Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: Still Time Studio.
Speaker 1: This is the history making rock band Heart with Crazy
Speaker 1: on You. Off their nineteen seventy five album Dreamboat Annie
Speaker 1: with Anne on lead vocals and Nancy on guitar, the
Speaker 1: Wilson's created a unique mix of rock, pop, and folk
Speaker 1: that would earn them twenty top forty singles, four Grammy nominations,
Speaker 1: and sell thirty five million records worldwide. Along the way,
Speaker 1: Hart went on to become one of the longest lasting
Speaker 1: and commercially successful bands of all time. Now they are
Speaker 1: reuniting for a world tour next week. I'll speak with
Speaker 1: Heart's lead singer Anne Wilson, but first I'll talk with
Speaker 1: my guest today, guitarist and vocalist Nancy Wilson. In addition
Speaker 1: to her numerous accomplishments with Heart, Nancy Wilson also formed
Speaker 1: the band road Case Royale and as a BAFTA winning
Speaker 1: film composer. I wanted to know when Nancy and her
Speaker 1: sister Anne, both Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners, first started
Speaker 1: writing music together.
Speaker 2: Well, we had many bands before we had Heart. We
Speaker 2: had little bands called the Viewpoint and Rapunzel and acoustic
Speaker 2: all girl bands and played at schools and you know,
Speaker 2: churches and living a lot of living rooms, and we
Speaker 2: started trying to write as soon as we could play guitars,
Speaker 2: which was I was about nine or ten when we
Speaker 2: started trying to write songs. And they were bad songs,
Speaker 2: very bad songs. And then when we actually got a
Speaker 2: real band, somebody that had a van, you know, at
Speaker 2: a basement and a mom that didn't care, that's when
Speaker 2: we started to get real serious about writing better songs,
Speaker 2: because at that point we had audiences and clubs and
Speaker 2: you know stuff like that, real drums and microphones and
Speaker 2: amplifiers and things.
Speaker 1: Did someone teach you how to play the guitar? Your
Speaker 1: self taught self taught.
Speaker 2: I knew a little bit of piano already, musical family,
Speaker 2: from the grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, so
Speaker 2: everybody knew out of harmonize and play ukulele and some
Speaker 2: piano over here. So we came by it, you know, honestly,
Speaker 2: to be musicians.
Speaker 1: When did you believe you could play the guitar? When
Speaker 1: do you really start to say I think I got this?
Speaker 1: I think I can really do this. How old are you.
Speaker 2: Well, by the time I've been playing for about six months,
Speaker 2: I knew I was.
Speaker 1: Going to you're nine and a half. Yeah, nine and
Speaker 1: a half. You conquered it when you're nine and a half.
Speaker 2: Well, we saw the Beatles play the Ed Sullivan Show
Speaker 2: on our black and white grandmother's television in La Jolla, California,
Speaker 2: you know, like the lunar landing. It was just the
Speaker 2: moment to be struck by that lightning, and the culture
Speaker 2: changed it, you know, forever ever since everything the world changed.
Speaker 2: And so I knew right then I had to have
Speaker 2: a guitar, and I was good at it right away.
Speaker 1: Now you're a famous guitar player. When did you get
Speaker 1: your hands on your first guitar that you were like,
Speaker 1: this is more like it.
Speaker 2: Well, it was Anne's guitar that I snuck away from
Speaker 2: her because she had a good one that our grandma
Speaker 2: gave her when she had mono nucleosis and she was
Speaker 2: holed up in bed with our other sister, Lynn, and
Speaker 2: they were trying to get well and doing hobbies like
Speaker 2: learning how to play guitar. But that was when I
Speaker 2: could play, So I would sneak it away and try
Speaker 2: to learn how to use a good guitar. But I
Speaker 2: figured she had like just a natural gift from above
Speaker 2: with her voice, and so with me as the accompanist
Speaker 2: and her voice, it was a natural like, hey, kids,
Speaker 2: come on downstairs, we're having a party. Do your ethel
Speaker 2: Merman imitation, right? So Anne would.
Speaker 3: Go, hey, do the ethel Merman as I show. Yeah, so,
Speaker 3: and I'd be playing it on a guitar. So we
Speaker 3: started out.
Speaker 2: Kind of like a little comedy troupe for our friend parents' parties,
Speaker 2: and and you know, I guess the rest is history.
Speaker 1: But when you say comedy, you mean that you didn't
Speaker 1: have enough songs, you'd learn, you didn't feel confident enough
Speaker 1: making it strictly. You wanted to make people laugh and
Speaker 1: play music correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It had to be fun obviously when
Speaker 2: you're young too, you know it's got to be hysterical
Speaker 2: or it's not worthwhile. So we did comedy skits in
Speaker 2: the in the garage and plays that we would charge
Speaker 2: tickets for and do like dance routines to records that
Speaker 2: we've played. We put on little productions and Anne was
Speaker 2: always the manager, being the older you know, four years
Speaker 2: older sister. So we ham hambones, you know, just performing
Speaker 2: somehow or any way we could perform, we would.
Speaker 1: I bet every boy in that neighborhood was there in
Speaker 1: your yard. They were lying outside your.
Speaker 2: Garage five cents for kool aid, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, popcorn kool aid. Now, when you talk about that
Speaker 1: performance inclination, and obviously you're very young at the time,
Speaker 1: you never had any thoughts about acting beyond you know,
Speaker 1: over the years, how do you ever consider acting acting?
Speaker 2: I thought maybe I should try some one time, you know,
Speaker 2: so because being a goofball and being a handbone, you know,
Speaker 2: you're just like, well, hey, I'm not afraid of, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to be goofy in front of people. So at
Speaker 2: one point when I was married to a writer director,
Speaker 2: so I got to do a part in a movie
Speaker 2: you was filming at the time, called say Anything Right.
Speaker 2: And I'd already been working on music for the films
Speaker 2: that he was doing at the time. But I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, I could try to be an actor, I guess,
Speaker 2: And so I tried. I failed miserably. It was like
Speaker 2: not built to be an actor?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: Because I don't know how to inhabit someone else's character,
Speaker 2: I guess, but I do end up, like I tried twice.
Speaker 2: Another movie I tried to do a bigger speaking part
Speaker 2: with called The Wildlife. I was a pregnant cops wife
Speaker 2: that answers the dover and the the other girl was
Speaker 2: there and I tried to, you know, be real and I've.
Speaker 1: Got to go watch this movie The wild Life. So bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so bad.
Speaker 1: I love that I do too.
Speaker 2: They're beautifully bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so I failed miserably, So no acting.
Speaker 1: You cut that short pretty early.
Speaker 2: Well, I realized, you know, I meant to be a
Speaker 2: musician and I'm not meant to be an actor. But
Speaker 2: I do end up having like complete respect. And this
Speaker 2: is something I wanted to say to you, as an
Speaker 2: amazing actor yourself, how much I really do have, Like
Speaker 2: it's incredulous how much work goes into that. Like there's
Speaker 2: so much to it to be an actor, being able
Speaker 2: to memorize lines and being able to deliver something as
Speaker 2: kind of someone else, you know, in a part like that.
Speaker 2: I have ultimate respect for the job you do.
Speaker 1: Well, No, that's very kind. I mean, for me, it's
Speaker 1: always been the motivation has always been, you know, you
Speaker 1: just don't think too much about it. When you play
Speaker 1: a tough role of the person's what I call the
Speaker 1: negative value and the piece, they're very tough, you know.
Speaker 1: When you play Hitler, you got to give it everything
Speaker 1: you've got. You got to play that role and it's tough.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to be that person, but
Speaker 1: you can't go there. So you just it's like jumping
Speaker 1: in the cold water. You just got to go. You
Speaker 1: just got to do it not really think about it
Speaker 1: very much.
Speaker 2: You have to kind of not think about it.
Speaker 1: So you wrote music with Cameron Kevin Crowe. How did
Speaker 1: that start? How did you start? It was soundtrack or
Speaker 1: score or both?
Speaker 2: Well, No, we had had music, you know, love of
Speaker 2: music as friends together forever and so it was kind
Speaker 2: of like we got together as a couple. We were
Speaker 2: first kind of dating and it was like, Okay, who
Speaker 2: do you like? Who do you like? He goes, I
Speaker 2: like the guess who? And it's like, ooh, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure about the guests who you know, but I kind
Speaker 2: of grew to love them kind of thanks to Cavin Crowe.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So we had like music things we would just you know,
Speaker 2: just talk and talk and talk about music Elton John.
Speaker 2: And you know, Tiny Dancer was a big song for us,
Speaker 2: and like we go like, oh, like a puppet cha,
Speaker 2: you know, like we'd have our Elton John accent singing
Speaker 2: Elton John.
Speaker 1: I want to make you sing a lot of songs
Speaker 1: now that you open up this can been singing that
Speaker 1: for us.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm I'm going to practice for a thing I'm
Speaker 2: doing with some of Elton John's players at this benefit
Speaker 2: for Hillside benefit, like this weekend, so I get to
Speaker 2: play with Elton. I'm just a super fan. I'm a shameless,
Speaker 2: giddy super fan around all those guys.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Now, when did you start writing songs that?
Speaker 1: Actually they're in his films? That begins? When well, that begins?
Speaker 2: I started working on his first film, Say Anything, and
Speaker 2: I worked with there was a scoring artist. I worked
Speaker 2: with her a little bit in the recording studio to
Speaker 2: add a guitar part to the score that they were
Speaker 2: already doing for Say Anything. And I was like, I
Speaker 2: don't know how to read charts. I'm freaking out because
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to read charts. I don't read
Speaker 2: I learned how to read music, but I never used it.
Speaker 2: So I lost that language along the way because I
Speaker 2: just had it all in my head on ear, you know.
Speaker 2: I'd do everything by ear. So Anne kind of took
Speaker 2: me in and somebody showed me how to read the
Speaker 2: chart and how to go D D D, you know,
Speaker 2: in a scene and say anything. Was like my first
Speaker 2: foray into scoring with other musicians in a scoring studio.
Speaker 1: And you did other films with them as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the next one I did was Jerry Maguire
Speaker 2: by myself. So I had a friend's studio and I
Speaker 2: I went to Costco. I got a little tiny cassette
Speaker 2: TV cassette player like VCR and that's what the dailies
Speaker 2: were printed on at the time. He had a good
Speaker 2: microphone and a six track reel to reel and so
Speaker 2: no soundproofing, nothing, just somebody's house in a spare room
Speaker 2: with you know, garbage trucks and dogs barking.
Speaker 1: Outside, and you're on the guitar or the piano on
Speaker 1: the guitar.
Speaker 2: And keyboards and percussion. I did everything wow, and some
Speaker 2: vocal stuff, but it was like it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: gotta wait for the garbage truck, you know, to press record.
Speaker 2: But I would like I would do the countdown on
Speaker 2: tape to the cassette that I put on this TV
Speaker 2: that luckily wasn't loud enough to pick up on the microphone,
Speaker 2: but it was like so loovi. It was ridiculous. There
Speaker 2: was no time I saw the timecode on the cassette
Speaker 2: for the scene. I was recording onto with one really
Speaker 2: good microphone on a really good guitar in a very
Speaker 2: noisy room, and it all worked because the guitar was
Speaker 2: close enough. At one point we used a few mics
Speaker 2: and spread the guitar sound out like stereo. We filled
Speaker 2: up the whole tape with one guitar.
Speaker 1: And when you do this for people who don't know,
Speaker 1: you don't wait to watch a cut and the music flows.
Speaker 1: You're doing it. Scenes are coming, you cut scenes and
Speaker 1: footage and you're writing stuff to that, or you wait
Speaker 1: till you get a full cut of the film.
Speaker 2: I wrote a lot of stuff to ongoing cuts, like
Speaker 2: scenes that were changed later, pieces of scenes that I
Speaker 2: would do music for which I would have to redo
Speaker 2: later all over again when it was cut together. But
Speaker 2: there was still a lot of learning process for me
Speaker 2: just to try to cut to picture because normally I
Speaker 2: just you know, play music for songwriting, and so it
Speaker 2: was an entirely different language to learn for me, how
Speaker 2: to stay out of the way of a scene where
Speaker 2: there's a dialogue happening and have not to step on
Speaker 2: the words, and how to create sort of an atmospheric
Speaker 2: like some air around you know. So less is more
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases, which is one of the
Speaker 2: biggest lessons I learned about scoring music as opposed to
Speaker 2: just writing songs for you know, hysterical screaming women kind
Speaker 2: of songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, could you do almost famous? Well?
Speaker 2: I did almost famous. Yeah, I think that was the masterpiece.
Speaker 2: Really well.
Speaker 1: He had a great line to me when I worked
Speaker 1: with him. We were talking about parenting. I met your
Speaker 1: sons and we were hanging out one day, and he
Speaker 1: said to me, something led up to one thing led
Speaker 1: to another. He goes, well, he is, I try to
Speaker 1: have some understanding of my kids, considering that their father
Speaker 1: is an Academy Award winning screenwriter and their mother's in
Speaker 1: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bit of pressure,
Speaker 1: a little bit of pressure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there's there's therapy involved, you know, because
Speaker 2: I mean, why wouldn't there be, you know, because that's
Speaker 2: a lot pressure on little guys and there are two
Speaker 2: twin boys that they're really good people. Thank God for that,
Speaker 2: because we managed to do something right along the way.
Speaker 2: But but you know, being being hard working archest type people,
Speaker 2: creatives that it doesn't really allow for just your everyday
Speaker 2: average I mean, and I always made a dinner table,
Speaker 2: I always lit candles, we always had dinner together.
Speaker 1: Hearts Nancy Wilson. If you enjoy conversations with gifted rockers,
Speaker 1: be sure to check out my episode with musician Patti Smith.
Speaker 4: I didn't really come into the music business. I wound
Speaker 4: up in music by mistake. I'm not really a musician.
Speaker 4: I didn't really want to be a musician or a singer.
Speaker 4: I wanted to be a poet and a writer. And
Speaker 4: it was accidental. So would it accidentally happen now? I
Speaker 4: don't think so. I think I would have to be
Speaker 4: more focused on what I wanted. But also because I'm
Speaker 4: so untechnological, I mean, I'm just not really suited for
Speaker 4: right now, so probably I would have to be like
Speaker 4: a physicist.
Speaker 1: Drove of the band the game. Oh you don't even drive.
Speaker 4: No, I don't know how to drive, so I couldn't
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 1: Hear more of my conversation with Patti Smith that Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot org. After the break, Nancy Wilson shares
Speaker 1: how things have changed for women in the industry since
Speaker 1: she started out and how it feels to be one
Speaker 1: of the founding women of rock. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the Thing wish This is You
Speaker 1: and Me, the title track from Nancy Wilson's twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one debut solo album, Who Is You and Me? And
Speaker 1: Me for decades playing sold out stadiums and recording hit
Speaker 1: records was another day on the job for the members
Speaker 1: of Heart. I wanted to know how Nancy Wilson felt
Speaker 1: about juggling the demands of her music career while raising
Speaker 1: her children with then husband director Cameron Crowe.
Speaker 2: Well, the scheduling of trying to be together yeah, really challenging.
Speaker 2: The idea going in was, okay, if we have kids,
Speaker 2: we'll take one project at a time and the other
Speaker 2: person stays song. But that's not really how you try.
Speaker 2: You try to do that doesn't work out, It doesn't
Speaker 2: work as well as you want it to work. Getting
Speaker 2: together we made a big point of always, you know,
Speaker 2: when we were all together, we would really be together
Speaker 2: and not just go and do stuff that was distracting.
Speaker 2: We would hang out and almost the favorite story I
Speaker 2: have even after we were not married anymore, but I
Speaker 2: had the kids at my place. I lived in Topanga
Speaker 2: Canyon for a while. There was a big power out,
Speaker 2: like there always is in Topanga. The power went out,
Speaker 2: and the boys were there and I lit the fire,
Speaker 2: lit the candles and had the lanterns. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: I could light the stove and I could still make dinner.
Speaker 2: So let's tell ghost stories. So you know. So we
Speaker 2: had the candles, we had the firelight, and we told stories,
Speaker 2: and then we had a story contest and each person
Speaker 2: went around and told let's pick categories. So it was
Speaker 2: really a great thing when the power went out, because
Speaker 2: it was a beautiful life lesson and a learning, you know,
Speaker 2: an instructional moment for them as well as for me
Speaker 2: as a parent, about taking all the artifice away and
Speaker 2: just being together.
Speaker 1: Now, questions are going to go hand in hand. One
Speaker 1: is some of these female goddesses of music precede you
Speaker 1: by a few years, and some of them are you know,
Speaker 1: right around you know your time. You're talking about Stevie Nicks,
Speaker 1: and then before you, Grace Slick and Janis Joplin, Linda
Speaker 1: Ronstadt and so forth. For you, was it I mean,
Speaker 1: let's face it, your sister and you both during your
Speaker 1: heyday were these gorgeous women. And we talked to your
Speaker 1: sister about, you know, the difficulties of that, about how
Speaker 1: women lived in that world back then. Was it tough
Speaker 1: where people it's the word impolite untoward, Yes.
Speaker 2: I mean it was a different era. Men were way
Speaker 2: less evolved the pre feminization of men. Yes, but I
Speaker 2: think it was just part for the course. And we
Speaker 2: didn't really care because we were military brats from the
Speaker 2: Marine Corps, like a Marine Corps aristocracy, to be honest.
Speaker 2: And so a grand dad was a brigadier general with
Speaker 2: four stars, and our uncle and our granddad other granddad
Speaker 2: and our dad was a military you know star and
Speaker 2: also the conductor of the military band as well. So
Speaker 2: and so we had this kind of breviera. I think
Speaker 2: we were just burly girls, you know that just didn't
Speaker 2: take the guff.
Speaker 1: You're confident, Yeah, we.
Speaker 2: Were just confident. We kind of felt like one of
Speaker 2: the guys. We didn't have brothers, so guys in bands
Speaker 2: were kind of became our brothers, and we were equal,
Speaker 2: we felt equal. We wanted democracy, We wanted a democracy
Speaker 2: of a band with men. And our influences were not
Speaker 2: Janis Choplin. They were Jimmy Page, you know. So our
Speaker 2: heroes and our muses were more the rock guys. So
Speaker 2: we wanted to be able to kind of transform or
Speaker 2: you know, be gender free, you know, not gender specific.
Speaker 1: Well, it seems like there's a reality when you're home,
Speaker 1: you're treated a certain way with respect, and everything is
Speaker 1: much more decent and honest at home. And then when
Speaker 1: you go out to the filthy cesspool of rock and
Speaker 1: roll music ticket sales, then it's a different thing with
Speaker 1: the people are just animals. I mean, they're just they
Speaker 1: don't get it. But then when you do that and
Speaker 1: you're enduring all those things that they're well, that's obviously
Speaker 1: what I've gotten. But what you see now is these
Speaker 1: monolithic stars, female stars. The biggest names in music now
Speaker 1: are women. It's obviously Taylor Swift and Beyonce, Miley Cyrus.
Speaker 1: I mean, all of the biggest acts today are female acts.
Speaker 2: Boy genus, boy genius.
Speaker 1: You like, oh yeah, when you see them put together
Speaker 1: these I don't want to say bubble or world, but operation.
Speaker 1: They got an operation in which they're taken care of.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the crap that women had
Speaker 1: to put up with has been subtracted from their lives.
Speaker 1: They've set up a system, they've set up an organization
Speaker 1: where that doesn't even come into the picture, the way
Speaker 1: they're treated, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's a really good point. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think that's really true, and I'm really happy things have changed,
Speaker 2: really happy about that. I mean, things have evolved in
Speaker 2: a really positive direction.
Speaker 1: If you're making money, by the way, and they're.
Speaker 2: Making yeah, they're changing the world economy basically too, so
Speaker 2: like Taylor Swift, but I'm really glad for that. I'm
Speaker 2: really kind of proud in a certain way, amazing to
Speaker 2: have been a bit of a founder for some of
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yes, but also let me just say this, which is
Speaker 1: you pioneer that and I don't think you would have
Speaker 1: pioneered it as well or as effectively if you weren't
Speaker 1: so good. I mean, Hard as a band that people love,
Speaker 1: love and play their music and just go nuts say
Speaker 1: this that music is really important to them. So I'm
Speaker 1: wondering when you go out on stage for the first time,
Speaker 1: or when you go into a studio for the first
Speaker 1: time without your sister. Now you're on your own. When
Speaker 1: was the time you first went on stage to perform
Speaker 1: and it was Nancy Wilson alone? When was that and
Speaker 1: what was that like for you?
Speaker 2: The first real time was after the pandemic, I think.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've done sit ins with such Pearl Jam
Speaker 2: and sat in with you know, various Seattle friends and
Speaker 2: bands in Seattle, but to perform after the pandemic solo.
Speaker 2: The first time I really went out there to a
Speaker 2: big audience was in Seattle at the performance center called
Speaker 2: ben Arroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony. So hey, no pressure,
Speaker 2: just the Seattle Symphony.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was like at the end of the first half
Speaker 2: of the pandemic. I guess there was a windover of
Speaker 2: time when it was everybody was still wearing masks, but
Speaker 2: it was okay for a minute to go do stuff.
Speaker 2: So I had made a solo album in my home
Speaker 2: studio remotely with the other members of the band in
Speaker 2: Heart that were in Heart at the time, and released
Speaker 2: a solo album called You and Me and So I went.
Speaker 2: I agreed to do this big sold out show at
Speaker 2: the Benaroya Hall with a Seattle Symphony, and I walked
Speaker 2: out there. It was like, oh, oh yeah, I've been
Speaker 2: sucking my house for about a year. You know, Oh
Speaker 2: I remember being on stage. Now, why are my knees shaking?
Speaker 2: You know, like, But it took a couple songs, and
Speaker 2: by the time I was in to the show, you know,
Speaker 2: just got over the hello, I'm here, I'm on a stage.
Speaker 2: How are you? It was really nerve wracky.
Speaker 1: And how was it without her? Meaning you're used to
Speaker 1: performing with a certain group of people, whether they're related
Speaker 1: to you or not. What was it like to go
Speaker 1: out and do that without your partner?
Speaker 2: Well, it was freeing. I like to talk about songs
Speaker 2: when I'm going to do them on stage, so I
Speaker 2: ended up getting really talkative on stage as a solo
Speaker 2: artist with Nancy Wilson's Heart, the various forms that I
Speaker 2: took the last four years. I go into a song
Speaker 2: called Mistral Wind and I tell usually I've been telling
Speaker 2: the story of the Great Ulysses, which is kind of
Speaker 2: what the song is about, where you know, an innocent
Speaker 2: individual gets in a boat, goes out on life's journey,
Speaker 2: you know, to encounter the worst storm they'll ever survive,
Speaker 2: and the sirens will be calling from the rocks, and
Speaker 2: the ship almost crashes on the rocks and you nearly die.
Speaker 2: And then if you tie yourself to the mast and
Speaker 2: resist all of the temptations of evil, then you might
Speaker 2: finally find yourself floating into a calm lagoon where your
Speaker 2: life has changed forever. You'll never be the same, but
Speaker 2: you live to tell, you know, the tale of great
Speaker 2: ulysses in a nutshell. Something simple, something simple like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, musician Nancy Wilson, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell
Speaker 1: a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Nancy Wilson shares why the guitar
Speaker 1: is her best friend. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing, don't you suppy? That's Nancy Wilson
Speaker 1: performing I'll Find You, from her twenty twenty one album
Speaker 1: You and Me. It may seem that both Anne and
Speaker 1: Nancy Wilson were always destined to be Rock and Roll
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame inductees. As members of the band Heart,
Speaker 1: But life almost took Nancy down another path when she
Speaker 1: attended college in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2: Well, I was really ambitious with my studies. I really
Speaker 2: had a wild eyed idea that I would learn Russian
Speaker 2: as well as German, and I would be proficient at
Speaker 2: creative writing classes. And I was taking some of the
Speaker 2: required like chemistry stuff. So I was really overly ambitious
Speaker 2: about all of it.
Speaker 1: What was it about you that you were seeking something
Speaker 1: in that way?
Speaker 2: I was really inspired at the time by Sue Ennis,
Speaker 2: our then collaborator. She had gone to Berkeley, and she
Speaker 2: was in grad school at Berkeley, and she was turning
Speaker 2: me onto all these really great books and concepts and
Speaker 2: Carlos Costeneda and all kinds of really mind expanding, you know,
Speaker 2: without the drugs, which we'd already tried. How to spell,
Speaker 2: how to write a paper, how to research a paper,
Speaker 2: and write about things that I wanted to know about,
Speaker 2: like Romantic tradition and European history and stuff that I
Speaker 2: figured I would bring back to my own creative song
Speaker 2: writing skills when I joined Heart after I took some
Speaker 2: of those classes, so I was I was playing acoustic
Speaker 2: solo shows at a little bar called the Pepper Grinder
Speaker 2: down the street from the university with my guitar that
Speaker 2: you know that I was earning enough money to buy
Speaker 2: records with and play records in my dorm room with.
Speaker 2: So it was just, you know, I guess I was
Speaker 2: really like romanticized college girl. Kind of a college girl.
Speaker 2: I was just romantic with it. I would play my music,
Speaker 2: and I would write my poetry and write my creative
Speaker 2: writing and do my studies and you know, and it
Speaker 2: was a girl's dorm. There was no co ed at
Speaker 2: the time, so you know, I even got in trouble
Speaker 2: with the other with the at the boys dorm one
Speaker 2: time at a party. I mean, it was just like
Speaker 2: all of the stuff, being a younger sister of three
Speaker 2: sisters to get my own declaration of independence as an
Speaker 2: individual before I joined NaN's band, because I'd been her
Speaker 2: shadow for the most part, the youngest all my life.
Speaker 2: So I figured I'm going to go get some skills
Speaker 2: before I joined the rock band, and that's what I did.
Speaker 1: Why isn't your sister Liz in the act? Would you say?
Speaker 2: Lynn's musically inclined? She fell in love like the first
Speaker 2: year she went to college. She fell in love and
Speaker 2: got pregnant right away. So she married a guy that
Speaker 2: helped him get out of the Vietnam War draft. So
Speaker 2: she kind of went a different journey.
Speaker 1: She had a boy or a girl.
Speaker 2: She had two boys, two boys.
Speaker 1: Now, well, the time we have left. When you write music,
Speaker 1: when you've written music with heart before and beyond in
Speaker 1: your life, now, what do you think is the thing
Speaker 1: you gravitate to more naturally? Like I'm the biggest fan
Speaker 1: and of love songs depending on who crafted them. Like
Speaker 1: I always say to people like, you know, Stevie Wonder
Speaker 1: wrote the most beautiful love songs. I can listen to
Speaker 1: his music all day long and create him.
Speaker 2: You know, all is fair in love.
Speaker 1: And in the sky and songs like that. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: for you, it's like, what music do you gravitate more
Speaker 1: towards love songs? Heartache? What's what's the music that comes
Speaker 1: out of you more readily?
Speaker 2: Well, love songs are heartache. Okay, not always that's true,
Speaker 2: but you know, happy little songs, there's always got to
Speaker 2: be an element of melancholy. For me, I think I
Speaker 2: really gravitate towards the complexity of what a love song
Speaker 2: can be like, you know, I'm reading Bernie Taupin's book
Speaker 2: Scatter Shop right now, and I'm getting close to the
Speaker 2: end of it. It's so cool to see his take
Speaker 2: on his lyric writing as a songwriter, because Tiny Dancer
Speaker 2: is such a great love song. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think be a songwriter, you're always basically writing about
Speaker 2: love in one way or another, whether or not you're
Speaker 2: angry with someone or you want you know, you're imploring
Speaker 2: something out of someone for more understanding or more connection
Speaker 2: somehow with the world or with their world. So I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think heartbreak is the best inspiration in
Speaker 2: many ways for writing music. And if you're a sensitive
Speaker 2: creative type person, you know, which is a blessing and
Speaker 2: a super curse, you're going to feel all of it
Speaker 2: and you're going to try to write about it, which
Speaker 2: is no easy to ask.
Speaker 1: Now, when you were you united with your sister recently
Speaker 1: to perform together again, How did that feel when you
Speaker 1: stepped out there with her again and performed.
Speaker 2: It was really cool. I kind of keep saying this
Speaker 2: about it because we're gonna go on a big tour
Speaker 2: sure starting in April, a world tour actually, and we
Speaker 2: just did a few shows around. On New Year's Eve,
Speaker 2: we played in Seattle. It was a hometown you know, kids,
Speaker 2: kind of victory lap and it felt so it feels
Speaker 2: so good to be on a stage with her because
Speaker 2: we have a shorthand, we have each other's secret code,
Speaker 2: secret language that we speak, and we know each other
Speaker 2: so well. You don't even have to say anything. You
Speaker 2: just see their face and you go, oh, okay, oh gotcha.
Speaker 2: It's so natural. It's you know, everything else that swirls
Speaker 2: around the camp of getting a heart. The big metal
Speaker 2: machine of heart started up again, is way more complicated
Speaker 2: than the actual nucleus, the center, the eye of the
Speaker 2: hurricane itself, which is me and Anne.
Speaker 1: I hope you're doing your pilates. Oh yes, I'm getting
Speaker 1: ready to get out there.
Speaker 2: I'm strength training and all kinds of pilates.
Speaker 1: Part is not Dan Fogelberg, You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: We need a little energy here, We need some energy.
Speaker 1: We need we need to be bouncing around every now
Speaker 1: and then.
Speaker 2: You know, well, you know me, I like my rocker size. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I do my rocker side. So I'm I'm I've got
Speaker 2: a trainer. I'm actually working out with a trade.
Speaker 1: Ready like Mick Jaggs. He's getting ready.
Speaker 2: Oh man, can you imagine bounce?
Speaker 1: He's still bouncing now. My last question for you, which
Speaker 1: of course is from our special consultant who came on
Speaker 1: his guy. I said, a mom with her today, said
Speaker 1: do you have a question to ask? He said, ask her?
Speaker 1: How is it she can play that guitar so well
Speaker 1: and she rarely practices.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good question. Well, of course it's a
Speaker 2: good question, right. What practices for me is trying to
Speaker 2: write a new song. So when I come back to
Speaker 2: the guitar, it's like, wow, it's a reunion and I'm
Speaker 2: trying something new out and I've learned something here that
Speaker 2: I didn't even know before because I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: practice what I already know.
Speaker 1: It's a great answer. They go hand in hand. The
Speaker 1: relationship with the guitar is also embedded in songwriting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, it is, and it's a best friend relationship.
Speaker 2: It's always a discovery of how's your day going. Well,
Speaker 2: here's how my day's going. And I'm going to sound
Speaker 2: like this today because you are talking to me about
Speaker 2: what we're talking about together, me and the guitar. So
Speaker 2: it's definitely. Yeah, it's my best friend. It says things
Speaker 2: for me that I want to say.
Speaker 1: Well, let me just say, man, I love you solo.
Speaker 1: I love your sister solo, but I like the two
Speaker 1: of you together. I mean, you guys are one of
Speaker 1: the greatest rock and roll acts of all time. And
Speaker 1: the range, you know, just I mean, obviously there's all
Speaker 1: these hits, and there's beautiful ballads in there as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, Dog and Butterflies, such a gorgeous song. You
Speaker 1: guys together is something I think everybody's gonna be excited about.
Speaker 1: Come April. You go on tour in April.
Speaker 2: Correct, in April. On the twentieth or fort show, it
Speaker 2: is true that there's a perception about heart that only
Speaker 2: really exists when the two of us are together. That
Speaker 2: is what heart is.
Speaker 1: Barry Gibb was on the show and we talked about
Speaker 1: blood harmony. Yeah, and when you talk sometimes you sound
Speaker 1: like Anne give a very similar tambur to your voices.
Speaker 2: You know, we're getting a film together about our story,
Speaker 2: which is not easy. We're trying to get a writer
Speaker 2: foot to it. But people say, you know, who would
Speaker 2: play you? You know, if you're doing a movie about heart,
Speaker 2: and right now, I mean, I know El Fanning can sing,
Speaker 2: and so I've think in El Fanning and Dakota for
Speaker 2: and would be so interesting of a pair up because
Speaker 2: they're sisters too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Blood harmony, blood harmony. Right, all my best to you,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, big.
Speaker 2: Love back at you, and thank you so much.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Nancy Wilson. You can find more information
Speaker 1: about Heart's world tour at heartdash music dot com. I'll
Speaker 1: leave you with a little more of Crazy on You
Speaker 1: off their nineteen seventy five album Dreamboat Annie. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.