by Ann Wilson
Roger’s onstage demeanor and his guitar prowess played a big part in the success of Hocus Pocus. He never played with the touch of a scientist. Instead he had a wide open flame, and many times it would explode onstage, pulling the entire audience in. He was a huge fan of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Deep Purple’s Richie Blackmore, and he could play anything he heard by ear. He was a feel player and a bit of a dervish onstage, constantly twirling around. I had to be careful not to get bonked.
I was still finding my sea legs onstage. I shared vocal duties with Gary Humphries, Steve Fossen, and sometimes with Don Wilhelm, who occasionally sang with us then. I usually did the ballads or the bluesy numbers. We felt having a few singers in the band gave us the ability to cover any popular hit of the day. I’d sing one or two songs and then take a break, while someone else took over. I didn’t have the lung stamina to sing for the five hours we were onstage. I was smoking cigarettes and still learning how not to get hoarse while performing.
We toured throughout the Northwest that next year, all the way east to Montana, and south to Portland. When we’d get a motel room, usually we had one room with two beds. Though most of my bandmates, particularly Roger, were quick to flirt with any passing female, they were protective of me. “She’s here to sing, buddy,” was a line that was uttered so many times by the band to my unwanted suitors, we could have had it put on T-shirts.
I was still very naive about the ways of sex. At one show in Great Falls, Montana, the soul band the Delfonics were in our club, and they bought me drinks. I was flattered beyond belief because they were one of my favorite bands, and when they asked to come back to my room to discuss music, I said sure. My Hocus Pocus bandmates showed up just as the situation grew tense, and relieved me of my two overly friendly Romeos. Another time at a Portland motel, I opened the door to my room thinking it was a bandmate, and a drunken man tried to storm in. I managed to push the door closed, but it frightened me terribly.
We played almost exclusively in taverns to audiences of drunk or high music fans, and it was a war zone for a twenty-year-old female. The catcalls, hoots, pinches, and sexual slurs were practically a daily ritual. In 1970, the only women who had been onstage in many of the taverns we played were barmaids bringing drinks to male performers. Rock had been entirely a male invention, and from Elvis’s hips to Robert Plant’s pants, rock music was charged with male sexuality. I was something entirely different onstage, and both the audience and I had to figure out what that was. If my onstage persona was too aggressive, I looked like a dominatrix. If I was soft and demure, I’d come off like a pushover sex kitten, and a song might overwhelm me.
We played popular radio hits, and I was still discovering what songs I could own. I felt it wasn’t honest to flip the gender of lyrics, but if I sang “My Girl,” there might be raised eyebrows in the audience. I also learned that songs a man could tackle might be problematic for me. That lesson came after I launched into the Who’s “See Me, Feel Me,” only to find the audience on their chairs swinging their jackets around like they were at a rodeo. At one show a drunk suggested I hike up my bra straps, followed by other lewdness. Sometimes the owners of the clubs were worse than the audiences, offering up “just listen to me” harangues on how I’d do better if I adopted a certain style of dress, one that emphasized sexuality over substance.
Everyone in Hocus Pocus was committed to the socialistic idea of the band as family, and the challenges bonded us. We were making good money for a bar band, but between gas, gear, and instruments, there was never enough. Roger and Steve were resourceful cooks, making meals of rice, garlic, cheese, and vegetables on a camp stove in our hotel room. Roger talked incessantly about his brother Michael, who had dodged the draft by escaping into Canada, and he said the recipe was his. “You’ve got to meet Michael,” Roger said. “He’s got great ideas about the band.”
I turned twenty-one in June 1971, and Hocus Pocus had become my life. I was still living at home, but the band was on the road constantly. One of our gigs that summer was at the Iron Bull in Bellingham, Washington. We had played the club a few times, and always drew a diverse crowd of college students, plus the occasional Canadian tourist because the border was only twenty miles away.
We arrived at the club in the afternoon to rehearse new material. We were learning the Janis Joplin song “Move Over,” which I sang. I was sitting on the floor cross-legged with the lyrics on a sheet of paper in front of me when Roger’s brother Michael walked in. Michael had snuck through the border to check out his brother’s new band. He was tall, handsome, and had piercing eyes.
We locked eyes. It was one of those eye-locks that happen once in a lifetime. It was long, unafraid, and neither of us looked away for what seemed like minutes. No words were exchanged. It was just eye on eye.
“Ann, meet my big brother,” Roger said.
Yes, indeed, meet him. Meet Michael Fisher.
I was never the same again.
We talked for hours that night after the show. Michael had escaped to Canada two years before to avoid the draft. He felt his local draft board was corrupt, and later found out his lawyer’s office was bugged. With the Vietnam War, and Nixon’s dirty politics, 1970 was an incendiary time in America. It was dangerous for Michael to be in the States since he was a wanted man, and he looked around a room before he entered, and always had his eye on an exit. When we talked, though, I seemed to have all his attention. He was smart, deep, and spiritual. Though he was only two years older than me, he was more self-assured than anyone I had met.
He went back to Canada that night, and we returned to Bellevue, but we began to talk on the phone. I wasn’t completely sure if Michael was even single—that topic never came up. Long distance calls were expensive, but during set breaks at our shows, I’d sneak into the manager’s office and call Michael.
He snuck down again to catch another show we had near Portland. Michael’s excuse was that he was coming to help run our sound, but he knew, and I knew, he was coming for me. Normally when I was onstage, I didn’t want to get off, but I found myself that night anticipating when someone else would sing. During the set breaks, I completely ignored the band and spent all my time talking to Michael.
After the show, we went back to our motel, which had little individual cottage-type rooms. Michael offered to walk me from the van to my room, which was all of fifteen feet away. This was not the kind of chivalry the members of Hocus Pocus were used to, and one made a gagging gesture when they overheard it.
But Michael did walk me. By the doorway, we talked and talked. And there, in front of a crappy little Portland motel at three in the morning, he kissed me for the first time. I went in my room, by myself, and Michael went back to Canada the next day, but I knew then I had to be with him.
It completely took me over. There had never been anything in my life that had consumed me the way Michael Fisher consumed me.
Here’s how Michael remembered those days:
MICHAEL FISHER
That first day I met her, I just dove into her eyes in a deep way and connected with her instantly. I don’t know how that works. I’ve felt that a few times, but never quite like that. I knew there was this bond there, and I had to explore it. The more I got to know her, the more perfect it was, and the better it got.
She was stunningly beautiful. The most beautiful part, though, was who she was. She was open. . . . She was like a book ready to be read.
I had a girlfriend at the time, and I didn’t consider myself available because I was in a relationship, though maybe a troubled relationship, in a way. But my paths with that woman were separating. When I met Ann, she couldn’t have been more different from the other person I was with.
Ann was like home.
ANN
So much of my life had been dominated by my connection with Nancy, or Sue, or the Beatles, or a desire to be a musician. But when it came to Michael, I had tunnel vision. I told him on the phone I missed him. “We’re going to have to do something
about that,” he said. To me, that meant, “Come to me.” I couldn’t think of spending one more day without him. It was the one time in my life I didn’t think of my band first.
I called a band meeting to announce I was quitting Hocus Pocus. I simply said, “I’m sorry.” Only later did I realize it was a pretty destructive move. We were starting to get good bookings, and everyone had bills for new gear to pay. It was the only time I ever quit a band for someone. It was the most reckless thing I ever did.
I called Michael and said I was heading up. I told my parents, and my mother was concerned, but she was also probably secretly pleased that I had met someone who moved me. I packed a little backpack, and I carried my guitar.
I took a Greyhound bus to Vancouver. When I arrived, I discovered that West Vancouver, where Michael lived, was twelve miles away. I didn’t have enough money for a cab, there was no direct city bus, and he hadn’t offered to pick me up. I hitchhiked and got a ride that took me a mile away. I walked the rest of the way, up a hill.
I was wearing a gray pinstripe mid-calf pencil skirt, a matching jacket, and boots. I had made this outfit because I wanted to look mod, ladylike, and sexy. I made all this effort to look put-together, but a light drizzle began, and by the time I arrived at Michael’s, the rain had ruined my hair and clothes. I looked completely bedraggled.
Michael lived in a little round house, a cottage really, that was stuck in the woods behind a rooming-house mansion. I walked on the little path around the bigger house and arrived at the cottage. His house was built on beams so it hung out over Lassen Creek, a roaring stream. It was Tolkien-esque.
Holding my guitar in one hand, and with my backpack on, I paused at the door, a young hippie girl on the threshold. I wondered if he’d be in there with another girl. I was frozen, afraid to leave my old life behind, unable to go back to the old Ann Wilson, but also terrified that the powerful feelings would completely consume me. Finally, I knocked.
Michael opened the door. He looked surprised to see me. A smile widened on his face, and he ushered me in.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.
That period, starting from that night, was the most romantic time I ever lived through. Michael had built his bed from driftwood logs, and it was so high off the ground you had to jump to get on it. It became more than a bed: It became the place where I learned everything about sexuality and sensuality. The bed became a nest, and a retreat from the rest of the world, but then so was everything about Michael.
He was very opinionated, and he set about modeling me into the woman he thought I should become. Some of that advice was wise—and his insistence I stop smoking did wonders for my singing voice—but he was also controlling. I didn’t know how to cook, so he taught me basic skills to make what he liked, which was mostly rice and vegetables. When he didn’t like my unruly eyebrows, he took candle wax to train them a certain way. I put up with his schooling because I so wanted to be touched by him. I was putty in his hands.
His house was very Zen-like. He had Herman Hesse books, and candles, and he spoke a lot about eastern spirituality. Michael was studying architecture at a local college, and he was interested in building things. In a way, he was building me. It was like a school, an old-fashioned women’s school, and he was the instructor.
When it came to music, he wasn’t a real rock guy. He had a penchant for jazz-fusion, and Chick Corea records, but he also liked Joni Mitchell and the spiritual Led Zeppelin tracks. That’s where I helped shape him, by exposing him to music he didn’t know about. I was writing a lot of poetry, and I imagined he’d be a scientist, and I’d be an artist.
For the better part of a year I was completely lost in the world of Michael Fisher. My whole life was in that round house, other than one short trip I made back home to get more stuff. Sue and Nancy did come to visit me, perhaps worried that I had completely gone off the deep end, which I had. The big house in front of the cottage was full of hippies, and when Sue and Nancy arrived, they were all naked in the backyard. When Nancy saw these naked hippies, and me living in this tiny round house over a creek, she was alarmed. But nothing was going to pull me away from Michael Fisher.
My mother became increasingly concerned that her daughter was, literally and metaphorically, in another country, and she’d call to ask me to move back home. I kept telling her how wonderful Michael was, and how true our love. But Mama wouldn’t have any of it.
In my notebooks, I began to craft a poem about those phone calls with my mother that would eventually transform into a song. The lyrics went, in part: “ ‘Come on home girl,’ Mama cried on the phone / ‘Too soon to lose my baby yet, my girl should be at home’ / But try to understand, try to understand / Try, try, try to understand / He’s a magic man, Mama.”
The words were straight from my life.
9
The Whisper That Calls
Nancy locks lips in a bell tower. Ann issues an order
to Nancy’s boyfriend. Nancy searches for her idol in
Canada. And Ann starts a new band. . . .
NANCY WILSON
I turned seventeen in 1971, and with Ann in Canada, my life shifted considerably. I was a senior in high school that fall, and began to apply to colleges. I also looked for a part-time job. I had given the occasional guitar lesson, but I sought something more lucrative.
My first thought was to become an auto mechanic. I applied at a garage and was told they weren’t accepting applications from women. Next, I walked to the Jade East Restaurant and applied to be a bus person. They told me it wasn’t a “girl’s job.” I said I’d work in the kitchen, but I was told that job also wasn’t fit for a woman. I said I could be a hostess, something I knew women did, but they said I didn’t fit that either. I persisted. “I can play guitar,” I said. The restaurant had music at night. That got me in the door, and I auditioned and got the gig. I only played a few times at the Jade East, but it was a taste of independence.
Once Ann began to tour seriously with Hocus Pocus, I began to look for other musicians. One of the first I discovered was a talented guitar player at my school named Geoff Foubert. We played together at a few parties, at church youth group, and at the Bellevue Community College student center. We did songs by Seals and Croft; James Taylor; the Beatles; Peter, Paul and Mary; and Yes. We didn’t make any money, but the experience allowed me to see myself as a folksinger. I would have a “small but appreciative audience,” I told myself.
A romance ensued between Geoff and me. I had been thinking about kissing him for some time, but needed the right setting. One night, we went to the Congregational Church, and I made him climb the seven flights to the top of the church bell tower. It was one of the tallest structures in Bellevue, and you could see for miles. Geoff meekly followed me. There, under the church bell, I kissed a boy for the first time.
Here’s how Geoff recalled those times:
GEOFF FOUBERT
We’d usually rehearse at her house, and her parents didn’t have a problem with me being in her room. When it became obvious we had affection for each other, Nancy said, “My mom’s really happy because she’s finally convinced I’m not gay.” It was only then I realized I was the first guy she ever went out with. Boys were not on the top of her list. She loved guitar, and she loved to create music, and those things fulfilled her.
One rare night when Ann was home, Nancy went to the bathroom, and I was walking through the hall. Ann passed by, grabbed my shoulders, threw me against the wall, pulled me close, and said, “When are you going to fuck my sister?” It was as if she was giving me this order, this insistence that I take care of business for her sister. It intimidated the hell out of me. I thought to myself, “Girls don’t talk like that.”
We named our band “Geoff and Nancy,” though we often played with a third guitarist named Art Crowder, and a drummer named Glen. I had managed to get myself under contract with a shady manager, and he booked us into the Keg-n-Cue, in North Bend, Washington. It was logger coun
try, and we played to a redneck crowd. Art and I had to wear short hair wigs because we were longhairs. Nancy was still underage, so we had to get an exemption from the liquor board for her to play there. The manager’s wife sewed outfits for us, and Nancy had to wear a Grand Ole Opry–type dress.
NANCY
Although I was most interested in folk music, at the Keg-n-Cue we played primarily country and western songs. We’d sneak in songs by Poco, Neil Young, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Elton John, and Crosby, Stills and Nash every so often. But mostly we played songs like “Okie from Muskogee,” “Snowbird,” “Break My Mind,” and “Stand by Your Man.” Ann was home once when I was playing at the Keg-n-Cue, and she sat in with us. She did two songs by the Bee Gees, “Words” and “Love Somebody,” and the crowd went crazy cheering. Geoff and I always got a good response, but I felt a little deflated seeing the reaction to her. Geoff’s manager tried to get Ann to sign a contract with him. She immediately tossed it away.
Geoff’s manager booked us for New Year’s Eve at the Snoqualmie Logger’s Union Hall, and that’s where I welcomed 1972. One of the loggers paid us twenty dollars to keep playing “Please Release Me” over and over. Our biggest gig ever was in Salem, Oregon, where we opened up for Roy Drusky, a pure Nashville act. There were 3,500 people in the crowd, and they probably all knew that, despite my little gingham dress, I wasn’t a country singer. But they were polite, and it felt like a huge victory. For one night only, I loved that my “small but appreciative audience” wasn’t so small.