Welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Hello, and welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air. Today, we’re going to spend some time with one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in rock music, the extraordinary Anne Wilson from Heart.
For more than five decades, Anne’s voice has been the driving force behind some of rock’s most unforgettable songs. Think Barracuda, Crazy on You, Alone, and Magic Man, songs that have helped define a generation and cement Heart’s place as one of the greatest rock bands of all time. ♪ Oh, late nights so long ago, when I was not so strong, no ♪ ♪ But man came to me, never seen eyes so blue, no ♪ ♪ I could not run away at sea, we’d seen each other in a dream ♪ ♪ Boom like a new man, he’d look right through me, yeah, smile ♪ Anne Wilson, however, isn’t someone who lives in the past.
She’s still writing, recording, and exploring new musical territory. And in this episode, she joins me to talk about her latest album, the stories behind it, the inspiration that fuels her creativity, and why she still feels the pull of making new music even after all these years. Before we hear from Anne, though, it’s worth taking a moment to look back at the journey that brought her here, because the story of Heart really begins long before the band became one of the biggest rock acts in the world.
♪ And he’s a magic man, yeah, oh ♪ Anne Wilson’s story begins in California, where she was born into a military family. Because her father was a Marine Corps officer, the Wilson family moved around frequently during Anne’s childhood. Eventually, they settled for a time in Seattle, and it was there that music really started to take hold.
Anne was drawn to singing from a young age. Like many teenagers in the 60s, she fell in love with the music of the British Invasion, bands like The Beatles and The Who, along with the growing American rock scene. But what really set her apart was that voice.
Even early on, it was powerful, expressive, and unmistakably her own. ♪ Round the station, darkness falls ♪ ♪ Silence lays against the walls ♪ ♪ And a girl waiting there with gentle hands for a man ♪ ♪ And there within the glass, her face wiser than the mask ♪ ♪ Reflecting what she wants to be, what he wants to see ♪ ♪ Steaming, hissing on the air, slowing, stopping ♪ ♪ Train is there and he’s there, waiting now in the aisle, a ready smile ♪ ♪ And there within the glass, he sees his face, is his hair in place? ♪ ♪ And he thinks again of words he’ll say, forgotten lines of the play ♪ Anne’s younger sister Nancy would soon follow her into music. Nancy was a talented guitarist with a natural feel for melody and harmony, and the sisters shared a deep musical connection.
Growing up, they sang together often, developing the kind of instinctive blend that only siblings seemed to have. By the early 70s, Anne had joined a local band in Seattle called Heart. The group was still finding its direction, but Anne’s commanding voice quickly made her the focal point.
When Nancy joined not long after, something really special clicked into place. ♪ Heading out this morning to the sun ♪ ♪ And on the diamond waves, little darling one ♪ ♪ I went over the sea, oh, and in a ship of dreams ♪ ♪ Oh, and in a dreamboat, and in a little ship of dreams ♪ Together, the Wilson sisters brought a dynamic that was unusual for the rock world at the time. Powerful female musicians fronting a hard rock band with the energy and swagger of their male counterparts.
Anne’s soaring vocals, paired with Nancy’s guitar work, created a sound that was both fierce and melodic. But as Anne says, it wasn’t always easy. There were a lot of really classic, cliche now, sexist obstacles.
You know, just the stereotype kind of sleazy sexist stuff went on that we wouldn’t dream of accepting now. If you’ve lived as long as I have and been, you know, functioning in the world of men and women working together, you really see how far, though incrementally, how far women have come since the mid-seventies. ♪ Sad faces painted over with those amazing smiles ♪ ♪ Heading out to somewhere better ♪ ♪ Won’t be there for a while ♪ The girls relocated to Canada in the mid-seventies, and the band began refining the music that would soon launch them onto the world stage.
Their debut album, Dreamboat Annie, arrived in 75 and produced hits like Magic Man and Crazy on You. Suddenly, heart were everywhere and the Wilson sisters had become pioneers for women in rock. The rest, as they say, is history.
♪ Won’t be there for a while, for a while, for a while ♪ ♪ Won’t be there for a while, for a while, for a while ♪ Anne Wilson’s musical story didn’t stop there. Decades later, she’s still writing, still performing, and still exploring new sounds, which brings us to the music she’s creating today. So let’s hear a little more from Anne Wilson herself as she talks about the inspiration behind her latest album.
Anne Wilson, how lovely to have you company. How are you? I’m doing well, thank you. And you’ve been doing some fabulous things, none the least of which is this new single.
Yeah, it’s timely. That song is a call to unity because right now in this country, in the US, there’s a polarization among the population that is so deep and wide that I just thought it’s ridiculous, you know, like we need an anthem. So the Steve Earle song was just the ticket, I thought.
♪ I was walking down the street ♪ ♪ In the town where I was born ♪ ♪ I was moving to a beat that I never felt before ♪ ♪ So I opened up my eyes and I took a look around ♪ ♪ I saw it written in the sky ♪ ♪ The revolution starts now ♪ ♪ The revolution starts now ♪ ♪ Revolution starts here ♪ ♪ Where you work and where you do and what you say ♪ ♪ The revolution starts now ♪ When did you start working on this? My husband and I thought we’ve got to get out of here for our marriage and for ourselves. And we’d like to go and travel. So we spent a whole lot of money and leased a tour bus and took a big road trip.
And we went to, we live in Florida and we went all the way over across to LA and then to San Francisco and then to Seattle and had meetings. And then when we got up to Seattle, I pulled a band together and we recorded that song. We had a great session.
We got some great music out of it. Was it only this single that you recorded or did you record enough for a whole album? We got about, let’s see, five songs out of it. I’m not really that interested in releasing an album as such next year.
I want to just drop one song at a time. That’s kind of more how I like to listen these days. It builds the anticipation for what comes next.
Right, and you don’t really test people’s attention span that way because we’re notoriously short these days. Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of tracks released on an album just get lost after the main ones, don’t they? People don’t pay too much attention to them, as you say.
Right, I think it’s smarter to even do like an EP where you’ve got four good songs. Yeah. ♪ Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay ♪ ♪ Nobody knows where it comes or where it goes ♪ ♪ I know it’s everybody’s sin ♪ ♪ You gotta lose the notions out of you ♪ ♪ With my life I’m preaching ♪ ♪ Live and learn from fools and from sages ♪ ♪ You know it’s true, all up to you, yeah ♪ ♪ Sing with me, sing before they leave ♪ ♪ Sing before they leave ♪ Your voice is sounding better than ever.
Well, thank you, thank you. Frankly, I didn’t even know if it was, what was gonna happen when I got in the studio after not having sung. I always sort of wonder after time off where it’s gonna come from.
But when I got in the studio, took me a little bit of, you know, warming up, but yeah, I could still sing. You don’t do regular vocal exercises or anything? Well, when we’re on tour or when we’re recording an album or something like that, it’s, yeah, it’s like I warm up and I’m really disciplined about my voice, but just in day-to-day life, I don’t go around singing at the top of my lungs. No singing in the shower? Not really, not really.
Oh, come on, a bar or two. I’m kind of shy around just me and my husband to just open up and blow in the house, you know? Are you? Yeah, I kind of am. And I know he wouldn’t mind it, but I’m just, I’m shy, you know, like I’m not shy around 10,000 people, but I’m very shy around two, you know? One of the many fascinating things about Anne Wilson is the contrast between her powerful stage presence and her naturally shy personality offstage.
As she grew up in that military family, she moved around frequently, which made her more introspective than outgoing. Music became her refuge, a way to express emotions that didn’t always come easily in everyday life. Singing, though, was different.
When Anne stepped up to the microphone, the shyness seemed to disappear. She’s often said that performing allows her to channel emotion through the music rather than focusing on herself. Once she’s in the song, the nerves fall away.
That’s part of what makes her performances so compelling. The intensity audiences feel isn’t just showmanship, it’s genuine emotional connection. Offstage, Anne has often been described as thoughtful and reserved, someone who prefers to let the music speak for itself.
It’s a striking contrast. The quiet, reflective person who can step onto a stage and unleash one of the most powerful voices in rock. ♪ And we still have time, we might still get by ♪ ♪ Every time I think about it, I wanna go away ♪ ♪ And give you some time to be your own ♪ ♪ Oh, ooh, voice touching the skin ♪ ♪ The gentle, sweet singing of leaves in the wind ♪ ♪ The whisper that calls after you in the night ♪ ♪ And kisses you here and there, let me die, ooh ♪ ♪ Wild man’s world is crying in the rain ♪ ♪ Whatcha gonna do, make a woman so afraid of you? ♪ ♪ Whatcha gonna do? ♪ I set the bar for myself really high vocally.
If I’m not present and authentic and real, I get mad at myself. So the stage persona is very different from the woman that you are. I guess, yeah, yeah.
I guess it’s some kind of pentimento thing where there’s two layers of me.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. You’ve had the most incredible career so far and obviously still going very strong.
Do you mind if I just take you back a little bit to the heyday of Hart? Oh, not at all. You were quite groundbreaking for female singers, weren’t you? Back then, yes, especially to sing rock, to do rock songs and write all our own stuff and everything. Was it tough to break into the industry at that time? Yes, it was, and there were a lot of really classic cliché now sexist obstacles.
You know, just the stereotype kind of sleazy sexist stuff went on that we wouldn’t dream of accepting now. It was all par for the course then, wasn’t it? Right, yeah, yeah. If you’ve lived as long as I have and been, you know, functioning in the world of men and women working together, you really see how far, though incrementally, how far women have come since the mid-70s, you know? Yeah.
That’s my high, too, because it’s just like nothing, no inch of ground that’s been gained was easy won. You know, it was all really painfully fought for. Life ain’t the end, I saw you again Today, I had to turn my heart away Smile like the sun, kiss as boring I didn’t know where you’d go Baroque rock Baroque rock on Whisper game And if the real thing don’t do the trick You better wake up from that dream You’re gonna burn, burn, burn, burn to the grid Ooh, barracuda Can you tell me a little bit about Barracuda? Yeah, that was on our second album, and that was written during a time when we were just starting to take off, and Nancy and I were just starting to understand that there was sexism out there in the industry, and it was kind of at its height, and we had come offstage.
We were in Detroit, Michigan. We were opening up for the Kinks, and after our set, the dressing room was all full of guys, you know, sleazy-type guys in the satin baseball jackets of the 70s, and one of them came up to me and said something like, Oh, yeah, you know, you girls sound great. You’re so beautiful.
You’re so beautiful together. Like, you and Nancy are lovers, right? And he just assumed that us being together in a band was some kind of a sort of a pornographic voyeuristic two chicks together. That’s so critical.
And that dawned on me and made me really furious because I thought, Oh, my God. Here we are just trying to be pure-hearted, bring our stuff out, and be authentic, and this sleazeball has to imply that we are incestuous and get off on it. And so I went back to the hotel, and I banged out all these lyrics that were barracuda, and then we put it to music.
Both of you were really young, and I’d imagine quite naive at that time. Absolutely, and I think that’s why it never dawned on me that we could be being viewed in kind of a pornographic way. We had never even considered that, you know? In our family, we didn’t have that kind of mindset.
I’m still very interested in how you guys, or you girls, managed to forge your way in this sea of men singing rock and roll with such veracity as you did. What did you have to draw from yourself in order to keep pushing yourself forward? Well, you know, I think the main thing that both my sister and I had to do at the beginning to stay with it was to keep pushing ourselves forward. It was to not take it all too seriously and take the little paper cuts that came every day of sexism that seriously.
I mean, we were raised by a mother who was, I would call her a wide-open feminist. I mean, she was… She never told us that there was something we could not do because we were women. She just always said, go do it, you know, just find your bliss, as they used to say.
And there’s no reason why you can’t do whatever you want to do. And I guess we took that to heart. Once Barracuda exploded onto the airwaves in 77, everything changed for Hart.
The song became one of the band’s defining hits. It pushed their second album, Little Queen, up the charts and firmly established Hart as one of the most exciting rock bands of the era. Suddenly, the venues they were playing in were getting bigger.
What had started in clubs and theatres in Vancouver quickly moved into large concert halls and arenas. Hart hit the road relentlessly, touring across North America and building a reputation as a formidable live band. There’s a lady in shore All that glitters is gold And she’s buying a stairway to hell When she gets there she knows If the stores are all closed With words she can get what she can’t afford Ooh, and she’s buying a stairway to hell There’s a sign on the wall But she wants to be sure Cause you know sometimes words have to mean There’s a songbird who sings Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven There’s a feeling I get When I look to the rest And my spirit is crying The songbird brings the smoke through the chain And the voices of those who stand by me Night after night, audiences came to see the group that was led by two women who could match and often outshine the biggest rock acts of the day.
The late 70s became a remarkably productive period. The band released a string of successful albums including Dog and Butterfly in 78 which showed a more reflective side of their music while still delivering powerful rock moments. The album went platinum and proved that Hart wasn’t just a one-album success story.
By this point, Anne and Nancy Wilson had become true pioneers. At a time when the rock world was still dominated by male performers they were fronting one of the biggest bands on the planet. Was it a difficult road to get where you had to go? Yeah, I think that anytime anyone tries to make it big and have a career in the entertainment world in many worlds, but in the entertainment world in particular it really is a struggle because you have to recognize moments that are really valuable you have to recognize people that are really valuable to help you and you have to know how far to push your idealism and when maybe somebody else is right, you know.
It’s like, I call it like surfing. You wait for a wave and you catch a wave and you ride it in and then it dissipates and you paddle back out and ride in again, you know. I mean, that’s how it’s been over 45 plus years.
Was the ambition to go all the way into the shore? Oh yeah, yeah. And we did back in the 1980s. We had I think the most commercially successful part of our career with number one albums and stuff like that.
So that kind of achievement we actually did have but the achievements that I thought were the most meaningful were the creative ones and the groundbreaking ones such as being a part of kicking in the door for more women to actually feel good about getting into the industry. There I was with the old man Stranded again, so off I ran A young world crashing around me No possibilities of getting what I need He looked at me and smiled Said no, no, no, no, child See the dog and the butterfly A beanie and a butterfly She had the time She rolled back down to the warm soft ground Laughing, she don’t know why She don’t know why Dog and butterfly Well I stumbled upon your secret place Saping trees with the tears on your face Wrestling with your desires A frozen stranger Stealing your fires The message in my mind Only words that I could find See the dog and the butterfly A beanie and a butterfly Dog and butterfly She had the time She rolled back down to the warm soft ground Laughing to the sky Up to the sky Dog and butterfly The momentum continued into the early 80s with major tours, loyal fans and a catalogue of songs that just kept growing. Hart had firmly secured its place in rock history and the Wilson sisters were only just getting started.
We’ve written so many songs over the decades and people are always comparing whatever songs we write or I write to those first songs. The first thing you hear and see is what you remember, you know. Which would you say was your favourite Hart track? Wow, probably they would be tracks that they’re not the big hits necessarily but deep cuts, you know for me like there’s a song called In The Cool and I think it’s on Jupiter’s Darling early 2000s.
Why? I like that, it’s powerful, it’s in a blues idiom but it’s more, you know and it’s for me as a singer, it’s challenging and it’s a really good chance to open my soul. You know some songs are more, they clip right along and they’re kind of cheerful and that’s great but this song In The Cool it’s one of those things where you can really just throw back your head and just howl, you know and I love that. I’m not a hero Not a saint I’m just a fever trying to cool it Through the burning days I’m not a lady Or Miss Lane I’m just tumbling through the sun Heels over head But in the cool There’s a place I can lay away the day Forsake all the hours Unkind My dreams and little brother’s heartache Down the road I travel You were raised on blues music, weren’t you? That was your first love.
Yeah, yeah. I think the first music that my sister and I ever performed together was folk music because our parents were into folk music back in their day in the late 1960s with the Limelighters and Peter, Paul and Mary and Pete Seeger and all that that was their thing so we kind of bounced off of that and gradually evolved from folk music into our own kind of folk rock and then into rock. How did that progression take place? Was that as a venture for commercialism? No, at first it wasn’t about commercialism it was more about this unspoken drive this drive that you could not quantify that you just had to get a guitar and you had to play it you had to get in front of people it was some kind of deep self-fulfillment and then later on when it actually was a band that made a record and we started to sell then the light bulb went on over my head and hey, I could actually make a living at this! The 80s kind of changed things for you a bit, didn’t it? There was a whole new era of music that came in how did you handle that? That was a time when we were accepting songs by other songwriters and collaborating with other songwriters.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. In the 80s, Hart found themselves at a bit of a crossroads.
Throughout the 70s, Anne and Nancy had built their reputation not just as performers, but as songwriters, creating many of the band’s best known songs themselves. We had this credo for, I don’t know, about three years that we would do whatever it took to just get a number one. It was like, this is what we want to achieve.
And so we, in a sense, made a kind of Faustian bargain in the 80s where we just wrote what was on the radio and it worked, you know. But it was my least favourite era of the band just because it was so inauthentic. The early 80s were a turbulent time for Hart.
The band went through line-up changes, management struggles and a rather difficult period with their record label. Their 1980 album, Bebola Strange, still performed really well, but the follow-up records, Private Audition in 82 and Passionworks in 83, didn’t have the same commercial impact. Radio tastes were changing.
MTV had arrived and the music industry was shifting towards a more pop-leaning rock sound. By 84, Hart had left Epic Records and signed with Capitol and the label had a clear idea about how to relaunch them. The plan was to reposition Hart for the MTV era with bigger radio-friendly songs, the kind of power ballads and arena rock anthems that were dominating the charts.
Don’t stop believing Feel like people Believing That’s when the decision was made to bring in outside songwriters. For the Wilson sisters, it wasn’t that they’d suddenly stop writing altogether, but the label strongly encouraged them to record material from professional songwriting teams who specialised in hit singles. This was common strategy at the time, especially for artists trying to regain chart momentum.
The result was the self-titled album Hart in 85 and it completely revived the band’s career. Songs like What About Love, These Dreams and Never became massive hits. In fact, These Dreams gave Hart their first number one single in the US.
Spare a little care Save some light for me Figures of a hair Moving in the trees White skin in linen Perfume on my wrist And the full moon that hangs over These dreams in the mist These dreams You want to close my eyes Every second of the night I live another life These dreams That sleep when it’s cold outside Every moment I’m awake But when I’m awake When I’m awake Hart’s success continued with albums like Bad Animals in 87 and Brigade in 90, producing more chart-topping songs including Alone and All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You. Commercially, it was the most successful period of the band’s career. However, creatively, it was a bit of a compromise.
Many of the biggest songs from that era weren’t written by Anne and Nancy, which led some critics, and even the sisters themselves, to say that Hart had lost a little of the raw identity that defined their earlier work. Over time, Anne and Nancy returned more strongly to writing their own material again, especially in later albums and solo projects. We move forward through that in 2006 you released your first solo album, which was fabulous, and you had some wonderful special guests appear with you on that.
Ben Mink and Alison Krauss and Wynonna Judd and Rufus Wainwright and Elton John. It was just really cool. Gretchen Wilson.
Yeah, it was pretty great. And it was my first ever foray out of the band. My sister was busy with her husband Cameron Crew at that time, who was a movie writer and director, and she was scoring his movies.
So we took a hiatus. And then I think around 99 or something we got back together. She and I did a duet tour, just the two of us.
And then we started Hart up again in about 2002, I think, with Jupiter’s Darling. Keep it on the sea Through the winter valley Wide And through the darkest night Here comes evil news Of the coming fight Yeah So love bring your birds, bring your feathers of peace All through the storm let the tides release Yeah, yeah, yeah Love bring your birds, bring your feathers of peace All through the storm let the tides release Come on down, lost angel Find us now From the clouds above Right down to the ground Lost angel Come on down Went all the way up to 2013, where we were inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame and then making records, you know. Oh, we knew each other long before we got into Hart.
So, no, I wouldn’t say we’ve had enough of each other, but we have, you know, we’re both grown up and we both have husbands and families and we have other lives now, so when we do come together to make music it’s really because we really want to. It isn’t because of any sense of having to do it or, well, we better do this, you know. No, we don’t have that.
You’ve managed to achieve all your aspirations and dreams, haven’t you? You can tick everything off the list and go, yep, done that, done that, done that. So, now it’s just for pure joy. Yeah, yeah, and that’s what we had when we first started, so like, I’m really happy about that.
I’m satisfied with that. That’s a good reason for doing this. Will we see you and Nancy together again on the road? Yeah, I imagine so.
I imagine so. Yeah, we’ve been having offers from Live Nation and different promoters and, you know, I think that it all starts with the music because it’s got to start from real physical something to back up the whole social media presence and all that kind of stuff. There has to be real music, so that’s why I will keep on Ivy dripping it out.
Anne’s most recent solo project is the 2023 album Another Door, recorded with her backing band Tripzitter. The album shows a slightly different side of her artistry compared with the classic heart sound. While the powerful vocals are still unmistakable, the music leans into a mix of bluesy rock, soul influences and contemporary rock textures.
Anne has described the record as a very personal project, one that reflects the experience and perspective she’s gained over decades in music. Rather than trying to recreate the arena rock sound of Heart’s biggest hits, Another Door focuses on mood, storytelling and emotional depth. There’s a time, sparklin’ red, super shinin’ blue, lettin’ the hard things go, lettin’ the hard things go Let my children through darkness go I never have had much luck with sending computer files to different musicians and having them record at home and sending them back to me.
I never have really felt the spark in that, you know. So it was time to not do an album of covers. Because I’d been songwriting during quarantine, I had all these new songs.
It was great for me because I got to tell my own stories, you know. And the main thing was is that there was nobody to tell me anything except myself. The buck stopped with me, so I got to write about the things that I find exciting and interesting, things from my own life.
It was really a great experience, kind of like a soul purge. When I open my closet door My feet are barely touching the floor Like a promise that I’m sure And zip it all up Zip it slow and zip it up I wanted to reach into my emotions and my experiences in life at the moment and pull out anecdotes. And so, especially as the world turns I had license to go in and just write about my own life.
When I’m writing for myself, there are no expectations. When you write for Heart it’s more like you’re playing against heart hits like Barracuda and Crazy on You and Alone and These Dreams and all that. And there are expectations of what Heart is supposed to sound like.
But for me on a solo album, it’s no holds barred. I hear the ticking of the clock I’m lying here on this beach dog I wonder where you are tonight, nowhere to see on the telephone And the night comes by so very slow Oh, I hope that you’re in there alone Until I touch your lips in the morning, I was gonna tell you tonight But the secret is still my own Though it’s still unknown Alone We’ve written so many songs over the decades and people are always comparing whatever songs we write or I write to those first songs. The first thing you hear and see is what you remember, you know.
So, yeah, it was nice to be free of that for a moment. People are always asking me if you had it to do all over again, what would you do different? And my answer is always the same, it’s always I wouldn’t change a thing. Because given the conditions and the questions I had to answer through the decades of my life, I think that the decisions I made were good.
You know, I wouldn’t go back and try and change anything. Thank you so much Ann for talking to me today. It’s been such a pleasure to have a chat with you.
I wish you lots of continued success and heartiest congratulations on what you guys have achieved today. Thank you and it was great talking with you too. Bye.