In her upcoming authorized documentary film, In My Voice, Heart’s Ann Wilson looks back on her incredible, decades-long career and touches on her bond and musical evolution alongside her sister and guitar virtuoso, Nancy Wilson.
“I started out with Nancy, of course,” she tells Guitar World in a new interview. “As a kid, I had mononucleosis and couldn’t go to school for three months, so my grandmother gave me a nylon-string acoustic. I’d try to figure out chords, but when I wasn’t playing, Nancy would pick it up and just rule on it.
“I mean, it was so easy for her. You’d put on Simon and Garfunkel records, and she could just completely play like Paul Simon. I’m four years older, but she just went sailing past me. I realized she was a killer player when she was only eight or something.”
When Nancy started going up to the fledgling band’s new home base of Vancouver, Canada, in 1974, she initially played acoustic.
“But pretty soon, she got her hands on an electric guitar” and everything changed.
“She approaches it as if it were an acoustic,” Ann says of why Nancy’s electric playing is so special.
“Y’know, she was friends with Joni Mitchell’s main guitar guy and got some of the tunings out of him and made them her own. Now, of course, she’s a complete original – no one plays like her.”
Ann Wilson’s In My Voice had its initial screenings earlier this year as part of a special nationwide tour. Additionally, she's joined forces with Tripsitter for her newly released album, Consecrated Ground.
Guitar World’s full interview with the Heart frontwoman will be coming out in the next couple of weeks.
