In the mid-1970s, hard rock was a boys’ club. Then two sisters from Seattle picked up their instruments, walked onto the stage, and blew the doors off the whole place. Ann and Nancy Wilson — one with a voice that could strip paint, the other with a guitar that could sing — built Heart into one of the great American rock bands. And they did it twice: first as seventies FM rockers, then as eighties pop conquerors.
From a Seattle Garage to the Great White North
Heart’s roots go back to the late 1960s in the Seattle area, where bassist Steve Fossen and guitarist Roger Fisher played in a band first called the Army, then Hocus Pocus, then White Heart. Ann Wilson, born June 19, 1950, joined the group in the early 1970s, becoming both its powerhouse lead singer and the romantic partner of the band’s guitarist-manager, Mike Fisher. Her younger sister Nancy, born March 16, 1954, joined in 1974 — and soon became involved with Mike’s brother, lead guitarist Roger.
In the early seventies the band decamped across the border to Vancouver, British Columbia, where the music scene was friendlier and the cost of living lower. They settled on a simpler name: Heart. With drummer Michael Derosier and guitarist-keyboardist Howard Leese rounding out the lineup, the band woodshedded in Canadian clubs, built a loyal following, and caught the ear of Shelly Siegel, the owner of a small Vancouver label called Mushroom Records. Nobody knew it yet, but the sisters from Seattle were about to set FM radio on fire.
“Dreamboat Annie”: The Debut That Roared
Heart recorded their debut album, “Dreamboat Annie,” in the summer of 1975 at Vancouver’s Can-Base Studios with producer Mike Flicker. It was released in Canada that August on the tiny Mushroom label, and its second single, “Magic Man,” slowly started getting airplay — first on a Montreal station, then everywhere. The song was autobiographical: Ann had written it about leaving home to chase her romance with Mike Fisher in Vancouver. The airplay earned Heart a coveted opening slot for Rod Stewart in Montreal in October 1975, and to meet the demand, Mushroom hastily set up an American division. The album got its full U.S. release on Valentine’s Day, 1976.
It took off like a rocket. “Dreamboat Annie” climbed to number seven on the Billboard 200 and went platinum, selling over a million copies. “Magic Man” peaked at number nine on the Hot 100 — the band’s first American Top 10 hit — and was followed by “Crazy on You,” with its unforgettable acoustic-to-electric guitar explosion, at number 35. Overnight, Heart became the most exciting new band in rock, and the first hard rock band fronted by women to break through on a massive scale.
“Barracuda”: The Song That Fought Back
Success came with an ugly side. In 1977, Mushroom Records ran a full-page magazine ad showing the bare-shouldered Wilson sisters — an image from the “Dreamboat Annie” cover — with the suggestive caption, “It was only our first time!” A reporter then asked Ann an even more insulting question, implying the sisters were lesbian lovers. Furious, Ann went back to her hotel room and poured her anger into a set of lyrics. The band set them to a galloping, shark-toothed riff, and “Barracuda” was born.
It became the centerpiece of “Little Queen” (1977), the band’s second album, and roared to number 11 on the charts. “Little Queen” became Heart’s second million-seller, and the whole episode taught the Wilson sisters a lesson they never forgot: in rock and roll, the best revenge is a great song. The Mushroom relationship was now poisoned, though, and the band soon jumped to a major label.
“Dog & Butterfly” and the Early-Eighties Drift
Heart closed the decade in fine form. “Dog & Butterfly,” released in late 1978, went double platinum and peaked at number 17 on the Billboard 200, spinning off the gentle title track and the rocker “Straight On.” The Wilson sisters were writing most of their own material and playing to arenas.
But the early 1980s were unkind. The band’s folk-and-hard-rock blend fell out of fashion as new wave and synth-pop took over the airwaves. Albums like “Bébé le Strange” (1980) and “Private Audition” (1982) had their moments — “Tell It Like It Is” kept them on the radio — but the fire was dimming. Lineup changes and label shuffles didn’t help. By 1984, many in the industry had quietly written Heart off as a seventies act. The Wilson sisters, stubborn as ever, had other plans.
The Big 1985 Comeback
Heart signed with Capitol Records, cleaned house, and made a bold decision: they would stop writing nearly everything themselves, bring in outside songwriters, and embrace the big, glossy arena-rock sound of the mid-eighties. The result was “Heart,” the band’s self-titled eighth album, released in 1985. It was a monster. The album shot to number one on the Billboard 200 and eventually went five-times platinum, powered by a string of smash singles: the pleading “What About Love,” the rockers “Never” and “Nothin’ at All,” and “These Dreams” — a shimmering ballad sung, for the first time, by Nancy Wilson — which became the band’s first-ever number-one single in 1986.
Almost a decade after “Barracuda,” Heart was bigger than ever, with a whole new generation of fans who had never heard “Dreamboat Annie.” The comeback was total.
“Alone”: The Power Ballad of the Decade
If 1985 was the comeback, 1987 was the coronation. “Bad Animals,” Heart’s ninth album, arrived that May with a lead single that would become the biggest hit of the band’s career. “Alone” — a power ballad written by hitmakers Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, the duo behind “Like a Virgin” — had already flopped twice in other hands before Heart got it. In Ann Wilson’s hands it became a vocal tour de force, opening with Nancy’s soft piano before erupting into one of the most explosive choruses of the decade.
“Alone” hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 11, 1987, knocking Whitney Houston off the top spot, and stayed there for three weeks. It finished the year as the number-two song of 1987, topped the charts in Canada, reached number three in Britain — Heart’s first UK Top 40 hit — and earned the band a Grammy nomination. The album went triple platinum and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200, spinning off two more hits in “Who Will You Run To” and “There’s the Girl.” Heart would come close to the summit again — 1990’s “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You” peaked at number two — but “Alone” remains their crowning chart achievement.
The Hall of Fame and the Legacy of the Sisters
Heart took a break in the late nineties — the sisters even released a pair of rootsy albums as the Lovemongers — then roared back in the 2000s with albums like “Jupiter’s Darling” and “Red Velvet Car.” The ultimate honor came in 2013, when Heart was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside the classic lineup of Ann, Nancy, Roger Fisher, Steve Fossen, Howard Leese, and Michael Derosier. With more than 35 million records sold worldwide and Top 10 albums in four different decades, their place in history was sealed.
Ann and Nancy Wilson opened a door that had been nailed shut. Before Heart, a hard rock band led by women — writing their own songs, playing their own instruments, headlining their own tours — was barely imaginable. After them, it was inevitable. From a Vancouver recording studio to the top of the charts and into the Hall of Fame, the sisters proved that the boys’ club of rock was never really a boys’ club at all. It just took Heart to show everyone the truth.
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