The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Ann Wilson | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Billy Corgan sits down with Heart's Ann Wilson to talk about the highs, heartbreaks, and hard-earned lessons behind one of rock's most enduring careers. Ann recalls the exact moment she discovered her powerhouse voice, why Aretha Franklin gave her chills before fame ever did, and how she and sister Nancy built "a parallel universe in rock" when the industry had no place for women. She gets candid about the 1980s "devil's bargain” swallowing outside-written hits that had no soul and the sobriety turning point that came the moment she became a mother.Along the way, Ann shares stories about Seattle's music explosion, Alice in Chains, sibling dynamics, artists trademarking their own voices, and why she's plotting an ambitious new concept album.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Women had to build their own universe, a parallel universe in rock. It seemed to me from the very beginning you guys were a big band. Lyrics to me are everything. You weren't just the pop act. Like you meant something to that world. You've got to hang on to your identity. It never struck me that you were afraid of sort of taking things head on.

No, I've been pretty much wearing my life on my sleeve the whole time. Anne Wilson. Thank you for being here. So nice to see you. My pleasure. Thanks for asking me. So you've had, you know, never quite sure when these things are going to come out. But generally speaking, as we're talking, your doc is just coming out or you're promoting it. Yes. In my voice. Yep. I was curious, you're certainly worthy of your own documentary, but, you know, the heart docs have been done and the behind the musics and all that stuff. So what about wanting to do your own story? It was important for you. Well, I felt at this time in my life and in my career that it would be refreshing to people

to know something about me personally apart from the band. Why am I interesting otherwise if it's not all about heart, you know? And so we found that my life really was worthy of a documentary. Yeah. A lot of stuff has happened. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's interesting, right? Because I've been listening to you for, I think the first time I heard you was probably 77, right?

Oh, right. For almost 40 years of being a fan. And, but, you know, you're one of those people that even though you've been in my life as an artist and somebody I admire. I don't feel I know that much about you. Right, yeah. And, of course, it's always, most of what I know, at least colloquially, is within the context of being in a band with your sister and, you know, what happened in the 70s and what happened in the 80s.

But I feel like I don't know that much about what you actually went through. Yeah. Because the doc kind of get into that. Absolutely. That's great. Yeah. It goes through every decade and what was happening. And it's not a whitewash either.

I mean, it doesn't just show them. the good stuff. It shows all the stuff. Yeah. Well, the ups and downs and, you know. It never struck me that you were afraid of sort of taking things head on. No, it's, I've been pretty much wearing my life on my sleeve the whole time. Talk about a little bit, if you don't mind, because you're doing this thing as we talk, we're going to all these different cities, so you're showing the dock and then you're doing a Q&A afterwards. Yeah, yeah. What was the thinking behind that? just that to give people

chance to see it on a big screen for one thing but then to let them just ask us me and the director

Barb Hall to ask us questions that they might have had that weren't covered in it yeah that makes sense

yeah yeah because that's I guess that's the hardest thing right because a doc usually 90

100 minutes but how do you put a person's life into you can't really Well, ours is 75 minutes. Okay, that's a lot of life in the 75 minutes. Yep.

You strike me, I guess we were talking before we rolled. My dad was a musician, and my dad, like a lot of musicians, you know, he looked at musicians sort of like you either could play or you couldn't. And there were those in it because they were serious and there were those in it because they liked the party. Yeah. You always struck me as somebody who's like in it because, that's what you do and you're in it till the end. Is that a fair thing to say? Yeah. Yeah, that's a fair thing to say. I'm a lifer. Yeah, that's the term I was going to use. That's the term my daddy used is lifer. It's something. I feel like I'm a lifer. Yeah. We're not there yet, but close enough, right? Yeah, I'd say starting at age 14 and still doing it when you're 75, that's like pretty much. That tells people.

that you're into it. I'm in awe of someone with your talent because, and I haven't known a lot of people like with your gift, but it seems like, and I've listened to early recordings with you, it's like it just comes out of your mouth right. What was the first time you sort of realized that you just had this ability to just sing like that? Yeah, that was a really strange thing because, you know,

I was always in choirs and high school and junior high and everything, but I was never the girl that got the solo. I didn't really have the courage to come out and sing in front of people. Really? Until I joined bands, and then suddenly there was this day where we were working out. Back then, you just did songs that were on the radio. It was all covers in our set. And we wanted to do Led Zeppelin songs and Deep Purple songs.

And there was no one else in the band who, could sing in those ranges, especially in Robert Plants range. And so it fell to me. And I started trying it. Okay. And it just sort of came out of me. It was there. So even before then, because you'd done stuff with your sister, kind of folk duo stuff, it never really occurred to you that there was this other thing happening. Right. The foky stuff is more soft and gentle. And then when you attempt something like Highway Star it comes from a whole different place as you well know well that's

I at least I've found with great rock singers something about pushing the voice up yeah that's where that's sort of like wait what is that yeah but if I listen early recordings of you singing rock it's like you sound like you then this is before fame before radio success yeah that's pretty shocking to me

speaking strictly as a musician to another musician is like how does that happen but obviously it came to you naturally yeah i don't know how it happens either it's it's it's just something that's in there yeah it's so deep in the child of you i think yeah and so much personality too does it make sense the way i say it yeah only you sing like you yeah but it never sound i can't find a recording of you where you don't sound like you. It's funny because at the very beginning when we were just doing all covers, the first thing you do is you try and imitate the singer in that band like Ian Gillen or Robert Plant or whoever it was. But no matter how hard you try to imitate somebody else, you end up sounding like yourself. Yeah. Yeah, I had the same problem, unfortunately.

Did you have ambitions when you were young? I mean, not just to be a musician. Did you have ambitions that I wanted to be successful? Like some people have a vision of fame or did you just want to be a working musician? Like, what was the process in that? I thought that I wanted to be a musician for sure because it was the only thing that interested me. And when other girls were so excited about boys and. clothes and stuff like that,

I was only excited about playing music. Yeah. And Nancy was the same then. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. In your formative years, before this rock voice emerges, like who in your mind was somebody

that you would have loved to have been as a singer? Mm. Like... Well, Aretha Franklin, of course. She was my... She inspired me and gave me goosebumps first. Yeah. She was the first one that really knocked my hair on end.

I would like to have been her. Have you seen that film that came out recently? It's the concert film where she sings in the church. No. Oh, you haven't seen that? Oh, I got to see it. What happened was, I can't remember, somebody paid for the film to be made.

It's her singing spirituals in a church somewhere here in L.A. And whatever happened, the sink for the film was messed up. So the film never got released. Now with computers, they were able to line up the film with the soundtrack, and it's unbelievable. Wow. Bernard Purdy's playing the drums. She has a real band playing with her in the church, full choir, and her singing spirituals. And she's just standing at the, I'm getting chills telling you.

She's just standing at the lectern singing, and it's about an hour of her singing spirituals. At her absolute physical peak, like 72, it's jaw-dropping. And she came from the church, so. Yeah, her dad was a big preacher, I think, in Detroit. Yeah. But to see her at the height of her pop career, go into a local church and sing just straight spirituals. Yeah. With the choir, it is, you got to see that.

Divine. It's unbelievable. I saw her once here in L.A. at the, was it the rainbow? It was a little cameo thing. Okay. And she was just on this little pie crust stage, and we were sitting at a table right by the stage. And, you know, Aretha comes on. And by the time she'd gotten through one song, I was just bawling. I was crying, you know, because it was just too great. It was so wonderful.

Yeah, some people have a level. She had a glow coming off. Well, some people, it's almost godly the talent. Yeah, yeah. She definitely was one of those people. Transcendant for sure. Did you, when you found you, the singer, did you, did you understand that's what had happened? Or were you still kind of like, because at that point, you're just a club singer.

Right. Did you feel like, well, I've tripped into something special or? Yes. Yeah. And I always thought that it was special and that it was, like I said a second ago, that it was somehow divine and spiritual. And so I was serious in that way about even just singing a Who song or something like that. To me, that was a really spiritual thing. I found this song, Day Breaks was the band.

Oh, yeah. Through Eyes and Glass. Oh, yeah. That's the first real song that Nancy and I ever wrote. Yeah. And see, we're already on this high horse about in that song. It's about a couple who are just fakes. They're phonies. Okay.

They're just acting their roles in their life. Yeah. And the choruses, get off the train, get off the train, the train of fakeism, you know. There's a lot of lines about the train I remember. Be real, you know. Yeah. And we were probably, I was probably about 16 when we wrote that. But what's crazy is like, I listened to it this morning.

I mean, it sounds like you today. Yeah. It's crazy to me. It is. Sorry to go on about it. No, that's good. When you went down this path that it was going to be music, that was going to be your life's path. How were your parents with that?

They were split. Our mother was very suspicious of it and worried that, you know, we were going to fall into the entertainer archetype where you take drugs and drink yourself to death. Well, they weren't wrong. Like Judy Garland. They weren't wrong. Right, right. But our father was from the first moment was really behind it. Really?

Very proud of us. and you know, drove us to gigs and all that. That's so beautiful. Yeah. There's this, because when I interviewed your sister in that chair, we talked about this time where you guys were kind of working as a folk duo, and then you went off with the band, Seattle up to Vancouver, something like that, right? That's the general.

Hocus Pocus was the band, if I remember correctly, before Hart. Right. Once you weren't working with her sister, how are instrumental were you with bringing her into the group? Yeah, she was still at university, and I'd gone up to Vancouver following a man. This is the guy. Was the manager of the band or was that guy?

Michael Fisher, yeah. And he'd gone up there to, not participate in the Vietnam War. Okay. So we were Americans up there and like I was loving it, just being up there, being romantic, just the two of us,

but the band followed me. So pretty soon all of them were up there too. Okay. And so we formed a band. And I, the only thing that was missing was a good, strong, backup harmony

and the acoustic guitar. So I kept inviting Nancy to come up to Vancouver. And she did whenever she got a break from school. And she started to come up more often, and she would sit in with us because we were playing all kinds of clubs in those days and high school dances and stuff like that. But it was a stage.

It was a way for us to get up there and work on it. And she finally came up enough that Mike Flickr, the producer, heard us with her on stage. Yeah. And wanted to give us a record contract with all of us. This mushroom? Mushroom. So she stayed. Yeah, wow.

It strikes me that lyrics were hugely important to you from the beginning. Is that a fair? That's true. Yeah. Where did you think that came from? Was it the singer has to believe what you're singing? It's unusual that the lyrics were that important to a young artist, I think. I think it was because our father was a word man, and he was also an English teacher.

and he would get a few beers in him and he would recite poetry at cocktail parties and at the dinner table. Is this Irish or Scottish solo we're talking about? Kind of, yeah, very much. It tends to be in those families. Very emotional. And so that was the language spoken in our family.

Oh. So lyrics to me are everything. Yeah. I love Dreamboat Annie. I'm a sucker for that song. Oh, thank you. When she caressed her, her lover, it seems, oh, Annie, dreamboat Annie, ship of dreams. I'm sure you've been asked, but I can't resist.

How autobiographical is that at that? Oh, totally, yeah. It's the metaphor for us. Yeah. Just little wooden ship, you know. Yeah. Growing up listening to rock radio in the 70s, you know, your emergence on the radio.

Of course, regional, radio was so regional back then. Yes. We didn't always understand in Chicago that, you know, Hart necessarily wasn't popular in other cities. But in Chicago, it seemed to me from the very beginning, you guys were a big band. You were on the radio constant. Yeah, there were a few cities, especially in the Midwest.

St. Louis was another one. Yeah. That started out just, you know, getting us. Yeah. So there were kind of two stories that were presented to us as fans in the 70s about your band. One was, this is a credible band fronted by women. So the cool thing was the rock crowd in Chicago accepted you guys from the very beginning. Yeah.

Which I think is cool. But the other thing, there was a lot of focus on your looks. Yeah. How comfortable, uncomfortable were you with that from the beginning? It varied, sometimes really comfortable. sometimes highly uncomfortable. Yeah. Because it's so,

there's such a double standard. For women, absolutely. Even to this day, for sure. Yeah. And it's just something you have to live with. And when you get the bad comments, you know, you just have to go, well, okay, how about the rest of what I do, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And you just have to go on. Yeah. I mean, I remember talking about it with your sister a bit, It's almost like you two almost had to build a business that wasn't there before. Yeah. There had been, of course, credible female rock stuff.

Right. But something about your emergence into the American rock scene when you emerged signaled that, okay, this isn't just the same stuff. Right. I don't want to be pedantic about it, but it's felt different. And now we see historically it was different. Yeah, it was different. And a lot of people in the industry didn't know what to do with us. Oh, I'm sure.

From the get-go. Especially a male-dominated industry. Yeah, yeah. The big question back in those days was, why aren't there more women in rock? And I think the answer was that women had to build their own universe, a parallel universe in rock. I know what you mean, but I actually want you talk more about it. It's very interesting to me. Yeah. Women couldn't go by the same rules. They had to make a new infrastructure that understood women. Yeah.

And accepted women as people of different sizes, shapes, looks, personalities. And probably almost have to prove more than male counterparts many times. There's a lot of truth in what the first line of feminists always used to say about you have to do everything better than men and do it in high heels. Yeah, or backwards. That was the Ginger Rogers line, right? Yeah. We can look back now because obviously in many ways it was a more innocent time. I know it doesn't mean it was innocent, but it's more innocent now because we understand that what you did really was trailblazing.

How do you feel now looking at the incredible crop of female lead rock artists that are out there now, accepted by the male audiences, are able to compete, basically peer-to-peer on the charts? Well, it's really amazing how many examples there are of women that are just going for it. Yeah. And I'm not saying that every one of them is incredible because there's a lot of, when there's so much, so many examples of people doing it, pretty soon people get lost in the crowd. They become anonymous kind of, and there's too many. Too much saturation.

What is the stat now? 200,000 songs are released a day. Oh, God. I don't want to know that. It makes you want to get to studio and record, doesn't it? Here's another one. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

I just, it just strikes me that, that's what I mean. In a way, it's, we can look back in those times in the 70s, with some sense of innocence because you got there in a way first, and there's always the first mover advantage of being there first. But we can also see that it opened the doors to so many artists that followed. Right. It shouldn't really be a sexist business. It's the strangest thing to me that it is a sexist business.

It's always struck me as odd. Yeah, yeah. It probably won't be forever, though. I can see it sort of, well, though, I must say that women have always been the biggest the ones who are the most anti-woman, they set the bar so high. Oh, I see. Yeah.

And so it's just really hard for women who aren't maybe super talented or super courageous. I see. To go in there and succeed. Life is complicated. We all go through times when we're stressed, overwhelmed, or just plain stuck. And sometimes the people closest to us aren't the ones who can help you sort it all out.

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Visit Rula.com slash others to get started. That's R-U-L-A-D-com slash others. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. Talk a little bit about because that the set, I call it Heart 1.0, but that, that early version of the band, that band was so good. What a great, great rock and roll band. Yeah, that band really played a lot and just. You guys doing like 200 dates a year type tours. Yeah. And in those days, it might have been even more because we did sometimes two things a day. all over the place. Yeah.

It's just ridiculous shows. Yeah. Well, back then you had to build your rap on the road. There was really no, it was radio and the road. And that's how you got good as a unit, as a playing unit. Yeah. But what a great. Sculpt a thing.

How did the, because obviously, all bands have their testosterone, including the ladies involved. Yeah. But how did the band deal with so much of the focus, being on you and Nancy? Like, were they cool with it? They were at first because they could see that it was bringing us success, but after a while they got really tired of it.

And it became a thing. Like, for instance, when Rolling Stone wants to do a cover story on Heart, they only want to talk to Nancy and Anne. Yeah. And that, after a while, really got under the guy's skin. and it became the thing that separated the people in the band right down gender lines. Really? So the very thing that made heart interesting and unusual,

the microcosm of men and women working together became the thing that ultimately kind of destroyed that first lineup. That's a shame. Yeah, and it's weird how that happened. Did you feel like they almost kind of blamed you and your sister, even though, like, what are you supposed to do about? about it. Yeah. Well, I was a real pariah then for a while because I was the one that was speaking the most for the band and the press. And so that the guys were not happy about it. The bass player didn't understand why it wasn't him speaking for the band, you know? We all have had these similar problems in our lives. I'll bet you understand. Too well. I understand. My band used to get mad of me for similar things. And I used to say, I,

I don't know what you want me to do about that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Say no? Yeah. Say no? No, they would want me to turn interviews down, turn photo shoots down, turn, insist that interviews could only happen if everybody was present.

And then if everyone was present and then the interviewer didn't ask them all the same amount of questions. They were mad at me. Yeah. Because I hadn't pre-negotiated. Yeah. Like stuff like that. Like you're just kind of like, wow, this is pretty bizarre. Like I got, this is the, I have, this is the, where I have the least amount of control.

Mm-hmm. With the media. Yeah. You know, and you know what that feels like. Yeah. It's not like, it looks, it can look shiny from the outside, but from the inside, it's, it's, it's hard to be vulnerable. It's hard to have people picking you apart. Yeah.

And talking about a lot of stuff you don't even necessarily want to talk about. Right. In your mind, at least in my mind, I was thinking, well, I'm promoting the band. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is all interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit? There's a deeper point I'm after, but can you talk about your songwriting philosophy because I was impressed because, you know, the general story, and correct me if I'm getting the general story wrong.

The general story is you have this integral band, great rock band, 70s, you're writing your own music. The 80s comes, Colin, you end up using all these outside writers. You've been very vocal about how you don't necessarily love all that. stuff, although you appreciate that the fans love it. Yeah. But I was impressed because I listened to some of your recent albums. And it's like, I was like, wow, that songwriter is still there.

And I felt like I found something beautiful in checking out your more recent work because I was like, there's the writer that I grew up with and she's still talking. That's amazing. Thank you. Do you feel that? I do. I do. Now more than ever. What was the song I listened to? read on fierce bliss. I was like, I know that person.

I grew up listening to this person's writing. I know this voice, not just the singer in you, this voice. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was so cool that you kind of found your way back to that. Yeah, and it was really something that was really important to both Nancy and I, after the 80s, was to come crawling out of that. It was,

one of those devil's bargains you always see that to make it for sure make it in the music world but to come out of that and come back to ourselves was not easy it strikes me and I did talk about it with your sis a bit but it struck me as particularly painful because

you guys were so good and you really were your own music that that transition is so strange to me and I I'm not judging it because I know that those pressures are not easy to navigate. But the fact that you have this recent, this last two albums that you put out, like there's that writer,

that same person who wrote Dreambone Annie. Like she's still writing music. I was like, wow, this is cool. That's great. I really enjoyed that. That's so great. Thank you. I hope you feel that because it's important to me even to hear it, you know.

Well, songwriting that I've been doing lately with TripSitter is, really rewarding. I mean, it's because anything goes. It doesn't have to be within the confines of what's acceptable in the 80s. Did you have to almost kind of refined your songwriting voice? Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Can you talk about, like, how does that work for you? Or how did it work for you? Well, I think, well, the song Greed, for instance, was, I just wanted to, come and write something that was happening currently. And so I was thinking about, you know, the corporate greed and all that kind of stuff that's so rampant in our country.

And I was just trying to think of a way to talk about that without being preachy. Yeah. And just, so the stuff I'm writing now is about all kinds of things. But I guess it's the, I don't know, The Genesee qua. It's the essence of you as a writer. I don't know what that is because, you know,

Heart 1.0, there's like weird info. There's folk, there's Zep, there's Prad, there's God knows what else, you know what I mean? Janus Ian, I don't know, you know what I mean? There's like an interesting mix of influences there. And it seems like somehow you kind of come back to those influences in a way. It doesn't, but it doesn't sound dated. Well, that's good.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's so important too because. Well, yeah. Yeah. Especially if you got to sing it, right? Yeah. When, when it's like I feel like we're talking about a decade, when the 80s happened, can you talk a little bit about that first time that you felt like, okay, we're in the situation, we have this big business. There's all this pressure on us to continue to be on the radio or we haven't had the radio success and now they're putting.

all this pressure. Talk about that because that's something I think most people don't understand in the modern world. Yeah. Like 80, it was about 82 or something. Yeah. Yeah, it was 82, 83. Like, suddenly, like, they kind of put the pins on you guys. Yeah. We had a record contract with capital at that point. And it was the thing that, uh, picked us up from not being able to be arrested, you know. I think we got dropped from Epic. And we met this guy Don Grierson, who's no longer with us, but he was A&R at the time.

And he said, well, I really believe in you guys. So come to Capitol, and I'll help you find the right songs, you know. And so it was come hither, you know. And it was sort of presented like, you can do this or you can just say bye-bye. They presented it to your management sort of translated the... Yeah. Okay, yeah. Because at that point, we were using big-time corporate L.A. management.

Okay. And which is scary enough on its own. Yeah. But, yeah, it was a complete devil's bargain. Yeah. And it really, the songs that we were presented with, you just kind of had to swallow real hard and go, well, there's something about the song I like,

but it hasn't got any substance. Yeah. That was the problem I had with most of the songs that we got in the 80s, that we did, even the hits. Yeah, even I listened to that one today that it's like, I know you flip the gender, but like you're the hitchhiker picking up. Oh, yeah, all I want to do is, What a weird.

No substance. And God, what a brutal, mean thing to do to another person. Yeah. But did you, I mean, I talked with your sis about it a bit, but at the end of the day, I mean, I know she sang the one song, but I mean, at the end of the day, you're the singer. Yeah. And, you know, I guess maybe I'm, excuse me for overly projecting, but as a singer, as a singer, who writes his own song, it strikes me as it must have been very painful for you to be in this position like, why doesn't my own song work in this dynamic anymore? Is that fair to say that?

Yeah. And that was a clear case of me not understanding the zeitgeist of the 80s and all. Because if I had understood that, I would have known that the songs I was writing, we were writing together, were just, they were, somewhere else. I see. And they weren't artificial, they weren't glossy, all those

things that the 80s music was. Yeah. So if you had it do over again, would you have come at it differently? Yeah. How, just indulge me, yeah? I would have understood, I would have spent more time listening to the radio, for instance.

Yeah. And understanding what it was that was turning everyone on so much. Yeah. And not just the sound of it, not to copy other records, but to get a feeling about the soul of what's there and the soul, you know. Yeah, because I once Rick Nielsen from Cheat Trick, they had that number one hit with the song The Game, if you remember that song.

Robin delivers this incredible vocal as only Robin could, you know. It's a great singer. And I know you guys did a song together. But, you know, Rick was the main writer for cheap trick. And I remember being in Rick's house one time and saying, did that kill you? And he kind of had this attitude like, well, you know, same thing. We were with Epic and the pressure. And we used an outside writer and we had a big hit.

And suddenly we were playing bigger places. So he had kind of processed it. Yeah. But I still, to this day, as someone who loves Rick as a person, I still feel like it hurt him in a way that he never totally recovered from. Yeah. He may argue with me on that. I mean, I'm not in his brain. I don't know if anybody's in Rick's brain,

but point being is you're a great songwriter, Rick's a great songwriter, and as somebody who writes for a living, it just strikes me as just so hurtful. I don't even know if I even have the words to put it. Way hurtful, yeah, because we had some really cool songs, we thought. Some really deep, like, emotionally fulfilling songs

that could have been great if they would have been listened to and given a chance, but they weren't. Yeah. Is it just wrong songs for the cheese of the time? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But coming out of that was pretty inspiring.

Okay. When it got to the 90s and, of course, in the 90s, nobody wanted to hear our kind of stuff either. You're talking about the 70s version or the 80s version or? I think everyone thought of heart in the 90s Everyone thought of heart as being a relic from the 70s Yeah Except for a couple of things like Barracuda And the things that were more

Yeah Heavy rock Yeah well to be fair to you I think it was such a time of change that it's It's common to just want to wipe everything out Yeah And that's really what happened in the 90s It was like this giant tsunami

Yeah. And there went the 80s. It was gone, you know. But of course you had that moment where you sang on the Jerry song, the rooster. Yeah. Brother, too. Oh, that's right. And I think for all of us in Gen X, it was a beautiful reminder of like, no, actually

hearts part of our world. Somehow I brought you back into our world. And I know you guys started doing other side projects. I can't remember the names of them. that you started doing those other records like you know what I'm talking about? You weren't heart, you were. Love mongers.

Thank you. Isn't there somewhere? But I'm saying is it seemed to kind of, I don't know, did it help kind of wake you guys back up too? Like there's a community out here that actually does really love and celebrates us. Yeah, and we actually found a lot of good friends in that community. Well, yeah. Because maybe on this surface it might have seemed like

oh yeah this is the band that did barracuda but you had a lot of love from the gen x community yeah because we'd grown up with you and you were so important to that world you weren't just a pop act right like you meant something to that world yeah and that was so surprising to me um that people like jerry cantrell and everything would be so um they would he would always tell me how much he loved certain ones of our songs. One song is basically an Allison Chain's song of yours. It's like it's Allison Chains 20 years before Allison Chains. Oh, you mean?

I can't think of the, you know the song. It's a very interesting kind of gothic ballad you have. It's just like very musical chain. Crazy. I can't remember the title of it. Is it rage? I can't remember. It's a very, it's, it literally sounds like Allison Chains, but you guys had done it in like 80 or something.

Uh-huh. It's more of an album cut. Yeah. But Jerry talked about how. he basically that song's like part of his inspiration for reading. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I saw him the other night.

Yeah. He actually came to the first time we did the doc, show the doc. Oh, okay. Because he speaks in it. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, I'm very fond of Jerry. He's doing so great. Yeah.

He's really doing great. Well, see, this songwriter. Yeah. Right. Real songwriter. Yep. So, I don't want to belabor the issue with everybody focused on your image.

I mean, that's been off explored. But what struck me that might be interesting to talk about from a different perspective is there's such a different attitude towards, I mean, the common thing is body positivity. But there's such a less, I'm not saying there's less focus on female artist looks, but there's a different mindset in the musical community that, like, you cannot. judge people on these things like they would have judged people in the past. Right. Do you at least see that now? Do you... Because you were, obviously, you were treated very roughly in those times.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had to go through some... Yeah. For sure. But, yeah, I think there is a pretty imperceptible almost, but very real change now. Like you see people like Lola Young. You see Lizzo, I mean, you see people who are being accepted, even though they don't fit the mold.

Yeah. I think it's powerful. Yeah. I'm not the wokenest person in the world, you know what I mean, as it's commonly defined. But I think of all the things that have come out of the social movements of the last 10 to 15 years, I think the body positivity movement is the one that's, to me, one of the most powerful. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And it definitely opens up the souls of a lot of people to actually try to write music and sing and speak, you know, who never would before because they were just scared that they would be rejected.

To me, that's one of the legacies of the Gen X alternative community is that generation, which I was a part of. We brought in a lot of, like, you really need to look at. these things a lot differently. Yeah. And that was one of them. Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah.

Very, very. So if there's any legacy there, that's a proud one because music really should be the great equalizer. It should really just be how talented are you and can you emotionally connect to an audience? All the other stuff is really more the product of capitalism. Yeah, exactly right. The entertainment rules, the rules of the entertainment world. Well, oftentimes dictated by men to women, by the way.

Yeah. Not that you've ever been through that. Never. There's this moment in your historical lore where, you know, somewhere in the 90s your sister comes to you and says, I need a break. Yeah. You know, and when I asked her, she said, you were not happy. No. About that.

I was not, yeah. Because. Oh, please. Because at that moment, heart was in a very important. heart was in a very precarious state of are we going to exist or not. And if we were going to exist, we had to pull together and just rally everything we had to make it happen. And she chose that moment to say, no, I want to take a break. I want to start a family.

And there was nothing I could do to persuade her. I pleaded, I cried, I did everything, but she was set on it. Yeah. I mean, she was married to Cameron. They were happy. They wanted to do this thing. And so I eventually just accepted it. Yeah.

I wanted to come at it slightly differently because it struck me that somewhere along the way between 1970, whatever, and this moment where your sister says, like, I need to take a break. I mean, somebody must have whispered it in your at some point said, you know, you can go solo. Yeah. You don't need heart. You don't need your sister. It can be all about you. I mean, somebody must have offered you that along the way. Well, I've had that offer many times along the way.

But I've always been a band person. I want to be in a band. But that's kind of what I was after. Yeah. Was part of your frustration? Like, look, I stayed here to do this thing with you together. Yeah. That would be called heart.

Yeah. Yeah. And but sometimes, yeah. There might be something that's bigger than the band. Sure. Can you believe that? You know, I mean. Do you think if you'd gone solo somewhere in that arc? You know, do you ever think about that? Yeah. And I did try to do some solo stuff during that time. Yeah. And it was fun, but, uh...

But you know what I mean? Yeah, it wasn't working. But you know what I mean. Like if you'd said, right, okay, I'm going to be a solo artist now. Yeah. I mean, look at the success of Phil Collins. Look at the success of other people who kind of broke out of their bands. Stevie Nicks.

Huge solo. Well, I mean, I love Stevie. I'm going to assume you do too. I mean, no one would say that you're not the equal or greater than a vocalist than Stevie. And she's one of the greats of all time. So I'm saying is it's not to play Monday morning quarterback. said, well, this could have been. Yeah.

But it strikes me that if you would, at some point in that arc, focused strictly on a solo career. Yeah, it could have happened. I was just never interested in it. You know, I never had that, oh, it's all about me. Like, it's got to be the Ann Wilson show, you know. Yeah. Like, I never had that.

Nowadays, I don't. even really have that. But I'm working with a band where it's called Ann Wilson and TripSitter. So it's kind of all about me songwriting than this great band, you know? So that's about the closest I've ever come to being a solo artist. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

I just, it's good. Because I was in the same mentality. It was band, band, band, band, band. Yeah. So even when people would say that stuff is like none of the band. Yeah. Like, that's my whole thing. Yeah, yeah.

But then when the ultimate thing happens and somebody doesn't want to do it. Yeah. Or somebody dies or something like that. You've got to figure it out. Yeah. Like think of what it was like for Allison Chains when Lane went past.

Yeah. That was a huge kick in the stomach for them. Yeah. Well, actually, when. When Alice reformed with William, their singer, ever since, I actually joined them in L.A. at a show and sang on stage with them. Oh, great. But they were kind of doing this, okay, now this is going to be the new version, Alice and Chains. And as you can imagine, there were many people that were skeptical.

Yeah, of course. You know, like, why are you continuing and what are you doing? Oh, people always are. No, I get that. But, you know, as you can imagine, it's particularly difficult if you don't have the singer. Yeah. You know what I mean? because the singer is, the public just identifies with that voice.

Yeah. And, of course, in the case of Lane, when an incredible, gifted talent. Yeah. I saw mention where, you know, you obolically referred to excess, you know, excess in your life, meaning like, I don't know, it was alcohol or self-medicating. Yeah. How did you kind of find your way out of that? Well, I It was two things.

It was my doctor said Your liver, I've never seen numbers like this. You've got to change your ways because your liver is not happy. And so that scared me, but the thing that really got me to stop was my children. They were,

my daughter was born. And I realized in a flash that I could not relate to her if I was altered. And even a little bit, like not even alcohol, nothing, you know. And so that sort of got me off it. And then when my son was born, he mentioned something to me because I had gone back to, oh, I'll just have a little bit, you know.

He mentioned something to me, and it just humiliated me and made me feel awful. So I decided just to stop everything. It was really them. Wow. I want to play a small game. I thought you're so uniquely voiced to play this game with me because we've seen such massive changes in entertainment over the decades.

So, and you could take it however you want. It struck me that you're the perfect. person to play this game. If it's silly, you can tell me it's silly. So what was your perception of music and the community of the music business, however you want to take that, whether it was on television or what you were listening to on the radio? What was your impression of music as a business or as an artistic way of expressing oneself in the 60s? Oh, I thought it was the most glamorous thing I'd ever seen. Um, and all those, All those people, those long shaggy people who were doing it were just gorgeous to me.

And I wanted to be part of it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so now fast forward to the 70s. Now you're in it. Yeah. Now what's your impression. Yeah.

Well, it was pretty glamorous and glorious, yeah, in the 70s. And, of course, you're in your 20s. So you've got all that physical energy. you're at the height of your physical beauty, your power. And by the way, there's live clips of you guys playing from the 70s and you guys are rocking. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're just rocking. Well, we played so much that we were just current within...

But you know you can't fake that. Man, yeah. I mean, you're just killing it. Yeah. Right? Yep. Okay, 80s. 80s was like somebody.

put a gag on you kind of on your true feelings and it was all about MTV so it was more about stylists and so a lot of the things that that

made you you were not cool like you know you had to be styled by somebody else yes there's a lot of big hair going on yeah a lot of big hair and you don't know what it took to get the hair

like that. I mean, it was amazing. And you had to sing somebody else's song. So it was almost like being just being a hireling. Wow. 90s? 90s.

We didn't have the big huge success, commercial success, but the 90s was one of the most satisfying times ever because there was so much amazing music going on in Seattle and being a part of that community was just great.

And I did work for a couple of years at Teatro Zanzani, which do you know what that is? It started in Seattle. It's Normalangel. It's kind of a cabaret drag show, but it's scripted. It's a play. Okay, I have heard about this. Yeah. Yeah. And the guy who started at Norm Landel went to Spain to the clown bar and got hired a bunch of clowns from different countries. So it was a cast of 13 people. I was one of them. And there were only two of us that were American. The rest were like Russian and French. And you were just part of the show.

Yeah. Yeah. And I played the strolling chantouse. I sang jazz songs and stuff like that. Yeah. I did that for a couple of years in Seattle and in San Francisco. Oh. So that's how I spent the 90s. It was pretty fun. Yeah.

It was really fun. Okay, 2000s. In the 2000s, I started to really, really want to get back to art. The bigness of it all. Yeah. And so Nancy and I, I started out the 2000s by going on a duet tour, just the two of us. I've seen clips of that, yeah.

Yeah, and that was great. That was right down to the core of everything. Yeah. Well, back to where he started, really. Yeah, that's right. And so we did that, and then we started putting the band back together. Mike Inez played bass with us for a while. Oh, I didn't know that.

What a great human being, by the way. Oh, God, yeah. What a lovely just person. Amazing comedic timing. Just one of the funniest guys. Yeah, and so we started getting heart back together with new people. Yeah. And that sort of opened up to what we have now.

Yeah. So having lived it both from a fan to a performer, and then you see with what's coming with technology and AI, Were you falling on all that? Because as you know, it's the number one topic. Yeah. You know, we're all sitting around dinner tables wondering what's coming. Yeah.

And I'm scared. Okay. Tell me why. Because I feel that not about the AI itself, but about how much the world is accepting it. That's, I'm with you on that. Yeah. It shocks me how there's no discussion on like, where is this guy? going. There's kind of a general, like, whoa, but like not the real discussion.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm just afraid that, well, like any worker whose job might be taken by a machine. I think you're safe, but. Yeah, but, I mean, you have those examples of songs that have been written by AI. Sure. and how absolutely despicable the lyrics are and the way they sound. But the thing that pisses me the most off about that is it's there's no soul, there's no humanity.

Yeah. Yeah, I had dinner. I'm scared about that. I had a group dinner about a month ago, and I happened to be sitting next to a guy, who's an AI engineer for a big tech. And he was basically telling me what's coming, like the stuff that's not out.

Yeah. And he said that the progress is so frighteningly fast that they're even almost trying to hold it back. Because at some point, once it reaches a point of singularity, the progress will be so fast that like the human mind won't be able to keep up with it. The other thing was I got an email the other day from an intellectual property lawyer that I work with on other stuff.

And he said that artists are now starting to explore because it's not in law yet the ability to trademark your voice, the way you speak, the way you sing, and your mannerisms, because families are going to have to start protecting the intellectual property of talents because no one knows where this goes.

Yeah. Yeah, I know everyone in our legal and management world is upset about that whole thing too. But there's no way to control it right now. It's like playing whack-a-mole. Yes. You see one and you beat it down and another one pops up. Have you had people do the fake songs with you using your voice yet?

Yeah. That's a weird one. It's happened to me too. Yeah. It's so weird. It's out there, right? Yeah. Since you're a lifer and since you've spent most of your life on the road,

is there anything that you've learned? Like any life lessons? Because it's a lonely gig. Yeah. Everybody has a sort of an idealized idea of what it means to be the singer in the band. My personal opinion is it's kind of a solitary gig. Yeah, yeah. And you have to rely so much on your physical.

to come through for you. Can I ask you a question? Sure. Since you're somebody I admire so much, do you think part of that is because we have to work with the breath so much? Yes, the breath and just the whole mechanism from abs all the way through. But the way I think about the whole breath thing is I think that it's the divine wind that we see. we singers get.

And if we can go like this, we're laughing. It's when we try to sing from here. It doesn't work. Yeah. It's got to come from... So for you, from an almost spiritual perspective, it's got to come this way.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's this beautiful quote I read once. Alan Ginsberg was talking about Bob Dylan at the height of like Bob Dylan 65. And the phrase that Ginsburg used was he called Dylan a column of air. Because Dylan was singing those crazy, you know, blonde and blonde songs where, you know, these impossibly long sentences. Yeah.

You know, songs with 14 stanzas that he memorized them all. And he said Bob was just this column of air. Wow. That's amazing. I thought it was such an interesting description of Dylan in that time. This is just one guy on stage with the guitar, but this ability to just move air. Yeah. Amazing. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Ray Davies, you know, another famed sibling situation.

I don't do gossip, so I'm not asking for gossip. It's more of like, what's it like to play in a band with your sibling? I guess not the gossip version. Like when I asked Dave about working with Ray, I mentioned. something about an interaction I'd had with his brother and he stopped me and didn't want to hear the story. Oh. Because he sensed it was going to be somewhat negative. Oh, right. And then he said, no, go on, go on, tell me. And I told him, it wasn't, it wasn't terrible.

It wasn't anything bad. I wouldn't have brought it up if it was terrible. And he said something along the lines to me, like, that's just the way my brother is. And he defended his brother in only a way that a sibling would defend a sibling, not how a bandmate would defend a bandmate. Because as you know, most bandmates will throw their bandmate under the bus. Of course they will. So if you could just give us a little bit of a three-dimensional look because you've had this incredibly long artistic relationship that goes obviously parallel to your relationship as sisters. Yeah.

Well. Sorry for the long-winded question. I just, I didn't want it to come across as, what's it like to be in a band with your sister? Oh, right, yeah. No, I get that. Yeah, that's what I mean. To me, that doesn't have the heart in it. I know, no unintended.

You know, it strikes me as such a deep thing to share an artistic life with a sibling. Yeah, and we most of the time finish each other's sentences, especially where music is concerned. Yeah. No one sings harmony like her. And there are things about what she does, what she can bring that nobody else can bring. I mean, maybe they could, but it would take three guys to replace her. Well, I've only met your sister a couple times. I've been out with her since a couple times.

But she strikes me, she's kind of like some people, they have that kind of magical fairy creature thing. Yeah, yeah. Is that a fair? Yeah. She's kind of got that magic. magical fairy creature thing. Yeah. I don't know what that is, but...

It's like, oh, like, love everybody. Love wins, you know. I mean, she's really got that. And she always has. She's always been very Pisces, you know. Yeah. I know you're Gemini, so... Yeah.

She's... I really miss her when we can't be together. And so we've had a tough time because we both got married to these, very different people and the men are kind of like dogs

sort of circling each other you know they don't hate each other but they it's it's very different because now it's not just the two of us I see

and when it's just the two of us and I can get her to calm down enough we have a great time I saw her last night at the rehearsal for the Grammy thing we're going to do. And she's just out there running everything and telling everybody what's what and telling the Grammy people how long this is going to be. She's got that in her, that administrative type desire.

I don't have that. Yeah. I don't know if this is fair, but I got the feeling talking to her. She truly admires you. Do you feel that? I do. I do. And it's a strange line to walk because I know she admires me and I admire her.

But I think she, and she's always copying me. She always has. But I think sometimes it frustrates her that, you know, I can do the things I do. and she can't be the lead singer because it's just, it's not there, you know? She plays an acoustic original acoustic guitar. Yeah. And nobody else plays like her.

Yeah. I wouldn't want anybody else. If I had my perfect band, she would definitely be in it as the... Yeah. See, the reason I resonate so deeply with that is I have a brother. He's not a musician. and he's an artist. But people always ask me, like, how is your brother with you?

Because you've had so much success and made money and all that stuff. And I'm like, I have the greatest brother in the world, totally supportive. So I guess in a way when I interviewed your sister, I was sensitive to that. I wanted to see, is there a hint of jealousy or a shadow over that? Sometimes I think there's a little jealousy, yeah. I didn't see it, but I mean, you would know. It's something you feel. Yeah.

Like, of course, in our family, you would never say that kind of thing out loud. But, yeah, I think sometimes it's frustrating to her. Well, the way I resonate with that is when people are freakishly talented like you, the jealousy is not in a way personal. And there's nothing I can do about it. That's kind of what I mean. I play in a band with somebody who's freakishly talented, and it's like, how did you get that?

Yeah. It's, it, it, it makes any sense. And I'm not trying to interject myself in your family politic. It's more of the idea of like, it's almost like, the jealousy is like, well, why did you get that? That look, you make it look so easy. Right. Yeah. You know what I mean?

What's your, what's your view of, I call it pop hegemony? We've had 20 years of just pop overload. Yeah. And we all know what that mean. say we don't even have to define it. Oh, Pop, yeah. Yeah. What's your feeling?

I'm kind of, this is my own personal rant, but I feel like it's collapsing now. I think we're finally at the end of it. I think the public's reached a point of exhaustion. I hope you're right. I would bet good money that I am right. Historically, as you know, music for some reason, you know, would flip over every seven years. Yes. Something happened with social media where pop didn't flip over.

Right. We almost had this like 15, 20 years. It was like the same, but different. Yeah. And now it's becoming more international too. Sure. So it got a transfusion. Sure, but what's your perspective?

Because you've been a student of the game, you know. Yeah. Like, what's your view on that? Well, personally, I've always been really suspicious of any music or art that. doesn't seem authentic, that just seems formulaic or no substance. And that's how I view pop. Yeah. It's there for a, to entertain, strictly to entertain, you know.

Not to be as lame as this, but I mean, is there, like recently somebody said to me, we were talking about a particular pop singer who seems to be struggling publicly. what would you say to a pop singer that would hear what you're saying and they would say, I know that's the situation in I'm in, but that's the world that I'm in. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, to be fair, you have expressed your own feeling of being trapped in the 80s by some of those pressures. Yeah, yeah.

So what would you say to them as somebody who's actually lived through it? You know what I mean? Well, I think I would have sympathy. I mean, empathy for them because. I do understand the pressures and what they can do to you. I would just say you've got to hang on to your identity. Yeah. That's all you can say.

Yeah. Like someone like Chapel Rhone, I think, that kid is really smart. And she's so young and she's got, she's so successful already. Yeah. Just if she keeps a hold of her. Just imagine where she could be when she's 40. Yeah. I think that's, we would have similar advice in this regard, which is pop affords you,

you know, you kind of call it like a deal with the devil. Pop is a deal with the devil. But the true artists, they can do pop, but they don't, they're not bound by pop. They don't live there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like even the true innovators in pop, whether it was Michael Jackson or Madonna or whatever. They were able, Prince, they were able to evolve the game around them. Yeah. Somehow in the last 20 years, the producers became dominant. The writers became dominant. Now you see it now with 20 people on a writing credit. I know. That is so amazing to me. Can you believe that? Yeah. So, okay, last thing. What's the one thing that you still want to accomplish musically that you've set a sense. side and who just haven't done it. Wow.

Well, I'd like to do an old-fashioned concept album. Really? Yeah. Like a Prague-type record? I saw you covering a yes song and I was like, see, there is the Prague thing in there. Yeah. Well, like concept in the sense of some of the old concept albums in the 70s,

like Wish You Were Here. Oh, okay. that has, there's a through line running through. So why haven't you? I don't know. So I've done three concept records. You have? Yeah.

The last one I did was a triple, 33 songs. Wow, triple album. Yeah, I did it during COVID, to be fair. I mean, it sounds crazy, but I was sitting at home in COVID. I was like, I need something to do. So I did a triple, triple record. Wow. Yeah.

So I've done three, 95, 2000, and 20-something, 20-something. Yeah. Wow, that's a lot of work. Yeah. But it's very rewarding. And I think the thing I would recommend writer to writer is you end up writing songs different than you would normally write because you're more in service to the story than your own emotions.

Right. Because, you know, most songwriting is just indulgent. This is what I feel. Yeah. Here's the song. There's something about writing to a narrative that is a different discipline. Yeah. And sometimes you get surprised,

things come out of you that you didn't know were in there because because of the, you're trying to serve this narrative. Yeah. Yeah. So I hope you do that. Yeah. Well, it just sounds like the most incredible, interesting thing to take on. It's fun.

It's fun. And I think in a world of so much noise and so much music, sometimes having a narrative allows people a different entree point into the music. Mm-hmm. True. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Thank you.