Heart's Nancy Wilson

Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

Pushkin Industries

Society & Culture, Music

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Guitarist and songwriter Nancy Wilson is one half of the rock band Heart, along with her older sister Ann Wilson. Nancy and Ann have been the face of the band since the mid-70s. Heart’s first album, Dreamboat Annie, was released in 1976 right as the band was making traction opening for big acts like Rod Stewart and The Bee Gees. Soon their songs, like “Magic Man” and “Crazy On You,” started to take off in the States, and Heart quickly became a headlining act.

Nearly 50 years since their debut album, Heart has experienced career highs—like a string of chart-topping hits and an induction into the Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame—as well as their fair share of personal and professional adversity. Today Ann and Nancy remain steadfast in continuing Heart’s legacy. This month they embarked on a world tour—their first in five years.

To celebrate Ann and Nancy Wilson’s massive contribution to rock n roll history, we will feature conversations with both sisters over the next two weeks. Today we’ll hear Leah Rose talk to Nancy about how the popular drugs of the ‘70s and ‘80s influenced Heart’s sound. She also describes how being accepted by the musicians of Seattle’s grunge scene helped her overcome Heart’s fraught experience recording power ballads in the ‘80s. And she describes the lo-fi setup she used to score the soundtracks of her ex-husband Cameron Crowe’s hit movies: Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, and Jerry McGuire.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Heart songs HERE.

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0:00.0	Pushkin
0:09.0	I'm Ben Nadefaffrey, host of the history show The Last Archive and I want to tell you about a new series we're running in our feed.
0:15.0	It's called The Dead Line. Six essays written and read by Jill Lepore, the New Yorker writer, American historian, and founding host of our show.
0:25.0	These are incredible essays on everything from the history of cryogenics to the Silicon
0:29.2	Valley Gospel of Disruption.
0:31.4	And at the end of each essay, I interview Jill about her craft as a writer. You can listen on the I Heart
0:36.4	radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Guitarist and songwriter Nancy Wilson is one half of the rock band Hart, along with her older sister, Anne Wilson.
0:51.0	Nancy and Anne have been the face of the band since the mid 70s when they started playing gigs around their home base in Vancouver, British Columbia.
0:58.0	The Wilson sisters both migrated to Canada from Seattle, Washington to join a band member who was dodging the Vietnam draft.
1:06.0	Hart's first album, Dream Boat Annie, was released in 1976, right as a band was making traction
1:11.7	opening for big acts like Rod Stewart and the Bee geez.
1:15.2	Soon their songs like Magic Man and Crazy On You started to take off in the States,
1:19.7	and Hart quickly became a headlining act.
1:22.8	Nearly 50 years since the debut album,
1:25.0	Hart has experienced career highs,
1:27.4	like a string of chart-topping hits
1:29.0	and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
1:31.8	as well as their fair share of personal and professional adversity.
1:35.0	Today, Anna Nancy remained steadfast in continuing Hart's legacy.
1:40.0	This month, they are embarking on a world tour their first in five years.
1:44.0	To celebrate Anne and Nancy Wilson's massive contribution to rock and roll history
1:48.8	will feature conversations with both sisters over the next two weeks.
	...

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