by Ann Wilson
Playtime now meant exclusively recreating scenes from Mutiny. I was always Fletcher, and Nancy was Seaman Mills. Neither of us wanted to take the role of the king’s daughter. The previous year, West Side Story had also become part of our play, and with that, both Nancy and I were also drawn to the male characters. Maria didn’t do it for either of us: We wanted to be Sharks and Jets with switchblades, or British naval officers.
It’s no coincidence that a handsome, erudite gentleman in a tailored dress uniform resonated with me. I looked at Fletcher Christian and was intoxicated by something that had hovered in the air in my house since the day I was born: my mother’s myth of my father’s knighthood. It was the same myth that had disappointed and stifled my mother, too, even as it fueled her desires.
One time I chipped my front tooth, and was crying, believing more than ever that I was truly and forever ugly, and my father came to comfort me. He was wearing his dress blues, and he hugged me. He wasn’t usually physically demonstrative, but that day he held me against his blue uniform with the brass buttons. It meant so much to be near that chest.
Our parents had always owned soundtrack albums, and we loved A Star Is Born, and West Side Story. But when the score to Mutiny was released, it became one of the first records I ever bought. I listened to that album again, and again, and every time it took me away from my stuttering, and into a majestic world of imagination.
During the summer of 1963, I officially became a teenager, turning thirteen a few days after I finished seventh grade. That month our parents announced we were moving again. We were headed back to California and Camp Pendleton. We had lived in Bellevue for almost three years, and it had been our longest time in one place. “Get ready to dust off your shoes again,” Mama announced. There was no time for protest.
Our sister Lynn did protest loudly, however. Lynn was seventeen and was to start her senior year of high school that fall. She was popular—more popular than Nancy or I would ever be—plus she had a steady boyfriend. “You’re going to ruin my life,” she wailed.
Because of our later career choices, many assume Nancy and I were the rebels of the Wilson family. We were not. Lynn and Mama would get in more battles over the course of one weekend than Nancy and Mama would get into over a year. Nancy and I just stood to the side and watched the show.
Lynn’s rebelliousness, and her battling with our parents, did have unintended effects on us, though. By the time we were going through our own defiance, our parents didn’t seem to have much fight left. Our sister wore them out. The result was that our decision to be in a band, which in many ways was less conventional and should have been more troubling than anything Lynn ever did, just sort of slid under the radar.
The year I was thirteen, no Wilson daughter had any sway with a Marine order. We were all moving to Camp Pendleton, and it was non-negotiable, which made the very fact that Lynn put up a fuss all the more extraordinary. She cried for what seemed like two days, but eventually, she was cried out.
In the end, we packed up the station wagon two weeks later. Even Lynn, still tearful from her good-bye with her boyfriend, dutifully carried her suitcase to the car.
“Dust off your shoes, girls,” Mama said. I did as she commanded, and so did Nancy. Lynn sat there in the backseat, refusing to make eye contact with anyone, even her two sisters. Then, in a sign of surrender, she tapped her feet together. With that, we were off.
Our move to Camp Pendleton was like coming home in some ways, since we had lived there before. This stint we moved into officer’s quarters in the “Seventeen Area.” Our house was on the edge of the vast, arid Southern California bush. It was not a hospitable place. There were war games going on constantly, and the muffled sound of artillery could be heard from our front porch at all hours. Our backyard was 125,000 acres full of rattlesnakes, jackrabbits, coyotes, tarantulas, red ants, and unexploded shells. As a younger kid, I had played out there, digging for diamonds and gold. I never found riches, but I often found sparkling quartz, which was just as beautiful in the hard daylight.
For this stint I was a teenager, and digging in the dirt no longer held much appeal. The harsh elements of Camp Pendleton were perfect for young, hard men training to be “The Few, the Proud.” But it was no country for white-skinned, complicated young girls.
I began school at James E. Potter Junior High in nearby Fallbrook, since there was no junior high on the base. The trip took forty-five minutes each way with my mom driving. It required travel through the Naval Weapon’s Station, basically a bombing range. It was extremely high security, so we had to stop at a guard gate, give our names, and they would hand us a clipboard. When we got to the other side of the naval base, we turned our clipboard in. If we delayed, we would have been arrested. It was a stressful way to go to school.
School was much more difficult that year. The first day, my stutter was incredibly bad, and the other children laughed. The teacher took me aside after that first day. “You have to keep your powder dry, where this reading aloud thing is concerned,” she said. I looked at her aghast, unable to explain myself, because to speak would be to stutter. It was as if she felt I was stuttering to get attention, as if it were a choice. She seemed to think I stuttered on purpose to give the other kids entertainment.
Though school was where my stammer was worst, I stuttered at home as well. It might occur at the dinner table, but it was guaranteed to happen if I tried to answer the phone. Mama had taught us to answer in a “lady-like manner,” with a script she had composed. “Wilson residence, Ann Wilson speaking,” was my line. I began to dread the sound of the telephone ringing, particularly if it rang when I was the only one in the house. This was an era with no message machines. When the phone rang, it might be an important message for our father, so I had to answer. I didn’t need to say my name after a while: Everyone who called knew that if someone was stuttering, it was Ann.
But in our house, my stutter became part of the landscape. Like the many wounds we were all hiding—particularly the real and metaphoric scars my father carried—my stutter was just one more Wilson pain we lived with, we coped with, we carried.
We had always been an army unto ourselves. With my socially unacceptable stutter, I spent more time than ever with my sisters, inside the family cocoon, oftentimes singing. Music and singing with my sisters became a huge part of my life.
The only time I didn’t stutter was when I sang. No one could understand why back then. But now, decades later, I think I can I explain it. I believe that because of the uninterrupted airflow that happened during singing, my brain no longer controlled my voice, and my body took over. Singing used a different part of the brain from talking, a part that wasn’t encased in fear. Singing meant an escape from stuttering, and it became one of the few places where I was free.
I sang more and more. It was my solace, my escape, my sanctuary.
It became the only place I could be me.
If my stutter was nearly impossible to live with, at least if I was silent, no one knew. But my weight was always obvious. Even in that era in California, girls were tan, blonde, and all had bare legs. They looked at me like they were standing in the sunshine peering into a darkened room.
There were two days I dreaded most during the school year: Health Assessment Day and Valentine’s Day. Health Assessment was when the entire school was weighed and measured. It became so painful for me that every year I vowed I would skip school the next time it came around. At Fallbrook, they sprang it without warning. With a bombing range between school and home, I was stuck.
Today, a health evaluation would be done in private, at the nurse’s office, or at least behind a curtain. In Fallbrook, they simply marched us all to the gym. Each student was called by name to a scale in the center of the room. One teacher with a clipboard wrote down results, while another teacher measured your height, and another moved the counterbalance along the scale and announced your weight as if it were a breakfast order at a diner. The entire eighth grade class watch
ed. I remember to this day the names of the students who preceded and followed me, and the exact numbers announced.
“Linda Whittle, come forward,” said the teacher with the clipboard.
“Linda Whittle: 62 inches,” announced the teacher with the measuring tape.
“Linda Whittle: 78 pounds,” announced the teacher operating the scale.
“Ann Wilson, come forward.”
“Ann Wilson: 58 inches.”
“Ann Wilson: 116 pounds.”
“Joe Winfield, come forward.”
“Joe Winfield: 64 inches.”
“Joe Winfield: 92 pounds.”
My peers let out a “whoa” when my weight was announced. The teachers let this pass. My humiliation was allowed. My weight, my life, had been distilled into a number.
My mother became concerned enough about my weight that she took me to the family doctor on base. There was not a lot of scientific information on weight issues then. He said: “The first thing we need to do with this girl is to have her eat nothing for two weeks, so she can shrink her stomach.” I tried that, and was so starving I eventually ate more calories than I’d saved. Next he wanted me on a strict diet of canned peaches in water. I dropped weight, but it was torture.
We went back to the doctor. He talked about “willpower” and “control.” He gave me a pamphlet that was like those cartoony brochures they’d given us about menstruation. It said things like “Try not to eat big meals every day.” “Avoid fried chicken.”
Valentine’s Day was even worse than the day we were weighed. Nothing seemed unusual in elementary school, but as the years went on, and my weight increased, I noticed I received fewer valentines than anyone else. That seemed odd because we were required to give a valentine to everyone in the class. If there were twenty-five kids in class, I might get twenty-two valentines.
Some of the valentines I received were also different from those received by the girl sitting next to me. The ones I got might have elephants or a rhinoceros on them. One, with a picture of a star-crossed hippopotamus, had the tag line “I’ve got a crush on you.” It showed a hippo sitting on a child.
These were not hand-drawn valentines: They were store bought. I know this probably wasn’t the case, but it felt as if they made sure that Ann Wilson got the card with the elephant.
It was a message that got through to me at an early age. I was different, and I was wrong. I stuttered, and I was overweight, and those things were not allowed.
One of the only positive things at Fallbrook was that the music program was so far behind Bellevue, I immediately was first chair flute in the school band. It was so easy I took orchestra as well, and a night class in music conducting. I had nearly perfect grades that year.
When I wasn’t in school, I listened to the radio, read teen magazines, and dreamed of boys. Just because I wasn’t popular, didn’t mean that I didn’t imagine being popular.
Back when I was in seventh grade in Bellevue, there was a freckled, crimson-haired boy whom everyone called Red. Red sat next to me in class, and he had been kind enough to help me deceive the teacher during the read-aloud. I considered him a friend.
Red was a right-down-the-middle guy, not super popular, but not an outcast. He would sometimes lean over when the teacher wasn’t looking and tell me funny jokes. I’d tell him jokes too, and when I did, I didn’t seem to stutter as much, and he’d always laugh.
I started to “like” him, but I didn’t dare tell him. I harbored this crush for the entire school year. Then toward the end of the term, I was in the lunchroom with other girls confessing their secret crushes. One girl kept asking me, “Ann, who is your crush?” I didn’t answer the first ten times, but finally I confessed.
“I guess it would be Red,” I said.
Within minutes this had gotten back to Red. He had been kind to me the entire year, but that afternoon was different. As the teacher had her back to us writing on the blackboard, he turned to me and announced so loudly that the entire class could hear, “I don’t like you, you fat thing!” It had been perfectly acceptable for him to be friends with me, as long as that friendship hadn’t been something public. But in public, he felt the need to humiliate me.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t even react.
Everyone in my family always talked about how I was “just like my father.” It was a way of saying that I had inherited my father’s “big bones” and brunette hair. It was their polite way of explaining my weight: My Marine father had passed “big bones” on to me.
They were probably right about the DNA. But there was another way I was also like my father. Like Dotes, I carried my wounds privately, and I retreated inward. I just disappeared. A part of me, like him, was internal and would rarely come out.
One of the only boys I befriended on Camp Pendleton was a young enlisted man who helped at the base stables. It was just a chaste friendship, and he was several years older, but he talked to me and asked about my life. Then I noticed he was no longer there. I asked where he was, and the guy working there told me he’d been transferred. My mother had seen me talking to him, and it was forbidden for an enlisted soldier to be friendly with an officer’s daughter.
The Marine Corps did not make anything easy for me. The base held a cotillion every year, and my mother insisted I attend. She designed a dress for me, and together we sewed it from scratch. It was beautiful. Dotes dropped me off at the camp ballroom, and said, “Knock them dead, girlie.”
Girls did not ask boys to dance at a Marine Corps Cotillion in the fall of 1963. And boys, for their part, did not ask Ann Wilson to dance. I sat there the entire night, and not a single boy asked me to dance. As with my earlier disappointments, I never showed emotion. When the dance was over, Dotes picked me up and drove me back home.
But once I was in our house, I just lost it. I wept, I wailed, I screeched at the world. This went on all night long. My mother sat with me, holding my hands as I cried. She didn’t know what to do or what to say. All the magic she could muster had failed to find me a knight.
4
Meet the Beatles
Four young lads from England start a fire, and Nancy
adopts a fake British accent. Meanwhile, Ann finds solace
from school in “A Hard Day’s Night” and a guitar. . . .
NANCY WILSON
The ninth day of February of 1964, a lightning bolt came out of the heavens and struck us. We had our life before February 9, and we had our life after. Who we were, and more important, who we imagined we could be, shifted forever on that day; we never turned back. From that point forward, we were aimed like arrows.
I was a month short of ten years old that day, and Ann was only thirteen and a half, but in a few short minutes we both grasped a forceful vision of adulthood that would stick and not let go.
The cause of our transformation was an encounter with four young lads: John, Paul, George, and Ringo. They were from exotic Liverpool. We had lived two dozen different places by then, but it felt like we were from nowhere. That Sunday night we were at our Grandmother “Maudie” Wilson’s house in La Jolla. This was before La Jolla, California, was a tony address. Maudie was a Marine widow on a pension, with a tiny black-and-white television. It was where we watched The Ed Sullivan Show week after week, reveling in the humor of Topo Gigio, or looking forward to the next musical discovery Ed was about to unleash on the world. And the second week of February, the Beatles were scheduled.
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” had become a radio hit the week before, and even in my elementary school, kids were talking about the song. The Ed Sullivan Show was anticipated as if it were the lunar landing. We couldn’t miss something like that, so we tuned in, along with seventy-three million other Americans, the largest audience for any television program to that point.
We had no idea what was coming. From the first moment we saw them on that tiny screen they became everything to us. Their outfits, their hair, every word they uttered, and every word they sang became imprinte
d on our brains. The caption under John Lennon read, “Sorry girls, he’s married.” Ann and I repeated that one line endlessly in fey British accents.
In that first appearance they played four songs: “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I knew little about adult love at that point, but I could nonetheless see their sexuality bursting at the seams. Though those songs now seem innocent, then they felt culturally defiant, as if the Beatles were pushing hard against the morality of the times. They had hair that went over their ears, and to me, a girl living on a Marine base, that made them seem the most dangerous rebels I had ever seen.
But from that first moment we “met” them through television, the love we had for the Beatles was far more than a schoolgirl crush. We didn’t just fall in love with them; we fell in love with Great Britain, rock ’n’ roll, and with ourselves in a way. They were the lens through which we imagined a bigger world.
The next day at school, the first topic was “Did you see the Beatles?” All my girl classmates would clutch their books to their sweaters, look to the sky as if they had “X”s and “O”s for eyeballs, and say, “Oh, Paul is so good-looking!” “Oh, that George.” “Oh, John is my favorite.” “Oh, even Ringo is kind of cute!”
Suddenly, the Beatles became the thing we talked about almost exclusively. They even became the center of our play: Instead of imaginary switchblades, we took up air guitar pretending to be the Beatles. Ann always had dibs on Paul, and I was either John or George (George, the serious, shy guitar player was forever stamped on my nine-year-old brain as a template). We’d sing the songs they did on The Ed Sullivan Show in order, recreate their stage patter, and put on a Beatle performance “live for one afternoon only” in Camp Pendleton housing! Only it wasn’t just one afternoon: It became every afternoon, particularly after we watched their appearances the next two Sundays when they returned to The Ed Sullivan Show.