bat? Probably when I was fifteen. It
just it was one of those things like in Close
Encounters where he's making the mountain out of mashed potatoes
and he doesn't know why. It's just just drawn to

(19:11):
making this mountain out of mashed potatoes. That's what it
was for me in music. It's just like I just
that's I just knew that's what I was gonna do.
Nothing else was even a possibility, Not boyfriends, not nothing. Okay,
Well what led up to that? I mean, were you
turned on by the Beatles or were you a music

(19:31):
head before that? What inspired you to this life? Um?
I started out by loving classical music and playing an
orchestra with the flute, and I come from a musical family,
classical music, opera, all that stuff, always playing, and so
one thing just kind of led to the next. Uh.

(19:56):
I started just like singing along in the family, and
then feeling the urge to sing in front of people
the family, and then church group and then whoever would listen,
and it just kept growing exponentially. Okay, were you known
as the singer growing up all that that's the girl
with the amazing voice. I didn't discover I had a

(20:18):
voice until about seventy when I was up in Vancouver,
about seventy four, that's when I discovered I had a voice.
Up until then, I was playing at bands, but I
was just like the chick in the band who would
sing the ballad, you know, like she'd sing Superstar by
the time I get to Phoenix or something like that,

(20:38):
and then and then bang of tambourine while the guys
did all the rock. We were trying to work out, uh,
some Zeppelin songs back in the early days, and none
of the guys in the band could sing that high.
So it felt to me. And that's when I discovered
that I could sing rock. So you were just you,

(21:00):
weren't You were playing the tambourine, singing backup vocals in
an occasional lead, and the and the cowbell and things
like clubs, and I mean, what did you see is
where you were going? Was this just another step down
the road or you said, holy ship, you know, something's
got to change here. Well, I didn't have a view

(21:21):
of what I was doing from the outside. I only
felt that I wanted to keep pushing up, and so, uh,
you know, I just found different guys to be in
a band with who would like slept the gear into
the next club, and then we get a like we

(21:42):
played there for a week, and then somebody would come
in and go, wow, we like this week, We like
the chick. How about this club a little bit better
of a place? You know how it goes, step up,
step up, step up, until you finally get some kind
of really cool offer where they say, okay, um, Rod
Stewart was gonna play in Montreal at the Forum, but

(22:06):
um the opening band got six so you can open
up for Rod Stewart if you want for one night.
And then one thing leads to another. Okay, going back
before that, did you play in bands in high school? Yes?
I did. I started when I was a sophomore in

(22:28):
high school, just trying to just stitch it together with
whoever I could find who either had a car or
had a guitar or a shirt with a high boy
collar or something like that. You know, did you have
bands that would work during high school that got paid
to work? No? No, I don't think that I ever

(22:50):
got paid to play in a band really until we
were up in Vancouver, and we we're able to maybe
make ten bucks each week because we lived in a
UM in a communal situation, so we take all the
money the band would make and we'd split it all
up between the band members and the wives and stuff.

(23:12):
So you'd end up with ten bucks a week. UM,
but that was pay, you know. That would have been
seventy four seventy Okay. So you when you were in school,
were you a good student, bad student? Were you popular
and not popular? I was not popular and I was
a mediocre student. I excelled in art and music and

(23:38):
English class. All the humanities were easy for me. Um,
but still I only got ces, you know. I graduated
with the two point five or six or something like that.
Nothing to write home about. I was interested in music. Okay,
So you graduated from high school. Did you ever get

(24:02):
education beyond that point? You say, I'm just going to
be a musician. I went to out of high school.
I went to Art College in Seattle, and then after that,
I um went into bands. So you know, it didn't
take long for me to go from school to being
in a band for a living. How long did you

(24:24):
go to school for I went to Art College for
two years after high school. Okay, And when you leave
art school and starting bands, where are you're living? Well,
I was still living with my parents, mooching off my parents,
you know. Uh. But then when I met Michael Fisher,

(24:45):
which was right then after art school, I went away
to Canada and the rest is just heart history. Well
a little bit slower. How did you meet him? And
how did you end up in Vancouver? Oh? Okay? Um.
The band I was at the time was called it

(25:07):
was with Roger Fisher and Steve fossen Um. Well, yeah,
it was called hocus Pocus and we were we got
a gig at this club in Bellingham, Washington called the
Iron Bull, where we were the house band. We were
playing there for two weeks I think. And Michael Fisher,

(25:30):
the brother of Roger Fisher who was in my band,
was a draft evader and he was living up in Vancouver,
b C. He snucked down over the border to Bellingham
to see his brother's band, and he spotted this chick
singer who was sitting cross legged on the dance floor
smoking a cigarette, and she spotted him and their eyes

(25:54):
just went lock. And uh, that's how it started. And
and I couldn't not be with him, and he just
kept coming down to see me, and finally we got
together as a couple and I left the band went
up to Vancouver. That lasted about six months before the

(26:16):
band chased me up there and we formed the band
up in Vancouver. So Michael and I probably had about
six months as a couple in romance up in Vancouver
before the band came and joined. For somebody who was
so driven in music, it seemed like you abandoned it
for six months. What was going through your head? I

(26:38):
love is pretty powerful. I mean when it's when it's
like that, you know, and it's I couldn't see anything else.
And that's really saying something because I, like you say,
I always have been pretty driven about making the band,
keeping it together, keep feeding it, being in it, you know.

(26:59):
Um yeah, so that that love just kind of washed
everything else away for six months. Now, it was a
different era. But did you want to get married? No,
I didn't think about getting married then. We were just Yeah,
it was a hugely different era. It was the era

(27:23):
of Joni Mitchell saying, we don't need no piece of
paper from the city hall keeping us tied and true,
you know, and I think that Michael and I really
bought into that. Okay, so this was you know. Also,
I'm like, today, everybody's got cable TV, everybody's got the Internet.

(27:43):
There really is no flyover country. But at that point
in the early seventies, how different was Vancouver from Washington. Oh,
it was hugely different. Vancouver was a really international, because
cosmopolitan city, small but very sophisticated. And coming into Vancouver,

(28:10):
I remember in the springtime during the easter being they
used to have in Stanley Park, it was just magic.
Seattle seemed like a real kind of a cowboy town
next to Vancouver. I remember Vancouver was very um, full
of artists and um it didn't have that that American

(28:34):
nationalism that was very bothersome at the time. And so
the band follows you up with what intention to put
the band back together? I think that they realized that
we had something as long as I was in it,
they we had something special. And Michael Fisher was a

(28:59):
really smart, kind of um entrepreneurial type guy. I mean,
he got the whole concept of how to manage a band,
what needed to happen. He and his brother would get
out there in the sun with their shirts off and
build the speaker cabinets and um, there's very hands on.
And we all lived together in this little one room

(29:21):
house for a short time and really built the band
up from nothing in kind of a um communal tribal away.
And what was the gig situation there? Oh, it was
just at that time Vancouver had two booking agencies, Bruce

(29:47):
Allen and Access, which was the more into indie type one,
and we couldn't get any gigs. You know, nobody knew us.
We were just some band until we finally decided to
pull a demo together and we took it to Bruce Allen,

(30:08):
who was the big booking agent there in town, and
he passed on heart. So we went to the other indeed,
and they said okay, so we went with them. He
got us our first gig at this place called the
Cave in downtown Vancouver, which was made to look like

(30:30):
it had stalactites and stalagmites inside and it was all
dark and it looked like a real cave. You know.
That was where our first gig was. And then how
often did you work thereafter? We probably worked there, um, god,

(30:53):
a couple of different stints, maybe a weekend at a time,
and then we started getting gigs, playing high school dances
and um and different bars around Vancouver and New Westminster
and that area. So we just started stepping it up.
Things started coming to us and with these originals or covers. Oh,

(31:17):
they were all covers until we started trying to slip
these songs like Crazy on You and these new originals
like Crazy on You and Magic Man and stuff into
the set, and the bar audience would they'd wait through
this new Crazy on You song until we could get
back to the Deep Purple and the rolling Stones and

(31:37):
the led Zeppa Stop. I just remember them just politely
waiting through us banging through Crazy and until it was over,
and then it's like, okay, now let the fund resume. Okay,
So when did you start writing songs? And how did
you write Crazy on You? And Magic Man started writing

(32:01):
Crazy on You and Magic Man uh for the Dreamboat
Any album, which was up in Vancouver. All the songs
written in Vancouver about seventy three, and yeah, just started

(32:22):
We were writing and playing and traveling all at the
same time. So we we'd write a song on the
bus during the day and try to fit it in
at night. Sometimes I would work sometimes it wouldn't and
literally hot on You develop um. Nancy and Roger and

(32:45):
Michael and I were living in a house in Point Roberts, Washington,
and let's see, and Nancy was sick with the flu.
And I had come up with these words, all the
words of crazy on You, and so I I was
really excited about him. So I went into her sick

(33:06):
bed and I went, God, you gotta check these out
for Nancy. You know, she had a high fever and everything,
and I made her sit up and listen to these words.
And then she got excited too. And we said, well,
what shall we do for the guitar part? It should
be an acoustic song. And so then we said, well,
what would Justin Hayward do on the acoustic And that's

(33:28):
that's how we arrived at the acoustic part for Crazy
on You? And Uh, Magic Man was I guess, uh
like a leaving home song. When I moved up to
Vancouver and my mother was just really against me moving
not only out of the country, but moving in with
a man. And she didn't know if I was just

(33:51):
going to end up barefoot and pregnant or you know.
That was before Roe V. Wade and mothers were extremely um,
a lot more Victorian with their daughters. Then there was
no attitude like all, honey, just go ahead, just you know,
keep your dignity. That they were like, no, you don't.
You don't go there with him. You just don't do that.

(34:14):
So it was a whole different era. So so Magic
Man was about this thing that went between my mother
and I when I was gonna move in with Michael. Okay,
were those songs just spontaneous or you writing them specifically
for an album? They were spontaneous. All the songs on

(34:36):
Dreboat Any were spontaneous. Um, there wasn't really an idea
to make an album. Uh. We were playing most of
the song the songs that would translate to a live situation.
We were playing in clubs and Mike Flicker came and
heard us play these songs. I thought that he liked

(34:59):
the way I saying he liked the way at that point,
the way Nancy played. She was sitting in with us
sometimes she'd come up from college in Forest Grove, and
he liked that combo. And so that's when the idea
was hatched for us to make an album. But it
wasn't until you know, pretty late the songs were already

(35:19):
in existence. Did you already have a desire? I mean,
were you somebody was a teenager say man, I'm gonna
make it. I'm gonna be famous. Oh yeah, yeah. And
back then in my young twenties mind, it was like,
you know what I want is I want the glory.
I didn't think about money. I thought about I wanted
to be to get up there and feel the power.

(35:42):
And did reality live up to the dream at some moments?
I think it did. Um, I think it would depend
on which era you're talking about and which kind of
drugs were involved in or not involved, you know, because
you know some of those eras that were big party

(36:06):
eras and wild, crazy rock star eras, the ego might
be a little bit more inflated than other times, so
the glory might be more powerful than other times. But yeah,
I think I felt all different kinds of being rapturous
at being in it, or just going like boy, this sucks,
you know, all different levels of all that. And you

(36:31):
mentioned the drugs. Was that something you got into more
as part of the rock star a lifestyle where you
were an experiment or at an earlier age I was
an experimenter with LSD before I went into bands, um seriously.
And but then in the rock star life, as the

(36:51):
years rolled on, the drugs changed and they did different
things to your perception of course, like uh, you know,
cocaine is no ls it's it's a whole different numb world,
you know. Um. But I was mostly just doing it
out of because back then the glorious thing was to

(37:12):
be the fabulous disaster, right. Everyone wanted to be Keith
Richards or some kind of version of you know, Anita
Palenberg or something and so u. But the trick was
to stay alive and not lose it and keep your
keep your your clothes on, your shreds around you of

(37:32):
intelligence so you can keep on doing this thing and
make it be good, you know. So how did you
take LSD the first time? And how old were you? Mm? Hmm.
I was seventeen. I had a friend who was going
to University of Washington and she was living in the dorm.

(37:53):
And uh, I was in art school at the time,
so I must I must have been eighteen. So I
was in art school on Capitol Hill in Seattle, and
she was at the Youth dub and so I just
went over there from school one time to her dorm room,
and uh, she had this acid and we only had

(38:15):
one album to listen to, and it was Bookends by
Simon and Garfunkel, and so we dropped acid and stayed
in her room for twenty four hours just looping this record.
And at some point I think we may have snucked
down the hall to buy some hostess pies out of
the vending machine and get some water. But but other

(38:39):
than that, it was just that was my first asset
trip in that album supported the whole thing, no problem.
It was really really amazing. I'll never forget it. Can
you listen to that album? Yeah? Yeah I can. So
what were the what were the great insights of your

(39:00):
first trip? The visual ones were, We're subtle, but I
won't forget them. And it was just seeing the complementary
neon colors lining every um sharp edge. If you would

(39:21):
look up at a at the window sill or something,
there'd be this Neon green and Neon purple just lining
the window sill. I remember that. The other um more
important things I took from it were just the way
music was. It was so much more than just auditory.
It was just there was this soul inside the way

(39:44):
each song was written lyrically, and just the the character
of each instrument and the colors that are all created. Um,
you could almost taste it. It's just all the senses
just bled together. I think, like save the life of
my child, you know, just imagine that, Yes, with all

(40:06):
the sounds in the background, the other thing on that wreck,
the other thing on the record which I quote all
my friends, I'm not quite there. How terribly strange to
be seven day oh god, yeah, yeah, and the voices
of old people. Oh yeah. But the other thing is
is that America that encapsulated something that was something you

(40:28):
did in the sixties and seventies. You've got a new
car and you look, people don't even do that anymore.
You know, they'll fly somewhere over that whole experience of anonymity,
discovering the country, the world yep, like being on a
bus or a train or something. Right, So you had

(40:48):
a good experience. How often did you do do LSD
after that? Well? After that, I did it every chance
I could. Um, probably had probably another I don't know,
a dozen trips or something with Nancy and with Sue
and us, with my sister Lynn and her commune every
chance I could. I think I even had a couple
by myself. Um, But I was never a person who

(41:11):
wanted to go out and climb trees or stuff like that.
I always wanted to be inside in a controlled situation
with the music I wanted to listen to. It was
about It was all about music for me. Um, with
the music I wanted to listen to. Ready to go,
So I the all the loose ends tied up. Nobody's
gonna come over, no one's gonna call, you know, so

(41:33):
you don't have to deal with the outside world. Just
I just wanted to dive into music as far as
I could. Did you ever have a bad trip once? Yeah,
And it was because I didn't get the loose ends
tied up. And I was over with Nancy at Sue

(41:57):
and us his house. Sue's ers were gone, um somewhere
on vacation. So we had the house and we took
this opportunity, and I neglected to tell my parents that
Nancy and I were going to spend the night over there.
We just went, you know, like sometimes young people will

(42:19):
just do that. And so we dropped. The acid was
orange Sunshine, and I was supposed to be at band practice.
Nancy was supposed to be home. So so first the
guys at ben practice started calling the house and saying,
where's Anne. She didn't show up, We can't find her.
Were worried about her. And then so my mom would say, oh,

(42:42):
I don't know, she's not here. And then pretty soon
Nancy didn't come home. So my mom is going, where's Nancy,
where's Ann? Right? And so she figured out we were
probably at best friend Seu's house. So she started calling
up there, and the phone kept ringing, and we kept
pretending we didn't hear it, and finally my mom just

(43:02):
got in the car and came over and banged on
the door and Nancy's who hit upstairs in the bedroom.
And because we're in the middle of this, we're in
another universe, you know, we can't deal with a angry
mother at that time. But I went downstairs, I answered
the door. She pulled me out into her car and

(43:25):
confronted me. Are you high? You know, look at you
You're high, right, And I'm like, oh, no, I'm not hot,
you know, like and uh, she let me have it,
you know, across the face once and and then she
kind of shoved me out of the car and said, okay,
go back to it. You can go to hell. Tell

(43:46):
Nancy to go there too, And then she backed out,
knocked over all the trash cans in the street and
took off and I went back in the house. And
the whole rest of the trip, Nancy and Sue and
I were just in hell. It was like we could
not come back from that. You know, that was a

(44:06):
bad trip. So what music did you like to listen to?
At that point? We were listening to Moody Blues, uh,
in Search of a Lost Card, the White Album, Sergeant Pepper,
and possibly maybe the first Elton John album. And that's

(44:29):
that's pretty much what it was. You know, I can't
remember if there was anything else, but you know, you
could listen to the White Album on acids and it's
like an hour plus long, and that's a that's a
universe of time, and then you might listen to it again,
you know, And is in Search of the Lost Cords?

(44:50):
Your favorite Boody Blues album at this time? I think
maybe Days of Future Past is again, but those two
I think are my favorite. They've just really hit on
something right then, you know, Timothy Leary and all the
other things, but I went back to that at this point.
It's the one I listened to most. So you're in Vancouver,

(45:13):
what was your relationship with Nancy? With Nancy and how
did she fit into your bands before you moved to Vancouver. Um,
she wasn't in the bands I was in before I
moved to Vancouver. She was still in high school. And
then after that she went to university in Oregon, and

(45:39):
she was serious about spending some time in college and
I wasn't. So I was just already out in this
band life. And we were driving to Montana, um Idaho,
up into Saskatchewan and just ranging out in these gigs

(45:59):
with the band I was in, and she was not involved. Finally,
because she and I had been so tight growing up
and learning how to play guitars together and singing together. UM,
I really wanted to to enrich Heart or Hocus Focus.

(46:19):
I mean the band I was in with more ability
to play acoustic guitar, more ability for backup harmoniars, because
we had settled into Hocus Focus, had settled into this
sort of bar band mentality was just like maybe two
part harmonies tops. Um, every song was kind of on

(46:43):
a Johnny be good level, you know, like nothing really
sophisticated was coming out of that band. Um Steve Foston
singing Suffragette City and stuff like that. And it was okay,
but it wasn't gonna go anywhere, you know, it was
just gonna end up being in bars forever. So I

(47:05):
started asking Nancy to come up and visit us in
Vancouver and sit in and provide her acoustic and provide
some more harmony singing, which she did. She was really shy.
She she didn't really enjoy it, you know, but it
sure made the band sound better on that level. And
then um, one thing led to another person. We started

(47:25):
writing those songs. She and Roger Fisher got together and
the two Wilson sisters and two Fisher brothers became a
family living group. And she left college and moved up
and that's when um Mike Flicker had discovered us playing

(47:46):
in a club called Starwin Marvin's and said, well, come
on down and let's demo you guys. So we went
in first without Nancy any past. Then we went in
again a year later with Nancy, and he liked the
two sisters thing, you know, and so that was kind

(48:10):
of a an extra added um, smallsey thing that worked
for him, and so mushroom scientists on the basis of it,
be me, Nancy and Roger, and we may dream bout Annie. Okay,
I have two sisters, and older sister and a younger sister.

(48:33):
They can be lovey dovey. They can be at each
other's throats, calling me bitching about the other one. What's
it like being in a band with your sister, Boy,
there's no one way that it's like. Um. Sometimes it's
just great because you come from a common stamp, you know,

(48:53):
and you know, uh, you've got like a language together
and all that where you can finish each each other's sentences.
But also along with that you have this incredibly complex
um set up of buttons you can push to upset
each other or or you know, just a little tiny,

(49:17):
little throwaway comments that just hurt like hell or shut
you down, or you can do the same thing for them.
So it's equally as good as it is bad. It's tricky.
The Nancy and I managed to make it be mostly
good for years as long as it was just she
and I, but when other people came into our lives,

(49:38):
it got more and more and more tricky because we
started to grow up and have our you know, come
into our own two separate Like people used to treat
us like we were joined at the hip, and I
guess we kind of were. But the minute we separated, Um,
that's when things got good and things got super hard.

(49:59):
And it's the status of it today. Well, it's she's
doing She just released an album, a solo album you
probably know, and um, we've both been doing our solo things.
But in two thousand nineteen, before the lockdown, we did
Heart Tour that was the most satisfying and successful commercial

(50:22):
to her hearts done in a long time. UM. So
we can do that whenever we want, and our relationship
will take it. Like things that have happened in the
past are we've come to the point where we've let
the air out of them and when we want to
get together and make music, we can do it, you know,

(50:44):
without it being all negative and personal and stuff. I mean,
we're she's a good, great musician. I really like her.
She's an original, she can do stuff, um, and she
gets me do. We just have to really watch out
for the sibling pitfalls, you know. And I know you

(51:08):
know what I mean because you were talking about your sisters,
you know. So let's just say you're not on the road,
you're not preparing or doing a hard tour. How much
contact do you have if any? Yeah, we have some,
but not that much. It's mostly birthdays and and you know,

(51:30):
something happens in the family or just something that made
us think of the other. One will go, hey, I
saw this, and I thought of you. You know, after
forty five years of living in each other's pockets, it's
kind of refreshing to be an adult, a completely separate adult. Um.

(51:52):
And it really has helped me with my writing and
my own agenda of just doing things my way, you know,
which is what I was doing before she joined the band.
So yeah, so you go into the studio with Mike Flicker.

(52:17):
How long does it take to cut dream Body any?
And how different are the songs from how you were
playing them live? And were you happy? Um? Let's see
how long did it take to make the record? Trying
to remember, I think it wasn't as long as we
usually take now. It's probably a month or a month

(52:40):
and a half tops, um, because we've been out there
playing the songs live, so the songs were already road tested.
Some of them sounded much better on the record than
they did live, because, for instance, the song Crazy on You,
we did have a drummer that we liked enough to

(53:03):
use in the studio, So on stund Crazy on You,
it's the drum part is a series of edits that
Mike Flicker did very cleverly, and you can't even tell
that it's not being played all the way through. But
I remember how complicated that one track was. The drummer

(53:25):
we were using live just wasn't up to it. So
we got this guy cat h Hendrix in to play,
and he was like a jazz player almost, and he
played on Crazy Um, So it sounded better on record
than live. Same with magic Man Boy. You should have

(53:45):
heard the demo I came in with for Magic Man.
It was the groove that we were playing live was
more like like the old Indian thing of do do
Do Do do you Know? And then in the studio
that evolved to do to do do you Know? Um?

(54:07):
And songs like how Deep It Goes and Hear Song
and all that were my romantic love songs you know
that I wrote just on my acoustics. So from that
little demo, the songs just opened up into like full
band productions. So they really did come alive a lot
on that record. And there was a third part to
your question, was I happy yet when it was all done?

(54:30):
Were you satisfied or you felt like you missed it
a little bit or it didn't sound like it was
in your head? Now? I was thrilled. I was just
like over the moon. And the experience in particular of
singing the lead vocal on Crazy and You is something
I'll never forget because this first time I'd ever opened

(54:51):
up and sung in a studio with a big mike
and everything and Mike Flicker. They're producing me and coaching
me and drawing me out, you know, and I just
I just remembered what that felt like too, to sort
of arrive at that, you know, it was like a revelation. Well,
you said earlier that you've learned that you could sing

(55:13):
in seventy four. Was that when you were cutting the
record or was it before but slightly before it was live?
When I started, we used to do this led Zeppelin
medley in bars that was, you know, twenty five minutes
long and just one song into the next. That's when
I realized that rock was really a blast. To sing

(55:35):
sing loud and high, and I could sing Aretha, and
I could sing um Ian Gillen from Deep Purple and
all that kind of stuff. And what was wild about
that too is that it's back then it was a
woman singing it and no one else was doing that.
So the audiences were like, yeah, that was something that

(55:56):
really caught their imagination. Okay, how long after you cut
the album does it come out? And when do you
realize something starting to happen in terms of airplay and sales.
Mustroom Records was a small, little indie label in Vancouver,
and they it was all this little in house staff,

(56:19):
very small operation, and we got through with the record.
It was released on Valentine's Day, I think, and by
summer we were out on tour supporting it and riding
around in the back of Nancy and I riding around
in the back of a car being driven by Shelley Siegel,

(56:41):
who was the um the publicist at Mustroom, and we
did this coal miners daughter thing with him where he
drove us to the record stations, I mean the radio stations,
and we'd go in and sit down and go HI,
where the girls from Heart and and and then the
the jock would play our song and we talk a

(57:03):
little bit, and then we'd leave and Shelley Wood slept
down like a grammar blow and get him a hooker later.
It was that old seventies kind of payola deal. So
we did that within a couple of months with the
record being done, and that kind of got the radio
play going. And and then once it was being played,

(57:25):
then people started calling in and different part of the country.
Parts of the country opened up at different rates. It
was interesting. You'd think it would be the glamorous part
of the country's like New York and l A, but
they were the last to like Heart. The places that
came to us first were St. Louis and Atlanta and

(57:49):
Detroit and Cleveland, you know, places like that, Chicago, the
ones that were where people are more down that they
liked their rock, you know. And when was the first
time you heard it on the radio? Oh? Um, the
first song I heard in the radio was Magic Man
and it was I was It was probably uh a

(58:12):
month after we got done recording, and I was coming
back from the grocery store with my dog in the
back of the car, and I had the radio on
and here comes well first it's like Captain into Neil,
you know, love will keep us together. And then the
next song is magic Man, and I had to pull
over and freak and freak out, you know, because it

(58:36):
was so cool. It's so surreal. The first time you
hear that it's it breaks this kind of little hyman
and your brain of yourself image. It breaks it all down.
So you're just like, whoa, here's me and that's me.

(58:57):
You know, you have to learn how to accept that
it's one. I don't know if that makes any sense,
but no, absolutely, But how is yourself image? How was
it before? Could you embrace the success? Did you feel
you weren't worthy? You're getting the attention? So what was
it like being inside you? I always thought that I

(59:19):
was worthy. I never felt that I was the ship
like because I knew I was learning. I was still
worshiping at the knees of my idols like Plant and
Ian Gillen and Elton John and the Rod Stewart, the
various people that I liked, the singers at that time.

(59:43):
And I guess that, you know, all I could here
was someday I'll be able to sing that great. You know,
I didn't have any sense of trying to sing like
a woman or sing like a man. I just wanted
to sing like a soul, you know. So summer the

(01:00:04):
being really explodes. You know. I was traveling in the
West and you know, not the metropolis, and you heard
the records everywhere before I came ultimately to l A.
So could you feel that? And the album was as
successful as any other album that summer and you're on
this little independent label out of Vancouver, did you realize
it was going well? It didn't really go as quick

(01:00:32):
as we wanted it too, because we weren't able to
come down to the States to turi it because Michael
Fisher was wanted for a draft evasion. Um. It was
that summer. I think that he realized that he had
to go get that straightened out so that he could
come down with us as the band's manager to the

(01:00:52):
States and we could open up down here, you know. Um,
So we didn't really get a feeling for what it
was like to drive around to America and here our record.
We only knew Canada at that point. But then once
we were okay to come down here, it seemed like
it was everywhere. Especially crazy On You was the first

(01:01:12):
single I think, and then Magic Man came after that
and we couldn't get it played that. This is funny.
It took us a while to get Magic Man to
really hit because it was long, and back then, to
really hit you had to be played on AM radio
and the songs couldn't be any longer than say, three
minutes in fifteen or twenty. And so finally somebody, I

(01:01:38):
don't exactly know how this went down, but somebody didn't
edit that was the right length and they put that
on AM radio and then all hell broke loose. We
were an FM band up until then All Hell breaks loose?
How does it change you in the band in the situation, Well,
we start getting these really amazing gig offers like cal

(01:02:02):
Jam two, and you know, it's just so funny what
happens when all of a sudden your song is on
the radio and everyone just thinks that you've taken this
gigantic leap up into their view as some kind of
mythological creature. Um. So yeah, we started getting really good
gig offers to warm up for Jefferson Starship, and I

(01:02:26):
guess there was Airplane at first, and then just about
everybody bgs all the bands that were huge. Then we
started getting offers to warm up for them and get
on getting on these big stages, and just it just grew,
just started to inhale and did you int your on
your inter your level. I want to say, Okay, I'm

(01:02:48):
gonna blow I'm gonna win over the audience who frequently
doesn't pay attention to the opening act, and I'm gonna
blow the headliner off the ridge. All right. Well I
never held the headliner any ill will, but yeah, I
wanted to go out there and just bulow everybody away.

(01:03:09):
And especially when you go out there and maybe it's
still light out and people are filing in. That's hard.
That's hard. And I think about that now with opening acts,
you know, like especially when you're playing sheds and it's
six o'clock at night or seven o'clock at night, still light,
it's hot and everything, the sun's on the stage. Some

(01:03:30):
poor openers out there just sweating away, trying to just
get them off. So I was trying to be nice
to them, you know, given whatever they need, because that's
a that's a hard place to be in. But um, yeah,
back then it was mostly indoors. We didn't play the

(01:03:53):
whole shed live nation shed thing didn't exist then, So
we got We came up playing inside arenas mostly and
some outdoor. So now you have this level of success.
You're somebody from Seattle, which was not a hotbed. They
had the Kingsman then ultimately the Grunero, but you were

(01:04:13):
between that. You in Vancouver was a different country. Suddenly
you have this international success. You start meeting all your heroes.
What's that like? Yeah, yeah, well it didn't take long
to realize that there where the myth stops and the
person starts, you know, when you start meeting people. And

(01:04:36):
but still the thrill was not gone, you know, Meeting
and John was just so over the top amazing. Um,
Freddie Mercury, Brian, all those guys, all the different people
we met. We opened up for Nazareth overseas and I

(01:04:56):
was a huge fan of them. Um oh, Grace Slick,
just all the different people who I looked up to
when I was a little kid. Um, I mean not
even that little, just the five years before. You know, Uh,
that was really eye opening, life changing stuff. And it

(01:05:18):
changes you because all of a sudden they're looking at you,
talking to you as if you're an equal and you.
I rapidly lost the thing of not worthy. Not worthy,
you know, I felt like, well, maybe these are like dots,
Maybe there are people that understand how I feel, and
it it is true. I came to the feeling that

(01:05:42):
there's there's definitely a type of alien being that does
this for a living, and especially if you have the
drive and the push to take it all the way,
you've got to be a certain kind of animal. And
so when you meet those animals, you reckon as each
other sometimes, you know, other than Elton John who lived

(01:06:05):
up to the rep plant I think Robert plant Um,
I meant Jagger, and he was just as much of
a princess as I thought he would be. We opened
up for the Stones at in Boulder, Colorado, and their
huge tour with the pink stage that raked down, you know,

(01:06:26):
the lips and tongue thing, and they just had shuttles
going from the hotel to the gig, and Michael and
I were standing down there waiting for a shuttle to
take us over there, and Jagger comes down to get
the shuttle and he grabs the first shuttle and doesn't
want anybody else in the car with him because it'll

(01:06:49):
wrinkle his trousers right, and so I went, yeah, okay,
I got it. Um Um. I thought Brian May wasn't
an incredible intelligent person and a gentleman. Um John Paul Jones,
same thing. Just there are so many of them, you know.

(01:07:11):
I thought Grace Slick was. She was probably one of
the wildest aliens I've met. So did you like the
grind of the road? I did? Yeah, I was good
with it. When you're in your mid twenties, even later twenties,
it's it's no big deal, you know what I mean.

(01:07:31):
You recover from from the travel you can. You're just
much more rough and tumble, you know, and uh, the
hours and the all the different modes of transportation, like
especially over in Europe, it's not, uh the tour bust
thing is not as developed as it was over here,

(01:07:54):
so you're on trains and and vans and stuff like that,
you know, and especially over in Europe back then rock
was just such a new thing. Rock shows were it
wasn't anything like it is now, you know, as you
will know. And so you'd go in and you'd play
these weird places like I remember we had a gig

(01:08:15):
in Belgium that where it was just this creepy, little old,
mildewy theater with Nazareth, and they put us in a
hotel that all the lampshades were torn and there was
trash all over the floor and dirty sheets and stuff.
And I was it scared the ship out of me

(01:08:36):
because I was just a little girl from Bellevue, you know,
where everything was fine and there's a big learning experience
and lots of those places. Needles say, in the last
five years we had me to awareness in America. But
you were one of only a handful of successful female

(01:08:58):
rock stars at the time. In addition, you were the
front person. What was that like? Yeah, it was kind
of like being being from another planet because no one
really knew how to treat you, where to put you.
If you were a folk singer or a disco diva,

(01:09:20):
they would have known, but being a rock singer, they
just automatically pegged me as is this wild kind of
like a nymphamaniac um uh crazy drunk, just wild thing,
you know, And that really wasn't what I was like.
Um So, yeah, there was a real stereotype that was

(01:09:44):
like an instantaneous, made up stereotype that was placed on me,
and Nancy too to a lesser degree, because she's She's
blond and fair and a little bit more delicate physically
and everything. So they just saw me and went, there's
a rock bitch, you know, and that I really didn't
measure up. I want to messer up to that inside

(01:10:06):
my own self. Well, I'm sure you had some bad
experiences as a result of people's perceptions and their aggressiveness. Yeah,
but I weathered that. I weathered it because I didn't
take it seriously. Um. I just kind of had an
attitude like, well, they don't know, you know, the band
I'm with takes me seriously, and what really matters is

(01:10:29):
what I do when I get up there. I kind
of think I had a sense that I was instrumental
in changing a perception of what women could be and
do in music. I was one of the few that
we're doing that. Okay, you have the legal situation with Mushroom.
You end up on Portrait, which is basically epic part

(01:10:51):
of CBS Records at the time. What was different about that, Well,
it was different in that, like all of a sudden
things got big, you know. It was just you went
to New York to the Black rock, you know, and
and you you hung out at a in a penthouse
in a champagne cocktail party with Slim Whitman. You know,

(01:11:12):
it just got automatically huge. And you met Yoko Ono
and you met Bob Grulin and it got big fast. Um,
it's very breathless cool time for sure. Uh. And just
they made things happen. Okay, you know you're living in obscurity, right,

(01:11:34):
the first album that blows up, then you have to
write more songs. What was the pressure like, Yeah, that
was a good one in terms of pressure. I mean
it was. It was just like there's kind of a
um hypocrisy because people just love your first record and
they just go, oh, you're such an artist. You know,

(01:11:57):
we just love your mind, we love your sensibility. Right,
another one? So then you do and they go, well,
why isn't that like the first one? You know? Like
that then, And I'm not blaming other people for being
um that way, because they're that way with all artists.

(01:12:19):
The thing that blows up between the artists and the
salesman is a year old. It will never change. That
goes back to your question about how the music industry change, Well,
not at all. You know, um, but yeah, the second
record was more us writing songs that were that came

(01:12:43):
out of being on the road and traveling and all
this big concerts and stuff and are my personal experience.
Like the song Little Queen, I think has a certain
sort of bitterness about it, like, Okay, you gotta get
up there, no matter how you feel, you gotta get
up there. It's almost like a Judy Garland mentality, you know,

(01:13:07):
put on the nose, get out there and just do it,
you know. Um. So yeah, the second album had elements
of that, almost biting the hand that was feeding us,
but not quite. Yeah, but you had success with that
second record. As long as you sell records, they don't
in retrospect, they'll stay off of you. But how much

(01:13:28):
did they interfere with your creative process there? Not at all,
Not at all. I don't remember being interfered with it all. Um.
We had the we had a combination in me and
Nancy writing songs and Roger Fisher writing songs with us,
and Mike Flicker producing. That was that was working at

(01:13:51):
the record company company level two. So they didn't really
start interfering with us until the eighties. Well, let's wait
for the eighties. First, Second, how did how did? How
did it end? With you and Michael Um? We were
living in we bought a house together in Seattle, came

(01:14:11):
down from Vancouver, Um and we were working on Baby
Less Strange recording in Seattle at Case Smith and Uh,
it was revealed to me by other people that he
was unfaithful. And because I was off writing songs with

(01:14:35):
Nancy and Sue all the time, and and I was
or I was in the studio, we drifted apart and
he found solace elsewhere. And I wasn't the kind of
person who could just turn my head and say, well,
that's my fault. You know. I walked out. I felt
not jealous, but I felt rejected, and so I left.

(01:15:00):
That's how we've split up. But he was your first
serious relationship, and you can't get over that so fast.
See I I didn't think so either, Like I felt
that was a serious betrayal. I thought that maybe he,
at the very worst, maybe he would tell me. But

(01:15:23):
it got to this point where everyone else in the
whole group knew except me, and everyone was trying to
keep it from me because the golden goose, right, and
they don't want to upset me or something make it
so I killed myself or stop writing songs or whatever.
As it turned out, I found out and that's what happened,

(01:15:47):
and I went into a real tail spin for a
long time about that. I think it shook myself confidence
in a way that was real deep. How long did
it take you to recover from that? If ever? Well,
I didn't get into another serious relationship until I was
sixty four years old, So it took me thirty plus

(01:16:10):
years to actually trust again. Um, but that's not to
say I didn't have a good time in those thirty
five years. You know, I dove headlong into being free
and individual and wild and uh, doing whatever I wanted
with whoever I wanted for a long time, but not

(01:16:31):
committing to anyone. So I guess you could say I
didn't recover until I was in my sixties. And what
changed I met Dean? What was different about him? He's
incredibly intelligent. Um, he's he's like, uh, he's like me.

(01:16:51):
It's almost like we're two versions of the same thing.
And he's got this spirituality that it's it's really basic
and simple and that I can really identify with. We
both felt like we recognized each other. Um, that's about
all I can say is like, it's just like this

(01:17:13):
familiarity of someone that you just know that you know
them and that well, this is it, this is what
it's going to be. It's so comfortable. It's it's like,
uh something that where you know you're supposed to be.
But he's he's a lot, I mean, Deans a lot.
He's a beautiful, highly intelligent person, but he's complicated and

(01:17:37):
sensitive and brainy and scientific, you know, a lot of
a lot. They're a lot there. So how do you
cope between the two of you? You see, you have arguments,
you see a therapist. How do you how do you
all relationships have these issues? How do you guys cope? Well,
he's he's a therapist. I see a therapist, you know,

(01:17:58):
I mean our problems we mostly talk out. Um, sometimes
we can't because we're both so complicated and we'll just
go round and round until the elephant in the room
is so big that we have to you know. Um.
And when we got married, we just kind of walked

(01:18:21):
off together, you know, we we didn't. We got together
in November and we were married by April. Um. That
was seven years ago, and we've been together every day
and every night since, except for the four Daisy spent
in the slammer over that White River deal that happened. Um,

(01:18:45):
but it's pretty intense how much total immersion we have
together now in the interim in that thirty five years.
You have children, correct, Yes, I do. I do. So
how did that? How did that come to be? And
what was that like? Well, I adopted both my children.

(01:19:05):
They I was looking to adopt, um because I was
ready to have children. I just didn't feel that I
wanted to wait and wait and wait and wait for
Mr Wright, you know, because I was in my thirties
at that point. Um, no, actually early forties. So I
went to an adoption agency and another one and another one,

(01:19:30):
and they weren't really having it because here I am,
this single woman in rock and roll, right, and they
weren't looking to place babies. They were looking to place
babies with two parents, upwardly mobile, stable families. So then
it just happened that a young girl that I knew

(01:19:53):
peripherally came to me and said that she was pregnant,
she couldn't keep her child, would I consider adopting it?
So I had That happened twice, and both my children
came to me before they were born, and I supported
the mothers. They're both like seventeen year old girls who

(01:20:15):
had just gotten out of their depth, you know, and
didn't want to be mothers yet, and so I supported them,
took them to their doctor's appointments, and then when the
time came for the births, I was there and you know,
had two babies seven years apart. And what was it

(01:20:35):
like being a single mother in addition working and working
on the road frequently. Yeah, Well, luckily, you know, I
took the babies on the road with me that when
they're little, football is like that, they're fine on the road. Um.
I was able to get to our buses where you
could child proof them, you know. And and uh, I

(01:21:01):
think my daughter was with me on the road until
she's about thirteen when she finally said, you know, Mom,
I've seen every aquarium and every minuteure golf place in
this country and I'm sick of it. I want to
be with my friends. And the same with my son.
You know, they had great upbringing. They went to Europe
and Japan and Australia and all over the country that

(01:21:24):
they had a great childhood and what are they up
to today. My daughter is thirty and she has got
six kids. She married a man who had twins, then
she had four of her own. And my son is
twenty three and he's uh a corrections officer at the

(01:21:47):
Monroe State Prison in Washington State. And are they independent
of you or do you support them financially? They're independent,
they're independent of me. Okay, let's go back. Ye, so
you're on Epic, you have a number of hits. How
does it end with Epic? M hmm, let's see. Um.

(01:22:12):
I think it ended with Epic when we did the
private audition album, or it might have been Passion Works.
That was our first record that did not sell, the
first one that was a commercial failure, right, and uh,
suddenly we took this commercially, this big nose dive and

(01:22:40):
heart couldn't really get arrested on the radio, which is
you know, as you know, which is how you did
things back then. There was no MTV yet or anything.
It's just starting up. And so eventually at it just

(01:23:00):
kind of went well, no, we're we're done here, you know.
And right at that same moment, Don Grierson at Capitol
came to us and said, well, you know, I think
that you guys could really be huge if you allow
me to introduce songwriters to you and if you take
advantage of this MTV thing and if you signed a capital.

(01:23:23):
So we we did that. You know, we were did
kind of a faustian bargain with that. I think. I
think at that point I wasn't ready to just go
back to obscurity. I wanted to keep it going, uh
And I liked getting all dressed up. I liked up singing,

(01:23:44):
and so I didn't have any qualms about singing other
people's material. It was just like going back to the
beginning for me um at first. So we signed a
Capital and made this record with ron Nevison producing Dan Sacelito,
and it went number one. And of course they there

(01:24:10):
were of the twelve or fourteen so songs that are
on there, four of them or five of them were
our compositions. The rest were from Diane Warren and Um
Peter both and Bernie Taupin and a few other people

(01:24:31):
who Kelly Steinberg, and so we had this huge success.
So we made three albums right in the Rover Capital
that that happened with, and we made all these big,
expensive MTV videos and and and wore the big hair
and all the whole kabuki set up, and that became

(01:24:55):
a real trap, became a real uncomfortable deal, especially when
you try to take that MTV thing with all the
stylists and take it out in the hot summer outside
shed setting where it's a hundred degrees and you're wearing
this corset and this big, huge mane of hair and

(01:25:16):
everything is just really hard um to maintain that pose.
And so at the end of the eighties, after we
did Heart Bad Animals and Brigade, I think we were
done with that. We just were we were exhausted, and

(01:25:37):
we went home to Seattle and just took everything off
and just went, well, I don't know what's going to
happen now, but I'm not doing that anymore. You know,
we've gone about as first week ago with that one,
and then there was grunge and we kind of landed

(01:25:57):
in the middle of that. So all your hits previously
been written by the band, primarily you and your sister.
What's it like singing somebody else's songs and having all
the recognition for that. Yeah, it's that's a real um
double edged sword, because if the if, if the song

(01:26:21):
is a great song that somebody else has written, it's
a pleasure, like the song Alone or These Dreams or
one of the really well written ones that has substance,
it's a it's a pleasure and a joy. But some
of those other songs that were just written for the
radio for the eighties radio, like nothing at All or
who Will You Run To? Or Never, those types of

(01:26:44):
things boring, boring, boring, and uh, for me, it was
just like some kind of I don't know, I'm I'm
trying not to get too colorful here, but some kind
of master masturbatory, um, meaningless exercise. Then I got real

(01:27:07):
tired of and it wore on my voice because they
weren't songs that I'd written for myself. But I knew
how to pitch, you know. Um. So I think the
mood changed in the eighties for us, and it was
it was hard. It wasn't exciting. It was hard and

(01:27:32):
commercial and corporate. How was your relationship with a label
with Capital? It was good. I mean, we spent time
over there at the Capitol Building in l A. And
I went a couple of the Wednesday morning singles meetings,

(01:27:53):
and you know, played that game a little bit, uh
back then, because you get into the situation where they
sort of have you over a barrel, like if if
you don't cooperate, then they won't cooperate. If if you

(01:28:15):
don't do what's necessary, then they could just let the
whole project sit and fail. Um. So pretty soon you
wake up and find yourself just in this situation of powerlessness,
and the realization came to me that, like, God, what
am I spending my life on this for? You know,

(01:28:37):
this isn't what I got into this for. I'm only
coming back to that now, you know. Okay. Needless to say,
MTV is all about image, and women are very concerned
about their image. How did you feel about being in

(01:28:57):
videos in the focus, etcetera. Yeah, that that was really
really hard because it was big, big money to make
these big productions that were like mini movies with stylists
and catering and um all these cameras and big name

(01:29:18):
producers and directors and uh, it was a whole lot
of work. And they the videos are what sold the
records in those days, so it worked. Needless to say,
there were issues in the eighties with your body and weight.

(01:29:40):
What was that experience for you. Oh, it was really
hard and and personal. It got really personal and it
was hurtful. But I used to look at myself and go, well,
you know, like, I'm not following the rules of how
you're supposed to be, so do I deserve the because

(01:30:00):
I'm not a h obeying the rules of what you're
supposed to look like. And I always came back too, well, yeah,
I'm not observing the rules, so maybe I deserve this. Um.
I went through everything I could do, like, you know,
every diet, every fasting, every thing you could do, but

(01:30:21):
it was just too hard for me to live behind.
I think that's a lot of what changed the mood
about it the eighties for me too. Now, ultimately, after
the Capital era, you do TV ads for weight loss? Yeah,
how do you decide to do that? Well? I met
these people who, um, who were willing to help me

(01:30:44):
in my weight loss goals and if I would speak
out for one of their products, and so I did,
and then they helped me, they paid for the medicine.
And where are you at with your body and weight
and image today? Well, you know, I I'm pretty relaxed

(01:31:06):
about it. Um. I really have spent so much of
my life struggling with it. That I it's just something
that you can You can have it stopped your whole life,
or you can realize that you can go on with
your life and accept yourself radically. And I think I've

(01:31:27):
met just the right people, like a couple of my
trainers and stuff, who have taught me about radical self acceptance.
And that doesn't mean just being happy to be a slab.
That means looking at yourself realistically and and not through
the eyes of pop culture. Okay, So you and your

(01:31:50):
sister wrote all these songs. Who owns those songs today?
Owns um? I don't know about Nancy, about her. I
know that some of some of the publishing is with Merk.
I'm not sure how that's I'm not sure how that's
going right now. But so in in terms of your publishing,

(01:32:15):
have you sold all your interest for a lump sum
to Murk or there are things that doesn't own. There
are the things that he does not own. So what
does Mirk own? Okay? And what you do with the
money that Mark gave you it's going to be invested, Okay.

(01:32:36):
Was that a tough tough decision to make a deal
with Mark, No, because because you know, we met with
him and and talked a lot about about ideals and
and you know how we're going to do this that Like,
I didn't just want to sign it away or sell

(01:32:57):
if it was just going to go into the toilet,
you know. Oh okay. So if we go through the seventies,
you're writing the songs, but revenue from the music business
is less. We go into the eighties, the hit songs
are not written by you, so you're making record royalties
which are not extremely high and split with other members

(01:33:18):
of the band. So how does it worked for you
financially over these decades? Not in a bad way, because
there's been a constant tour going on. We've just Heart
has been touring, and I've been touring as a solo
artist solidly since the eighties, No, I mean the beginning

(01:33:40):
of the nineties. Just all the different forms that my
touring life has taken. My solo stuff stuff with Heart,
a duet with Nancy, the more recent stuff with the
band I'm in now with That's like where the money

(01:34:00):
has come from. For god, two decades it was playing live.
Let's go back to the beginning. You have these big
hits did you see any money? Oh yeah, yep, dump
trucks and what do you do with the money? Um?
But things houses, cars, And I didn't be really smart

(01:34:27):
with investments until just recently. Uh. But I never ran
out of money. I was able to keep it just
at a nice level and have the things I wanted,
but not be all lavish. If you didn't go on
the road anymore, you have enough money to get to
the end in the lifestyle you want. Yeah, I think

(01:34:48):
so now. I think so now. But you really don't
know because you don't know what's what's going to happen.
You know, whatever money a person is able to put
away could be just blown away if something catastrophic happens.
So there's never a time when you're gonna be safe,
you know. But yeah, I think if everything goes well,

(01:35:11):
I'll be fine. I won't have to worry. I can
just go about my life. So you want to be
on the road, I do. Yeah. In fact, when enough
time passes that I'm not on the road, I start
to really climb the walls and I start to not
be able to speak in a fluid way. And it's
just that's what singing does for me and you're gonna

(01:35:31):
do this forever till you drop, or at some point
you're gonna say you're gonna hang up your shoes. I'm
probably gonna do it till I drop, run till my
children's children escort me off the stage, and go go out,
go out there and get your grandma, you know, bring
her back. And when you're home. Are you a reader,

(01:35:51):
a TV watcher, traveler? How do you fill your time
when you're not on the road travel? Dean and I
watch a whole lot of a whole lot of stuff HBO, Netflix,
You know, boy, do we ever, especially living out here
in the country, swimming a lot of swimming. So what

(01:36:13):
have you watched on Netflix? You recommend? Um, let's see
God Marathy's Town. We're just actually finishing up watching Sopranos
because I was on the road when that was out,
when that was on TV, I never saw it. Best
television show ever, totally. We're just finishing it up now

(01:36:35):
for the first time, so that I really love fantastic
And the only the only sad thing is that Gandalfoeni
passed away. Well, don't tell me the end of the series.
I'm only talking about a real life he passed away
the guy okay, because you also know that they're making

(01:36:55):
a prequel with his son. Oh, so it's gonna so
it's gonna come out relatively soon. And do you listen
to new music? Do you care about the music scene
today or just pretty much self focused? I gotta admit
I'm pretty much self focused right now. Um. I think

(01:37:17):
it's it's hard for me to um. I'm such a
word person. It's hard for me to get into the
thought levels of people who are and thirty, you know.
So that's the trouble I have with listening to new music.

(01:37:38):
It's not that it's bad, it's that I've heard it
before and I'm always trying to keep it going out,
you know. Any regrets? Um Nah? I think that one
thing makes the next thing happen. If I had to
go back and make all those so us is again,

(01:38:00):
those decisions again, they'd be the same. I think one
thing I would do it I would be a a
little bit more careful, not to be quite as much
of a wild partier as I was in the eighties.
But that's about the only thing that's something that you
grow out of, you know. And the two songs you
like to sing most m hmm. Right now, I'm enjoying

(01:38:24):
singing black Wing. It's a song I wrote for my
new album, and uh, I like singing no quarter okay,
And it's been fantastic. Thanks so much for spending your time.
Obviously you're still in the thick of it making new music,
going on the road. Thanks a lot for taking the

(01:38:45):
time with us. It's been really great. Until next time.
This is Bob left Sex,