Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll

by Ann Wilson

  Sobriety became yet another shift in the way I approached music. My songs have always dealt with my life experiences, but this was a real big one that cried out to be written about. It was part of where the title song “Red Velvet Car” came from: “Maybe you got hit real hard / Maybe you are on the floor / People screaming out your name / And they don’t trust you anymore / I’m coming for you.”

  I haven’t had a drink in nearly three years. It has been difficult at times, but it’s something I’m very proud of. Sobriety is still a bit like a project for me, like the way I might write a song that has no end. The melody and lyrics are ever evolving, and though a verse might be written here or there, the chorus changes constantly. There is always a conversation about it going on inside my head. I know it is a song I will continue singing for the rest of my life.

  We released Red Velvet Car in 2010. It became our first top ten album in twenty years, a rewarding sign that we still had a strong fan base four decades after our start. It was one of our best-reviewed albums in years, with Rolling Stone raving, “these barracudas still draw buckets of blood.” That review also read, “Heart’s finest moment might be right now, as the Wilson sisters keep making good music years after their classic-rock peers have faded away.” This from the same publication that once called us “cock rock without the cock.” Things had shifted in music, and in rock ’n’ roll journalism, and we were no longer lampooned for the very idea that we wanted to rock. That subtle change might be Heart’s greatest blow against the empire.

  Red Velvet Car felt like Heart had “re-upped,” a term that Dotes always used when a Marine enlisted for another stint. Nancy’s powerful “Hey You” became one of the singles, but the album also included “Sunflower” which she had written as a birthday gift to me. I turned sixty that year. I was newly sober, and with a hit record. There were very few sixty-year-olds who ever hit the top ten, which was a particular joy I had never imagined when I was younger. Heart had become one of only a handful of groups to score top ten hits in four different decades, a feat in the modern music business that was nearly impossible. It felt that week as if I had re-upped in life, and in music.

  We promoted the album at first with what we called our “Zamboni tour of Canada.” We played some of the same hockey rinks we had in our first few years, and in the dead of the winter. But Canada always treated us well, as if we were hometown girls. Our shows sold out, and the tour showed up on the Billboard charts for the hottest that season, just behind Lady Gaga and Rihanna.

  In many cities we were treated like royalty, not just a touring rock band. In Newfoundland, we were “screeched,” a ritual where visitors are forced to kiss the lips of a fish, eat a fish gizzard, and throw back a shot of “screech” rum. I substituted juice for the rum. That night there was a huge dinner, and a sing-a-long. Nancy and I won everyone over with our version of “The Great Titanic.” It was one of the first songs we learned to sing, but it was particularly important to Newfoundland, which was near where the ship sank. In Vancouver, members of their First Nations held a ceremonial dance dressed like eagles, ravens, wolves, and whales for us. One of the dancers looked exactly like a Native American Mick Jagger, complete with oversized lips.

  One of the strangest experiences of the tour came in Calgary, of all places, the very city where I had been were fired from Lucifer’s in 1975. In the years since that gig, we always had successful shows there, with generous and adoring audiences, and Lucifer’s had long since closed. This time we were playing the decidedly upscale Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, and it was one of the best shows of the tour.

  Calgary city officials came before the show to give us the honorary Calgary “White Hat,” which is bestowed on visiting dignitaries. We were asked to recite an oath: “Heart, having pleasured ourselves in the only genuine cowtown in Canada, namely Calgary, Alberta, and having been duly exposed to exceptional amounts of heartwarming, handshaking, foot-stomping, down home, country-style western spirit do promise to share this here brand of western hospitality with all folks and critters who cross my path.” We repeated the oath, stumbling over the phrase “having pleasured ourselves,” and they put oversize cowboy hats on us for a photo op.

  In a town that almost ended my career, and that of Heart, where we had nearly been poisoned by Pine Sol–laden food, where we had died in a way, and also been reborn as we left on a train to open for Rod Stewart in Montreal, we were now honored guests. We had “pleasured ourselves” in Calgary, and Calgary, apparently, would never forget. Nor would we.

  In June 2011, U2’s massive “360-degree” tour came to Seattle’s Qwest Field, and Bono’s assistant called to invite Nancy and me. It was the single biggest tour in rock history, and when Bono calls, you come.

  We had first met Bono in 2004 when we played in Dublin. He came to our show, and backstage afterward we sat down and talked about the craft, not the business, for hours. It was the kind of deep conversation you can only have with another singer. He wanted to talk about how I connected with the audience with my voice, how certain songs were written, why I sang a song a specific way. He brought us a dozen white roses that night, and we kept them until they dried up. They came in a bucket and even after the roses were gone, we traveled with that bucket in our dressing room, and referred to it as if Bono was still a presence in our lives, which he was. “Can you hand me that mascara, right next to Bono’s bucket?” Nancy would ask me. It became sort of a holy relic.

  When we walked into Qwest Field in June 2011, staring at the “Claw,” U2’s giant scaffolding, I wasn’t expecting to do anything other than say hi to Bono because it was right before showtime. But Bono immediately embraced us as if minutes, rather than years, had passed since we’d last seen him. There were a handful of people in the corners of his dressing room, and I immediately recognized Eddie Vedder, Matt Cameron, and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, and greeted them, too.

  Bono is one of the most powerful human beings in the world, but the reason he’s a great lead singer is because he knows how to tell a story. He worked his small audience backstage by telling us about his long recovery from his back injury. “It was a pretty close call,” he said. A piece of a disc had ripped through one of his ligaments, and it was threatening his spinal cord. “I could have lost the use of my left leg,” he said.

  The operation was a success, but he spent eight weeks in rehabilitation, which was a mental challenge unlike any he had faced. He turned to classic books he hadn’t read since childhood, including T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the story of Lawrence of Arabia. Bono said Lawrence’s perspective on Arab independence had given him resolve that anything could be overcome. He explained to us how the title of the book was Lawrence’s loose interpretation of the “seven pillars” of Biblical verse. And then Bono recited from memory the dedication poem that starts Lawrence’s book: “I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands, and wrote my will across the sky and stars to earn you freedom.”

  It was a surreal moment. I felt Bono coaxing himself open, as if we were his bridge to begin to communicate with the sixty-five thousand waiting in the audience. A roadie opened the dressing room door, announcing it was showtime, but Bono held up a finger to indicate that he wasn’t ready. He hadn’t finished his story on Lawrence.

  Eventually, Bono stood up, put on his leather jacket, gave an Elvis-like shoulder shrug, and walked onto the long ramp to the stage. Our backstage enclave was ushered toward the mixing board, to watch the show. Eddie Vedder then lit up some of the most powerful marijuana I’d ever smelled, and I tried not to breathe until the fumes passed my airspace.

  In the tiny mixing board area sat one person, who I realized was also probably in the dressing room shadows as Bono told us his stories of Lawrence, and overcoming impossible odds. It was Steve Jobs. I had never seen him in person before, and I was struck by how thin he was, a matchstick of a man, but with a presence nonetheless. I knew he was ill—he would die just a few months later. But as U2 began to
play, the expression on Jobs’s face shifted, and a huge smile came upon him.

  The show was transcendent. I had never seen rock be so big and so intimate all at once. “Where the Streets Have No Name” was my favorite moment. It seemed as if the whole glory train of rock ’n’ roll was bursting out of the tunnel.

  As I watched Bono’s performance I kept thinking about the words we had exchanged before and in fact every time we talked together. Bono always wanted to chat about how it is the lead singer’s job alone to make sure there is a connection with the audience. It was a huge responsibility he said, whether you are in a bar playing to a tiny crowd, or performing to sixty-five thousand people.

  In the summer of 2011, we accepted an offer to open up for Def Leppard on their world tour. I had totally missed Def Leppard in the eighties, and I only knew them as a big metal band. My initial thought was that by touring with them, we’d have something to aspire to. They seemed to represent the empire we had raged against. The tour would also take us to Australia for the first time, and that was a place Nancy and I had always wanted to visit.

  As the opening act, we found ourselves on a stage Def Leppard had constructed, and at first I had trouble getting used to their eighties “ego ramps,” that made you stand even higher on the stage. Our staging was lights, and nothing else, as we wanted our songs to be the show. Their set had the giant ramp, flame machines, fireworks, smoke machines, and the massive production of a Broadway show. I assumed we would rule the night with our simple sincerity.

  Sometimes that happened, but other times it was impossible. There were shows we went out, and hit it as hard as we could, and Def Leppard flattened us. It was like “Bambi Meets Godzilla.” There is no arguing with butt rock. At a lot of dates though, we got better notices than they did. I loved a headline in Milwaukee: “Heart out-throbs Def Leppard,” but it was apples and oranges, really.

  I had also been naive about the amount of partying there would be on the tour. I had expected, because these guys were in their fifties, they had been tamed. Once I saw the reality of it, I said, “Holy shit, how am I going to live through this?” Their attitude about drinking was that it was just part of the experience. The tour was like sharing a bunk with Keith Richards for six months: charming, exhausting, and toxic. I came out of it sober, but it wasn’t that much fun sitting there with my soda water, while everyone else partied down.

  I’d injured a knee during the tour, and Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott told me to have it taped up in their “health” room. The room had a massage table, candles, and incense. But it also had cartons of cigarettes at the ready, and a full bar set up. That was their idea of healthy.

  Def Leppard were good people, though, and I felt a real connection with Joe Elliott. He would come offstage from the ego ramp, and immediately turn into a sweet and thoughtful guy. A few times we also talked about how difficult it is to be a lead singer. “This is hard stuff,” he said. “There’s the wall of expectation. Do you flip the bird to the crowd, and refuse to play the hits they want to hear, or do you give it to them? If you don’t do ‘Barracuda,’ or ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me,’ they are going to boo.” Joe felt as trapped as I did by past hits.

  The U.S. tour initially had been scheduled to end in Seattle, where we could go home to our own beds. But Joe Elliott’s father died in the middle of the summer, so the tour was extended. We knew, and understood that as much as anyone. The finale was in San Antonio, and we ended our set with a desperate version of the Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me,” and the emotions overtook Nancy. She grabbed her guitar, and smashed it to bits—Nancy was as exhausted as I was with the big production tour we’d been on for most of the year. We had long ago moved away from eighties bombastic excess and wanton destruction. But in San Antonio we’d reverted to our more barbaric selves. Nancy’s guitar lay in pieces on the stage after the show was over. It was the perfect punctuation for the end of a tour that celebrated the past.

  26

  Glimmer of a Dream

  Heart receives a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination.

  Nancy’s romantic life takes a surprising new twist. A new

  album springs forth, and a boxed set. And Ann and Heart go

  full circle, back where it all began by a cottage near a creek. . . .

  NANCY WILSON

  In the fall of 2011, we were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was quite an honor, and would have seemed impossible to us when we first started, when we were driving around Canadian back roads, or playing Michael J. Fox’s high school prom. We didn’t make the final list of inductees for the year, but getting nominated, and being on the short list, was a step toward that recognition, and one we were grateful for.

  In early 2011, my romantic life also took an unexpected turn. I’d casually known Geoff Bywater for a few years, as he worked in music production on television shows for Fox. Heart’s manager, Carol Peters, arranged dinner with him. I thought, “What can be wrong with that?” I knew it was time for me to get out there.

  I went with Carol to meet Geoff at a restaurant. It was an edgy dinner because he felt nervous and I was so anxious I nearly bolted. He really liked me, but I was scared and decided it was too soon. Geoff was divorced himself, and was a great father to four wonderful children.

  Geoff was persistent, and in the fall of 2011, we went out again a few times, usually with mutual friends. Every date we had was plagued by my nervousness, or the awkwardness that we always had chaperones with us. Then, on what was our fifth date, it was just us. Something shifted, and a deep and beautiful conversation ensued. At the end of the night, there was a kiss. That kiss changed everything.

  I discovered in that one kiss something about myself that I had lost. I found that I could be an adult with another adult, and that I could move on. I finally gave myself the permission to let the past be the past. In Geoff, I found a trusted friend, and he helped me close the book of guilt and wrong I had been carrying around. Together we opened a brand new book with that kiss.

  I never thought I would be in love again. I never thought I would be in another relationship. My life had become centered around Heart, my sisters, my friends, and my children. Though my friends and family described me as the “most hopeless romantic” they’d ever known, that part of me had gone missing for a few years. It came back with Geoff.

  After that magical date, Heart left for Australia for the long last leg of our tour with Def Leppard. Over the next month, Geoff and I wrote love letters back and forth electronically. We talked on the phone a few times but it was through written correspondence, like lovers in the Victorian times, that we formed our true bond. We decided to go steady, and he mailed me a bracelet. I mailed him a sunflower that I painted. I later printed up and bound all the letters, texts, and emails that we had exchanged into a book. We wrote six-hundred-and-three love letters in one month.

  As Geoff and I became serious, I let Cameron know I had someone in my life. Cameron had moved on into a new relationship, as well. I told him I was committed to being better at communicating with Cameron in our original family group. Cameron supported me, and that freed up my heart and improved the bond of our co-parenting.

  In early 2012, Geoff and I became engaged. We moved fast, but it felt like a wave overtook us, and at our age, you really know what you want. On April 28, 2012, in a restaurant in Mill Valley, California, we were married. Ann, Lynn, my two sons, and my dear friends Sue Ennis and Kelly Curtis watched me start this new chapter. Geoff’s children were there, and his friend Sammy Hagar who owned the restaurant.

  Love heals everything. It’s a lot like music.

  In 2011, Ann and I also began working on a new Heart album, which we decided to title Fanatic. Ben Mink came aboard as our producer once again. We were on the road a lot that year, so we cut some of the record in unusual places, like hotel rooms. Ben would book the corner room on a top floor, and we would sing and play at full volume. Only occasionally would we get a complaint from the front desk. It sho
wed how far the music industry had changed from the days we were with Mushroom in Vancouver, thirty-five years before, when you needed a giant, acoustically perfect studio to make a record.

  We also did a few sessions in traditional recording studios, not just hotel rooms. In early 2012, we were working on final vocals at the Village in Los Angeles when we got a message that Elton John was down the hall, and he wanted us to come say hi. I was always nervous around Elton, but he was down-to-earth and warm, and we’d become good friends. Around that time he had been asked by a publication what he thought about Heart, and Elton said: “I have been a huge fan of Heart their whole career. I love that they rock, and the sound of Ann’s voice always sends shivers down my spine. I am happy to say that they have become great friends. I absolutely adore them.” We adored him, too.

  We walked into Elton’s studio, and just he and producer T-Bone Burnett were there. We sat on the couch, and they played us four tracks from Elton’s upcoming album. Elton wanted us to return the favor by playing our album. “Our stuff is nowhere near ready to be heard,” I said. I could just as well have said, “We’re not worthy.”

  But Sir Elton John insisted. We told him we’d send him a copy, once it was all done. But Elton would have none of that, so we cued up the few tracks that were close to being done. To watch Elton John be the first person to listen to Fanatic was a memory I will never forget. Here was the same Elton John I had seen in Vancouver in the early days of Heart, when I had purchased that counterfeit scalped ticket to his show, and climbed a fence to sneak in. Here was the same Elton John who wrote the songs that I taught Kelly Curtis to play on guitar when I was a twelve-year-old guitar instructor. Here was the same Elton John who wrote all those great songs with Bernie Taupin, the same Bernie Taupin who penned “These Dreams,” my song, and Heart’s first number-one hit. And here was that same Elton John closing his eyes, tapping his feet, and listening to our new album.