Heart's Nancy Wilson

0:06Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest. And they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

0:48where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. Every great music conversation goes beyond the surface. The influence that shaped an artist's sound. The moment that changed their creative direction. The story behind the story that fans never hear. Claude helps you discover those deeper connections. Upload interviews, liner notes, or music journalism, and Claude reveals patterns across an artist's entire journey, showing how influences become innovations. Whether you're a music journalist, passionate fan, or someone who loves understanding creative processes, Claude matches your curiosity about what really drives great artists.

1:29Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Traveling is one of life's greatest joys. Honestly, can anything be more exhilarating? Well, actually, yeah, with Chase Sapphire Reserve. It's your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations. First, you will earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel. And the card gets you into Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences. Whether you are booking a once-in-a-lifetime trip or your next weekend escape, Discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve.

2:11Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval, terms apply. Guitarist and songwriter Nancy Wilson is one half of the rock band Heart, along with her older sister, Ann Wilson. Nancy and Ann have been the face of the band since the mid-70s, 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 band member who was dodging the Vietnam draft. Hart's first album, Dreamboat Annie, was released in 1976 right as the band was making traction, opening for big acts like Rod Stewart and the Bee Gees.

2:50Soon, their songs like Magic Man and Crazy On You started to take off in the States, and Hart quickly became a headlining act. Nearly 50 years since the debut album, Hart 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, Anne and Nancy remain steadfast in continuing Hart's legacy. This month, they are embarking on a world tour, their first in five years. To celebrate Anne and Nancy Wilson's massive contribution to rock and roll history, we'll feature conversations with both sisters over the next two weeks.

3:28Today, we'll hear Leah Rose talk to Nancy about how the popular drugs of the 70s and 80s influenced Hart's sound. She also describes how being accepted by the musicians of Seattle's grunge scene helped her overcome Hart's fraud experience recording power ballads in the 80s. 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 I'm Justin Richman Here's Leah Rose's conversation with Hearts' Nancy Wilson 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 I guess with this sort of like an arena tour I didn't realize it was five months long Well yeah Does that sound like a long time to you, or is that just part of life and you readjust?

4:30Right now, what I've heard, the last I heard, the last Hart show is December 15th. So it's been extended. I think it's been extended through another run in through Canada. I love Canada, though. Good old Canada for Hart. Good old Canada for Hart. I know, it's our other home. you know but there's breaks between you do about 20 shows or 30 shows then you go home for maybe two weeks so you can you know answer your mail you know what sort of comforts do you set up for yourself at this point when you're going out for that long i think i could write a book about it there's a whole survival kit really of like comfort zone things and practical physical survival things that you need to kind of have with you and skills that you develop when you're not at home.

5:28So like you take one container that 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 to the vent. Such a good call. There's stuff like that. And an alligator clip also will close the curtains when it's broad daylight comes away too early in your room. Oh, yeah. Hair clamps also suffice. And then if you have a stinky room, you run the shower with the tub closed. So the water gathers the hot water with the complimentary shampoo. Oh, wow.

6:24You run the bath with the shower, moisten the air, and scent the room at the same time. Wow. 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 bring 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 even better because then they'll go fast they'll dry faster like college stuff the college stuff all works you know right if you ever went to university, which I did. All of that stuff, like one little hot pot is pretty much all you had.

7:08No refrigerator, you know? Yeah. You had the window that kept things cold outside, you know, stuff like that. 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. 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 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. Yeah. Oh, yeah. How do you get past that feeling?

7:50How do you deglaze yourself? Yeah. How do you manage that when you're just in the middle of a long tour? Well, you know, sleep is the key to the universe, for one thing. You try to find quiet places and moments to regroup and regather because there can be a lot of momentum and dramatic political drama inside of the power structures that are traveling with you. You 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 humor is intact and our initial relationship is just like completely safe.

8:43but everything else is swirling like the dickens it's like the twister movie where you see cows go by and yeah you know there's oh there's the kitchen sink there's a house over there you know just the emotional luggage that you kind of have to navigate through the baggage and the chaos that can surround you but we do we like to have a wellness room because we're going to be in lots of arenas, which are basically locker rooms. So you're going to need something that smells good in there. Yeah, some lavender spray or something. Lavender spray, some incense, and some good thick yoga mats and some music and turn the fluorescence off and put some candles on and have a massage table in one room and then have to work out stuff like the TRX and the free weights and the Pilates machine in the other room.

9:45So you can strengthen or you can go get body work. Even if it's once in a while, just try to keep strong and keep centered with it. Last time you went out, I saw there's a couple of dates on this tour with Def Leppard and Journey. And last time you went out with them, it sounds like Def Leppard were just like party animals to an extent that you weren't expecting because at that point they were in their 50s and it sort of took you aback. Are you expecting more of that this tour? They're older guys now. Everybody has to slow down their party activity at a certain point. For instance, you two have really slowed down because I partied with you two one time.

10:31It was like, whoa, what city did we land in on the private jet? Oh, wait, you thought it was Paris? No, it's Vegas. You know, like stuff was going on. Everybody was drinking like fish and smoking like sacks. But, you know, you can't live like that, especially if you're a little bit older. So, you know, those dance cards have been full for a while. So I think even, I don't know, even Def Leppard, I mean, you can't actually go out and play and do it well if you're just destructed from a party. I mean, Hart actually plays everything live. We don't run tapes, as they say. Our show doesn't come out of a box like most people do these days, which is not a judgmental comment on my part, but I guess we're just kind of old school that way.

11:26We 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 times, where your voice doesn't exactly work right or you squeak, you know, or you can't quite hit that note or your fingers don't work too well or your fingers 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 tell some of the background vocals 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.

12:21You know, there's no like shame in that. I think all that really matters is how beloved these songs are and the experience that people get from going all the way out of their way to go and see you play those songs that they love. 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? And are you over supportive of that new music moment?

13:03I 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 80th roof day in San Francisco and it was an incredibly good show and 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 actually a pretty short period of time that became such landmark songs and even with Wings as well as with the Beatles. But when he does something like Molov Kintyre or something more rare, like Happiness in the Homeland or Love in Song or Tug of War, I mean, I know all of his songs.

14:03The deep cuts. 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 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 yeah 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.

14:50And people kind of appreciate the imperfections, even maybe a little bit more than they appreciate something that's absolutely perfect. 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 till the death. well I mean I've been known to step out play lots little bit of lead here and there on records and in live settings and I 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 approach my playing like a songwriter so i'm accompanying the 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 yeah so for me that's the meat and potatoes that's the that's the real you know essence and you can add all the extra stuff which is fun to do and i'm not a horrible lead player.

16:08I just don't do it that often because I'm more a building block song person in the way I play. But yeah, but I've always thought as a woman playing guitar, there's so many women right now that are younger women coming out that are just shredders, like Grace Bowers, 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 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. I was surprised when I listened back to Dreamboat Annie, which is turning 50 next year.

17:02Next year. 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. Right. Was that something that was intentional from the beginning? Or did that just happen in jams? Well, I guess I would say both. 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 Dreamboat Annie, the album. And at that point, it was Howard Lease and Roger Fisher, 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.

17:50The era we came from, too, the late 60s, by this point, we're releasing our first album in the mid-70s in 75. So we had all of that imprint from the late 60s, the mind expanded sort of epic length songs and, you know, tales of great Ulysses kind of stuff out there. And, you know, like Styx and Rush and Yes, you know, and Heart, a lot of conceptualizing going on and, you know, Oh, significance and depth-y symbolism and stuff like that before cocaine, you know, before it got all ego-driven later. Yeah, I was going to say that feels very LSD-esque. Very mind-expanded from that era. So we were really starting out with the first album, I think, really naive and doggedly determined, workmanlike about getting something very important recorded onto a vinyl disc, you know.

19:01And this might be our only chance to be heard. 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 we've been digging through old cassettes for and old CDs for like a rarities 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 the blast of all blasts.

19:53But listening to a lot of those cassette tapes, you could hear Soul of the Sea forming. You could hear Even It Up, the beginnings of Even It Up coming together. And also we found the motherlode of like Hart when they were called, before I joined Hart, when they were called Hocus Pocus in a club called Oil Can Harry's in Vancouver, BC. there's these reel-to-reel tapes that the sound man used to get of the live performance to listen back and critique from and like a ball team you know so yeah so there's like a bunch of covers that we used to do you know a bunch of David Bowie 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 of music and banter.

20:55You really had a lot of time to fill and entertainment to provide. We have to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more from Nancy Wilson and Leah Rose. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.

21:40With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity, even in times of high demand. With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients. And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite to mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S. where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

22:26The greatest music stories aren't always in the songs themselves. They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions. Whether you're wondering about the connections between different scenes, trying to understand what drove a particular creative period, or exploring how social movements influenced sound, Claude works through these complex cultural puzzles with you.

22:57It's built for people who know that understanding music means understanding the human stories behind it. Claude doesn't just compile facts. It helps you see patterns across decades of music history, ask the kinds of follow-up questions that reveal deeper truths, and works through the nuanced relationships between artists, movements, and moments. Whether you're a music journalist, industry professional, or someone who just lives for understanding the stories behind the sounds, Claude matches your level of curiosity about what really drives great art. Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.

23:35This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. One of the things I think is universal to nearly everyone is that warm feeling you get when you find someone you feel comfortable sharing parts of your life with that otherwise you might just keep to yourself. Often it's a friend, sometimes it's a loved one, but in those moments you really take a load off. That's one of the things I've enjoyed most about therapy, that there's someone regularly in my life that I'm able to talk to about things I'd probably keep to myself for longer than I really needed to. And they're clinically trained and licensed to help.

24:05Plus, if you regularly see them, they have most, if not all, the context they need to really understand how this item you're sharing might be affecting you or those around you. That's where BetterHelp comes in. They've been helping people find their therapy match for over a decade. Because of their quality therapists that work according to a strict code of conduct, they have a 4.9 rating out of 1.7 million client session reviews. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp.

24:36Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash broken. That's BetterHelp.com slash broken. We're back with Leah Rose and Nancy Wilson. 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 70s when the big Fleetwood Mac albums were coming out. I was just curious about the relationship between Hart and Fleetwood Mac. And it sounds like you came together more in the 80s to hang out. Yeah, they were kind of happening right before us, kind of, as Hart was just starting to tiptoe into the scene.

25:21And 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 so jealous of that band because there was 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. Something we were trying to capture, they had already captured it. So I was really like, damn it. What makes us so different now? But we did sound very different. I mean, a lot of it's Anne's voice, very signature.

26:05you know the muscle and the power that she possesses and the way she sings is completely its own thing so lucky for us we had ann not just you know 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. Yeah. I was surprised. I asked Anne about her voice and I asked her when she first realized that her voice was so powerful. And she said that she didn't think her voice was very powerful. Yeah. Her confidence is hard for her to, she's hard on herself. But when she was a kid, a kid kid, and I was maybe nine or eight, we were all a bunch of hams, always singing harmonies into the family and, you know, she would do Ethel Merman.

27:03She would do, there's no business, like show business. And she could just belt it like this little kid. And our parents would be like, girls, girls, come on down the stairs. Andrea, Ethel Merman. 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 it's god given do you think of both your gift as a songwriter a player a writer ann's voice ann's gift as a writer where does that come from in your mind oh well i think the gift the music gift comes from our parents and our grandparents and our aunts and our uncles.

27:57Our 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. 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 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 Belafonte and Peggy Lee and Judy Garland and all of those great singers from that era.

28:51We were always singing along. Every Christmas we'd had the same like big Benjamin Britten chorale going on and we'd sing in the house and decorate the trees, singing in the house, you know. And you hear about those families. I guess we were one of them. like the Bee Gees family, they were all singing, the Jacksons. So it comes really naturally. It comes very honestly to both of us, you know, from the inside out. Oh yeah. And you can feel that too. 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.

29:41And it's like a destiny, you know, a feeling of destiny because it's what your cellular memory knows. When you talk about the 80s now, or when you think about the 80s 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? Well, we were kind of victims of longevity in a certain way because the styles changes and you want it to not change that much. The mind expanded perspective was turning into a cocaine perspective, which was a little more money and ego sort of driven.

30:32Therefore, a stable of LA's hit songwriters were employed in tandem with these record companies to create the formulaic hits that were expected of the time, and those big power ballads and, you know, hairband music. And so we were like reluctantly kind of going along for survival reasons and writing our own 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 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 and what you're going to wear and how much your jacket's going to cost as much as a car.

31:29It was never important to us. And so we muddled through pretty good in the 80s because we got a couple of really gorgeous songs out of that time, like These Dreams and Alone, What About Love, and a few more. They're just gorgeous, well-written, structured pieces of music that we still enjoy doing today. So if that's the moody that we snuck out of the 80s, then it's well worth it. How have you changed the arrangements on some of those songs? Have you tried to take them away from their power ballad beginnings? 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 on an acoustic guitar or piano.

32:28With these dreams in particular, it's an oddball song that's changed different keys. I played it on mandolin. We do it with keyboards and percussion, and then we do it just acoustic, and we've done it different keys, different arrangements. The song's really flexible that way. And Alone, 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. Was These Dreams originally written for Stevie Nicks? Yeah, Bertie Topin told me that once. He said, actually, Stevie Nicks rejected this song first and they thought about it for her because of it's very diaphanous and mysterious and it's very gauzy sounding.