HEART and SIMON TOWNSHEND as part of Canadian Music Fest at Massey Hall (178 Victoria), tonight (Thursday, March 21), 7:30 pm. $65-$115, limited wristbands. RTH, cmw.net. And celebrity interview at the Marriott Eaton Centre Hotel (525 Bay), Friday (March 22), 1:05 pm. Limited VIP wristband. See listings.
Gloria Steinem has said that typically men get more conservative as they get older and women get more radical. She was speaking politically, though it’s easy to extend the idea to the arts when listening to Heart’s 14th album, Fanatic (Legacy), one of their boldest and heaviest releases to date.
“That’s absolutely been true for me,” says Ann Wilson, the rock band’s 62-year-old powerhouse singer, on the phone from Seattle. “The older you get and the more you learn, the more you figure out that if you speak your mind and be yourself, it doesn’t really matter if people get mad at you. Nothing earth-shaking is going to happen. You’re not going to die. You’re going to feel better, and things are going to get done the way you want them to get done.”
Ann and her guitar-slinging sister Nancy Wilson were never exactly wallflowers to begin with, though Ann, who joined Heart first, says it took her some time to find her place in the outfit.
“When I first got in the band right out of high school, I didn’t yet know I could rock like the guys,” she says. “I came into it as the chick who was more or less window-dressing and who could sing the ballads and play the tambourine and wiggle around onstage.
“But that didn’t last long. It wasn’t enough for me. After a couple of years when the band decided they wanted to do Led Zeppelin and Aretha Franklin songs, [the job] fell to me. I was the one who had the voice that could go high. It all went from there.”
Beyond being adored by all the coolest girls I know, Heart’s been experiencing a renaissance: filling elegant soft-seaters like Massey Hall, dropping two strong albums in as many years after a six-year drought (that followed an 11-year hiatus in the 90s while they raised their children), co-writing the 2012 memoir Kicking And Dreaming, and finally getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after narrowly missing out on the honour last year.
Fans of vintage Heart might be excited to know that at the April induction ceremony, the Wilsons will reunite with the classic 70s lineup heard on Dreamboat Annie, Little Queen and Dog & Butterfly. That includes drummer Mike Derosier, keyboardist Howard Leese, founding member/bassist Steve Fossen and founding member/guitarist Roger Fisher, who dated Nancy back in the day. Ann dated his brother Mike, Heart’s former manager, about whom she wrote the song Magic Man.
Will that be awkward?
“It should be interesting,” Ann allows with a hearty laugh. “We’re just going to get up and jam.”
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