There’s no denying that sisters Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilsonwere in the spotlight when it came to the fame of Heart. Nancy Wilson opens up about the gender power dynamics of the rock band that caused rifts, and the one album cover that “p*ssed off” the rest of the band.
While appearing on Billy Corgan‘s Magnificent Others podcast, the guitarist looks back on having to do a “tricky eggshell walk” with her sister when it came to the male members of Heart. She specifically recalls their anger toward an album cover that fed into the public attention to her and her sister.
It was their fifth studio album, Bebe Le Strange, released in early February 1980. The overall design of the album cover led to tension, with Wilson recalling how it “really p*ssed them off.”
“Attention just naturally would fall on me and Ann together as a focal point,” she recalled, “The guys were on the back cover of (1980 album) Bebe Le Strange. And just me and Ann, the big black and white closeup of me and Ann on the front cover really pissed them off.”
The album cover was in black and white and featured a close-up photo of Wilson and her sister, with the band’s name and album title in the upper left-hand corner. Howard Leese, Michael Derosier, and Steve Fossen were pushed to the back cover of the album, with how it was done adding to their anger.
“[The picture] was the back of our heads with the hair,” she explained, “and their pictures were inserted on top of the back, in our hair.” Nancy then paraphrased her bandmates’ complaint at the time saying, “So we were just the out of focus guys in the background, in your hair.”
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The album was the first released by the rock band without founding member Roger Fisher on lead guitar, who also left alongside his brother Michael. Despite the band’s struggle with the cover, it ended up being a commercial success on the Billboard charts and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Wilson added that despite the band having a “family” bond, the intense focus on her and her sister as the frontrunners of the band led the others to “have to kind of relinquish the idea of complete democracy in many ways.”
