Heart played their first full show as a band earlier this week. In just a few short days, they’ll take things a step further with a New Year’s Eve homecoming show. The band will take the stage at the Pledge Climate Arena in their hometown of Seattle.
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Earlier this week, Nancy Wilson sat down with The Seattle Times to discuss the New Year’s Eve show, the longevity of Heart, the perceived drama within the band, and more.
Wilson is looking forward to sharing the stage with her sister in their hometown. “I’m just really excited about working with Ann again,” she said. “We’ve been texting back and forth a lot—‘What about this song? What if we did that song?’ It’s a really beautiful legacy to dive back into and look around and see over the four decades-plus that we’ve managed to do some pretty awesome, artistic musical things,” Wilson added.
Ann Wilson originally joined Heart in 1973 which makes this the 50th anniversary of her time with the band. The Times asked Nancy how she felt about the band’s longevity. “I think it’s proof of the puddin’, as they say, that we survive,” she said. “We bounce, we float. The survival of it all was largely due to a wicked sense of humor and just the passion and the desire to do music. Music is a real healing power, and right now, need I say, the world needs it a lot.”
[Get Tickets to See Heart Perform Live via StubHub]
Family Issues Within Heart
Siblings fight. That’s just a fact of life. The Wilson sisters are no different. They’ve had their issues over the years. However, they’re on better terms than some would like to believe. Wilson discussed this during the interview.
“The first question a lot of people have always asked either of us, me or Ann, has been, ‘Do you guys fight?’ Like sibling rivalry. They’re hoping we say yes,” she said. “At one point, we even thought about staging a fight just to satisfy the—what is now like—the haters on social media. Like, everybody has to take sides all the time. Everybody has to be in opposite camps … don’t get me started on that,” she added. “In my case, having Ann as my sister and having done music with her since I was born basically, it’s a good thing.”
However, Wilson admits that being in a band with a family member isn’t always easy. After all, things that are worth the effort rarely are. “There’s been a lot of emotionally challenging aspects to having a family that’s in a band together,” Wilson admitted. “It’s really hard to compartmentalize some of those things and not be defensive or to be disruptive inside the family aspect of things when you’re trying to do business in a career setting. So, the family part and the career part can oftentimes derail pretty easily,” she continued. However, there is a solution to that. “That’s where you have to think bigger and you have to be a bigger human around it all and learn how to be really forgiving and take the high road.
Featured Image by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
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