Legends of Rock & Roll: Heart

By James Hoag

Ann and Nancy Wilson were among the first to show us that women could rock as well as men. There have been other women rockers, but no one like the Wilson sisters. Their band Heart has been at the top of the album charts for over 40 years

They have sold more than 35 million albums throughout their career. They have had twenty Top 40 singles and seven Top Ten albums. They have received four Grammy Awards.

In 2009, television channel, VH1, named “Barracuda” the 39th best hard rock song of all time. "Barracuda" is one of Heart's signature songs. Come inside and find out just how and why this song was written.

All the Legends of Rock & Roll books are essentially biographies, but I am interested primarily in the music. You'll find that the emphasis is on the music, how it came to be, who wrote it and performed it and any juicy tidbits about any given song or album.

If you like the music of Heart, scroll up and buy now. You will enjoy it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Hoag
• Release date: May 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310846731

James Hoag

James Hoag has always been a big fan of Rock & Roll. Most people graduate from high school and then proceed to "grow up" and go on to more adult types of music. James got stuck at about age 18 and has been an avid fan of popular music ever since. His favorite music is from the Fifties, the origin of Rock & Roll and which was the era in which James grew up. But he likes almost all types of popular music including country music.After working his entire life as a computer programmer, he is now retired and he decided to share his love of the music and of the performers by writing books that discuss the life and music of the various people who have meant so much to him over the years.He calls each book a "love letter" to the stars that have enriched our lives so much. These people are truly Legends.

Book preview

Legends of Rock & Roll – Heart

By

James Hoag

~~~

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2015 by James Hoag

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Cover by James Hoag

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Publishers Notes

Disclaimer

Legends of Rock & Roll – Connie Francis Copyright 2015 James Hoag.

All rights reserved.

No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without written permission from the publisher. The only exception is for a reviewer. A reviewer may quote brief passages in a review.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Pre-Heart

Growing Up In a Military Family

The Viewpoints

Hocus Pocus

The Birth of Heart

Catching Up With Nancy

Heart is Finally Complete

Dreamboat Annie

Barracuda

Dog & Butterfly

Bebe Le Strange

In Decline

Passionworks

Heart

The Singles of Heart

Bad Animals

Drugs and Rock & Roll

Heart Takes a Break

A Family For Ann

The Lovemongers

Heart Once Again on Hold

Ann and Nancy’s Families Grow

Reviving Heart

Red Velvet Car

Fanatic

Legacy of Heart

Afterword

Selected Discography

About the Author

Introduction

I have to admit, in 1975, I had a crush on Nancy Wilson. Any red-blooded American (or otherwise) guy would. She could sing and she could play the guitar and she was gorgeous. Actually, both Wilson Sisters were gorgeous (still are). Heart came on the scene about 1975 and have never really gone away. There have been periods of inactivity, but they are still going strong today. I didn’t really grow up with Heart as I was married with two children in 1975, but I feel like I have followed their career since the beginning. The Wilsons were the first women to really rock. I mean hard rock. They could sing a ballad that would give you goosebumps or they could pound it like the hardest rocker around. And they were really the first women that could do that.

Ann and Nancy’s journey really starts when they were living in Seattle, Washington, moves into Canada for several years, and then goes worldwide. They’ve had their ups and downs just like any other band, but their legion of fans is still faithful to them as they tour and record to this day. This is my tribute to a great American band, Heart. Oh, and I still have that crush on Nancy.

Pre-Heart

When you think of the band Heart, you immediately think of the Wilson sisters, Ann and Nancy, but the story of Heart starts long before they joined the band. We have to go all the way back to 1967 to determine where it all started.

It began with a guy named Steve Fossen. Fossen was born in 1949 in the Seattle, Washington area. That made him about 18 years old when, in 1967, he got together with a friend named Roger Fisher, also from Seattle, and created a band they called The Army. Fisher was born in 1950 and had learned to play the guitar along with his brother Mike. They grew up in the town of Bothell, Washington which is part of Metropolitan Seattle. Along with some friends of theirs, they did the teenage thing, playing in all the area high schools and also in some local bars and clubs. Nothing permanent came of The Army, but it was good experience for later on.

The Army was your typical local band. They were teenagers hoping to make it big in the world of rock music. The personnel changed frequently, but Fossen and Fisher stayed the course and were the glue that held things together. Ann Wilson says that Fossen changed the name of the band to White Heart because they couldn’t play at any Navy functions (not that very many came up.) The name White Heart is supposed to come from a science fiction novel of the same name, but the closest I can come is a novel by Arthur C Clarke called White Hart, published in 1952. In 1970, the band actually used the name Heart for a short time and then changed it again to Hocus Pocus.

Ann Wilson joined the band in 1970 when she was twenty. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. We need to get caught up with the Wilson sisters.

Growing Up In a Military Family

Ann and Nancy Wilson grew up the daughters of a career Marine. Their parents were John Wilson and Lois Dustin Wilson. Since John was in the Marine Corp, the family moved a lot. Their grandfather was also named John Wilson, and he was a brigadier general in the Marines, so they came from good stock. The Wilson family was originally from Corvallis, Oregon and