Rock Chicks

by Alison Stieven-Taylor

  With the 1977 amnesty for American draft dodgers, Mike Fisher was able to return home. Heart pulled up stumps and went back to Seattle. Leaving Mushroom for CBS subsidiary Portrait, they found themselves in legal hot water. Their first CBS album Little Queen was released in the middle of that year and got strong reviews. It cemented Heart’s position as rockers on a par with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, bands the girls had idolised. But within months Mushroom released Magazine, an album that had been recorded in 1976. Heart didn’t want it to see the light of day—when they did nothing to support it, Magazine quickly faded from view.

  ‘Barracuda’, the biggest hit from Little Queen, was written by the Wilsons with their old friend Sue Ennis and drummer DeRosier. It reached eleven on the Billboard charts and sent rock reviewers’ hearts racing. Ann’s voice ranged from melodic tones to the animal howls of a true rocker. She was like a tornado, whipping everyone around her into a frenzy, band and audience alike. Little Queen clocked up multiplatinum sales.

  When Dog & Butterfly, was released in 1978 the band was awash with personal crises. Ann’s relationship with Mike, who produced the album, was starting to fray and Nancy had broken up with Roger only to take up with DeRosier. During a show in Portland, Oregon, Roger snapped, smashing his guitar and storming off stage. Then Ann and Mike split.

  No way were broken love affairs going to break up the band, although they screwed things up emotionally for a time. The press couldn’t help comparing Heart’s heartaches with those of other mega-1970s group Fleetwood Mac—but in this case the emotional fireworks were not sparked by drugs.

  Ann moved into a house by the woods that Nancy and Ennis shared in Seattle and the three women worked on songs for the next album. Bebe Le Strange was released in 1980 to mixed reviews. It was a departure from the heavier arena rock style that had made them stars—more introspective and more feminine. Reviewers suggested the album suffered from Roger Fisher’s absence. Its single ‘Even It Up’ made it to the top forty and the album peaked at number five, but it wasn’t enough to stem the downturn in sales and the album only went gold—a poor performance compared with their previous efforts.

  Commercially, it was the beginning of a downward slide. In the space of just three albums and three years— Bebe Le Strange, Private Audition and Passionworks—Heart had gone from superstar, multi-platinum artists to racking up a pathetic half-million sales for Passionworks, even though its single, ‘How Can I Refuse’, reached number one.

  broken love affairs screwed things up for a time. The press couldn’t help comparing Heart’s heartaches with those of Fleetwood Mac

  Passionworks was the last of three albums contracted to Epic, with whom there was no love lost, and it may have suffered as a result. It was also the first with Denny Carmassi on drums, and Mark Andes on bass. DeRosier and Fossen had quit after the recording of Private Audition—although it was as if they had already split, such was the lack of input from either in the creative process.

  By the time Heart started to record the self-titled album in 1984, the band had their backs to the wall and their own money on the line.

  But they got a new deal with Capitol Records and they pulled against the musical tide that was sweeping arena rock bands away. Heart sold over five million copies, ending up at number one on the US charts. That was largely thanks to the producing genius of Ron Nevison. Heart was enriched by Grace Slick, who was now singing with Starship, singing back-up vocals.

  The album included their first number one hit, ‘These Dreams’, which was written by Bernie Taupin and Martin Page, the first of numerous hits for Heart written by other songwriters. Its four singles—‘These Dreams’, ‘Never’, ‘What About Love’ and ‘Nothin’ At All’—all made it into the top ten.

  having nearly gone to the wall financially, they were prepared to play the record company’s game. But the constant preening was a chore

  The release of Heart introduced a new image for the Wilson sisters—as sexy vamps. Lots of cleavage, cinched waists, high hair and thick make-up in classic 1980s style. Having nearly gone to the wall financially, they were prepared to play the game. Even though the endless preening was a chore.

  When the band wasn’t in the studio it was on the road playing to massive arena crowds around the world. They loved it. For Nancy, performing was ‘beyond the physical’. It was like ‘an all inclusive state of euphoria,’ she said.

  Heart and the subsequent Bad Animals album, issued in 1987, refilled the coffers. The Wilsons were back on top, hailed as superstars of a supergroup. Success the second time round was that much sweeter.

  In 1986 Nancy married Rolling Stone writer Cameron Crowe, who turned screenwriter/director with the film Almost Famous, based on his life on the road as a music journalist. Nancy was wrapped in a cocoon of romantic bliss.

  But Ann was struggling with her personal demon—food. She’d battled to keep the kilos off all her life. As much as forty-five kilos overweight at times, she had managed to camouflage her weight problems in the early years. But when MTV came along in the 1980s the whole rock’n’roll game changed. Now it wasn’t just about how you sounded. It was all about the video.

  the Wilsons were back on top, hailed as superstars of a supergroup. Success the second time round was that much sweeter

  As Ann’s weight escalated, the record label tried to disguise her size. Photos from the time never show her in full view. She is off to the side or behind Nancy. The super-confident singer was reduced to a bundle of anxiety. The one thing she loved more than anything, performing for an audience, became an agony. She was paralysed with fear. ‘I’d sing my head off but all they would notice would be what I looked like in the review,’ Ann told a journalist.

  The inclusion of material by other songwriters continued with 1990’s Brigade. Again it paid off. Its hit single, ‘All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You’, written by John ‘Mutt’ Lange, reached number two and the album got to three on the Billboard charts. This success was followed by Rock the House Live in 1991, recorded during the concert tour for Brigade.

  In the early 1990s the Wilsons started to dabble in other projects. Ann recorded two duets that hit the top ten—‘Almost Paradise’ with Mike Reno for the Footloose soundtrack and ‘Surrender to Me’ with Robin Zander from Cheap Trick, which featured in the movie Tequila Sunrise. Nancy began scoring films for husband Cameron Crowe, including the Tom Cruise–Renee Zellweger hit Jerry Macguire. Ann adopted her daughter Marie in 1991 and seven years later a boy, named Dustin, her mother’s maiden name.

  The 1993 Desire Walks On seemed to lack that Heart magic and only reached the top fifty. By 1995 the band—now consisting of the Wilsons and Howard Leese—had trouble finding a spot for The Road Home among hits by pop stars like Mariah Carey and rappers such as Coolio.

  Ann and Nancy kept busy with a band they formed for the Support the Troops concert in Seattle during the first Gulf War. Reluctant to perform as a duo, they started the Lovemongers—a play on ‘warmongers’—with Sue Ennis on keyboards, guitarist Frank Cox and Ben Smith on drums. A philanthropic vehicle, it allowed the Wilsons to support causes they believed in while playing music they loved. It was far removed from Heart. They performed concerts to benefit everything from breast cancer research to the environment. Ann described it as ‘heavy harmonies and old folk rock, protest music like anti-war stuff ’. It was family sing-along music—but political at the same time. Ennis believed the Lovemongers ‘was a reclaiming of who Ann and Nancy were artistically’.

  The Lovemongers played around Seattle in the 1990s, recorded a cover of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Battle of Evermore’, which appeared on the soundtrack of Crowe’s 1992 film Singles and released two albums, the 1997 Whirlygig and Here is Christmas the next year. And in 1997 Nancy made her first solo album, Live at McCabe’s, recorded at the guitar shop in Santa Monica, California. It has a folk-rock edge with confessio
nal, Joni Mitchell-esque lyrics.

  Three years later, at the age of forty-six, Nancy gave birth to twin boys. As their families grew, so did the tour entourage. Both women took their children on the road as often as possible, along with nannies and support staff. Often tours would be scheduled around school holidays. At the height of Heart mania in the 1980s, touring was on private jets in superstar style. Now, on the Beatles tribute tour, Inside the Abbey Road with Todd Rundgren, Alan Parsons and John Entwistle, Ann was travelling by bus. Her she-bus, as she called it, had ‘cool music, great movies, candles, the whole back lounge for the kids ... I love the tour bus thing, but it has to be done just right ... boys will be boys on the road even the best of them. Leave them to it.’

  the Lovemongers were far removed from Heart. They performed concerts to benefit everything from breast cancer research to the environment

  By the age of fifty-one, Ann had tried every diet in the book. Now she made the decision to undergo lap-band surgery, which limits the amount of food you can eat. The operation had a miraculous effect on her health and wellbeing.

  When Heart hit the road in 2002 the only original members were Ann and Nancy. They were joined by the Lovemongers’ Ben Smith on drums, Mike Inez from Alice in Chains on bass, Tom Kellock on keyboards and guitarist Scott Olsen. Alive in Seattle, recorded at a Heart show in Seattle, was released in 2003 and displayed the Wilsons’ range and versatility over twenty-five years.

  Jupiter’s Darling, the first studio album from Heart in eleven years, was out the same year. As Nancy explained, ‘we’ve been thinking about going back into the studio as Heart for a long time ... we went back to our ... dream ... of giving Led Zeppelin a run for their money.’ Nancy’s first attempt at producing, it sounds more like the Heart of old. Jupiter’s Darling put the Wilsons back on the rock’n’roll map. Reviews were largely united: Ann is ‘powerful and dynamic’, Nancy sings ‘steamy vocals’ and plays ‘hard fast licks’.

  Heart continues to rock without rehashing the hits of the 1980s—or the high hair and glam-rock. Their army of fans, known as Heartmongers, is evidence of their longevity as well as the relevance of their current songs. Nancy isn’t convinced the path is any easier today for women than it was when the Wilsons were earning their stripes. ‘What’s allowed for women in rock culture is still very narrow ... the pole dancer vibe is so strong now ... I feel bad for a lot of the girls out there.’

  PATTI SMITH

  Rock’n’roll’s Bard

  A poet at heart, Patti had a clear rock agenda. She wanted to ‘shake things up’ and invigorate rock’n’roll, which she saw as losing its way. Her startling 1975 debut album Horses shifted the rock paradigm into a new realm. It was a bold experiment with musical form and sound. Critics were wowed by her audacity and intrigued by her manipulation of voice, words and music—all done without any slick embellishment. Scribes from Rolling Stone to the New York Times hailed Horses as one of the most original, thought-provoking, emotionally charged and important records of the time. Thirty years on, it has lost none of its potency.

  Christened Patricia Lee Smith, the eldest of the four children of Beverley and Grant Smith, Patti was born in Chicago in 1946, and grew up in Woodbury, New Jersey, on a housing estate built on reclaimed swamp land. Money was very tight. Patti’s mother worked as a waitress and her father in one of the local factories. A sickly child who suffered from bronchial troubles, including TB, Patti wore an eye patch to correct a stigma for several years. Her mother was Jehovah’s Witness, a religion Patti followed until she was around twelve. She explored Catholicism and Buddhism in later years and religion was ever present in her art, particularly Christ, who regularly featured in her musings and whom she has nominated as one of her ‘favourite guys’.

  For much of her early childhood Patti identified with the male side of her nature. She was more comfortable hanging out with the boys. She hung out with her crew by the railway tracks, as many of the youths in South Jersey did. It was a rough place and Patti learned early on to look after herself. As she grew into teenagehood, she found it increasingly difficult to cope with being female.

  she was toying with words, jotting down random thoughts and scribbling rambling poems about love and death

  Painfully thin, with long dark hair and sharply defined facial features, Patti was not considered pretty. That and her personality oddities set her apart. She began to feel social pressures to adopt a more feminine stance. But she just wanted the freedom to keep on wrestling and fighting with the neighbourhood boys.

  On the exterior she may have seemed just another Jersey kid, but what was going on in Patti’s head was another story. A compulsive daydreamer, she would drift off for vast spaces of time, her fantasies keeping her entertained and tuned out from the world around her. She was an avid reader and fell in love with the decadent nineteenth-century French poets, Arthur Rimbaud in particular. She also adored William Blake. Her musical tastes spanned everything from jazz, which her mother loved, to rock. She was a fan of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, the early Rolling Stones, the Beatles, James Brown and groups like the Marvelettes, whom she danced to until she dropped. And she worshipped Bob Dylan.

  Patti soon fell in with the New York underground arts movement and with Robert Mapplethorpe

  Early on she began toying with words, jotting down thoughts at random and scribbling rambling poems about love and death, epics that she has said were atrocious. She also loved to draw in a spidery hand with pencil. As a teenager she had a baby, who she gave up for adoption. She had no intention of being a single mother in New Jersey.

  In 1969 Patti and her sister Linda took off for Paris. There Patti scraped by as a street performer and walked the streets Rimbaud had wandered a century earlier. She kept on painting and sketching, but was being drawn back to poetry—many of her drawings featured more words than images. It wasn’t long before she gave herself entirely to the written word.

  The next year she was back in the USA. Moving to New York, she immersed herself in alternate theatre, performing in independent productions including Cowboy Mouth, a play she co-wrote with Sam Shepard.

  New York’s Greenwich Village was teeming with artists. Patti fell in with the underground arts movement and with Robert Mapplethorpe, who later become a renowned photographer. Mapplethorpe, reportedly her lover for a time, was homosexual and in 1989 died of AIDS. The pair lived in the famously decadent Chelsea Hotel. At the time Patti was there the hotel was home to William Burroughs, Shepard and Janis Joplin when she was in town. Patti frequented Max’s Kansas City, which had become the ‘in’ spot for the ‘in’ crowd. She became friends with Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Burroughs.

  She was in her element.

  By 1971 she had teamed up with guitarist Lenny Kaye. They performed their first poetry-to-music reading at St Mark’s Church on the Lower East Side. Their originality got a positive response and the two continued to explore the form over the next couple of years.

  Patti began appearing at the Mercer Arts Center with various bands, including the New York Dolls. The Center, a warren of performance spaces, was a creative breeding ground for the new wave. She performed without accompaniment. Often the audience was less than receptive to the intense young woman. Patti was yet to start singing, although her poems were always written like song lyrics and lent themselves to rhythmic accompaniment.

  She published three volumes of poetry— Seventh Heaven, Kodak and Witt—and contributed lyrics to several Blue Oyster Cult songs. In 1973 she and Kaye performed Rock’n’Rimbaud at Le Jardin near Times Square. Shortly after Patti began to experiment with singing. Her transition into performance-poetry-come-rock’n’roll was a natural progression.

  As her confidence grew, she and Kaye decided they needed to round out their sound. They auditioned for a piano player, grilling tens of young hopefuls, and found the missing link in Richard ‘DNV’ Sohl (DNV is s
upposedly an acronym for Death in Venice). There was no doubt he could play—at the audition he swept from classical to jazz and everything in between—but for Patti the real clincher was that Sohl had been brought up a Jehovah’s Witness and had rejected it. They were on the same cosmic plane. Patti recalled all three were stoned during the audition—she liked to smoke dope and eat hash, but the drugs were a brief interlude and never took over her life.

  In 1974 Mapplethorpe, Kaye and Patti’s manager Jane Friedman (who had worked on Woodstock) funded production of the single, ‘Hey Joe’ backed by ‘Piss Factory’. The latter song was about Patti’s experiences working in a toy factory in the late 1960s, when her fellow female workers had persecuted her by sticking her head in a urine-filled toilet bowl. ‘Hey Joe’ began with a monologue about kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst toting a machine gun with her abductors. The songs were recorded at Electric Ladyland, the studio Jimi Hendrix built but never recorded in, located in the Village. Tom Verlaine, guitarist with Television and one of Patti’s lovers, also played on the record, which was issued on the Mer label.

  critics were wowed by her audacity and her manipulation of voice, words and music—all without the slick embellishment of her contemporaries

  That year the Patti Smith Group, as the trio was named, performed a couple of gigs in California. Another band member was added—guitarist Ivan Kral—and the quartet launched into performances at Max’s Kansas City in New York. A two-month residency with Television at CBGB followed early in 1975.

  The grimy, claustrophobic, dimly lit club appealed to Patti, who was in her element on the tiny cramped stage. She drew her energy from the sea of bodies heaving and rolling with her voice. Dressed in black, she seemed lacking in any female definition. Many assumed she was lesbian—had they read Seventh Heaven they would have been convinced. Patti laughed off the suggestion that her sexuality was that easily defined. She very clearly loved men, but as an artist she was amorphous.