Every Moment Has A Song

(Reprinted from Rolling Stone)

Sisters publishing memoir ‘Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul and Rock & Roll’

By Jessica Hopper

After four decades and 30 million albums sold, Ann and Nancy Wilson have  decided to tell their story. This week Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of  Heart, Soul and Rock & Roll (HarperCollins) hits shelves. With  co-author Charles Cross (Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt  Cobain), the Wilson sisters dish on Heart’s formative years, the  inspirations behind their hits and their personal travails, along with some  sordid rock gossip. Here are some of the more notable – and curious – stories  revealed:

During Ann’s junior year in high school, their parents became aware that  their daughters were regularly smoking pot. Having hit a bit of a counterculture  experimental phase, one night after dinner, the Wilson parents suggested that  the whole family toke together. Ann recalls it being rather embarrassing: “It  wasn’t the best pot, but I wasn’t about to share my connection with my  parents.”

“Crazy On You” was inspired by Ann’s first serious romance, with Michael  Fischer, who would soon become Heart’s iron-fisted manager. The pair shacked up  on a hippie commune in Canada. Wilson writes that while the lyrics “were  straight out of the scenes of wild sexuality that went on in the cottage,” they  were also about her feminist awakening and finding empowerment through her  music.

During Heart’s earliest incarnation they were primarily a cover band,  cementing their reputation in the Vancouver club scene with their set of Led  Zeppelin songs. In March 1975, Heart was onstage performing “Stairway to Heaven”  when Zeppelin themselves walked in, fresh from their show at the Pacific  Coliseum. Wilson writes that the foursome seemed oblivious, disappearing into  the club’s inner-sactum, where Jimmy Page was tended to by “his doctor” before  promptly passing out.

When Nancy was on location with her then-husband (and former Rolling  Stone scribe) Cameron Crowe while he was directing the 2001 bomb  Vanilla Sky, the film’s star, Tom Cruise, gave the couple a personally  guided tour of Scientology’s Celebrity Centre.

The early radio success of “Magic Man” was paid for with hookers and cocaine.  The band’s publicist would ferry the Wilson sisters to radio appearances where  they would meet the DJ, do a station ID and then be told to go wait outside.  According to Nancy, “When we were out of the way, he’d pass the DJ a gram of  cocaine or the number of a hooker he’d lined up and say ‘She’s yours, on Heart.’  It wasn’t until years later that the Wilson sisters found out about the shady  dealings that had gone on behind their backs.

The photo negative for a topless picture of Ann Wilson, taken surreptitiously  by Annie Leibovitz, is rotting in a safe deposit box. When a shoot with the  photographer for the band’s Bebe Le Strange-era Rolling Stone cover went south, the band demanded the famed rock photographer destroy her  copy; when she refused, Heart took her to court. The judge ordered the negative  to be kept in a safe deposit box that could only be opened with two keys – one  belonging to Wilson and the other to Leibovitz – insuring it would never see the  light of day.

In the fall of 1982, Heart had a brush with the legendary ego of John Cougar  Mellencamp. The young singer was opening the band’s tour behind Private  Audition, Heart’s first album that wasn’t an immediate million-seller, when  Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” went to number one. He came to the band with a  proposition: “Seeing as your album is a turkey and mine is a hit, care to swap  places?” The Wilson sisters declined, reminding him that the tour had sold out  before he’d even been announced as the opening act.

While Heart was on tour with Van Halen, Alex and Eddie, in their own  fumbling, wasted way, suggested a four-way-of-sorts between them. The sisters  declined, but later that night, when Nancy learned that Eddie didn’t own an  acoustic guitar she was incredulous, and she gave him one of her own before  sending him on his way.  The next morning, after a night-long binge, he  called her hotel room and serenaded her over the phone.