Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Ann Wilson. A party and how are
Speaker 1: you doing. I'm doing great. Good to see you now.
Speaker 1: You say you're out in the country without giving us
Speaker 1: your address. Generally speaking, where are you Northeast Florida close
Speaker 1: to St. Augustine, the way out in the country in
Speaker 1: a rural setting. If you're from the Pacific Northwest, how
Speaker 1: did you end up in Florida with humidity? And which
Speaker 1: do you prefer? I prefer the Pacific Northwest in the
Speaker 1: summer and fall. I prefer Florida in the spring and winter.
Speaker 1: So I guess that's kind of a snowbird thing, isn't
Speaker 1: it right? Right? But we're talking in July, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't quite make sense, right, Yeah, I know, But I'm
Speaker 1: working right now. I can't just visit where I want
Speaker 1: to visit, you know. Um, it's too hot here right now.
Speaker 1: It's too hot and humid. Okay, So you say you're working,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. I'm getting ready to start setting
Speaker 1: up a new album that's gonna come out the first
Speaker 1: quarter of twenty two, and I'm getting ready to go
Speaker 1: out and do some more gigs. And uh, I'm just
Speaker 1: involved in all this new music and gigs and stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: needless to say, the music business has changed from when
Speaker 1: you started, and it's hard for any it's hard for
Speaker 1: anybody to get recognition with their new recordings. So what
Speaker 1: keeps you motivated? Well, I think what keeps me motivated
Speaker 1: now that everything is so different is uh, kind of
Speaker 1: the same um impetus that got me going in the
Speaker 1: first place, which is just I had things to say,
Speaker 1: and I had ideas that just keep banging around in
Speaker 1: my head and in my soul that I want to
Speaker 1: set to music. It's it's hard to describe why musicians
Speaker 1: want to do it from the inside out. It's easy
Speaker 1: to understand why they might want to create an image
Speaker 1: and have fame and all that kind of stuff from
Speaker 1: the outside in, But what makes you just scrape it
Speaker 1: together and go from zero to something on your own?
Speaker 1: And that's that's really what I've found since we've been
Speaker 1: in lockdown and all that kind of stuff in the
Speaker 1: music business shut down. There's no money to be made really,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, So so what motivates that creative process?
Speaker 1: You're just lying in bed, something comes to you. What says, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to start. I gotta get my thoughts down.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty emotional, and I guess I'm feisty. And so
Speaker 1: you put those two things together, and you you need
Speaker 1: an outlet, even though nobody might be listening. It's a
Speaker 1: way to handle the energy and force of these emotions.
Speaker 1: So I come from a family that loves poetry and
Speaker 1: loves words. You know. My father used to stand up
Speaker 1: after a few glasses of wine and recite poetry to
Speaker 1: the to the friends and family and stuff, and a
Speaker 1: tear would come down. And and uh, that's where I
Speaker 1: come from, so that I love words. I love to write.
Speaker 1: You say, you say your emotional and feisty. Yeah, since
Speaker 1: you lay that out there, how does that manifest itself?
Speaker 1: How do you describe yourself that way? What does it
Speaker 1: ultimately mean? I guess it means I want my way
Speaker 1: just and by that I mean I want to get
Speaker 1: these things down and physicalize them, bring them into the world,
Speaker 1: make them be. Do you usually get your way? Uh?
Speaker 1: I don't get it my way all the time, but uh,
Speaker 1: when I do, it sure feels good. It really really does.
Speaker 1: And how does it feel when you don't get your way? Frustrating,
Speaker 1: totally frustrating, and it just makes me want to try
Speaker 1: harder to find another way to get it, you know,
Speaker 1: and in writing songs and making music and everything. At
Speaker 1: this point, after all these years of doing it, it's
Speaker 1: interesting what I'm going through now because I'm working with
Speaker 1: much younger people in the studio as players, and uh,
Speaker 1: some of them at the technical level are much younger,
Speaker 1: and so I feel kind of like in some cases
Speaker 1: the wise old owl. Not not that I know everybody's business,
Speaker 1: but I have to teach everyone my business. They weren't
Speaker 1: around to understand what it was like at the beginning
Speaker 1: and the feelings that we tried to access at the beginning.
Speaker 1: You know, how did you get hooked up with these
Speaker 1: younger people. I was just looking for fresh input and
Speaker 1: players that were trying to push the envelope out and
Speaker 1: level up and move forward, you know, and especially I
Speaker 1: was looking for people that weren't dying on the vine,
Speaker 1: who weren't just resting on their laurels. I was looking
Speaker 1: for an escape from riding the old horse down, you know,
Speaker 1: from getting into a cycle of just going out and
Speaker 1: playing the sheds and repeating and repeating until there's nothing left.
Speaker 1: I really didn't want to do that. So how did
Speaker 1: you literally find these people? Oh? Literally just by asking around?
Speaker 1: So you're in Florida. Now where you actually going to
Speaker 1: record the record? I recorded a few of the songs
Speaker 1: at Muscle Shoals, and a few of them in Nashville,
Speaker 1: and a few of them in Seattle. And who's producing
Speaker 1: the record? Well, it's produced by me, and by mostly
Speaker 1: by me. I guess there's like, there's no set producer
Speaker 1: except for me. I'm where the buck stops on this.
Speaker 1: And where did you find the money to record? In
Speaker 1: my pocket? So it's your money, so in your idea
Speaker 1: and you're in your mind, what was the budget for
Speaker 1: how much you wanted to spend for this new project?
Speaker 1: Oh god, I never thought of it that way. I thought,
Speaker 1: I'll pay as much as it takes to bring these
Speaker 1: ideas to fruition. And luckily I'm married to someone who
Speaker 1: really understands how to tighten the belt and uh cut
Speaker 1: costs and do do things in a really smart way.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't the big old lavish record recording experience
Speaker 1: of the past, of the eighties or nineties. You know,
Speaker 1: it was pretty close to the leather and and lean,
Speaker 1: but I like the way it sounds. Okay, So how
Speaker 1: far along are you in the project? Well, I'm done recording,
Speaker 1: You're done? Yeah, so you have the record? Is not
Speaker 1: gonna come out to the four first quarter? Uh? How's
Speaker 1: it going to come out? As there a label? You're
Speaker 1: gonna do it yourself? And why wait to the first quarter? Well,
Speaker 1: we're dangling it around to all the labels. Now it's done.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say here it is. What do
Speaker 1: you think it's the labels that want to wait until
Speaker 1: the first quarter because they need to have actual time
Speaker 1: to set it up. You know, you're gonna make a
Speaker 1: deal with one label? Maybe, I don't know. It's still
Speaker 1: depends on what they come back with. We only are
Speaker 1: um showing it around, like starting right now, so I'm
Speaker 1: sure it'll take a while for them to go through
Speaker 1: their process where they go, let's see, do we hear
Speaker 1: a single? You know if that's that old thing, you know,
Speaker 1: the Wednesday morning singles meeting? You know absolutely? Are you okay?
Speaker 1: Since you are you a student of the game or
Speaker 1: the type of person who just makes the music and
Speaker 1: let the business people take care of it, or you
Speaker 1: know how the label works. You're talking to people. You're
Speaker 1: in the woods in the weed. Excuse me. I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm in the weeds that much. I think that
Speaker 1: over the years I've gone in the weeds a little
Speaker 1: bit and been frustrated the question. But you're you said
Speaker 1: you're earlier, feisty person, and you know, you scratch the
Speaker 1: itch and then sometimes things happen. The music is a
Speaker 1: music similar to the music you've made before, rock music
Speaker 1: or is it different? Oh, it's it's rock music for sure,
Speaker 1: and it's it goes from soft emotional ballad all the
Speaker 1: way up to pretty out there, balls out rock, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got this great band that's called The
Speaker 1: Amazing Dogs, and they they're just cooler than cool, just
Speaker 1: so great players. Tony Lucido on base and Tombukavac on guitar,
Speaker 1: and um young guy from Seattle named Shanty Lane on
Speaker 1: drums and Paul Moke on keyboards. I mean, they're they're
Speaker 1: really amazing. The rhythm section in particular so good. So
Speaker 1: how old are these guys? I think they're in there
Speaker 1: late thirties, mid forties. They're young. Yeah, when you reference
Speaker 1: when you reference the seventies, whatever, they have any idea
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. They're fans of the music. They
Speaker 1: love Barracuda for instance. It's just it's sick how much
Speaker 1: guys in bands, younger guys in bands want to play Barracuda.
Speaker 1: They just want to play that song and a few
Speaker 1: others like it, Magic Man, stuff like that. Do you
Speaker 1: get tired of Barracuda? Yeah? So how do you cope?
Speaker 1: How do you cope with that? Um? Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Just it's only like four minutes. I like Veracuda. I
Speaker 1: think that the the idea behind it is great. The
Speaker 1: the Heart version with Roger Fisher playing guitar was pretty iconic.
Speaker 1: So to me, it's it's just trying to recapture the
Speaker 1: spirit of the song that makes it interesting to do
Speaker 1: now because we don't have that Roger Fisher sound now.
Speaker 1: And do you sometimes sing it and think about your
Speaker 1: laundry or what you're gonna do after the gig? Or
Speaker 1: you always invested in saying it? No, I'm always invested.
Speaker 1: That's ah that that kind of split in your attention
Speaker 1: is something that is a sin to me. When you're
Speaker 1: up there on the mic. Okay, and so you're doing
Speaker 1: this project independently, yet you still tour with Heart. So
Speaker 1: how do you decide to do which one? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really good question because it's kind of just like
Speaker 1: the the relationship between Nancy and I is good enough,
Speaker 1: so we can if she gets her thing done over here,
Speaker 1: I get mind done over here. We could just say
Speaker 1: let's do this other thing and we can do it
Speaker 1: in terms of our relationship. But it's it's just we
Speaker 1: want to do a Heart tour when it really matters.
Speaker 1: We don't just want to waste it. You know, who
Speaker 1: knows how many more years we have left with it.
Speaker 1: It's been together for nearly fifty years now. So you
Speaker 1: have a big birthday this year. How's that messing with
Speaker 1: your head? Well? Yeah, I had a seventy one this year,
Speaker 1: so uh so, you know, I don't know. I had
Speaker 1: a couple of things I got Lukibia ten years ago
Speaker 1: that I knew I wouldn't really live forever. Then I
Speaker 1: turned sixty and it really fucked me up. H'm not
Speaker 1: quite as old as you are, but I was wondering
Speaker 1: your perspective because one thing is for sure, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna live forever. Yeah, that's that's dang sure, yeah it.
Speaker 1: I think seventy messed with my head and set me
Speaker 1: back on my heels, like my my bravado just wouldn't
Speaker 1: even take it. Seventy was just one step too far.
Speaker 1: But then I got over it, and I just I
Speaker 1: feel the same. Um, yeah, I don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: seventy one. I didn't even feel because it's not one
Speaker 1: of those years with the zero after it. Eight will
Speaker 1: be heavy, right, you know? Well, just you know, I
Speaker 1: think a ringo is either eight one eighty two. Paul
Speaker 1: McCartney will be a d hard to conceive. The other thing. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean there are people Joe Walsh had, as somebody
Speaker 1: else said, said, I'm too old to die young. It
Speaker 1: used to be such a tragedy these rock stars would die.
Speaker 1: But if you die when you're eighty, people die when
Speaker 1: you're eighty. It's very hear that our generation is going yeah,
Speaker 1: well except you know, eighties the new sixty. I guess so.
Speaker 1: I think internally that's true. We just haven't learned that
Speaker 1: physically in our bodies are bodies are not quite there.
Speaker 1: I think that that the most challenging part of being
Speaker 1: older in rock is just trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: you can relate to the younger music that's coming out now,
Speaker 1: because it's coming from people whose experienced levels are so
Speaker 1: much different. And it's hard to get interested in somebody's
Speaker 1: song about their boyfriend when you're seventy one, you know,
Speaker 1: so I certainly understand that lyrically, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I have the perspective that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: our frame of reference with because he was the Beatles
Speaker 1: of British Invasion, San Francisco, etcetera. But Mariah Carey came
Speaker 1: out thirty years ago. A lot of people that's all
Speaker 1: they know. Is some they don't even know what we
Speaker 1: grew up with. So it's hard to hard to relate
Speaker 1: in general, it is. And one of the things that's
Speaker 1: really hard to relate to for me is is the
Speaker 1: way of singing, the human way of singing, which is
Speaker 1: a way that is un altered. It's not tuned without
Speaker 1: a tune, it's it's a human way of singing, like
Speaker 1: jan Is saying and like Jagger saying and stuff. Those
Speaker 1: human ways that are out of tune and imperfect and
Speaker 1: full of imperfection, um, and those are really that's the
Speaker 1: that's the stuff that's it's range now in our time,
Speaker 1: it's so easy to hear Mariah Carey, but it isn't
Speaker 1: easy to hear Mick Jagger. You know, it's our imperfections
Speaker 1: that make us lovable. Okay, that's right. You've cut a
Speaker 1: lot of Zeppelin songs. What's your favorite Zeppelin song? I
Speaker 1: think my favorite Zeppelin song is No Quarter? Really? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like No Quarter up. I like the stuff from
Speaker 1: the Zeppelin four and Houses of the Holy era really
Speaker 1: a lot. I think they really hit some real diamonds
Speaker 1: and that that era, So No Quarter What else going
Speaker 1: to California see in My Time of Dying? Yeah, God
Speaker 1: for Sticks, just some of those songs that are just
Speaker 1: a little bit more sophisticated but still just down, you know.
Speaker 1: I like. I love that stuff. They get kind of tricky,
Speaker 1: like on the Crunch, and they show that their their
Speaker 1: intelligence but their insanity at the same time. I like that.
Speaker 1: How did you discover led Zeppelin? M Well, my best
Speaker 1: friend in high school, uh got a hole. She turned
Speaker 1: me onto led Zeppelin when a whole lot of love
Speaker 1: came out, and it's one of those deals where we're
Speaker 1: high school girls, you know, sitting in her room listening
Speaker 1: to Plant do a lot of of and just our
Speaker 1: mind's going crazy and what does this mean? You know,
Speaker 1: way down inside you need it and we're like what
Speaker 1: But you can't look away from that when you're seventeen
Speaker 1: or eighteen or something. That's how I got turned on
Speaker 1: the ZEP one. Well, you know, certainly on that album. Uh,
Speaker 1: they have the Lemons song and a lot of sexual references.
Speaker 1: Were you were you? Were you a fast girul or
Speaker 1: were you naive? I was super naive And I remember
Speaker 1: too well going to a led Zeppelin concert in Seattle
Speaker 1: at the Green Lake Aqua Theater. I think it was
Speaker 1: nine or eight and so um with Nancy and the
Speaker 1: two of us sat there listening to led Zeppelin and
Speaker 1: the Lemon Song and all this stuff. And by the
Speaker 1: time the Lemon Song was half half over, I was
Speaker 1: headed to the car because it was just too much
Speaker 1: for me. It was like, this is too much for
Speaker 1: me to comprehend. I don't know whether this is dirty
Speaker 1: or whether it's incredible or what okay was to say?
Speaker 1: They say sex, drugs and rock and roll. Uh, you
Speaker 1: were singing, how did the sex party end up? You know?
Speaker 1: Being awakened by real life, you know, But just the
Speaker 1: lovers that I had and experiences, especially when I got
Speaker 1: into um road life with the band, and I was
Speaker 1: old enough to be in a relationship in my own
Speaker 1: that was full fledged, you know, real relationship. Plus being
Speaker 1: on the road with all these dudes all the time.
Speaker 1: That's where I got my education, I think. I mean,
Speaker 1: long before Nancy joined the band, it was just me
Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of men in vans, in busses,
Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, I guess I learned quick. But
Speaker 1: didn't you have Roger Fisher as a boyfriend through most
Speaker 1: of that? Nancy had a boy friend named Roger Fisher.
Speaker 1: Excuse me you his brother Michael Fisher. Weren't you involved
Speaker 1: with Yes? I was, yeah, and we were together from
Speaker 1: about seventy two to about seventy nine, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he taught me everything I know. And do you
Speaker 1: ever talked to him? Now? Occasionally will will connect on
Speaker 1: UM line. I've he actually after we broke up, he
Speaker 1: went on to have like eleven children with various other mayors.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and a couple of times I've reached out
Speaker 1: to him to ask him advice on parenting anyway, But no,
Speaker 1: we don't really hang out or anything. So, uh, when
Speaker 1: did you know you wanted to sing as a career
Speaker 1: right off the bat? Probably when I was fifteen. It
Speaker 1: just it was one of those things like in Close
Speaker 1: Encounters where he's making the mountain out of mashed potatoes
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know why. It's just just drawn to
Speaker 1: making this mountain out of mashed potatoes. That's what it
Speaker 1: was for me in music. It's just like I just
Speaker 1: that's I just knew that's what I was gonna do.
Speaker 1: Nothing else was even a possibility, Not boyfriends, not nothing. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well what led up to that? I mean, were you
Speaker 1: turned on by the Beatles or were you a music
Speaker 1: head before that? What inspired you to this life? Um?
Speaker 1: I started out by loving classical music and playing an
Speaker 1: orchestra with the flute, and I come from a musical family,
Speaker 1: classical music, opera, all that stuff, always playing, and so
Speaker 1: one thing just kind of led to the next. Uh.
Speaker 1: I started just like singing along in the family, and
Speaker 1: then feeling the urge to sing in front of people
Speaker 1: the family, and then church group and then whoever would listen,
Speaker 1: and it just kept growing exponentially. Okay, were you known
Speaker 1: as the singer growing up all that that's the girl
Speaker 1: with the amazing voice. I didn't discover I had a
Speaker 1: voice until about seventy when I was up in Vancouver,
Speaker 1: about seventy four, that's when I discovered I had a voice.
Speaker 1: Up until then, I was playing at bands, but I
Speaker 1: was just like the chick in the band who would
Speaker 1: sing the ballad, you know, like she'd sing Superstar by
Speaker 1: the time I get to Phoenix or something like that,
Speaker 1: and then and then bang of tambourine while the guys
Speaker 1: did all the rock. We were trying to work out, uh,
Speaker 1: some Zeppelin songs back in the early days, and none
Speaker 1: of the guys in the band could sing that high.
Speaker 1: So it felt to me. And that's when I discovered
Speaker 1: that I could sing rock. So you were just you,
Speaker 1: weren't You were playing the tambourine, singing backup vocals in
Speaker 1: an occasional lead, and the and the cowbell and things
Speaker 1: like clubs, and I mean, what did you see is
Speaker 1: where you were going? Was this just another step down
Speaker 1: the road or you said, holy ship, you know, something's
Speaker 1: got to change here. Well, I didn't have a view
Speaker 1: of what I was doing from the outside. I only
Speaker 1: felt that I wanted to keep pushing up, and so, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I just found different guys to be in
Speaker 1: a band with who would like slept the gear into
Speaker 1: the next club, and then we get a like we
Speaker 1: played there for a week, and then somebody would come
Speaker 1: in and go, wow, we like this week, We like
Speaker 1: the chick. How about this club a little bit better
Speaker 1: of a place? You know how it goes, step up,
Speaker 1: step up, step up, until you finally get some kind
Speaker 1: of really cool offer where they say, okay, um, Rod
Speaker 1: Stewart was gonna play in Montreal at the Forum, but
Speaker 1: um the opening band got six so you can open
Speaker 1: up for Rod Stewart if you want for one night.
Speaker 1: And then one thing leads to another. Okay, going back
Speaker 1: before that, did you play in bands in high school? Yes?
Speaker 1: I did. I started when I was a sophomore in
Speaker 1: high school, just trying to just stitch it together with
Speaker 1: whoever I could find who either had a car or
Speaker 1: had a guitar or a shirt with a high boy
Speaker 1: collar or something like that. You know, did you have
Speaker 1: bands that would work during high school that got paid
Speaker 1: to work? No? No, I don't think that I ever
Speaker 1: got paid to play in a band really until we
Speaker 1: were up in Vancouver, and we we're able to maybe
Speaker 1: make ten bucks each week because we lived in a
Speaker 1: UM in a communal situation, so we take all the
Speaker 1: money the band would make and we'd split it all
Speaker 1: up between the band members and the wives and stuff.
Speaker 1: So you'd end up with ten bucks a week. UM,
Speaker 1: but that was pay, you know. That would have been
Speaker 1: seventy four seventy Okay. So you when you were in school,
Speaker 1: were you a good student, bad student? Were you popular
Speaker 1: and not popular? I was not popular and I was
Speaker 1: a mediocre student. I excelled in art and music and
Speaker 1: English class. All the humanities were easy for me. Um,
Speaker 1: but still I only got ces, you know. I graduated
Speaker 1: with the two point five or six or something like that.
Speaker 1: Nothing to write home about. I was interested in music. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you graduated from high school. Did you ever get
Speaker 1: education beyond that point? You say, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: be a musician. I went to out of high school.
Speaker 1: I went to Art College in Seattle, and then after that,
Speaker 1: I um went into bands. So you know, it didn't
Speaker 1: take long for me to go from school to being
Speaker 1: in a band for a living. How long did you
Speaker 1: go to school for I went to Art College for
Speaker 1: two years after high school. Okay, And when you leave
Speaker 1: art school and starting bands, where are you're living? Well,
Speaker 1: I was still living with my parents, mooching off my parents,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. But then when I met Michael Fisher,
Speaker 1: which was right then after art school, I went away
Speaker 1: to Canada and the rest is just heart history. Well
Speaker 1: a little bit slower. How did you meet him? And
Speaker 1: how did you end up in Vancouver? Oh? Okay? Um.
Speaker 1: The band I was at the time was called it
Speaker 1: was with Roger Fisher and Steve fossen Um. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was called hocus Pocus and we were we got
Speaker 1: a gig at this club in Bellingham, Washington called the
Speaker 1: Iron Bull, where we were the house band. We were
Speaker 1: playing there for two weeks I think. And Michael Fisher,
Speaker 1: the brother of Roger Fisher who was in my band,
Speaker 1: was a draft evader and he was living up in Vancouver,
Speaker 1: b C. He snucked down over the border to Bellingham
Speaker 1: to see his brother's band, and he spotted this chick
Speaker 1: singer who was sitting cross legged on the dance floor
Speaker 1: smoking a cigarette, and she spotted him and their eyes
Speaker 1: just went lock. And uh, that's how it started. And
Speaker 1: and I couldn't not be with him, and he just
Speaker 1: kept coming down to see me, and finally we got
Speaker 1: together as a couple and I left the band went
Speaker 1: up to Vancouver. That lasted about six months before the
Speaker 1: band chased me up there and we formed the band
Speaker 1: up in Vancouver. So Michael and I probably had about
Speaker 1: six months as a couple in romance up in Vancouver
Speaker 1: before the band came and joined. For somebody who was
Speaker 1: so driven in music, it seemed like you abandoned it
Speaker 1: for six months. What was going through your head? I
Speaker 1: love is pretty powerful. I mean when it's when it's
Speaker 1: like that, you know, and it's I couldn't see anything else.
Speaker 1: And that's really saying something because I, like you say,
Speaker 1: I always have been pretty driven about making the band,
Speaker 1: keeping it together, keep feeding it, being in it, you know.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so that that love just kind of washed
Speaker 1: everything else away for six months. Now, it was a
Speaker 1: different era. But did you want to get married? No,
Speaker 1: I didn't think about getting married then. We were just Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a hugely different era. It was the era
Speaker 1: of Joni Mitchell saying, we don't need no piece of
Speaker 1: paper from the city hall keeping us tied and true,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think that Michael and I really
Speaker 1: bought into that. Okay, so this was you know. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm like, today, everybody's got cable TV, everybody's got the Internet.
Speaker 1: There really is no flyover country. But at that point
Speaker 1: in the early seventies, how different was Vancouver from Washington. Oh,
Speaker 1: it was hugely different. Vancouver was a really international, because
Speaker 1: cosmopolitan city, small but very sophisticated. And coming into Vancouver,
Speaker 1: I remember in the springtime during the easter being they
Speaker 1: used to have in Stanley Park, it was just magic.
Speaker 1: Seattle seemed like a real kind of a cowboy town
Speaker 1: next to Vancouver. I remember Vancouver was very um, full
Speaker 1: of artists and um it didn't have that that American
Speaker 1: nationalism that was very bothersome at the time. And so
Speaker 1: the band follows you up with what intention to put
Speaker 1: the band back together? I think that they realized that
Speaker 1: we had something as long as I was in it,
Speaker 1: they we had something special. And Michael Fisher was a
Speaker 1: really smart, kind of um entrepreneurial type guy. I mean,
Speaker 1: he got the whole concept of how to manage a band,
Speaker 1: what needed to happen. He and his brother would get
Speaker 1: out there in the sun with their shirts off and
Speaker 1: build the speaker cabinets and um, there's very hands on.
Speaker 1: And we all lived together in this little one room
Speaker 1: house for a short time and really built the band
Speaker 1: up from nothing in kind of a um communal tribal away.
Speaker 1: And what was the gig situation there? Oh, it was
Speaker 1: just at that time Vancouver had two booking agencies, Bruce
Speaker 1: Allen and Access, which was the more into indie type one,
Speaker 1: and we couldn't get any gigs. You know, nobody knew us.
Speaker 1: We were just some band until we finally decided to
Speaker 1: pull a demo together and we took it to Bruce Allen,
Speaker 1: who was the big booking agent there in town, and
Speaker 1: he passed on heart. So we went to the other indeed,
Speaker 1: and they said okay, so we went with them. He
Speaker 1: got us our first gig at this place called the
Speaker 1: Cave in downtown Vancouver, which was made to look like
Speaker 1: it had stalactites and stalagmites inside and it was all
Speaker 1: dark and it looked like a real cave. You know.
Speaker 1: That was where our first gig was. And then how
Speaker 1: often did you work thereafter? We probably worked there, um, god,
Speaker 1: a couple of different stints, maybe a weekend at a time,
Speaker 1: and then we started getting gigs, playing high school dances
Speaker 1: and um and different bars around Vancouver and New Westminster
Speaker 1: and that area. So we just started stepping it up.
Speaker 1: Things started coming to us and with these originals or covers. Oh,
Speaker 1: they were all covers until we started trying to slip
Speaker 1: these songs like Crazy on You and these new originals
Speaker 1: like Crazy on You and Magic Man and stuff into
Speaker 1: the set, and the bar audience would they'd wait through
Speaker 1: this new Crazy on You song until we could get
Speaker 1: back to the Deep Purple and the rolling Stones and
Speaker 1: the led Zeppa Stop. I just remember them just politely
Speaker 1: waiting through us banging through Crazy and until it was over,
Speaker 1: and then it's like, okay, now let the fund resume. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when did you start writing songs? And how did
Speaker 1: you write Crazy on You? And Magic Man started writing
Speaker 1: Crazy on You and Magic Man uh for the Dreamboat
Speaker 1: Any album, which was up in Vancouver. All the songs
Speaker 1: written in Vancouver about seventy three, and yeah, just started
Speaker 1: We were writing and playing and traveling all at the
Speaker 1: same time. So we we'd write a song on the
Speaker 1: bus during the day and try to fit it in
Speaker 1: at night. Sometimes I would work sometimes it wouldn't and
Speaker 1: literally hot on You develop um. Nancy and Roger and
Speaker 1: Michael and I were living in a house in Point Roberts, Washington,
Speaker 1: and let's see, and Nancy was sick with the flu.
Speaker 1: And I had come up with these words, all the
Speaker 1: words of crazy on You, and so I I was
Speaker 1: really excited about him. So I went into her sick
Speaker 1: bed and I went, God, you gotta check these out
Speaker 1: for Nancy. You know, she had a high fever and everything,
Speaker 1: and I made her sit up and listen to these words.
Speaker 1: And then she got excited too. And we said, well,
Speaker 1: what shall we do for the guitar part? It should
Speaker 1: be an acoustic song. And so then we said, well,
Speaker 1: what would Justin Hayward do on the acoustic And that's
Speaker 1: that's how we arrived at the acoustic part for Crazy
Speaker 1: on You? And Uh, Magic Man was I guess, uh
Speaker 1: like a leaving home song. When I moved up to
Speaker 1: Vancouver and my mother was just really against me moving
Speaker 1: not only out of the country, but moving in with
Speaker 1: a man. And she didn't know if I was just
Speaker 1: going to end up barefoot and pregnant or you know.
Speaker 1: That was before Roe V. Wade and mothers were extremely um,
Speaker 1: a lot more Victorian with their daughters. Then there was
Speaker 1: no attitude like all, honey, just go ahead, just you know,
Speaker 1: keep your dignity. That they were like, no, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't go there with him. You just don't do that.
Speaker 1: So it was a whole different era. So so Magic
Speaker 1: Man was about this thing that went between my mother
Speaker 1: and I when I was gonna move in with Michael. Okay,
Speaker 1: were those songs just spontaneous or you writing them specifically
Speaker 1: for an album? They were spontaneous. All the songs on
Speaker 1: Dreboat Any were spontaneous. Um, there wasn't really an idea
Speaker 1: to make an album. Uh. We were playing most of
Speaker 1: the song the songs that would translate to a live situation.
Speaker 1: We were playing in clubs and Mike Flicker came and
Speaker 1: heard us play these songs. I thought that he liked
Speaker 1: the way I saying he liked the way at that point,
Speaker 1: the way Nancy played. She was sitting in with us
Speaker 1: sometimes she'd come up from college in Forest Grove, and
Speaker 1: he liked that combo. And so that's when the idea
Speaker 1: was hatched for us to make an album. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until you know, pretty late the songs were already
Speaker 1: in existence. Did you already have a desire? I mean,
Speaker 1: were you somebody was a teenager say man, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make it. I'm gonna be famous. Oh yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 1: back then in my young twenties mind, it was like,
Speaker 1: you know what I want is I want the glory.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about money. I thought about I wanted
Speaker 1: to be to get up there and feel the power.
Speaker 1: And did reality live up to the dream at some moments?
Speaker 1: I think it did. Um, I think it would depend
Speaker 1: on which era you're talking about and which kind of
Speaker 1: drugs were involved in or not involved, you know, because
Speaker 1: you know some of those eras that were big party
Speaker 1: eras and wild, crazy rock star eras, the ego might
Speaker 1: be a little bit more inflated than other times, so
Speaker 1: the glory might be more powerful than other times. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I felt all different kinds of being rapturous
Speaker 1: at being in it, or just going like boy, this sucks,
Speaker 1: you know, all different levels of all that. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned the drugs. Was that something you got into more
Speaker 1: as part of the rock star a lifestyle where you
Speaker 1: were an experiment or at an earlier age I was
Speaker 1: an experimenter with LSD before I went into bands, um seriously.
Speaker 1: And but then in the rock star life, as the
Speaker 1: years rolled on, the drugs changed and they did different
Speaker 1: things to your perception of course, like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: cocaine is no ls it's it's a whole different numb world,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. But I was mostly just doing it
Speaker 1: out of because back then the glorious thing was to
Speaker 1: be the fabulous disaster, right. Everyone wanted to be Keith
Speaker 1: Richards or some kind of version of you know, Anita
Speaker 1: Palenberg or something and so u. But the trick was
Speaker 1: to stay alive and not lose it and keep your
Speaker 1: keep your your clothes on, your shreds around you of
Speaker 1: intelligence so you can keep on doing this thing and
Speaker 1: make it be good, you know. So how did you
Speaker 1: take LSD the first time? And how old were you? Mm? Hmm.
Speaker 1: I was seventeen. I had a friend who was going
Speaker 1: to University of Washington and she was living in the dorm.
Speaker 1: And uh, I was in art school at the time,
Speaker 1: so I must I must have been eighteen. So I
Speaker 1: was in art school on Capitol Hill in Seattle, and
Speaker 1: she was at the Youth dub and so I just
Speaker 1: went over there from school one time to her dorm room,
Speaker 1: and uh, she had this acid and we only had
Speaker 1: one album to listen to, and it was Bookends by
Speaker 1: Simon and Garfunkel, and so we dropped acid and stayed
Speaker 1: in her room for twenty four hours just looping this record.
Speaker 1: And at some point I think we may have snucked
Speaker 1: down the hall to buy some hostess pies out of
Speaker 1: the vending machine and get some water. But but other
Speaker 1: than that, it was just that was my first asset
Speaker 1: trip in that album supported the whole thing, no problem.
Speaker 1: It was really really amazing. I'll never forget it. Can
Speaker 1: you listen to that album? Yeah? Yeah I can. So
Speaker 1: what were the what were the great insights of your
Speaker 1: first trip? The visual ones were, We're subtle, but I
Speaker 1: won't forget them. And it was just seeing the complementary
Speaker 1: neon colors lining every um sharp edge. If you would
Speaker 1: look up at a at the window sill or something,
Speaker 1: there'd be this Neon green and Neon purple just lining
Speaker 1: the window sill. I remember that. The other um more
Speaker 1: important things I took from it were just the way
Speaker 1: music was. It was so much more than just auditory.
Speaker 1: It was just there was this soul inside the way
Speaker 1: each song was written lyrically, and just the the character
Speaker 1: of each instrument and the colors that are all created. Um,
Speaker 1: you could almost taste it. It's just all the senses
Speaker 1: just bled together. I think, like save the life of
Speaker 1: my child, you know, just imagine that, Yes, with all
Speaker 1: the sounds in the background, the other thing on that wreck,
Speaker 1: the other thing on the record which I quote all
Speaker 1: my friends, I'm not quite there. How terribly strange to
Speaker 1: be seven day oh god, yeah, yeah, and the voices
Speaker 1: of old people. Oh yeah. But the other thing is
Speaker 1: is that America that encapsulated something that was something you
Speaker 1: did in the sixties and seventies. You've got a new
Speaker 1: car and you look, people don't even do that anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll fly somewhere over that whole experience of anonymity,
Speaker 1: discovering the country, the world yep, like being on a
Speaker 1: bus or a train or something. Right, So you had
Speaker 1: a good experience. How often did you do do LSD
Speaker 1: after that? Well? After that, I did it every chance
Speaker 1: I could. Um, probably had probably another I don't know,
Speaker 1: a dozen trips or something with Nancy and with Sue
Speaker 1: and us, with my sister Lynn and her commune every
Speaker 1: chance I could. I think I even had a couple
Speaker 1: by myself. Um, But I was never a person who
Speaker 1: wanted to go out and climb trees or stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be inside in a controlled situation
Speaker 1: with the music I wanted to listen to. It was
Speaker 1: about It was all about music for me. Um, with
Speaker 1: the music I wanted to listen to. Ready to go,
Speaker 1: So I the all the loose ends tied up. Nobody's
Speaker 1: gonna come over, no one's gonna call, you know, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to deal with the outside world. Just
Speaker 1: I just wanted to dive into music as far as
Speaker 1: I could. Did you ever have a bad trip once? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was because I didn't get the loose ends
Speaker 1: tied up. And I was over with Nancy at Sue
Speaker 1: and us his house. Sue's ers were gone, um somewhere
Speaker 1: on vacation. So we had the house and we took
Speaker 1: this opportunity, and I neglected to tell my parents that
Speaker 1: Nancy and I were going to spend the night over there.
Speaker 1: We just went, you know, like sometimes young people will
Speaker 1: just do that. And so we dropped. The acid was
Speaker 1: orange Sunshine, and I was supposed to be at band practice.
Speaker 1: Nancy was supposed to be home. So so first the
Speaker 1: guys at ben practice started calling the house and saying,
Speaker 1: where's Anne. She didn't show up, We can't find her.
Speaker 1: Were worried about her. And then so my mom would say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, she's not here. And then pretty soon
Speaker 1: Nancy didn't come home. So my mom is going, where's Nancy,
Speaker 1: where's Ann? Right? And so she figured out we were
Speaker 1: probably at best friend Seu's house. So she started calling
Speaker 1: up there, and the phone kept ringing, and we kept
Speaker 1: pretending we didn't hear it, and finally my mom just
Speaker 1: got in the car and came over and banged on
Speaker 1: the door and Nancy's who hit upstairs in the bedroom.
Speaker 1: And because we're in the middle of this, we're in
Speaker 1: another universe, you know, we can't deal with a angry
Speaker 1: mother at that time. But I went downstairs, I answered
Speaker 1: the door. She pulled me out into her car and
Speaker 1: confronted me. Are you high? You know, look at you
Speaker 1: You're high, right, And I'm like, oh, no, I'm not hot,
Speaker 1: you know, like and uh, she let me have it,
Speaker 1: you know, across the face once and and then she
Speaker 1: kind of shoved me out of the car and said, okay,
Speaker 1: go back to it. You can go to hell. Tell
Speaker 1: Nancy to go there too, And then she backed out,
Speaker 1: knocked over all the trash cans in the street and
Speaker 1: took off and I went back in the house. And
Speaker 1: the whole rest of the trip, Nancy and Sue and
Speaker 1: I were just in hell. It was like we could
Speaker 1: not come back from that. You know, that was a
Speaker 1: bad trip. So what music did you like to listen to?
Speaker 1: At that point? We were listening to Moody Blues, uh,
Speaker 1: in Search of a Lost Card, the White Album, Sergeant Pepper,
Speaker 1: and possibly maybe the first Elton John album. And that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty much what it was. You know, I can't
Speaker 1: remember if there was anything else, but you know, you
Speaker 1: could listen to the White Album on acids and it's
Speaker 1: like an hour plus long, and that's a that's a
Speaker 1: universe of time, and then you might listen to it again,
Speaker 1: you know, And is in Search of the Lost Cords?
Speaker 1: Your favorite Boody Blues album at this time? I think
Speaker 1: maybe Days of Future Past is again, but those two
Speaker 1: I think are my favorite. They've just really hit on
Speaker 1: something right then, you know, Timothy Leary and all the
Speaker 1: other things, but I went back to that at this point.
Speaker 1: It's the one I listened to most. So you're in Vancouver,
Speaker 1: what was your relationship with Nancy? With Nancy and how
Speaker 1: did she fit into your bands before you moved to Vancouver. Um,
Speaker 1: she wasn't in the bands I was in before I
Speaker 1: moved to Vancouver. She was still in high school. And
Speaker 1: then after that she went to university in Oregon, and
Speaker 1: she was serious about spending some time in college and
Speaker 1: I wasn't. So I was just already out in this
Speaker 1: band life. And we were driving to Montana, um Idaho,
Speaker 1: up into Saskatchewan and just ranging out in these gigs
Speaker 1: with the band I was in, and she was not involved. Finally,
Speaker 1: because she and I had been so tight growing up
Speaker 1: and learning how to play guitars together and singing together. UM,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to to enrich Heart or Hocus Focus.
Speaker 1: I mean the band I was in with more ability
Speaker 1: to play acoustic guitar, more ability for backup harmoniars, because
Speaker 1: we had settled into Hocus Focus, had settled into this
Speaker 1: sort of bar band mentality was just like maybe two
Speaker 1: part harmonies tops. Um, every song was kind of on
Speaker 1: a Johnny be good level, you know, like nothing really
Speaker 1: sophisticated was coming out of that band. Um Steve Foston
Speaker 1: singing Suffragette City and stuff like that. And it was okay,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't gonna go anywhere, you know, it was
Speaker 1: just gonna end up being in bars forever. So I
Speaker 1: started asking Nancy to come up and visit us in
Speaker 1: Vancouver and sit in and provide her acoustic and provide
Speaker 1: some more harmony singing, which she did. She was really shy.
Speaker 1: She she didn't really enjoy it, you know, but it
Speaker 1: sure made the band sound better on that level. And
Speaker 1: then um, one thing led to another person. We started
Speaker 1: writing those songs. She and Roger Fisher got together and
Speaker 1: the two Wilson sisters and two Fisher brothers became a
Speaker 1: family living group. And she left college and moved up
Speaker 1: and that's when um Mike Flicker had discovered us playing
Speaker 1: in a club called Starwin Marvin's and said, well, come
Speaker 1: on down and let's demo you guys. So we went
Speaker 1: in first without Nancy any past. Then we went in
Speaker 1: again a year later with Nancy, and he liked the
Speaker 1: two sisters thing, you know, and so that was kind
Speaker 1: of a an extra added um, smallsey thing that worked
Speaker 1: for him, and so mushroom scientists on the basis of it,
Speaker 1: be me, Nancy and Roger, and we may dream bout Annie. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have two sisters, and older sister and a younger sister.
Speaker 1: They can be lovey dovey. They can be at each
Speaker 1: other's throats, calling me bitching about the other one. What's
Speaker 1: it like being in a band with your sister, Boy,
Speaker 1: there's no one way that it's like. Um. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just great because you come from a common stamp, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, uh, you've got like a language together
Speaker 1: and all that where you can finish each each other's sentences.
Speaker 1: But also along with that you have this incredibly complex
Speaker 1: um set up of buttons you can push to upset
Speaker 1: each other or or you know, just a little tiny,
Speaker 1: little throwaway comments that just hurt like hell or shut
Speaker 1: you down, or you can do the same thing for them.
Speaker 1: So it's equally as good as it is bad. It's tricky.
Speaker 1: The Nancy and I managed to make it be mostly
Speaker 1: good for years as long as it was just she
Speaker 1: and I, but when other people came into our lives,
Speaker 1: it got more and more and more tricky because we
Speaker 1: started to grow up and have our you know, come
Speaker 1: into our own two separate Like people used to treat
Speaker 1: us like we were joined at the hip, and I
Speaker 1: guess we kind of were. But the minute we separated, Um,
Speaker 1: that's when things got good and things got super hard.
Speaker 1: And it's the status of it today. Well, it's she's
Speaker 1: doing She just released an album, a solo album you
Speaker 1: probably know, and um, we've both been doing our solo things.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand nineteen, before the lockdown, we did
Speaker 1: Heart Tour that was the most satisfying and successful commercial
Speaker 1: to her hearts done in a long time. UM. So
Speaker 1: we can do that whenever we want, and our relationship
Speaker 1: will take it. Like things that have happened in the
Speaker 1: past are we've come to the point where we've let
Speaker 1: the air out of them and when we want to
Speaker 1: get together and make music, we can do it, you know,
Speaker 1: without it being all negative and personal and stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're she's a good, great musician. I really like her.
Speaker 1: She's an original, she can do stuff, um, and she
Speaker 1: gets me do. We just have to really watch out
Speaker 1: for the sibling pitfalls, you know. And I know you
Speaker 1: know what I mean because you were talking about your sisters,
Speaker 1: you know. So let's just say you're not on the road,
Speaker 1: you're not preparing or doing a hard tour. How much
Speaker 1: contact do you have if any? Yeah, we have some,
Speaker 1: but not that much. It's mostly birthdays and and you know,
Speaker 1: something happens in the family or just something that made
Speaker 1: us think of the other. One will go, hey, I
Speaker 1: saw this, and I thought of you. You know, after
Speaker 1: forty five years of living in each other's pockets, it's
Speaker 1: kind of refreshing to be an adult, a completely separate adult. Um.
Speaker 1: And it really has helped me with my writing and
Speaker 1: my own agenda of just doing things my way, you know,
Speaker 1: which is what I was doing before she joined the band.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you go into the studio with Mike Flicker.
Speaker 1: How long does it take to cut dream Body any?
Speaker 1: And how different are the songs from how you were
Speaker 1: playing them live? And were you happy? Um? Let's see
Speaker 1: how long did it take to make the record? Trying
Speaker 1: to remember, I think it wasn't as long as we
Speaker 1: usually take now. It's probably a month or a month
Speaker 1: and a half tops, um, because we've been out there
Speaker 1: playing the songs live, so the songs were already road tested.
Speaker 1: Some of them sounded much better on the record than
Speaker 1: they did live, because, for instance, the song Crazy on You,
Speaker 1: we did have a drummer that we liked enough to
Speaker 1: use in the studio, So on stund Crazy on You,
Speaker 1: it's the drum part is a series of edits that
Speaker 1: Mike Flicker did very cleverly, and you can't even tell
Speaker 1: that it's not being played all the way through. But
Speaker 1: I remember how complicated that one track was. The drummer
Speaker 1: we were using live just wasn't up to it. So
Speaker 1: we got this guy cat h Hendrix in to play,
Speaker 1: and he was like a jazz player almost, and he
Speaker 1: played on Crazy Um, So it sounded better on record
Speaker 1: than live. Same with magic Man Boy. You should have
Speaker 1: heard the demo I came in with for Magic Man.
Speaker 1: It was the groove that we were playing live was
Speaker 1: more like like the old Indian thing of do do
Speaker 1: Do Do do you Know? And then in the studio
Speaker 1: that evolved to do to do do you Know? Um?
Speaker 1: And songs like how Deep It Goes and Hear Song
Speaker 1: and all that were my romantic love songs you know
Speaker 1: that I wrote just on my acoustics. So from that
Speaker 1: little demo, the songs just opened up into like full
Speaker 1: band productions. So they really did come alive a lot
Speaker 1: on that record. And there was a third part to
Speaker 1: your question, was I happy yet when it was all done?
Speaker 1: Were you satisfied or you felt like you missed it
Speaker 1: a little bit or it didn't sound like it was
Speaker 1: in your head? Now? I was thrilled. I was just
Speaker 1: like over the moon. And the experience in particular of
Speaker 1: singing the lead vocal on Crazy and You is something
Speaker 1: I'll never forget because this first time I'd ever opened
Speaker 1: up and sung in a studio with a big mike
Speaker 1: and everything and Mike Flicker. They're producing me and coaching
Speaker 1: me and drawing me out, you know, and I just
Speaker 1: I just remembered what that felt like too, to sort
Speaker 1: of arrive at that, you know, it was like a revelation. Well,
Speaker 1: you said earlier that you've learned that you could sing
Speaker 1: in seventy four. Was that when you were cutting the
Speaker 1: record or was it before but slightly before it was live?
Speaker 1: When I started, we used to do this led Zeppelin
Speaker 1: medley in bars that was, you know, twenty five minutes
Speaker 1: long and just one song into the next. That's when
Speaker 1: I realized that rock was really a blast. To sing
Speaker 1: sing loud and high, and I could sing Aretha, and
Speaker 1: I could sing um Ian Gillen from Deep Purple and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. And what was wild about
Speaker 1: that too is that it's back then it was a
Speaker 1: woman singing it and no one else was doing that.
Speaker 1: So the audiences were like, yeah, that was something that
Speaker 1: really caught their imagination. Okay, how long after you cut
Speaker 1: the album does it come out? And when do you
Speaker 1: realize something starting to happen in terms of airplay and sales.
Speaker 1: Mustroom Records was a small, little indie label in Vancouver,
Speaker 1: and they it was all this little in house staff,
Speaker 1: very small operation, and we got through with the record.
Speaker 1: It was released on Valentine's Day, I think, and by
Speaker 1: summer we were out on tour supporting it and riding
Speaker 1: around in the back of Nancy and I riding around
Speaker 1: in the back of a car being driven by Shelley Siegel,
Speaker 1: who was the um the publicist at Mustroom, and we
Speaker 1: did this coal miners daughter thing with him where he
Speaker 1: drove us to the record stations, I mean the radio stations,
Speaker 1: and we'd go in and sit down and go HI,
Speaker 1: where the girls from Heart and and and then the
Speaker 1: the jock would play our song and we talk a
Speaker 1: little bit, and then we'd leave and Shelley Wood slept
Speaker 1: down like a grammar blow and get him a hooker later.
Speaker 1: It was that old seventies kind of payola deal. So
Speaker 1: we did that within a couple of months with the
Speaker 1: record being done, and that kind of got the radio
Speaker 1: play going. And and then once it was being played,
Speaker 1: then people started calling in and different part of the country.
Speaker 1: Parts of the country opened up at different rates. It
Speaker 1: was interesting. You'd think it would be the glamorous part
Speaker 1: of the country's like New York and l A, but
Speaker 1: they were the last to like Heart. The places that
Speaker 1: came to us first were St. Louis and Atlanta and
Speaker 1: Detroit and Cleveland, you know, places like that, Chicago, the
Speaker 1: ones that were where people are more down that they
Speaker 1: liked their rock, you know. And when was the first
Speaker 1: time you heard it on the radio? Oh? Um, the
Speaker 1: first song I heard in the radio was Magic Man
Speaker 1: and it was I was It was probably uh a
Speaker 1: month after we got done recording, and I was coming
Speaker 1: back from the grocery store with my dog in the
Speaker 1: back of the car, and I had the radio on
Speaker 1: and here comes well first it's like Captain into Neil,
Speaker 1: you know, love will keep us together. And then the
Speaker 1: next song is magic Man, and I had to pull
Speaker 1: over and freak and freak out, you know, because it
Speaker 1: was so cool. It's so surreal. The first time you
Speaker 1: hear that it's it breaks this kind of little hyman
Speaker 1: and your brain of yourself image. It breaks it all down.
Speaker 1: So you're just like, whoa, here's me and that's me.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to learn how to accept that
Speaker 1: it's one. I don't know if that makes any sense,
Speaker 1: but no, absolutely, But how is yourself image? How was
Speaker 1: it before? Could you embrace the success? Did you feel
Speaker 1: you weren't worthy? You're getting the attention? So what was
Speaker 1: it like being inside you? I always thought that I
Speaker 1: was worthy. I never felt that I was the ship
Speaker 1: like because I knew I was learning. I was still
Speaker 1: worshiping at the knees of my idols like Plant and
Speaker 1: Ian Gillen and Elton John and the Rod Stewart, the
Speaker 1: various people that I liked, the singers at that time.
Speaker 1: And I guess that, you know, all I could here
Speaker 1: was someday I'll be able to sing that great. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have any sense of trying to sing like
Speaker 1: a woman or sing like a man. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to sing like a soul, you know. So summer the
Speaker 1: being really explodes. You know. I was traveling in the
Speaker 1: West and you know, not the metropolis, and you heard
Speaker 1: the records everywhere before I came ultimately to l A.
Speaker 1: So could you feel that? And the album was as
Speaker 1: successful as any other album that summer and you're on
Speaker 1: this little independent label out of Vancouver, did you realize
Speaker 1: it was going well? It didn't really go as quick
Speaker 1: as we wanted it too, because we weren't able to
Speaker 1: come down to the States to turi it because Michael
Speaker 1: Fisher was wanted for a draft evasion. Um. It was
Speaker 1: that summer. I think that he realized that he had
Speaker 1: to go get that straightened out so that he could
Speaker 1: come down with us as the band's manager to the
Speaker 1: States and we could open up down here, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So we didn't really get a feeling for what it
Speaker 1: was like to drive around to America and here our record.
Speaker 1: We only knew Canada at that point. But then once
Speaker 1: we were okay to come down here, it seemed like
Speaker 1: it was everywhere. Especially crazy On You was the first
Speaker 1: single I think, and then Magic Man came after that
Speaker 1: and we couldn't get it played that. This is funny.
Speaker 1: It took us a while to get Magic Man to
Speaker 1: really hit because it was long, and back then, to
Speaker 1: really hit you had to be played on AM radio
Speaker 1: and the songs couldn't be any longer than say, three
Speaker 1: minutes in fifteen or twenty. And so finally somebody, I
Speaker 1: don't exactly know how this went down, but somebody didn't
Speaker 1: edit that was the right length and they put that
Speaker 1: on AM radio and then all hell broke loose. We
Speaker 1: were an FM band up until then All Hell breaks loose?
Speaker 1: How does it change you in the band in the situation, Well,
Speaker 1: we start getting these really amazing gig offers like cal
Speaker 1: Jam two, and you know, it's just so funny what
Speaker 1: happens when all of a sudden your song is on
Speaker 1: the radio and everyone just thinks that you've taken this
Speaker 1: gigantic leap up into their view as some kind of
Speaker 1: mythological creature. Um. So yeah, we started getting really good
Speaker 1: gig offers to warm up for Jefferson Starship, and I
Speaker 1: guess there was Airplane at first, and then just about
Speaker 1: everybody bgs all the bands that were huge. Then we
Speaker 1: started getting offers to warm up for them and get
Speaker 1: on getting on these big stages, and just it just grew,
Speaker 1: just started to inhale and did you int your on
Speaker 1: your inter your level. I want to say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna blow I'm gonna win over the audience who frequently
Speaker 1: doesn't pay attention to the opening act, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: blow the headliner off the ridge. All right. Well I
Speaker 1: never held the headliner any ill will, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: wanted to go out there and just bulow everybody away.
Speaker 1: And especially when you go out there and maybe it's
Speaker 1: still light out and people are filing in. That's hard.
Speaker 1: That's hard. And I think about that now with opening acts,
Speaker 1: you know, like especially when you're playing sheds and it's
Speaker 1: six o'clock at night or seven o'clock at night, still light,
Speaker 1: it's hot and everything, the sun's on the stage. Some
Speaker 1: poor openers out there just sweating away, trying to just
Speaker 1: get them off. So I was trying to be nice
Speaker 1: to them, you know, given whatever they need, because that's
Speaker 1: a that's a hard place to be in. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: back then it was mostly indoors. We didn't play the
Speaker 1: whole shed live nation shed thing didn't exist then, So
Speaker 1: we got We came up playing inside arenas mostly and
Speaker 1: some outdoor. So now you have this level of success.
Speaker 1: You're somebody from Seattle, which was not a hotbed. They
Speaker 1: had the Kingsman then ultimately the Grunero, but you were
Speaker 1: between that. You in Vancouver was a different country. Suddenly
Speaker 1: you have this international success. You start meeting all your heroes.
Speaker 1: What's that like? Yeah, yeah, well it didn't take long
Speaker 1: to realize that there where the myth stops and the
Speaker 1: person starts, you know, when you start meeting people. And
Speaker 1: but still the thrill was not gone, you know, Meeting
Speaker 1: and John was just so over the top amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury, Brian, all those guys, all the different people
Speaker 1: we met. We opened up for Nazareth overseas and I
Speaker 1: was a huge fan of them. Um oh, Grace Slick,
Speaker 1: just all the different people who I looked up to
Speaker 1: when I was a little kid. Um, I mean not
Speaker 1: even that little, just the five years before. You know, Uh,
Speaker 1: that was really eye opening, life changing stuff. And it
Speaker 1: changes you because all of a sudden they're looking at you,
Speaker 1: talking to you as if you're an equal and you.
Speaker 1: I rapidly lost the thing of not worthy. Not worthy,
Speaker 1: you know, I felt like, well, maybe these are like dots,
Speaker 1: Maybe there are people that understand how I feel, and
Speaker 1: it it is true. I came to the feeling that
Speaker 1: there's there's definitely a type of alien being that does
Speaker 1: this for a living, and especially if you have the
Speaker 1: drive and the push to take it all the way,
Speaker 1: you've got to be a certain kind of animal. And
Speaker 1: so when you meet those animals, you reckon as each
Speaker 1: other sometimes, you know, other than Elton John who lived
Speaker 1: up to the rep plant I think Robert plant Um,
Speaker 1: I meant Jagger, and he was just as much of
Speaker 1: a princess as I thought he would be. We opened
Speaker 1: up for the Stones at in Boulder, Colorado, and their
Speaker 1: huge tour with the pink stage that raked down, you know,
Speaker 1: the lips and tongue thing, and they just had shuttles
Speaker 1: going from the hotel to the gig, and Michael and
Speaker 1: I were standing down there waiting for a shuttle to
Speaker 1: take us over there, and Jagger comes down to get
Speaker 1: the shuttle and he grabs the first shuttle and doesn't
Speaker 1: want anybody else in the car with him because it'll
Speaker 1: wrinkle his trousers right, and so I went, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I got it. Um Um. I thought Brian May wasn't
Speaker 1: an incredible intelligent person and a gentleman. Um John Paul Jones,
Speaker 1: same thing. Just there are so many of them, you know.
Speaker 1: I thought Grace Slick was. She was probably one of
Speaker 1: the wildest aliens I've met. So did you like the
Speaker 1: grind of the road? I did? Yeah, I was good
Speaker 1: with it. When you're in your mid twenties, even later twenties,
Speaker 1: it's it's no big deal, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: You recover from from the travel you can. You're just
Speaker 1: much more rough and tumble, you know, and uh, the
Speaker 1: hours and the all the different modes of transportation, like
Speaker 1: especially over in Europe, it's not, uh the tour bust
Speaker 1: thing is not as developed as it was over here,
Speaker 1: so you're on trains and and vans and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: you know, and especially over in Europe back then rock
Speaker 1: was just such a new thing. Rock shows were it
Speaker 1: wasn't anything like it is now, you know, as you
Speaker 1: will know. And so you'd go in and you'd play
Speaker 1: these weird places like I remember we had a gig
Speaker 1: in Belgium that where it was just this creepy, little old,
Speaker 1: mildewy theater with Nazareth, and they put us in a
Speaker 1: hotel that all the lampshades were torn and there was
Speaker 1: trash all over the floor and dirty sheets and stuff.
Speaker 1: And I was it scared the ship out of me
Speaker 1: because I was just a little girl from Bellevue, you know,
Speaker 1: where everything was fine and there's a big learning experience
Speaker 1: and lots of those places. Needles say, in the last
Speaker 1: five years we had me to awareness in America. But
Speaker 1: you were one of only a handful of successful female
Speaker 1: rock stars at the time. In addition, you were the
Speaker 1: front person. What was that like? Yeah, it was kind
Speaker 1: of like being being from another planet because no one
Speaker 1: really knew how to treat you, where to put you.
Speaker 1: If you were a folk singer or a disco diva,
Speaker 1: they would have known, but being a rock singer, they
Speaker 1: just automatically pegged me as is this wild kind of
Speaker 1: like a nymphamaniac um uh crazy drunk, just wild thing,
Speaker 1: you know, And that really wasn't what I was like.
Speaker 1: Um So, yeah, there was a real stereotype that was
Speaker 1: like an instantaneous, made up stereotype that was placed on me,
Speaker 1: and Nancy too to a lesser degree, because she's She's
Speaker 1: blond and fair and a little bit more delicate physically
Speaker 1: and everything. So they just saw me and went, there's
Speaker 1: a rock bitch, you know, and that I really didn't
Speaker 1: measure up. I want to messer up to that inside
Speaker 1: my own self. Well, I'm sure you had some bad
Speaker 1: experiences as a result of people's perceptions and their aggressiveness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I weathered that. I weathered it because I didn't
Speaker 1: take it seriously. Um. I just kind of had an
Speaker 1: attitude like, well, they don't know, you know, the band
Speaker 1: I'm with takes me seriously, and what really matters is
Speaker 1: what I do when I get up there. I kind
Speaker 1: of think I had a sense that I was instrumental
Speaker 1: in changing a perception of what women could be and
Speaker 1: do in music. I was one of the few that
Speaker 1: we're doing that. Okay, you have the legal situation with Mushroom.
Speaker 1: You end up on Portrait, which is basically epic part
Speaker 1: of CBS Records at the time. What was different about that, Well,
Speaker 1: it was different in that, like all of a sudden
Speaker 1: things got big, you know. It was just you went
Speaker 1: to New York to the Black rock, you know, and
Speaker 1: and you you hung out at a in a penthouse
Speaker 1: in a champagne cocktail party with Slim Whitman. You know,
Speaker 1: it just got automatically huge. And you met Yoko Ono
Speaker 1: and you met Bob Grulin and it got big fast. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very breathless cool time for sure. Uh. And just
Speaker 1: they made things happen. Okay, you know you're living in obscurity, right,
Speaker 1: the first album that blows up, then you have to
Speaker 1: write more songs. What was the pressure like, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a good one in terms of pressure. I mean
Speaker 1: it was. It was just like there's kind of a
Speaker 1: um hypocrisy because people just love your first record and
Speaker 1: they just go, oh, you're such an artist. You know,
Speaker 1: we just love your mind, we love your sensibility. Right,
Speaker 1: another one? So then you do and they go, well,
Speaker 1: why isn't that like the first one? You know? Like
Speaker 1: that then, And I'm not blaming other people for being
Speaker 1: um that way, because they're that way with all artists.
Speaker 1: The thing that blows up between the artists and the
Speaker 1: salesman is a year old. It will never change. That
Speaker 1: goes back to your question about how the music industry change, Well,
Speaker 1: not at all. You know, um, but yeah, the second
Speaker 1: record was more us writing songs that were that came
Speaker 1: out of being on the road and traveling and all
Speaker 1: this big concerts and stuff and are my personal experience.
Speaker 1: Like the song Little Queen, I think has a certain
Speaker 1: sort of bitterness about it, like, Okay, you gotta get
Speaker 1: up there, no matter how you feel, you gotta get
Speaker 1: up there. It's almost like a Judy Garland mentality, you know,
Speaker 1: put on the nose, get out there and just do it,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. So yeah, the second album had elements
Speaker 1: of that, almost biting the hand that was feeding us,
Speaker 1: but not quite. Yeah, but you had success with that
Speaker 1: second record. As long as you sell records, they don't
Speaker 1: in retrospect, they'll stay off of you. But how much
Speaker 1: did they interfere with your creative process there? Not at all,
Speaker 1: Not at all. I don't remember being interfered with it all. Um.
Speaker 1: We had the we had a combination in me and
Speaker 1: Nancy writing songs and Roger Fisher writing songs with us,
Speaker 1: and Mike Flicker producing. That was that was working at
Speaker 1: the record company company level two. So they didn't really
Speaker 1: start interfering with us until the eighties. Well, let's wait
Speaker 1: for the eighties. First, Second, how did how did? How
Speaker 1: did it end? With you and Michael Um? We were
Speaker 1: living in we bought a house together in Seattle, came
Speaker 1: down from Vancouver, Um and we were working on Baby
Speaker 1: Less Strange recording in Seattle at Case Smith and Uh,
Speaker 1: it was revealed to me by other people that he
Speaker 1: was unfaithful. And because I was off writing songs with
Speaker 1: Nancy and Sue all the time, and and I was
Speaker 1: or I was in the studio, we drifted apart and
Speaker 1: he found solace elsewhere. And I wasn't the kind of
Speaker 1: person who could just turn my head and say, well,
Speaker 1: that's my fault. You know. I walked out. I felt
Speaker 1: not jealous, but I felt rejected, and so I left.
Speaker 1: That's how we've split up. But he was your first
Speaker 1: serious relationship, and you can't get over that so fast.
Speaker 1: See I I didn't think so either, Like I felt
Speaker 1: that was a serious betrayal. I thought that maybe he,
Speaker 1: at the very worst, maybe he would tell me. But
Speaker 1: it got to this point where everyone else in the
Speaker 1: whole group knew except me, and everyone was trying to
Speaker 1: keep it from me because the golden goose, right, and
Speaker 1: they don't want to upset me or something make it
Speaker 1: so I killed myself or stop writing songs or whatever.
Speaker 1: As it turned out, I found out and that's what happened,
Speaker 1: and I went into a real tail spin for a
Speaker 1: long time about that. I think it shook myself confidence
Speaker 1: in a way that was real deep. How long did
Speaker 1: it take you to recover from that? If ever? Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't get into another serious relationship until I was
Speaker 1: sixty four years old, So it took me thirty plus
Speaker 1: years to actually trust again. Um, but that's not to
Speaker 1: say I didn't have a good time in those thirty
Speaker 1: five years. You know, I dove headlong into being free
Speaker 1: and individual and wild and uh, doing whatever I wanted
Speaker 1: with whoever I wanted for a long time, but not
Speaker 1: committing to anyone. So I guess you could say I
Speaker 1: didn't recover until I was in my sixties. And what
Speaker 1: changed I met Dean? What was different about him? He's
Speaker 1: incredibly intelligent. Um, he's he's like, uh, he's like me.
Speaker 1: It's almost like we're two versions of the same thing.
Speaker 1: And he's got this spirituality that it's it's really basic
Speaker 1: and simple and that I can really identify with. We
Speaker 1: both felt like we recognized each other. Um, that's about
Speaker 1: all I can say is like, it's just like this
Speaker 1: familiarity of someone that you just know that you know
Speaker 1: them and that well, this is it, this is what
Speaker 1: it's going to be. It's so comfortable. It's it's like,
Speaker 1: uh something that where you know you're supposed to be.
Speaker 1: But he's he's a lot, I mean, Deans a lot.
Speaker 1: He's a beautiful, highly intelligent person, but he's complicated and
Speaker 1: sensitive and brainy and scientific, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot. They're a lot there. So how do you
Speaker 1: cope between the two of you? You see, you have arguments,
Speaker 1: you see a therapist. How do you how do you
Speaker 1: all relationships have these issues? How do you guys cope? Well,
Speaker 1: he's he's a therapist. I see a therapist, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean our problems we mostly talk out. Um, sometimes
Speaker 1: we can't because we're both so complicated and we'll just
Speaker 1: go round and round until the elephant in the room
Speaker 1: is so big that we have to you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And when we got married, we just kind of walked
Speaker 1: off together, you know, we we didn't. We got together
Speaker 1: in November and we were married by April. Um. That
Speaker 1: was seven years ago, and we've been together every day
Speaker 1: and every night since, except for the four Daisy spent
Speaker 1: in the slammer over that White River deal that happened. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty intense how much total immersion we have
Speaker 1: together now in the interim in that thirty five years.
Speaker 1: You have children, correct, Yes, I do. I do. So
Speaker 1: how did that? How did that come to be? And
Speaker 1: what was that like? Well, I adopted both my children.
Speaker 1: They I was looking to adopt, um because I was
Speaker 1: ready to have children. I just didn't feel that I
Speaker 1: wanted to wait and wait and wait and wait for
Speaker 1: Mr Wright, you know, because I was in my thirties
Speaker 1: at that point. Um, no, actually early forties. So I
Speaker 1: went to an adoption agency and another one and another one,
Speaker 1: and they weren't really having it because here I am,
Speaker 1: this single woman in rock and roll, right, and they
Speaker 1: weren't looking to place babies. They were looking to place
Speaker 1: babies with two parents, upwardly mobile, stable families. So then
Speaker 1: it just happened that a young girl that I knew
Speaker 1: peripherally came to me and said that she was pregnant,
Speaker 1: she couldn't keep her child, would I consider adopting it?
Speaker 1: So I had That happened twice, and both my children
Speaker 1: came to me before they were born, and I supported
Speaker 1: the mothers. They're both like seventeen year old girls who
Speaker 1: had just gotten out of their depth, you know, and
Speaker 1: didn't want to be mothers yet, and so I supported them,
Speaker 1: took them to their doctor's appointments, and then when the
Speaker 1: time came for the births, I was there and you know,
Speaker 1: had two babies seven years apart. And what was it
Speaker 1: like being a single mother in addition working and working
Speaker 1: on the road frequently. Yeah, Well, luckily, you know, I
Speaker 1: took the babies on the road with me that when
Speaker 1: they're little, football is like that, they're fine on the road. Um.
Speaker 1: I was able to get to our buses where you
Speaker 1: could child proof them, you know. And and uh, I
Speaker 1: think my daughter was with me on the road until
Speaker 1: she's about thirteen when she finally said, you know, Mom,
Speaker 1: I've seen every aquarium and every minuteure golf place in
Speaker 1: this country and I'm sick of it. I want to
Speaker 1: be with my friends. And the same with my son.
Speaker 1: You know, they had great upbringing. They went to Europe
Speaker 1: and Japan and Australia and all over the country that
Speaker 1: they had a great childhood and what are they up
Speaker 1: to today. My daughter is thirty and she has got
Speaker 1: six kids. She married a man who had twins, then
Speaker 1: she had four of her own. And my son is
Speaker 1: twenty three and he's uh a corrections officer at the
Speaker 1: Monroe State Prison in Washington State. And are they independent
Speaker 1: of you or do you support them financially? They're independent,
Speaker 1: they're independent of me. Okay, let's go back. Ye, so
Speaker 1: you're on Epic, you have a number of hits. How
Speaker 1: does it end with Epic? M hmm, let's see. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it ended with Epic when we did the
Speaker 1: private audition album, or it might have been Passion Works.
Speaker 1: That was our first record that did not sell, the
Speaker 1: first one that was a commercial failure, right, and uh,
Speaker 1: suddenly we took this commercially, this big nose dive and
Speaker 1: heart couldn't really get arrested on the radio, which is
Speaker 1: you know, as you know, which is how you did
Speaker 1: things back then. There was no MTV yet or anything.
Speaker 1: It's just starting up. And so eventually at it just
Speaker 1: kind of went well, no, we're we're done here, you know.
Speaker 1: And right at that same moment, Don Grierson at Capitol
Speaker 1: came to us and said, well, you know, I think
Speaker 1: that you guys could really be huge if you allow
Speaker 1: me to introduce songwriters to you and if you take
Speaker 1: advantage of this MTV thing and if you signed a capital.
Speaker 1: So we we did that. You know, we were did
Speaker 1: kind of a faustian bargain with that. I think. I
Speaker 1: think at that point I wasn't ready to just go
Speaker 1: back to obscurity. I wanted to keep it going, uh
Speaker 1: And I liked getting all dressed up. I liked up singing,
Speaker 1: and so I didn't have any qualms about singing other
Speaker 1: people's material. It was just like going back to the
Speaker 1: beginning for me um at first. So we signed a
Speaker 1: Capital and made this record with ron Nevison producing Dan Sacelito,
Speaker 1: and it went number one. And of course they there
Speaker 1: were of the twelve or fourteen so songs that are
Speaker 1: on there, four of them or five of them were
Speaker 1: our compositions. The rest were from Diane Warren and Um
Speaker 1: Peter both and Bernie Taupin and a few other people
Speaker 1: who Kelly Steinberg, and so we had this huge success.
Speaker 1: So we made three albums right in the Rover Capital
Speaker 1: that that happened with, and we made all these big,
Speaker 1: expensive MTV videos and and and wore the big hair
Speaker 1: and all the whole kabuki set up, and that became
Speaker 1: a real trap, became a real uncomfortable deal, especially when
Speaker 1: you try to take that MTV thing with all the
Speaker 1: stylists and take it out in the hot summer outside
Speaker 1: shed setting where it's a hundred degrees and you're wearing
Speaker 1: this corset and this big, huge mane of hair and
Speaker 1: everything is just really hard um to maintain that pose.
Speaker 1: And so at the end of the eighties, after we
Speaker 1: did Heart Bad Animals and Brigade, I think we were
Speaker 1: done with that. We just were we were exhausted, and
Speaker 1: we went home to Seattle and just took everything off
Speaker 1: and just went, well, I don't know what's going to
Speaker 1: happen now, but I'm not doing that anymore. You know,
Speaker 1: we've gone about as first week ago with that one,
Speaker 1: and then there was grunge and we kind of landed
Speaker 1: in the middle of that. So all your hits previously
Speaker 1: been written by the band, primarily you and your sister.
Speaker 1: What's it like singing somebody else's songs and having all
Speaker 1: the recognition for that. Yeah, it's that's a real um
Speaker 1: double edged sword, because if the if, if the song
Speaker 1: is a great song that somebody else has written, it's
Speaker 1: a pleasure, like the song Alone or These Dreams or
Speaker 1: one of the really well written ones that has substance,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pleasure and a joy. But some
Speaker 1: of those other songs that were just written for the
Speaker 1: radio for the eighties radio, like nothing at All or
Speaker 1: who Will You Run To? Or Never, those types of
Speaker 1: things boring, boring, boring, and uh, for me, it was
Speaker 1: just like some kind of I don't know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: trying not to get too colorful here, but some kind
Speaker 1: of master masturbatory, um, meaningless exercise. Then I got real
Speaker 1: tired of and it wore on my voice because they
Speaker 1: weren't songs that I'd written for myself. But I knew
Speaker 1: how to pitch, you know. Um. So I think the
Speaker 1: mood changed in the eighties for us, and it was
Speaker 1: it was hard. It wasn't exciting. It was hard and
Speaker 1: commercial and corporate. How was your relationship with a label
Speaker 1: with Capital? It was good. I mean, we spent time
Speaker 1: over there at the Capitol Building in l A. And
Speaker 1: I went a couple of the Wednesday morning singles meetings,
Speaker 1: and you know, played that game a little bit, uh
Speaker 1: back then, because you get into the situation where they
Speaker 1: sort of have you over a barrel, like if if
Speaker 1: you don't cooperate, then they won't cooperate. If if you
Speaker 1: don't do what's necessary, then they could just let the
Speaker 1: whole project sit and fail. Um. So pretty soon you
Speaker 1: wake up and find yourself just in this situation of powerlessness,
Speaker 1: and the realization came to me that, like, God, what
Speaker 1: am I spending my life on this for? You know,
Speaker 1: this isn't what I got into this for. I'm only
Speaker 1: coming back to that now, you know. Okay. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: MTV is all about image, and women are very concerned
Speaker 1: about their image. How did you feel about being in
Speaker 1: videos in the focus, etcetera. Yeah, that that was really
Speaker 1: really hard because it was big, big money to make
Speaker 1: these big productions that were like mini movies with stylists
Speaker 1: and catering and um all these cameras and big name
Speaker 1: producers and directors and uh, it was a whole lot
Speaker 1: of work. And they the videos are what sold the
Speaker 1: records in those days, so it worked. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: there were issues in the eighties with your body and weight.
Speaker 1: What was that experience for you. Oh, it was really
Speaker 1: hard and and personal. It got really personal and it
Speaker 1: was hurtful. But I used to look at myself and go, well,
Speaker 1: you know, like, I'm not following the rules of how
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be, so do I deserve the because
Speaker 1: I'm not a h obeying the rules of what you're
Speaker 1: supposed to look like. And I always came back too, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not observing the rules, so maybe I deserve this. Um.
Speaker 1: I went through everything I could do, like, you know,
Speaker 1: every diet, every fasting, every thing you could do, but
Speaker 1: it was just too hard for me to live behind.
Speaker 1: I think that's a lot of what changed the mood
Speaker 1: about it the eighties for me too. Now, ultimately, after
Speaker 1: the Capital era, you do TV ads for weight loss? Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you decide to do that? Well? I met
Speaker 1: these people who, um, who were willing to help me
Speaker 1: in my weight loss goals and if I would speak
Speaker 1: out for one of their products, and so I did,
Speaker 1: and then they helped me, they paid for the medicine.
Speaker 1: And where are you at with your body and weight
Speaker 1: and image today? Well, you know, I I'm pretty relaxed
Speaker 1: about it. Um. I really have spent so much of
Speaker 1: my life struggling with it. That I it's just something
Speaker 1: that you can You can have it stopped your whole life,
Speaker 1: or you can realize that you can go on with
Speaker 1: your life and accept yourself radically. And I think I've
Speaker 1: met just the right people, like a couple of my
Speaker 1: trainers and stuff, who have taught me about radical self acceptance.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean just being happy to be a slab.
Speaker 1: That means looking at yourself realistically and and not through
Speaker 1: the eyes of pop culture. Okay, So you and your
Speaker 1: sister wrote all these songs. Who owns those songs today?
Speaker 1: Owns um? I don't know about Nancy, about her. I
Speaker 1: know that some of some of the publishing is with Merk.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that's I'm not sure how that's
Speaker 1: going right now. But so in in terms of your publishing,
Speaker 1: have you sold all your interest for a lump sum
Speaker 1: to Murk or there are things that doesn't own. There
Speaker 1: are the things that he does not own. So what
Speaker 1: does Mirk own? Okay? And what you do with the
Speaker 1: money that Mark gave you it's going to be invested, Okay.
Speaker 1: Was that a tough tough decision to make a deal
Speaker 1: with Mark, No, because because you know, we met with
Speaker 1: him and and talked a lot about about ideals and
Speaker 1: and you know how we're going to do this that Like,
Speaker 1: I didn't just want to sign it away or sell
Speaker 1: if it was just going to go into the toilet,
Speaker 1: you know. Oh okay. So if we go through the seventies,
Speaker 1: you're writing the songs, but revenue from the music business
Speaker 1: is less. We go into the eighties, the hit songs
Speaker 1: are not written by you, so you're making record royalties
Speaker 1: which are not extremely high and split with other members
Speaker 1: of the band. So how does it worked for you
Speaker 1: financially over these decades? Not in a bad way, because
Speaker 1: there's been a constant tour going on. We've just Heart
Speaker 1: has been touring, and I've been touring as a solo
Speaker 1: artist solidly since the eighties, No, I mean the beginning
Speaker 1: of the nineties. Just all the different forms that my
Speaker 1: touring life has taken. My solo stuff stuff with Heart,
Speaker 1: a duet with Nancy, the more recent stuff with the
Speaker 1: band I'm in now with That's like where the money
Speaker 1: has come from. For god, two decades it was playing live.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the beginning. You have these big
Speaker 1: hits did you see any money? Oh yeah, yep, dump
Speaker 1: trucks and what do you do with the money? Um?
Speaker 1: But things houses, cars, And I didn't be really smart
Speaker 1: with investments until just recently. Uh. But I never ran
Speaker 1: out of money. I was able to keep it just
Speaker 1: at a nice level and have the things I wanted,
Speaker 1: but not be all lavish. If you didn't go on
Speaker 1: the road anymore, you have enough money to get to
Speaker 1: the end in the lifestyle you want. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: so now. I think so now. But you really don't
Speaker 1: know because you don't know what's what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: You know, whatever money a person is able to put
Speaker 1: away could be just blown away if something catastrophic happens.
Speaker 1: So there's never a time when you're gonna be safe,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, I think if everything goes well,
Speaker 1: I'll be fine. I won't have to worry. I can
Speaker 1: just go about my life. So you want to be
Speaker 1: on the road, I do. Yeah. In fact, when enough
Speaker 1: time passes that I'm not on the road, I start
Speaker 1: to really climb the walls and I start to not
Speaker 1: be able to speak in a fluid way. And it's
Speaker 1: just that's what singing does for me and you're gonna
Speaker 1: do this forever till you drop, or at some point
Speaker 1: you're gonna say you're gonna hang up your shoes. I'm
Speaker 1: probably gonna do it till I drop, run till my
Speaker 1: children's children escort me off the stage, and go go out,
Speaker 1: go out there and get your grandma, you know, bring
Speaker 1: her back. And when you're home. Are you a reader,
Speaker 1: a TV watcher, traveler? How do you fill your time
Speaker 1: when you're not on the road travel? Dean and I
Speaker 1: watch a whole lot of a whole lot of stuff HBO, Netflix,
Speaker 1: You know, boy, do we ever, especially living out here
Speaker 1: in the country, swimming a lot of swimming. So what
Speaker 1: have you watched on Netflix? You recommend? Um, let's see
Speaker 1: God Marathy's Town. We're just actually finishing up watching Sopranos
Speaker 1: because I was on the road when that was out,
Speaker 1: when that was on TV, I never saw it. Best
Speaker 1: television show ever, totally. We're just finishing it up now
Speaker 1: for the first time, so that I really love fantastic
Speaker 1: And the only the only sad thing is that Gandalfoeni
Speaker 1: passed away. Well, don't tell me the end of the series.
Speaker 1: I'm only talking about a real life he passed away
Speaker 1: the guy okay, because you also know that they're making
Speaker 1: a prequel with his son. Oh, so it's gonna so
Speaker 1: it's gonna come out relatively soon. And do you listen
Speaker 1: to new music? Do you care about the music scene
Speaker 1: today or just pretty much self focused? I gotta admit
Speaker 1: I'm pretty much self focused right now. Um. I think
Speaker 1: it's it's hard for me to um. I'm such a
Speaker 1: word person. It's hard for me to get into the
Speaker 1: thought levels of people who are and thirty, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's the trouble I have with listening to new music.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's bad, it's that I've heard it
Speaker 1: before and I'm always trying to keep it going out,
Speaker 1: you know. Any regrets? Um Nah? I think that one
Speaker 1: thing makes the next thing happen. If I had to
Speaker 1: go back and make all those so us is again,
Speaker 1: those decisions again, they'd be the same. I think one
Speaker 1: thing I would do it I would be a a
Speaker 1: little bit more careful, not to be quite as much
Speaker 1: of a wild partier as I was in the eighties.
Speaker 1: But that's about the only thing that's something that you
Speaker 1: grow out of, you know. And the two songs you
Speaker 1: like to sing most m hmm. Right now, I'm enjoying
Speaker 1: singing black Wing. It's a song I wrote for my
Speaker 1: new album, and uh, I like singing no quarter okay,
Speaker 1: And it's been fantastic. Thanks so much for spending your time.
Speaker 1: Obviously you're still in the thick of it making new music,
Speaker 1: going on the road. Thanks a lot for taking the
Speaker 1: time with us. It's been really great. Until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sex,