Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll by Ann Wilson & Nancy Wilson & Charles R. Cross

Author:Ann Wilson & Nancy Wilson & Charles R. Cross [Wilson, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780062246271
Publisher: It Books
Published: 2012-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

The photo shoot for Bebe Le Strange produced my favorite album cover. The picture captured us at a moment after I had whispered a secret joke to Nancy. Both the music and the cover seemed to connect with audiences, and it became our fourth platinum album in a row, going to number five on the Billboard charts, and staying on the charts for half the year. Little Queen sold slightly more, but the success of Bebe Le Strange, without either Fisher involved, felt more our own.

Maybe it was our gallows humor, but we released Bebe Le Strange on Valentine’s Day, 1980. The album also earned us some of the best reviews of our career. We wouldn’t have wished our break-ups on anyone, but they helped create a juicy back story. “Healing a Broken Heart,” one review headline read. Critics loved songs like “Down on Me,” “Break,” and “Even It Up,” which were often cited as examples of us finding fire again. As a songwriter, seeing a critic quote a line you really felt, like “I don’t want to burn it all, no, but this axe she, she got to fall,” from “Even It Up” felt rewarding, as if I had connected with the audience.

One of the only publications that panned the album was Rolling Stone. Just a year earlier, female journalist Ariel Swartley reviewed Dog and Butterfly by writing about how that album represented “blows against the empire,” meaning against the male-dominated world of rock. But when male Tom Carson tackled us a year later in the same publication, our music was now “cock rock without the cock.” To Ariel Swartley, we were “fresh and welcome,” but to Tom Carson our approach was “the same as on all previous Heart records: Mix together enough styles simultaneously, and maybe you’ll be mistaken for an original.” While different critics often have contrasting views, the number of times sexual organs were referenced in our reviews was truly extraordinary. In the Rolling Stone Record Guide, Mikal Gilmore wrote, “Take Ian Anderson and Robert Plant, endow them with mammaries, and you have the essence of Heart.”

Though Rolling Stone panned the album, they still featured us on their cover that spring. The headline was lurid as usual (“Rock’s Hot Sister Act”), but the article was a fair and detailed examination of our roots. The writer convinced me to take her back to my old high school, and to the house we grew up in. Our Lake Hills home was still empty, two years after our parents moved out, and it was eerie to visit. My mom was quoted about my break-up with Michael, and as usual Lou didn’t mince words: “Michael used to walk her out every night [on stage]. I wonder who will walk her out now?” Nancy addressed our new singlehood by announcing, “We’ll be each other’s keepers.” We had always had been.

Daisann McLane wrote the Rolling Stone profile and, thankfully, left out the usual references to our sex appeal. But the issue was not without a sensationalistic element.

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