Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Guitarist and songwriter Nancy Wilson is one half of
the rock band Heart, along with her older sister Anne Wilson.
Nancy and Ann have been the face of the band
since the mid seventies, when they started playing gigs around
their home base in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Wilson sisters
both migrated to Canada from Seattle, Washington to join a
(00:38):
band member who was dodging the Vietnam draft. Heart's first album,
Dreamboat Annie, was released in nineteen seventy six, right as
a band was making traction opening for big acts like
Rod Stewart and the Bee Gees. Soon, their songs like
Magic Man and Crazy On You started to take off
in the States, and Heart quickly became a headlining act.
(00:58):
Nearly fifty years since the debut album, Heart has experienced
career highs like a string of chart topping hits and
an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
as well as their fair share of personal and professional adversity. Today,
Ann and Nancy remain steadfast in continuing Heart's legacy. This month,
they are embarking on a world tour, their first in
(01:19):
five years, to celebrate Anna and Nancy Wilson's massive contribution
to rock and roll history. Will feature conversations with both
sisters over the next two weeks. Today, we'll hear Leo
Rose talk to Nancy about how the popular drugs of
the seventies and eighties influenced Heart's sound. She also describes
how being accepted by the musicians of Seattle's grunge scene
(01:39):
helped her overcome Heart's fraud experience recording power ballads in
the eighties, and she describes the lo fi setup she
used to score the soundtracks of her ex husband Cameron
Crowe's hit movies Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, and Jerry Maguire.
This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I'm justin Ritchman.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Here's Lea Rose's conversation with Heart's Nancy Wilson.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
I was looking at your upcoming tour dates and I
know this is you know, probably nothing new to you,
but it has been five years since you've been on
the road. Yeah, I guess with this sort of like
an arena tour. Yes, I didn't realize it was five
months long.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Well yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Does that sound like a long time to you or
is that just part of life and you readjust.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Right now what I've heard. The last I heard the
last Heart show is December fifteenth, so it's been extended.
I think it's been extended through another running through Canada.
I love Canada.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Though, good old Canada for heart.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Good Old Canada for Heart. I know it's our other home,
you know, but there's breaks between. Do you do about
twenty shows or thirty shows? Then you go home for
maybe two weeks, so you can, you know, answer you're mail.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
You know, what sort of comforts do you set up
for yourself at this point when you're going out for
that long?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I think I could write a book about it. There's
a whole survival kit really of like comfort zone things
and practical survival things that you need to kind of
have with you, and skills that you develop when you're
not at home. So like you take one container that
(03:32):
has sharpies, scissors, gaffer's tape, some kind of string, and
then you know, some of those alligator clips and a
pillowcase so if the vent in the hotel room is
blasting cold air on you, you can clip the pillowcase
(03:55):
to the vent, take a call. There's stuff like that,
and an alligator clip also will close the curtains when
its broad daylight comes away too early in your room. Oh,
hair clamps also suffice. And then you if you have
a stinky room, you run the shower with the tub
(04:18):
closed so the water gathers the hot water with this
complimentary shampoo who were on in the bath with the
shower moist in the air and scent the room at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And if you get an extra pile of towels, you
can do all your laundry in cold water in the tub,
bring them out, rinse them in the tub, ring them
out again, and do the towel dance is what I
call when you lay the clothes and fold the towels
and do the dance on the towels, and then hang
the clothes in the room. And if you have a balcony,
(04:54):
even better because then they'll go fast. They'll drive faster.
Like college stuff, all the college stuff all works. You know,
if you ever went to university, which I did, all
of that stuff, like one little hot pot is pretty
much all. You had no refrigerator, you know, Yeah, you
had the window that kept things cooled outside, you know,
(05:15):
stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
I listened to your audio book Kicking and dreaming And
it was so great because you read the book. You
and Anne read the book. There was one section where
you were talking about meeting Paul McCartney. Uh huh, and
he was on stage talking to somebody else, and then
I guess you and Anne went up and started talking
to him, and he had this glazed over look in
(05:39):
his eye that I think Anne said reminded her of
just what happens when you're on the road for a
long period of time.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
How do you get past that feeling?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
How do you deglaze yourself? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
How do you manage that when you're just in the
middle of a long tour?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Well, you know, sleep is the key to the universe,
for one thing. You try to find quiet places and
moments to regroup and re gather because there's there can
be a lot of momentum and dramatic political drama inside
of the power structures that are traveling with you. You
(06:19):
know what usually happens on a big rock tour with
a lot of travel, a lot of finance involved, is
me and Anne are like in the eye of the hurricane,
where it's quiet and calm and peaceful together and our
humors intact and our initial relationship just it's just like
(06:42):
completely safe, but everything else is swirwing like the Dickens.
It's like the Twister movie where you see cows go
by and you know, there's go, there's the kitchen sing,
there's a house over there. You know, just the emotional
luggage that you kind of have to navigate through the
(07:03):
baggage and the chaos that can surround you. But we
do like to have a wellness room because we're gonna
be in lots of arenas which are basically locker rooms, yeah,
which you know, so you're gonna need something that smells
good in there, like some lavender spray or lavender spray,
(07:24):
some incense, and some good thick yoga mats and some
music and turning the fluorescence off and some put some
candles on and have a massage table in one room
and then have the workout stuff like the TRX and
the free weights and the pilates machine in the other
(07:44):
room so you can strengthen or you can you know,
go get bodywork, even if it's once in a while,
you know, just try to keep strong and keep centered
with it.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Last time you went out, I saw there's a couple
of dates on this tour with Deaf Leopard in Journey
and last time you went out with them, it sounds
like Deaf Leopard were just like party animals to an
extent that you weren't expecting because at that point they
were in their fifties and it sort of took you
a bash. Are you expecting more of that this tour?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
They're older guys now, Like everybody has to slow down
their party activity, you know at a certain point. I mean,
for instance, you too have really slowed down because I've
partied with you too. One time it was like whoa,
where are what cities we land in on the private jet?
Oh wait, you thought it was Paris, No, it's Vegas.
(08:39):
You know, like stuff was going on. Everybody was drinking
like fish and smoking like sex. But you know, you
can't live like that when you're especially if you're a
little bit older. So you know, those dance cards have
been full for a while, so we I think even
I don't know, even def Lepper, I mean, you can't
(09:01):
actually go out and play and do it well if
you're just destructed from a party, right. I mean, art
actually plays everything live. We don't run tapes, as they say.
Our show doesn't come out out of a box like
most people do these days, which is not a just
(09:21):
mental comment on my part, but I guess we're just
kind of old school that way. We just really want
to feel the authenticity of the moment that only happens
that one particular time and there's nothing sort of canned
going on around it, you know, And even at the
expense of coming off really fallible and really human at
(09:44):
times where your voice doesn't exactly work right or you squeak,
you know, or you can't quite hit that note, or
or your fingers don't work too well or your finger's
hurt or whatever it is. You know, we just do
it like that because that's how we know how to
do it, you know. Like as a rock fan, if
I go see the Eagles, for example, and you could
(10:07):
tell some of the background vocal are sweetened, you know,
or if you go see Paul McCartney and some of
it's a little bit extra, you know, like the album
sounding and stuff like that, it doesn't really matter, you know,
there's no like shame in that. I think all that
really matters is how beloved these songs are and the
(10:29):
experience that people get from going all the way out
of their way to go and see you play those
songs that they love.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Are you the type of fan if you go see
someone like Paul McCartney, since you've loved the Beatles for
so long, do you want to hear him play all
the hits, all the early Beatles stuff, Wing stuff. Do
you kind of get a little bit disgruntled if he
starts to play a new song? Or because you're also
an artist and a performer, do you totally get that
(11:00):
and are you over supportive of that that new music moment?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I tend that's a good question. I tend to be
really overly supportive of anyone that you know, puts a
toe into the new material column, you know, in a
live show setting, especially when they have so many beloved
songs to do. And I went and saw Paul on
his eightieth roofday in San Francisco, and it was an
(11:25):
incredibly good show. And you know, he's ever the Paul.
He's dependable as the sun will rise. He's a genius songwriter.
But there's so many songs that over a very actually
pretty short period of time that became such landmark songs,
and even with Wings as well as with the Beatles,
(11:49):
but when he does something like Molofkin Tire or something
more rare like Happiness in the Homeland or you know,
love in Song or you know Tug of War. I mean,
I know all all of its songs deep cuts. So
that's kind of what I'm concentrating a little bit on
with this new lineup of players in this band. We
(12:13):
call Heart a couple of deep cuts, you know, to
put in our back pocket to keep the set list
from being always predictably the same, right, even for ourselves,
you know. Yeah, living on the edge, it's like, okay,
let's pull this one out. Oh my god, how does
that go? Again? Let's see how does that go?
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
You know, if you're worth your salt as a player,
a singer, songwriter, player, I think you can pretty much
get through even if you mess up a little bit.
You can have fun with it and make it work.
And people kind of appreciate the imperfections, even maybe a
little bit more than they appreciate something that's absolutely perfect.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
I was curious about your decision to play rhythm guitar
rather than lead guitar, and if gender had anything to
do with that decision early on, and if you still
feel like, yeah, I'm a rhythm guitar player to the death.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Well, I mean I've been known to step out play
little bit of lead here and there on records and
in live settings, and I toss in little I don't know,
shred moments here and there. But I'm more like a
Pete Townsend at my center. I'm an accompanist as a songwriter,
so I approached my playing like a songwriter. So I'm
(13:41):
accompanying the lyrics and the melody for the song. So
it's the structure of the song that interests me more
than the embellishing and kind of the frosting on top,
you know. So for me, that's the meat and potatoes.
That's the real, you know, essence. And you can add
(14:02):
all the extra stuff, which is fun to do. And
I'm not a horrible league player. I just don't do
it that often because I'm more a building block song
person in the way of play. But yeah, but I've
always thought as a woman playing guitar, there's so many
(14:23):
women right now that are younger women coming out that
are just shredders, like Grace Bauers for example. I don't
know if you've seen her on like Instagram or whatever,
but She is kind of a Clapton type shredder. She's
a blues player who plays instead of for the quantity
(14:44):
of notes, she plays for the quality of the expression
of the notes that she chooses that sound more like
sentences than you know, show off stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
I was surprised when I listened back to Dreamboat Annie,
which is turning fifty.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Next year next year.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
There's so much musical interplay on the songs. It's not
just straightforward at all, and there's a lot of communication
between the two guitars.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Was that something that was intentional from the beginning or
did that just happen in jams?
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Well, I guess I would say both. I mean all
of the above. It's intentional to try to have a
dialogue with another guitar player, a rhythm and a lead player,
which you hear a lot of that on Dreambani the album.
And at that point it was Howard Lease and Roger Fisher,
(15:38):
two really great players that I got to sort of
cut my teeth, you know, my rock and roll live
club band kind of recording first recording session teeth with
the era we came from to the late sixties. By
this point, we're releasing our first album in the mid
(15:58):
seventies and seventy five, so we had all of that
imprint From the late sixties, the Mind expanded sort of
epic length songs and you know, tales of great Ulysses
kind of stuff out there, and you know, like sticks
and Rush and yes, you know and Heart. A lot
(16:23):
of conceptualizing going on and yeah, you know, significance and
depthy symbolism and stuff like that before cocaine, you know,
before it cut all ego driven later.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, I was going to say that feels very LSD esque.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Very mind expanded from that era. So we were really
starting out with the first album, I think.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Really naive and doggedly determined, workmanlike about getting something very
important recorded onto a vinyl disc, you know, and this
might be our only chance to be heard.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
And it was really cool because it worked. I mean,
just over my last weekend, I was having a birthday
weekend at this beautiful beach in Oregon on the Oregon
coast with my friend Sue Ennis that we did a
whole bunch of songwriting with. And we have a project
(17:27):
We've been digging through old cassettes for an old CDs
for like a rarity project that We're just digging out
with gems and morsels and hysterical little bits and song
pieces and songwriting jams that turned into other songs that
would be familiar someday. Stuff like that, and we had
(17:50):
the blast of all blasts. But listening to a lot
of those cassette tapes, you could hear Soul of the
Sea forming, You could hear you know, even It Up,
the beginnings of Even It Up coming together. And also
we found the mother load of like Heart when they
(18:11):
were called before I joined Heart, when they were called
hocus Pocus in a club called oil Can Harry's in Vancouver.
Received there's these real surreal tapes that the sound man
used to get of the live performance to listen back
and critique from like a ball team, you know. So yeah,
(18:32):
so there's like a bunch of covers that we used
to do, you know, a bunch of David Bowie's songs,
a bunch of deep purple. It's like, oh my god.
It reminded me how hard those club days were because
you really had a lot of time to fill and
probably close to you know, I don't know, five hours
(18:54):
of music and banter. You really had a lot of
time to fill and entertainment to provide.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
We have to take a quick break and then we
back with more from Nancy Wilson and Leah Rose. We're
back with Lea Rose and Nancy Wilson.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
I was asking Anne about the time in the book
you talked about there's a period of time where you
both would hang out with Stevie Nicks. Yeah, especially in
the seventies when the big Fleetwood Mac albums were coming out.
I was just curious about the relationship between Heart and
Fleetwood Mac, and it sounds like you came together more
in the eighties to hang out.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah, they were kind of happening right before us, kind
of as Hart was just starting to tiptoe into the scene,
and they already had rumors out there, and we were
just trying so hard to make an album and get
out there and get a tour or whatever, and they
were all over the radio, and you know, I felt
(20:00):
so jealous of that band because there were two women
in it. It sounded so good together, and they had
the acoustic guitar kind of thing that I felt like
I was bringing a lot of into our band. They
kind of had it already, you know, like something we
were trying to capture. They had already captured it. So
(20:20):
I was really like, damn it, what makes us so
different now? You know? But we did sound very different.
I mean a lot of it's Anne's voice, you know,
very signature. You know, the muscle and the power that
she possesses and the way she sings is completely its
(20:41):
own things. So lucky for us we had Anne, not
just it know was soft rock. We had hard rock,
so we could rock very hard and as quietly as well.
So we probably had a lot more maybe versatility or something.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yeah, I was surprised. I asked Anne about her voice
and she I asked her when she first realized that
her voice was so powerful, and she said that she
didn't think voice was very powerful.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, her confidence is hard for her to she's she's
hard on herself. But when she was a kid, a
kid kid, and I was maybe nine or eight, we
were all bunch of Hams, always singing harmonies into the
family and you know, she would do ethel mermon. She
would do this no business like show and she could
(21:37):
just build it like this little kid and our parents
would be like girls, girls, come on down the stairs,
you know, and your ethel murmon. So She would just
you know, blow the people's minds in the living room,
and she just had this facility, you know, she just
had these has these pipes that a few people have.
(22:00):
It's God given.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Do you think of both your gift as a songwriter,
a player, a writer AND's voice and gift as a writer.
Where does that come from in your mind?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh? Well, I think the gift, the music gift comes
from our parents and our grandparents and our aunts and
our uncles. Our grandpa was the Irish tenor in the
local church choir, and both of our mom and dad
were met in choir when they decided they loved each other.
(22:36):
And my dad was a singer in a barbershop quartet,
and my mom was in various ensemble choirs and big choirs,
and all of us grew up with choirs and choirs
and harmony, singing in the car on the way to grandma's.
You know, I think it's generational in our family and
(22:57):
the love of music and listening to music and Ray
Charles and Aretha Franklin. We always had a record player,
you know, and we learned a lot of albums by
Heart and Harry Bellefonte, Peggy Lee and Judy Garland and
all of those great singers from that era. We were
(23:18):
always singing along. Every Christmas. We had the same like
Big Benjamin Britain Corral going on, and we'd sing in
the house and decorate the tree singing in the house,
you know. And you hear about those families, I guess
we were one of them. Like the Beg's family. They
were all singing the Jacksons. So it comes really naturally.
(23:43):
It comes very honestly to both of us, you know,
from the inside out.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Oh yeah, and you can feel that too.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
No, it's true. I feel driven by it still, whether
or not something's happening or going on, or successful or
not successful. I feel driven to do music and create music,
write music, play music. And it's like a destiny, you know,
feeling of destiny because it's what your cellular memory knows.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
When you talk about the eighties now, or when you
think about the eighties and the first formation of Heart
started to sort of disintegrate and new players came in.
You were signed to Capitol Records. They started bringing songwriters in.
How devastating was that to you and Anne at the time.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Well, we were kind of victims of longevity in a
certain way because the styles changes and you wanted to
not change that much. The mind expanded perspective was turning
into a cocaine perspective, which was a little more money
ego sort of driven. Therefore, you know, a stable of
(25:02):
LA's hit songwriters were employed in tandem with these record
companies to create the formulaa hits that were expected of
the time and those big power ballads and you know,
hairband music and so so we were like reluctantly kind
of going along for survivals reasons and writing our own
(25:25):
stuff meanwhile, you know, but we were kind of irritated
with the whole atmosphere of that. The weather system just
felt wrong to us, you know, around all of that
image making type of stuff, because we were cool, kind
of apple cheek girls from Seattle without makeup when we
first started, and then it was all about the artifice
(25:48):
and what you can wear and how much your jacket's
going it's going to cost as much as a car.
You know, like that's not important. It was never important
to us, and so we muddled through pretty good in
the eighties because we got a couple of really gorgeous
songs out of that time, like like these Dreams and Alone,
(26:09):
What About Love, and a few more. They're just gorgeous,
well written, structured pieces of music that we still enjoy
doing today, you know. So if that's the booty that
we snuck out of the eighties, then it's well worth it.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
How have you changed the arrangements on some of those songs?
Have you tried to take them away from their power
ballad beginnings?
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Oh? Yeah, A good song you could do almost any way.
I mean you could do Alone on a ukulele, you know,
because it's a good song and it has a good
shape to it, whether or not it's in a big format,
a bombastic sounding format, or if it's just an acoustic
guitar or piano. With these Dreams in particular, it's an
(26:57):
oddball song. This changed different keys. I played it on mandolin,
we do it with keyboards and percussion, and then we
do it just acoustic on it, different keys, different arrangements.
You know. The song's really flexible that way. And Alone
(27:18):
we've sort of we merged Alone into what About Love
at the guitar solo, which really worked well. So there's
just ways to yeah, just try new versions out so
that you're not so it's not just the album, you know.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Was These Dreams originally written for Stevie Nicks.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, Verdie Topin told me that once. He said, actually,
Stevie Nicks rejected this song first, and they thought about
it for her because if it's very diatheanous and mysterious,
and you know, it's very gauzy sounding, and she rejected
it because she was not taking outside material, thank you
(28:00):
very much. And a lot of people were at the
time and she wasn't. And I respect that a lot
that she wasn't doing that. And it's not easy to
write a song that fits the fashion of the current
radio program either. So we gave, you know, we gave
(28:22):
a lot of songs a good try. When we were
I was at the beach with Sue listening to cassettes.
There were some real turkeys, I mean, a lot of
really bombastic ballad stranges of the Wold. You know. It's like,
(28:44):
you know, like a bunch of very righteous sounding marching songs,
kind of either marching rock songs or bombastic ballads with
a lot of gated echo on the snare trum.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
We were like, oh, we us I think are head
and shite because we were we were obviously trying really
hard to keep up with the stable of la songwriter.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Like the formulaic stuff is what we never could get right,
you know. So the biggest global hit song was All
I Want to Do Is make Love to You by
Mutt Lang. Right. We recorded it and it was a
huge smash and it was all over the world. Oh,
I remember it was banned in Ireland, you know, because
(29:38):
of the reverse sexism of it. But we were kind
of proud of the fact that it was banned in Ireland.
That's just the one that just never felt like a
heart song exactly. It's a great track. It sounds genius
on the radio, but it was never for Anne as
a lead singer too, who has to sell what she's
(29:58):
talking about in those lyrics of the song. It's really
kind of more like a country story song. It's more
like that. Yeah, it's not a real rock song per se.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
And I know Hart used to jam with a lot
of musicians off stage and you can together have parties
and sometimes at Ann's house later in Seattle, and it
really reminded me of the stories of your family early
on when you would have the hoot Nannies together, right,
you know, totally were there any jams from that early
(30:34):
era or any musicians that you've played with that really
stand out.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Definitely one of my favorite moments of coming back out
of the eighties back to Seattle in the early nineties
with our tail between our legs basically, you know, having
been kind of gristed for the MTV mill there and
the Seattle explosion was really cool. Suddenly it was really
(31:01):
good music and guitars were back again, and all the
layer cake production was blasted out of the water, like
you know, smells like teen Spirit was like it. That
was the flash mob moment in the culture where the
eighties was definitely over, just instantly over, and you know,
(31:25):
like eighties kind of power ballot bands that had a
number one hit the week before were dropped from their
label that day. You know, it was just that that
exact like it was a surgical strike of rock and
roll into the culture that made that happen. It was
so so such a relief to us after coming out
(31:48):
of that. And we had a party at Ann's house
after we all kind of met each other because one
of my oldest friends was managing Pearl Jam. He managed
them forever. My friend Kelly Curtis still my best friend,
and they all got together at some of the house
(32:09):
around Andy Woods, who had just had odd from Mother
Love Pone, who are then going to find Eddie Vedder
and become pro jam So the whole community came together
and we showed up to meet everyone kind of at
this one big party, and we brought all of our
dogs and everybody was crying and laughing and petting dogs
(32:30):
and playing guitars. And then the next time we got
together was at Ann's house and I ended up jamming
with Jerry Cantrell, like cross legged in a corner and
She's like, how I play the beginning of Mister all Wind?
And I'm like, okay, that was like the best words
I could have heard out of somebody that cool asking
(32:53):
me that at that moment, because I got to feel
cool again, like yeah, as like a musician should be
able to feel in their hometown and not shamed by
the new generation of people pushing back against the hair
bands of the eighties and so so you know, that
(33:14):
meant everything met the world to me and we're still tight.
As a matter of fact, Stone Gossard in Petal Time
he actually ended up buying a house from Anne at
the beach in Oregon that I was just at last weekend,
and the and Sue Mines were blown like we were
(33:36):
here in our twenties writing Barracuda stuff, you know, and
listening through the history of us doing that there in
this beautiful location where we always used to go for
ultimate hideout. So it was really an amazing time to
come back to Seattle in the nineties and then be
(33:57):
so well brought into the fold like that. It meant
the world.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
I loved in the book. You were saying that Seattle
musicians they won't bullshit you. If they don't like something,
they'll tell you. They're not just going to kind of
kiss up to you because you're already established. They'll say like, no,
actually that kind of sucked.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
No, that's really true. They're not looking to be anti
everything either. They're being honest. And it's a great thing
about that community. That missed community in Seattle. I mean,
people in program are really truly friends. They are there
for each other. Kelly would Curtis would take his office
(34:40):
employees and the band all out on retreats out of
the Oregon coast, oh and stay at those same places
where we used go right, and just get in small
groups and talk about everybody and how things are going,
and really communicate with each other about what can we
do better? How can I make you feel better? I
(35:00):
don't know. I just still feel really close to the
people from Seattle in that particular way, because you can
really tell the truth to each other other and you're
not just smiling whatever.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
After this last break, we'll be back with more from
Nancy Wilson. We're back with the rest of Lea Rose's
conversation with Nancy Wilson.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
When you started to pivot and work on film scores
with Cameron Crowe and you worked on Almost Famous, how
much of your experience was used in that movie? Was
a lot of it? Like direct source material for the movie?
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, most of the Hearts played most of the sound
of the score. Music for Almost Famous is me playing everything.
So I played you know, percussion and keyboards, and I
played hurdy gurdy, a little bit of you know, synthesizer, piano, guitar,
(36:06):
electric guitar, bass guitar, and vocals, you know as atmosphere,
and I really had a blast doing that. I actually
had a couple of musical instrumental pieces i'd recorded along
the way, one in particular, called the Queue, ended up
(36:28):
being called Deflower the Kid. So there was a piece
of music that I'd already recorded just as a piece
for myself for a different project that fit perfectly into
the scene where with the William Miller characters being deflowered
by the band aids in a hotel room in slow motion.
(36:50):
So it actually worked out very well. It's like they
cut to the song, so it worked really perfectly for
that one scene, the whole scene, and I had a
few little bits and pieces scraps of music sitting around
it I threw into the mix. But I recorded a
lot of it just on a little cassette stuffed into
(37:11):
a tiny Costco TV player with really good like Noyman
microphones at my friends my friend's house, you know, no
no soundproofing, nothing, just very low fi but close enough
so that you couldn't really hear the garbage trucks outside.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
So so Jerry Maguire was done like that. Almost famous
was done on the pretty much really low fly by
like that. My first ever movie session, like which scared
the shit out of me, was for for say anything.
Anne Dudley was the score artist on that, So she
(37:53):
was really nice to me. It was like I don't
know how to read. I mean I learned, but I
don't remember how to read, and so it's like, just
show me how it goes my ear and I'll just
play it. So I played, you know, guitar parts for
that in a scoring session for my first time ever.
And then the next thing I did was Jerry Maguire
(38:13):
by myself. Wow, with the Costco TV.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
What an incredible new experience to have at that point
in your career, still in music, still making music, but
now by yourself. Yeah, such a different way to make music.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
So different. Well, I had a really good music editor,
Carl Caller, that I did a lot of that stuff
with for years, and he was really a good translator
for me to know how to approach it, like because
he would be able to take something I'd done and
edit it together to fit the screen. So I was
(38:55):
not encumbered by what was on picture and played a
picture very often, just took for that those five seconds
or whatever. But you know, we got really experimental when
we did Vanilla Sky. There's some really crazy stuff that
we did in that together. There's one called Elevator Beat
(39:16):
where the Tom Cruise character is going up the elevator
at the end before he jumps off the building, relives
his life as he's falling. I went to a flea market,
the Pasadena flea Market, and I found these old vinyl
discs that you could play on home entertainment keyboard machines.
(39:37):
You would certain a disc and it would play the
groovy beat that you could play along with on your keyboard,
your your home entertainment organs. Wow, so the Casio maybe, yes, yes,
so really analogue, scratchy old albums that people would like.
Speaker 6 (39:57):
D you know, it would have like do you know,
little little groove beats or like you turn it over,
would be like.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
A shoff with the flutes right there. And so then
you could tape it and run the tape backwards and
have this crazy ass insanity sounding thing that you could
also play forward stuff too, stuff like that. So I
thought it was Brian Wilson there for a minute, and
(40:32):
you know, or the Beatles on drugs, you know, And
we just tried everything like that On Vanilla Sky. I
was clearing out my garage, throwing stuff into a garbage
scan and I recorded the sound of big flanks and
clunks and planks going into the garbage can and used
(40:54):
it as a rhythm track for Vanilla Sky where he's
walking through the streets with his mask.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
On stuff that was so eerie.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
So it's like crazy stuff, you know.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
Did you have a lot of influence over the stories
of the movies as well?
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Well? With Kevin writing scripts, he was always writing, rewriting
and rewriting again and reading out loud for dialogue and
just for the feel of how it sounds and what
it feels like. So yeah, I did a lot of responding,
and I made a lot of notes, gave a lot
(41:31):
of notes, you know, a sentence here, a sentence there
that might land in a funny, cool way, And so
I kind of worked a little bit on some of
the dialogue mainly. And it's a lot like songwriting, especially
a writer like Camera Crow. He writes with music in
his head, So he's writing his scenes like songs in
(41:54):
a lot of ways where he's working toward a song
that's going to be in the scene or or they're
going to have, you know, a feeling of a song
that they're going to act the scene too, that's playing
on set, even if you don't have it in the
movie later stuff like that. So it's all steeped in music,
(42:18):
and the cadence of the dialogue should sound musical. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Did you have any experiences on set with the actors
once you got to the point where the movie was
actually being filmed.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
My most memorable wildest one was on Almost Famous when
Billy Krudip was playing the rock star on Acid of
the scene where he goes to the kids party and
it's a really funny part, and they were about to
film the part where he's up on the roof going
(42:52):
I'm a golden God, you know, and he said, so, Nancy,
did you ever take LSD? And I was like, yes,
I did. He does tell me what it's like, because
he was about to go do this scene like right
after that, and I said, well, it's kind of like
you're like your nerves are all kind of sparks coming
(43:15):
out at the ends of your fingers, and your head
feels like an opening observatory where you're starting to see
the universe and the stars and you feel kind of elevated,
like you're part of everything and you're part of God
and love all of the same time. So so he
(43:37):
kind of went up. He kind of went out there
and he sort of exactly did what I just said said.
If you look at it today, you'll see like you
can almost see sparks coming out of his fingertips. It's electrified.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Yes, that must be so interesting to have the opportunity
to talk to an actor and see them just turn
it on.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
I know, I have so much respect for that. I
tried to act a couple of times. It really did
not go well for me because, you know, I know
how to put myself in another like musical persona kind
of way, but like just walking and talking is that
to me is so foreign. I don't know how to
(44:20):
not be who I am, you know, right to be
someone else.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Did you ever see Tom Cruise on set acting? I
imagine he then he should be really fantastic to watch.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
He was fantastic. He's a fantastic human being. I mean,
his eyes are kind of like headlights. You know, He's
just full of this light that comes out of him.
And I don't know what it is. I mean, maybe
it's scientology. I don't know, but it's it's positive if
it works for him. Obviously it really does. And he's
(44:51):
a sweetheart, and you know he kisses your mom when
he meets your mom, and she's like, you know, she's
a flutter and he's just the nicest human being.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
I wanted to hear about your experience around the time
you started working on film scores and you Heart for
a small amount of time, and then you had the
experience of going and seeing Heart play and being in
the audience and seeing and perform. What was that like
for you to witness her as an audience member?
Speaker 2 (45:22):
That was really actually amazing for me to see that.
I mean, I never left the band. I was taking
a sabbatical, you know, kind of trying to start my
family period of time that I was always going to
come back to the band, just so that's real clear.
So when Anne came to LA, I went and saw
(45:43):
her at a cool club somewhere in town, and I
was like, I don't want to, oh, you know, I
don't want to go try to go up on stage
or do anything with you, because I just I've never
got to be a spectator and not stand next to
you on the stage. So I sat up in the audience,
(46:03):
you know, trying to disappear as hard as I could
not be there and just be the lie on the
wall and see this amazing singer. It's like she good.
You know, she's such a good singer. Like I never
I'm so usually standing there concentrating on the part I'm
playing in a harmony that's coming up, or the other
(46:24):
thing that's gonna happen next to just watch her sing.
It's like Jesus, she's like one of the greats. This
all done.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
What was the deciding factor this time to go back
on tour now.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Well, there was kind of a natural break over the
last since twenty nineteen was our last big tour. You know,
there was a lot of political shuffle and bustle and
scuffle and it was hard to get or putting back
together as far as like who owns what and who
(47:01):
makes what decisions and what is hard exactly and yeah,
you know who's in it, and so a bunch of
really boring, unnecessary logistical flex kind of stuff. And you know,
after twenty sixteen there was that break happened too because
(47:21):
you know, obvious things that we thank god it's a
long time ago now, but just stupid stuff that's inside
the family. It was unnecessary, a negative stuff. We had
to try to get over that first and then Once
we got over that, we went out on to the
twenty nineteen tour and that was a really hugely successful tour,
(47:44):
but there were still more I don't know, drama.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
To work out.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
So we're back again five years later. Unfortunately it's a
lot late later. I mean, we'd kind of ready to
go out for quite a while. But you know, I've
got a trainer, I'm getting strong, I keep my strength up,
and I think it's going to be a good one.
I think it's going to be fun and really really
(48:10):
and I love playing with my sister. I really like
being next to her on a rock stage, and you know,
while we can, it's a good time to do it.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
So do you think you'll do another album?
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Well, I've been writing songs with Sue and one of
them we're doing in Heart now called roll the Dice.
It's a new Heart song. So you know, there's a
couple of other songs that might kind of come out
of it. But right now, these days, it's more about
one song at a time than an albums. But I
(48:43):
would love to do more songs with Art for art,
but first the tour.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
You know, yeah, I have such a great time on
the tour. I hope all goes well. People are going
to go crazy and be so happy to see you
both so well.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
I'm going to have my stash of Gaffer's tape and
my scissors stuff and the clips.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Yeah, your whole kid, the kit.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
I've got the kit ready to go.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Thank you so much for talking today. It's been so
much fun.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Thank you. Really great to talk to you two, and
very thorough.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
Thanks to Nancy Wilson of Heart. Stay tuned next week
to hear from our sister and We'll see You. Can
hear all of our favorite Heart songs on a playlist
at broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube
channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where
you can find all of our new episodes. You can
follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
(49:36):
produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from
Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tollery.
Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you
love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to
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(49:58):
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by any Eats. I'm justin Richmond.