Heart songwriter-guitarist Nancy Wilson.Criss Cain/Supplied
“The Juno Awards were a lovely experience for us,” says Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson. “I remember we had to go to a department store to buy dresses for the ceremony.”
Nancy and Ann Wilson lead Heart on an eight-city Canadian tour that begins this week in Vancouver and ends in Toronto. Though known as American classic-rock icons, the high-powered Seattle sisters recorded the debut Heart album, Dreamboat Annie, in Vancouver, for local label Mushroom Records. The album earned a Juno nomination in 1976 (for most promising group) and scored two trophies one year later.
“Ann lived in Vancouver for a number of years,” Nancy says, speaking on a video call recently. “She was a landed immigrant and still is.”
It was Ann who memorably sang “‘Come on home, girl,’ he said with a smile,” on the album’s Magic Man. And, indeed, when it comes to Canada, absence truly does make the Heart grow fonder. The band’s earliest tour poster advertised, “All the way from Vancouver,” because of the band’s opposition to the Vietnam War. All these years later, Nancy, 70, isn’t in love with the current U.S. leadership.
“Politically, it’s never been more embarrassing to be an American,” she says, referring to President Donald Trump as the “chief bamboozler.”
She holds out hope for the future, though: “I think there’s a buyer’s remorse. Nobody believed it would be this bad, and it is. It’s going to backfire, though, because it has to. It’s a matter of time before people speak for themselves.”
Looking back on her career, the musician spoke to The Globe and Mail about her sister, her “guitar butler,” and the value of a good cry.
Sisterly love in the centre of the storm: “A lot of rock bands have guy siblings. There are a lot of war zones with brothers – a lot of notorious stories of unrest and major fallouts. With me and Ann, not being guys but occupying the shoes of the leadership roles and working as the creative control, we steer the ship. We’re tight. We have the best humour together. We have an endless supply of in-group experiences together. So, while all the politics that swirl around the business of Heart can be fraught with drama and control freaks, we just stay in the calm centre of the hurricane with each other.”
Nancy and Ann Wilson are leading Heart on an eight-city Canadian tour that begins this week in Vancouver and ends in Toronto.Criss Cain/Supplied
A good guitar tech is worth their weight in gold: “Jeff Ousley was my guitar butler for many decades. He recently decided to retire from Heart. We’re family, and we’ve helped each other through a lot of big losses in our lives. He’s a good cook and a gardener and a dog lover. He was the coffee boss, making coffee on a little cart on the side of the stage during soundchecks. My new guitar tech is Nathan McMurdo, from Edmonton. Everybody loves him.”
Find a collaborator like Sue Ennis, co-writer of Heart hits such as Straight On, Even It Up and Dog & Butterfly: “I was 12 when I met Sue. She was in high school with Ann. They were Beatles fans, and I was as well. We could play and sing Abbey Road in sequence on acoustic guitars in our bedroom. We started writing songs with Sue early in Heart. She was a PhD candidate at University of California, Berkeley. It was a lot of pressure for her, and she was a stress bucket to begin with, and a catastrophist on top of that. So, we talked her out of doing her dissertation in German literature. We told her writing songs was a practical job. It was like, ‘Do you want to teach all your life, or do you want to join the circus and write songs with Heart?’ So, she dropped out of grad school. We wrote some really cool songs with her, and I’m still close with her today.”
Don’t underrate the value of good wine and sad films: “Our 1993 album Desire Walks On was kind of a flop. It sold 500,000 copies in the United States, which by today’s standards, for physical product, is pretty good. But, back then, for us, it was kind of a big turkey. When it didn’t open big, we went to Ann’s house to mourn it. We had wine and watched sad films so we could get out the Kleenex and cry. We watched Terms of Endearment and The Color Purple.”
Keep writing: “The creative process is important for my sanity. The rock tour is a million thrills – the stage part, not the travel part. But maintaining a creative project all the while keeps you grounded with new ideas while you’re out there playing the soundtrack of many people’s lives. Those are beloved songs, and they’re really fun to play, but the other ones in progress are important.”
