A Heart-to-Heart with Nancy Wilson
Robert Burke Warren sits down with the rock icon, whose band, Heart, is currently on The Royal Flush tour.
Nancy Wilson, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist in Heart, a band that’s sold over 50 million albums, is talking about what she, a 71-year-old rock star on the road, does and does not eat.
“I can’t go without good chocolate,” she says, her voice warm, burnished. “But I can live without alcohol and deep fried stuff.”
“Same,” I say. “My doctor told me not to eat anything that comes in a box.”
An easy laugh—one of many to come—ripples down the phone line.
“That’s pretty good,” she says. Then, Nancy makes a confession: When she and her sister Ann—legendary 78-year-old lead singer of Heart—treat the band and crew to an advance screening of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, she’ll probably indulge in some cheap candy.
“I hope the movie doesn’t hit too close to home,” she says, laughing again.
Heart and crew are advancing east from Ohio, booked to play ninety minutes from my home at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair. It’s the band’s third time performing there.
Nancy, an original hippie chick, is eager to discuss the open-air venue on rock n’ roll hallowed ground, where half a million people gathered almost six decades ago for “three days of peace and music.”
“Me and Ann have dealt with a lot of politics and money around ‘the legacy of Heart,’ but the true artistic center is our blood relationship, the calm eye of the hurricane. Everything else is just chaos sometimes, but the creative center is strong, peaceful, and magic.”
“There’s definitely an energy there,” she says with awe. “Something in the soil, in the trees. The spirit is still in the place. Playing outside, you’re making a church in the air.”
“Yes,” I say. “Whenever I go there, I’m increasingly amazed the festival happened at all. They kept trying to duplicate it. They never could. Issues with insurance, and money…”
“Yeah,” Nancy says ruefully. “There’s a great New Yorker cartoon of two guys in business suits with martinis standing in the field at Bethel. The caption reads: ‘20 year Anniversary of Woodstock.’ Instead of gypsies with joints, it’s these money guys.
“Me and Ann have dealt with a lot of politics and money around ‘the legacy of Heart,’ but the true artistic center is our blood relationship, the calm eye of the hurricane. Everything else is just chaos sometimes, but the creative center is strong, peaceful, and magic.”
Indeed, while Heart achieved ‘70s fame as a tight-knit, versatile sextet, the Wilson sisters were always the focal point, not only as vocalists, but as primary songwriters. Since the mid-80s, the band has mainly been the Wilsons, plus some excellent players adeptly recreating the classic songs, and throwing in some epic Led Zeppelin covers. Since their club days in the Pacific Northwest, Heart has been renowned for the latter. Early fans even nicknamed them “Little Led Zeppelin.”
Back then, Nancy, a natural athlete, could eat and drink whatever she wanted, lose sleep, and still hit the boards with gusto. Now, in addition to mindful eating, strength training prior to a tour is a necessity.
“So you bounce instead of break,” she says.
***
Turns out, the older you are upon meeting a “legacy” rock star (I’m 60), the more there is to talk about. Anyone lucky enough to gray into elderhood, no matter their occupation or financial status, can commiserate on the journey, and not just about meds, maladies, and loss. Curiosity reveals a sense of wonder at the vista in the rearview, and evokes gratitude a youngster cannot yet comprehend.
When I ask Nancy what’s surprising about being an oldster, she says 21st century motherhood gave her a bracing perspective on the freedom she and her sister took for granted as Boomer children.
Turns out, the older you are upon meeting a “legacy” rock star (I’m 60), the more there is to talk about. Anyone lucky enough to gray into elderhood, no matter their occupation or financial status, can commiserate on the journey, and not just about meds, maladies, and loss. Curiosity reveals a sense of wonder at the vista in the rearview, and evokes gratitude a youngster cannot yet comprehend.
“We were like wildcats in the neighborhood,” she says. “Just the animal nature of being a kid. We felt safe without any parental guidance. We’d run out the front door, ride our bikes everywhere, all day long, until we smelled dinner cooking. We’d follow the scent back to our front door. We were so lucky.”
I get it. Nancy’s and my childhoods—hers in ‘60s Seattle, mine in ‘70s Atlanta—were typically unsupervised, and we both parented Gen Z’ers. Nancy’s twins with her ex, writer-director Cameron Crowe, are 25, and my son is 27. We compare notes on raising these “digital natives,” i.e. people who don’t remember a time before the internet, for whom our unplugged, free-range childhoods may as well have been on another planet.
Upon reading her and Ann’s 2012 memoir Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock & Roll, I will learn she was living the occasional nightmare: aggressive, normalized sexism, casual misogyny (documented in their hit “Barracuda”), occasional snarky reviews, heartbreak, and, by her own admission, cocaine madness, particularly in the band’s ‘80s incarnation, when Heart was all over MTV. Nancy refers to that era as “the hairspray years.”
“Getting my kids away from the isolation of their world of screentime was a challenge,” she says. “To get them outside in a place that felt safe without supervision was next to impossible.”
Now, our youngsters are functioning adults, likely unfazed by our concern over how the World Wide Web shaped them. In fact, when I’m scrolling mindlessly, my son delights in walking by and muttering in mock-annoyance, “Screenager.”
***
Talking to Nancy Wilson about childhood, I’m unstuck in time. I recall the 15-year-old version of me, a fledgling bass player in the nosebleeds of Atlanta’s sold-out Omni arena. May 7th, 1980 (thanks, Google). It’s Heart’s Bebe Le Strange tour. Standing there with my girlfriend, whose mom dropped us off amid the pot smoke and mullets, I’m mesmerized by twentysomething Nancy strutting the lip of the stage with a Stratocaster, tossing a permed blond mane, high-kicking. Wildcat energy intact. She’s living the dream. My dream.
Decades later, upon reading her and Ann’s 2012 memoir Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock & Roll, I will learn she was also living the occasional nightmare: aggressive, normalized sexism, casual misogyny (documented in their hit “Barracuda”), occasional snarky reviews, heartbreak, and, by her own admission, cocaine madness, particularly in the band’s ‘80s incarnation, when Heart was all over MTV. Nancy refers to that era as “the hairspray years.”
All I knew when I saw Heart in 1980 was how thrilling Nancy and her cohorts were. The songs, the blood harmony of the Wilson sisters atop a fantastic rock band, and Ann’s untouchable warrior-goddess voice and presence. In the 45 years since, I’ve heard comparable pipes maybe a couple times. (Brandi Carlile comes to mind.)
When I mention that Omni show to Nancy, and how Atlanta radio played her band incessantly in my late ‘70s teens, she indulgently says, “Oh, I remember.” Of course she does.
I tell her that arena gig inspired me the following year to join a band featuring a wunderkind 15-year-old singer named Bonnie. We specialized in Heart covers, something I feel sure no interviewer has ever told her.
“Really?” she says, pleasantly surprised.
“Yes. We did ‘Barracuda,’ ‘Straight On,’ ‘Bebe Le Strange,’ and ‘Even it Up,’ and we copped your arrangements of Zeppelin’s ‘Rock & Roll’ and Kiki Dee’s ‘I Got the Music In Me.’”
All I knew when I saw Heart in 1980 was how thrilling Nancy and her cohorts were. The songs, the blood harmony of the Wilson sisters atop a fantastic rock band, and Ann’s untouchable warrior-goddess voice and presence. In the 45 years since, I’ve heard comparable pipes maybe a couple times. (Brandi Carlile comes to mind.)
“Fun songs! Wow.”
“It was the first time I ever got paid to make music. We played a Georgia Tech frat party and I made enough money to put gas in my VW Bug.”
That laugh again. Then: “I gotta ask you the name of the band.”
“Little Dreamer.”
“Ah! Little Dreamer. I love baby band names.”
~
The current Heart run, billed as “The Royal Flush Tour,” is notable in part because Ann spent most of 2024 dealing with a cancer diagnosis, from which she is now recovered. As if that weren’t enough, just before the first tour date, due to balance issues from chemo, she fell and broke her elbow, necessitating the use of an onstage wheelchair, now upgraded to a standing stool. Nevertheless, the septuagenarian warrior goddess is ready to rock.
“Yeah, Ann kicked cancer’s ass,” Nancy says. “It’s all the sweeter now, playing these beautiful summer nights.” Instead of the pot smoke and mullets of yore, she says, “Families are coming out. It’s a perfect ‘first rock show.’ Nine-year-olds playing air guitar to ‘Barracuda.’ College kids. My two-year-old granddaughter just came to her first show.”
***
Four days after our conversation, the Heart caravan rolls into Bethel Woods. It’s a brisk Catskills summer night, the last date of this leg of the tour, with a hale and hearty Todd Rundgren opening. My wife and I motor over the historic terrain that once was Max Yasgur’s sprawling dairy farm. On a grassy hill, we park and walk past open tailgates, folks gathering, laughing, cooking on grills, getting their groove on in the waning light. Same as it ever was. As we take our seats in the open-air pavilion, I try to wrap my head around this fact: It’s been forty-five years since I’ve heard Heart live and in person.
Nancy Wilson and I have both been through a lot. Except the occasional child underfoot, virtually everyone in the Bethel Woods crowd has been through a lot. No words needed. Everybody’s got everybody else’s number. Unlike the half million who gathered here in ’69, we look beat up. Exactly like them, however, we’re engaging in an activity that pulls us away from regret and worry. We’re experiencing music, one of our species’ greatest inventions, performed in the light, pulling us into a timeless moment, where age is neither good nor bad.
The current Heart run, billed as “The Royal Flush Tour,” is notable in part because Ann spent most of 2024 dealing with a cancer diagnosis, from which she is now recovered. As if that weren’t enough, just before the first tour date, due to balance issues from chemo, she fell and broke her elbow, necessitating the use of an onstage wheelchair, now upgraded to a standing stool. Nevertheless, the septuagenarian warrior goddess is ready to rock.
During Heart’s heyday, Nancy prowled one side of the stage, while her sister owned the center, the spotlight. Now, the Wilsons are both center stage, with a versatile group of handsome musos to the right, left, and rear. Nancy talks a lot more between songs, and rarely leaves her sister’s side. She is the most lithe grandmother I have ever seen, kicking, crouching, her guitar a fluid extension of her body, pink-tipped fair hair flying. In addition to coaxing untold hours of music into the world, those hands have now cooked innumerable meals, grown vegetables, raised kids, and farewelled both elders and friends, experiences that radiate from the stage.
Ann has traded long raven hair for a short silver cut. From her throne-like stool, in a black pea coat and boots, she faithfully delivers the songs that granted the Wilsons entrance into the rock star pantheon: “Magic Man,” “Crazy On You,” “Straight On,” “Alone,” “Bebe Le Strange,” et al. Sweetly introducing her sister, she beams as Nancy slays her solo vocal turn, “These Dreams,” Heart’s first Number One. To pandemonium, the band executes jaw-dropping renditions of Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song,” “The Ocean,” and “Going to California,” reminding us why Heart was chosen to perform “Stairway to Heaven” at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors honoring Zeppelin, and featuring the Obamas. The YouTube video of that event (recommended) has been viewed hundreds of millions of times.
After a couple hours, Ann announces the band could do a “fake encore,” i.e. leave the stage when everyone knows they’ll return after the audience makes a lot of noise—or they could skip the bullshit and play their last song. Everyone agrees the latter is best, so Nancy rips into the iconic “Barracuda” riff, which sends the congregation into an age-defying frenzy. After a lengthy standing ovation, the band bows, and retreats into the wings.
As folks navigate the darkness back to their cars, my wife and I are granted a few dressing-room minutes with Nancy, resplendent in an embroidered tunic, understandably exhausted, but gracious, and game for some photos. She gestures to a table laden with food, and a small fridge of soft drinks, telling us to take whatever we want. I’m drawn to a fellow tall guy with kind eyes watching from the doorway. I immediately know it’s Nancy’s husband of thirteen years, Geoff. I ask him what’s next for them.
I’m reminded of Nancy’s answer to my question: what do you like about aging? She said, “When you’re older, you’re smarter from all the experience, all the trial and error. You don’t waste your time spinning your wheels on the wrong stuff or the wrong people. You get it wrong so much, and then you get it right.”
“We’re staying at an airport hotel in Newark tonight,” he says. “And we fly back to Sonoma tomorrow morning, pick up our Bermadoodle, and head home. She’s the best dog either of us has ever had.” In his words, his vibe, and his constant peripheral focus on Nancy, I can sense their life: an environment of love, family, and music, hard-won, and—due to loss only an oldster understands—deeply appreciated.
I’m reminded of Nancy’s answer to my question: what do you like about aging? She said, “When you’re older, you’re smarter from all the experience, all the trial and error. You don’t waste your time spinning your wheels on the wrong stuff or the wrong people. You get it wrong so much, and then you get it right.”
That laugh again.
Robert Burke Warren is a writer, performer, teacher, and musician, author of novel Perfectly Broken and one-man show Redheaded Friend, editor of Cash on Cash: Interviews & Encounters with Johnny Cash. His writing appears in Vulture, Salon, Longreads, Texas Music, Brooklyn Parent, Oldster, Paste, The Rumpus, The Bitter Southerner, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, to name a few. You can find his music on releases by RuPaul, Rosanne Cash, and rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson. In the 90s, he performed the lead in the West End musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. Prior to that he was a globetrotting bass player. He lives in Phoenicia, NY.
Previously, he took The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, and wrote an essay for Oldster called Visiting Durham, 1984.
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Here is the link to the Led Zepplin Heart tribute mentioned. Blew. Me. Away. Stairway to heaven, indeed.
https://youtu.be/2cZ_EFAmj08?si=Um9S7C_vQaTixzaR
What everyone else said! Beautiful piece, the physical connection to Woodstock and the current time took me right there. Although I am not quite Nancy’s age I wasn’t a huge Heart fan (more Joni and Bonnie) this makes me want to relisten to it all! 🙏🏼❤️