“Jimmy Page said, ‘Wow, I love the way you play that song.’ I was like, ‘God, I could die now’”: Heart’s Nancy Wilson on their long road to the top, grunge friends – and that cover of Stairway to Heaven

Flying in the face of sexism in the ’70s, Heart made it big with some of the most powerful and beautiful rock songs of that decade. In turn, Nancy Wilson became one of the most inspirational guitarists of the era. Now, on the eve of a UK tour, she tells us: “You have to feel proud of your gnarly hands!” 

When Heart kick off their 2024 UK tour at London’s O2 Arena on July 1, it will be not only their first UK appearance in nearly a decade, but their largest-ever headline show on these shores. It’s a sign the band’s stock is as high again as it was in the late ’80s and early ’90s. 

Heart, led as always by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, will play a career-spanning setlist from what is now rightly recognised as a catalogue of rock classics. And, as Nancy Wilson tells us, they have fought for that recognition from the beginning.

“We were military brats who figured we wouldn’t take any prisoners. We would just go out and prove it,” Nancy recalls of the band’s formative years in the mid-’70s. “We travelled all our lives in the military. So to go on a rock tour, what’s the big difference?” 

At that time, there were few visible women in rock, but the Wilsons were unconcerned by that. 

“There were no female influences really. When we first saw The Beatles, we wanted to be in the band. Then when we saw Zeppelin, we wanted to be Zeppelin. I was channelling Jimmy Page, and Elton’s piano playing on acoustic guitar. Ann was channelling Robert Plant and Paul Rodgers.”

Many women following in Heart’s wake have said seeing Heart made them realize it was possible. So what gave the Wilsons the idea? 

“Janis Joplin had been out there already, but she was blues, really. Aretha was soul. Judy Garland was before our time, but she had a lot of power. There were powerful women that we admired in music from our parents. So we figured, ‘why not? What’s stopping us?’ It’s not expected, but if we’re good, we can do it.’” 

Nancy barely pauses before adding, “And we were good.” It’s not a brag, just a statement of fact, but it speaks the self-belief required to blaze that trail.

Although Ann and Nancy couldn’t see a problem with women playing rock, plenty of other people could. 

“People were like, ‘Women aren’t really supposed to do that! You’re supposed to be an ornament, and be seen but not heard,’” Nancy grimaces. 

“So we were very loud. I guess we just didn’t care. We wanted to channel the androgyny of rock ’n’ roll. 

“Guys like Robert Plant looked like really hot chicks, and we felt like we could be hot chicks or hot dudes on a big rock stage like that. Androgyny and a sense of humor were our basic survival tools, because there was no place for us at the time.”

Instructions to be seen and not heard were not the end of it. “A lot of people were like, ‘Oh, it’s just not ladylike!’ A common question was, ‘How do you possibly maintain your femininity?’ I was like, ‘Maybe just be myself?’” she laughs. 

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“People said all the time: ‘You’ll ruin your fingernails!’ It did of course, but I didn’t care about my fingernails. Me and Keith Richards – we’re not hand models. I went to a Neil Young benefit a few years ago. A famous singer came up to me and was like, ‘Oh, man, I always had a thing for you. I wish I would have ever acted on it.’ 

“I was like, ‘Well, I’d like to introduce you to my husband!’ He was like, ‘Dammit, I should have made a move, but I was just too fucked up at the time’. But then he goes, ‘Let me see your hands’. And so we compared our acoustic guitar fingers. You have to feel proud of your gnarly hands!”

That everyday sexism was only fuel to Nancy’s fire. “When I wrote the guitar intro to Crazy On You, called Silver Wheels, I was just going for something like Yes, who used to have acoustic guitar intros to epic songs. 

“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll prove myself. I’m not a guy, so if I prove myself a little bit harder, then I might be noticed and taken seriously as a player.’ Stuff like that actually brings respect when you can show that you’re an accomplished musician, and not just an ornament on a stage.” 

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Silver Wheels has become a benchmark for acoustic guitarists to master. “Everybody and his brother always tries to play it on Instagram,” Nancy agrees. “Everybody plays it slightly differently. I never play it the same twice. But it’s a cool kind of cultural phenomenon that guitar players always try that little acoustic intro.”

Her favorite Heart guitar moment, however, is from a deep cut, Mistral Wind, the closing track on the 1978 album Dog & Butterfly. 

“I really like the way Jimmy Page used dissonance, and his acoustic guitar playing, too,” she begins. 

“There’s that sort of element to the heaviness of Zeppelin. That made them one of the coolest bands on planet, because they were so versatile. So when I was working on the intro part of Mistral Wind, I was definitely channelling a Jimmy Page mentality, trying to evoke something darkly mysterious. 

“I think musically, the guitar perfectly matches the lyrics. It starts in a quiet little mysterious place and then it runs into a huge storm at sea, and then you’re almost crashed on the rocks and there’s lightning bolts. 

“It’s like a music visual to the actual lyrics. By the end of it, you’re a changed person, but you lived to tell. I’m really proud of it. It’s one of the great epics from the ’70s, when Rush and Styx would have seven-minute songs.”

As the ’70s gave way to the ’80s, Heart briefly found themselves out of fashion before reinventing themselves as purveyors of the finest power ballads. 

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“With the onset of MTV came all of the star-making machinery, the hairspray and the corsets,” Nancy recalls with a trace of discomfort.

“It was a real switchover for us from the mind-expanded ’70s into the ’80s that were more cocaine- and ego-driven. We were fish out of water for the first part of the ’80s, and then we grabbed on to the Prince & The Revolution vibe with the stylists, and worked with other songwriters. 

“We’d only written our own songs up until then, but Alone and These Dreams and What About Love are great songs that could be out of any era. So we still do those. The blues and the ’80s co-exist in the set.”

Although Heart made some great ’80s records, Nancy’s particular talents were sometimes sidelined. 

“I played a lot of powerchords, in the army of powerchord players of the time. There wasn’t a lot of acoustic guitar in the ’80s. The producer of those albums said, ‘It’s really out of style. Nobody wants to hear the acoustic guitar right now.’ I was like, ‘Really? I don’t think that.’ 

“It was hard for me to get to get an acoustic guitar into those songs, but it’s always been my signature. The signature sound of Heart is a hard rock band incorporating acoustic guitar, like on Magic Man, or a lot of songs you could name.” 

Still, the ’80s weren’t all bad: “It was a great time for music, when a lot of people first came to know Heart. We get teenage people discovering us now. I guess it speaks well for some of those songs, and it really is all about the songs.”

The sidelining of Nancy’s acoustic playing in Heart had a silver lining, however. “I did some score music that really centred around the acoustic guitar,” she points out.

That led to a side career in film scoring, contributing soundtrack material for films by her then-husband Cameron Crowe, including Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous.

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When the 1990s saw grunge annihilate the hair metal scene, a somewhat sheepish Heart returned to their native Seattle. 

“We were so embarrassed to come back during the explosion of Soundgarden and Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam,” Nancy admits. 

“All those guys were our brothers from our hometown. When Mother Love Bone’s singer Andy Wood died, my best friend Kelly Curtis, who managed Pearl Jam, invited us to come to his memorial party. 

“That’s where I met Chris Cornell and all these guys that I’m still really tight with – Eddie Vedder, Mike McCready and Kim Thayil. It was such a relief to be accepted into that rock community in our hometown, after the big hair and the artifice in the ’80s.”

Having fought her way up alone, Nancy is now an inspiration to generations of guitar-playing women. She mentions Boygenius, Angel Olsen and Sleater-Kinney among her favorites, but her greatest praise is reserved for Grace Bowers, a 17-year-old from Nashville: 

“She’s so good. She’s not just shredding for the sake of shredding. There’s a whole difference in my mind between just shredding, like wanking-off, as opposed to melodically conversational-type shredding. That’s what the great players do, like I think Grace Bowers is already at 17. She has a significant voice. I would pick her out in a crowd of shredders, like, ‘Oh, I know who that is’, like David Gilmour. You could shred ’til kingdom come, but it doesn’t stick until there’s a conversation going on.”

As she prepares to tour, Nancy faces a conundrum familiar to many rock stars of her generation: whether to leave her favourite vintage guitars at home. 

“I’ve always used a 1962 Gibson SG with a Bigsby for vibrato. I just got a newer one that was built in the ’70s, because road life is pretty hard on guitars. I’m saving that for my studio work now. My Lake Placid Blue ’63 Telecaster – same thing. It’s been my best friend onstage forever. 

“I’m saving it for the studio, and I’ve got a remake. Fender Custom Shop made me another one, but it’s not the same. I love it, but I just don’t hear the dirt that’s in the original. It’s much harder to make it sound the way I want it to sound. 

“But look at Bruce Springsteen. He’s got the same blonde Telecaster that he’s always had. Just put some extra bubble wrap around it or something. And we’re playing indoors, which is easier on the guitars.” She seems to decide as she’s talking: “So I’ll probably take the old Tele.”

The rest of Nancy’s rig is fairly simple: a Budda SuperDrive 30 is set crunchy, boosted by an MXR Timmy when necessary. The Ten Effects Barracuda flanger, designed by former Heart guitarist Howard Leese, is deployed on, of course, the heaviest of all Heart songs, Barracuda. 

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“I just like a good amp, a good mic on the amp, and a pedal or two,” Nancy says. “For me, it’s more about the expression of how you play than the effects of the playing. And I’m more a rhythm player. I mean, I play lead okay, but I’m not a shredder. I’m more like a Pete Townshend rhythm player, where I incorporate lead into the rhythms.”

Although they had to fight for recognition, the Wilson sisters have long since earned their peers’ respect. 

One of Heart’s most viewed videos is their 2012 Kennedy Center Honors performance of Stairway To Heaven for the surviving members of Led Zeppelin, including a visibly tearful Robert Plant. When Nancy remembers a moment from that night, she retains a sense of amazement. 

“Jimmy Page came up later and said, ‘Wow, I love the way you play that song’. I was like, ‘God, I could die now’. I was just in shock to hear that coming out of him. Then Plant said, ‘I’ve really come to hate that song. But wow, you guys did a great job.’ Jimmy Page telling me he thought I played great was so incredibly life-altering! It made me want to get better. Keep working it!”

Heart tour the UK in July and hit the US in August. Head to Heart Music for more information.