by Ann Wilson
Our first real success in the States came from border cities like Detroit, Seattle, Buffalo, or any place that could pick up Canadian radio. But soon radio airplay in the Midwest brought us to the heartland. Some of that came because of our music, but Shelley’s promotion efforts were also crucial. Shelley would take us to these radio stations, introduce us to the DJs, and send us to the car. When we were out of the way, he’d pass the DJs a gram of cocaine, or maybe the number of a hooker he’d lined up, and say, “She’s yours, on Heart.” We suspected the drugs when Shelley’s own issues became apparent, but we never knew about the hookers until years later. We were pretty sheltered, but if we had known, it would have been a difficult ethical situation for us. We were so intensely serious about our music, and thought our political message was one of love and purity. We had no idea how corrupt the industry was.
Shelley also lined up the first few stories in the press done on Heart. When we complained that the facts were wrong in some of those pieces, Shelley just waved us off as if we knew nothing about the ways of the world. “Ink is ink,” Shelley always said.
If Heart was going to build on the success of Dreamboat Annie in Canada, we needed to play regularly and tour in the United States. Faced with that, Michael Fisher decided to turn himself in to the authorities. He did it for me, but he also did it because he believed in the band, and he didn’t want to be the obstacle to our success.
Michael had met my parents one time when he’d snuck down to the States with me. I had imagined that my Marine major father might not be crazy about my draft-evading boyfriend, but Dotes surprised me. Dotes, a man with a Purple Heart, and a revolver in the drawer by his bed, not only accepted Michael, he supported him evading the draft. Dotes said he might have done the same if the “dirty war of Vietnam” had been happening when he enlisted. When Michael’s draft-dodging case was close to going to trial, Dotes wrote letters to the judge and to the president, asking for leniency. It was impossible to know how much that correspondence had to do with the fact that Michael settled his case without jail time—Michael had also uncovered massive corruption in his local draft board where deferments were given to anyone wealthy, or connected. Still, I’m sure a letter from war hero Major Wilson had an effect.
Now that we could play in the States, Heart began to tour there regularly, a pattern that would continue for the next several years. It was with some sadness that we eventually left Vancouver, which had been an adopted home to me for almost four years, and a city where I felt loved and accepted by our fans. But the United States was where we all grew up, and where the biggest success was possible. Once Dreamboat Annie hit the U.S. album charts it stayed there for two years. We found an audience because our songs touched a nerve, but some of it was also timing, and hard rock stations were ready for more female voices at the moment we were coming up.
Just a few months before, our record had been so slow to catch on in Canada that Nancy and I had phoned radio station request lines with foreign accents, thinking that might jumpstart our struggling career. Now, with a hit album that would sell two million copies in the States over the next two years, we didn’t have to do that anymore. Our mother couldn’t let go, though. She thought phoning the request lines and getting us played one more time on Seattle radio might make or break our career. Unlike our attempt to hide our identities, Mama had no shame in her calls.
“This is Lou Wilson,” she’d proudly announce to whatever DJ answered the phone. “Can you play another track from my daughters’ album, please? They’re called Heart.”
12
Burn to the Wick
Nancy makes a decision, and the Wil-Shers begin.
An ad by Mushroom launches a war. And Ann is confronted
by a man with bad cologne named Tone-Knee
who inspires a song. . . .
NANCY WILSON
In the fall of 1975, just as Dreamboat Annie was becoming a hit, I made a decision to get involved with our guitar player Roger Fisher. It wasn’t that I ever said “yes” to Roger, but I simply stopped saying “no.” He had pursued me for years with lyrics, songs, notes, appearances out of the blue, and by being extremely forward about his sexual interest in me. I held him off for a long time, but finally gave in. Initially it helped bond the band, and with two brothers dating two sisters, we truly were one big family now.
Ours was never a deep soul love, but a relationship of convenience for me. We were traveling together, and having a boyfriend in the band to bunk with made sense. We saved money on hotel rooms, and it was as if Ann, Michael, Roger, and I were on a never-ending double date. Ann and I even came up with a combination of our last names that represented our two-sisters-two-brothers relationship: We were the Wil-Shers.
Within the Wil-Shers, however, I always felt Roger and I were the mascots to Ann and Michael. They seemed a really solid couple, like adults, while Roger and I were silly and adolescent. If we went somewhere together, they drove, both literally and metaphorically, while Roger and I were in the backseat.
My relationship with Roger did have significant musical highpoints. He was a gifted guitarist, and onstage we fed off each other. We pushed each other artistically offstage as well, and for someone who was never happier than when I was playing guitar, Roger was my ever-ready duet partner. We both discovered the mandolin at the same time, and when Heart went into the studio to cut Little Queen, that shared interest helped shape “Dream of the Archer” and “Sylvan Song.”
Roger was handsome, athletic, and muscular and had no qualms about showing off his great body. To someone as shy and inexperienced as I was, it was an education. I had to almost beg Roger to put clothes on. Sometimes I got with the hippie plan, and we would sit around nude playing guitar. There was a downside to Roger’s physicality, however, in that I was not the only female he had his eye on, even when we were living together. I discovered that fact early in our relationship when I caught him with his ex-wife. I initially had felt tremendous guilt that I was with a guy who had only recently separated from his wife, so in a way maybe that incident was my penance. There would be more painful lessons to come on this front.
But being with Roger did cut down on most, if not all, of the unwanted male energy directed toward me. Ann initially had her reservations about our relationship—having spent several years on the road with Roger, she knew his ways too well. But our brother-sister relationships had unintended positive effects on the band: It became a news story of sorts and was yet another unique aspect of Heart in the press. Fleetwood Mac had inter-band romances, as well, but not among siblings.
The story of Heart became the story of the Wil-Shers. But in another way that was similar to Fleetwood Mac, these were not relationships without drama or pain.
ANN WILSON
The success of Dreamboat Annie changed everything. We still weren’t seeing much money from our success, though, because Mushroom was so small that cash flow was a huge issue, and their slowness in paying us became increasingly frustrating. Other record labels, some who had previously turned us down, approached us in the meantime. We put the other suitors off out of loyalty to Mushroom. We ended up touring to make money, and we played over two hundred dates that year alone.
In 1976, we were on tour in the States, opening up for the Beach Boys, when our relationship with Mushroom changed forever. The label had attempted to leverage our success by signing more bands, adding U.S. distribution, and raising their industry profile. Sometimes they did that with money that might have gone toward paying us royalties we were owed. So we weren’t surprised when they bought a full-page ad in Rolling Stone touting our success. “Million to One Shot Sells a Million,” read the headline. They had mocked up the ad to look like it was the front page of the National Enquirer. The main headline read: “Exclusive—the Heartbreaking Story, Regional Hit Mushrooms into Million Seller.”
But what was surprising, and heartbreaking, to Nancy and me was the headline that ran farther down the page. Under a photograph of us, an o
uttake from the Dreamboat Annie cover sessions that shows us back to back with bare shoulders, the caption read: “Heart’s Wilson Sisters Confess: ‘It Was Only Our First Time!’ ”
It was a moment when I thought that my mother’s warnings had come true—we had turned into something tragic like Judy Garland, corrupted by the entertainment industry. The ad went against everything we had hoped to achieve, against our ideals, and against all the intent and beauty in our songs. What steamed us the most was that our own record label had put out an ad that implied we were incestuous lesbian lovers.
We angrily called up Shelley Siegel. He answered the phone as he always did, “Mushroom, home-a-duh-hits.” As we had become more successful, Shelley had become more arrogant. On his wall he framed a quote from our first Rolling Stone article where he said, “I’ve sold a million fucking albums, and nobody in L.A. knows who I am, so when they find out, I’ll sell a million point two.” As we might have expected, Shelley tried to blame the ad on someone else, but we knew it was him. He later would admit to placing the ad but claimed we had approved it. Shelley had developed a serious cocaine problem by then, which affected his already questionable judgment. “Don’t worry,” Shelley said on the phone that day, giving us his typical sales job. “Ink is ink.”
There was one headline that was part of the Rolling Stone ad that was true. It read, “New LP on Its Way.” With the success of Dreamboat Annie we were rushing to finish our second album, and we had nearly completed five songs, including “Heartless.” It was more of a concept album than our debut. We planned to call it Magazine and have it fold out like a publication. “Heartless” contained some of my favorite lyrics ever (“Never realize the way love dies when you crucify its soul”), and I was convinced our second album was going to be our best so far.
Michael Fisher had been Heart’s de facto manager, but as Dreamboat Annie became a hit, Michael realized that for the sake of our relationship we needed an outsider. We hired Ken Kinnear out of Seattle to represent us. One of the first tasks we gave Ken was to renegotiate our royalty rate with Mushroom because it was not in line with what a platinum band should earn. Those negotiations were ongoing, but Mushroom was holding tough. Mike Flicker, who had been an employee of Mushroom, as well as our producer, later told us the owners of the label thought we might be one-hit wonders and so refused to budge. The negotiations proved a difficult point for Flicker, who eventually resigned from Mushroom to continue to produce us. The line-up of Heart then was me, Nancy, Roger Fisher, keyboardist and guitarist Howard Leese, bassist Steve Fossen, and drummer Michael Derosier, who had joined after Dreamboat Annie. But producer Mike Flicker could have been the seventh member of Heart.
The renegotiations had been difficult, but the “It Was Only Our First Time” ad was the final straw in our relationship with Mushroom. We hired a lawyer and eventually our contract dispute ended up in federal court. Over the next year, Heart would become nationally known for something Mushroom certainly never expected when they placed their advertisement: Mushroom and Heart became involved in one of the nastiest legal battles in the music industry that decade.
As the case wound on, we began negotiating with other labels and eventually signed with Portrait, a division of CBS Records. Mushroom was adamant that they weren’t willing to let us out of our original contract, which called for two albums. We argued that since Mike Flicker was listed in that agreement, and Mushroom could no longer provide Flicker, their contract was invalid. They threatened to release the material we’d already recorded without our approval.
And that’s exactly what Mushroom did. They took the few tracks that were nearly done and completed them without our involvement, using our rough vocals. To that they added a few outtakes and live tracks, and rushed the album into stores, trying to beat our first Portrait album, Little Queen. The Mushroom album had a disclaimer on the back that read, “Mushroom Records regrets that a contractual dispute has made it necessary to complete this record without the cooperation or endorsement of the group Heart, who had expressly disclaimed artistic involvement in completing this record. We did not feel that a contractual dispute should prevent the public from hearing and enjoying these incredible tunes and recordings.” It was one of the oddest chapters in the record business, and unfortunately it involved us.
We received a federal injunction that recalled Magazine, but not before fifty thousand copies were sold in stores in New York and Los Angeles. And though we were unhappy with the mixes, the song selection, and the shoddy design that stripped away our original concept, the songs on Magazine were immediate radio hits. We found ourselves in the uncomfortable situation of asking radio stations not to play our record. Most played it anyway.
Although it took some time for the court case to settle, in the end we won the right to sign with Portrait if we gave Mushroom a second album. We decided to make Magazine that album but insisted we finish the vocals and mixes. We did that in a Seattle studio later that year, as an armed security guard stood by. The court had ordered the guard because Mushroom was afraid we would erase our original multi-track recordings out of spite.
Mushroom re-released Magazine, our ill-fated second album, in April 1978. It was a project we had begun with high hopes, but it had ended so painfully. But our name was attached, and Magazine vaulted up the charts. It sold a million copies in just three weeks. It was a huge infusion of cash for Mushroom, but much of that was eaten up by legal bills, of which we had a mountain of our own.
A few months after the re-release of Magazine, Shelley Siegel collapsed and died of a brain aneurysm brought on by cocaine abuse. We were on the Washington coast with Sue Ennis on a writing retreat in a cabin with no telephone when it happened. We heard a pounding at the cabin door and discovered a police officer, who had been sent out to tell us to call our office, which is how we heard. Shelley, even with his faults and his sleazy ad, had been one of our original disciples.
We felt less grief a few years later when Mushroom Records went bankrupt. The owners had failed to find another group who did as well for them as Heart, a band they thought would be a one-hit wonder.
Not long after the “It’s Only Our First Time” ad appeared, I had an incident in Detroit with a radio promo guy. His name was Tony, but he bellowed it out as “Tone-Knee,” stretching the syllables like an opera aria. We had met plenty of these promo guys by then, all with the same sexist jokes, all who called us “girls.” Shelley Siegel was the same kind of guy.
I had just come offstage when I met Tone-Knee. “Hey, Ann, it’s ‘Tone-Knee,’ ” he shouted. He was wearing a red satin promotional baseball jacket with Heart stitched on the back. “Where’s ya lover, Ann?” Tone-Knee said as he pushed a meaty elbow into me. He had a wide smirk on his face.
I thought he was asking about Michael, but even with that interpretation the use of the word “lover” was too familiar. “Michael’s back at the mixing board,” I said. “He’ll be there for another hour, breaking gear down, if you need him.”
“Nah, nah, nah, not him,” Tone-Knee said. “Nah, ya lover! Your sista! Where’s your lover?”
Tone-Knee had seen the “It’s Only Our First Time” ad, and he apparently thought Nancy and I had taken it out to announce our incestuous love to the world. To Tone-Knee, it was the most natural thing in the world to walk up and ask me where my lesbian-lover-sister happened to be. If Nancy had been there, she might have smacked him with her guitar. I, however, was immobilized with rage.
Tone-Knee continued on. “Hey, look at my watch, Ann,” he said. He pulled back the sleeve of his Heart satin jacket, to display his wristwatch. On the face was an image of a buxom Marilyn Monroe–type in her underwear. It was the image that every woman in the entertainment industry would forever be compared to: You were either Marilyn Monroe, or you were not. I was not.
“Look at this, Ann,” Tone-Knee said. “Ya push this button, and her undies fall down, and shows her tushie!” As if on command, Tone-Knee pushed the button, the dial shifted, and
Marilyn’s naked body, from the front, appeared. If I could have found words, I might have informed Tone-Knee that if he thought a woman’s vagina was her “tushie,” he was terribly confused.
Instead I left, thinking that if I made a quick retreat, the encounter would slip from memory. But Tone-Knee’s essence would stick with me the way his bad cologne hung in the air.
I ran into Nancy in our dressing room. I was so embarrassed I could barely get the words out. As I tried to tell Nancy what Tone-Knee said, she started screaming, “He said WHAT?” She later described him as “like Artie Fufkin from This Is Spinal Tap.” These radio promo guys were so archetypal there were movie characters based on them. It was one step away from Goodfellas, but it was the way business was done in that era, with a wink, and a nudge, and a flash of a naked body on a watch.
I left the venue and went back to the hotel. I sat down with pen and paper, and started writing a song. No song is completely about any one person, and what later came to be known as “Barracuda” was not just about Tone-Knee: It was about a million Tone-Knees, some in the record industry, and some outside it. It was about how this thing we thought was about art was, when mixed with sexuality and marketing, just a sleazy commodity. It went in part:
