Still Crazy on You

MERCURY: You went to college at Pacific University
in Oregon and, according to Wikipedia, you are their most famous
alumni.

NANCY WILSON: Aw. Well, I also went to Portland State the year
before that and I really love Portland. It’s a great town. I was at
Forest Grove—I was at Pacific for a year—and I was at
Portland State for half a year before I joined the band.

For 500 points, can you name me the Pacific University
mascot?

The mascot? No.

The answer we were looking for was “Boxer.”

That’s terrible. I don’t remember the mascot. Oh, man.

You’re on tour right now. Where are you calling from?

Well, right now I’m in Albany, NY. We’re on tour right now in
between recording sessions. So we’ve been really busy putting together
the songs for the new album.

A new Heart album?

We’re making a new album and we’re working with producer Ben
Mink.

K.D. Lang’s guy?

Yeah! He also did Ann [Wilson]’s last solo album, Hope &
Glory. We’re kind of busy right now doing what we love to do.

It seems like nowadays I hear your music more than ever
before.

We’ve seen so many young, young kids the last few years now, showing
up at the Heart shows, in the front row, yelling, “BARRACUDA!” Which is
really cool because it means that our songs are standing the test of
time kind of beautifully and the generational dots are connecting. We
couldn’t be more excited about that.

Every year on American Idol, some contestant
attempts to sing “Barracuda,” or “Alone,” and my reaction is always:
Nope, not even close. Sometimes it takes hearing those versions to
really hit home how underrated Ann is as a great rock singer.

That’s really true. When we do “Alone” live there’s this wave of,
“OH MY GOOOOD!” It’s a touchdown because there’s just nobody that can
touch it like Ann Wilson. Singers like that don’t just grow on trees.
And there’s no digital corrections necessary: you can’t Pro Tools Ann’s
voice.

Whenever they do one of our songs on American Idol, the
catalog gets a spike, which is good.

It seemed as if Heart had two distinct careers: the classic rock
Portrait Records incarnation of the ’70s, and the run you had after
signing with Capitol, with the smoke machines and big hair videos on
MTV.

Well, at first it was kind of exciting because we had a new record
label and new management and a new opportunity to survive. The way the
culture was changing because of MTV turned quickly into something
else—it was so bombastic, over the top, and [cost] so much money.
It was really hard to live up to the standard of the imaging that was
starting to support that ’80s fashion; it got to be more trouble than
it was worth. All that hairspray. Oh my god.

The label brought in songwriters. Would you have signed to the
label if you knew they were going to do that? How does that
work?

We were still writing our own songs on the albums, but every rock
band then was pretty much expected to do songs by a stable of
songwriters. There were about 10 or so, or less, individual writers
that everybody was doing their songs and the record companies told us
they would not support the albums unless we played those songs. So we
listened to piles and piles of songs and chose the ones we really loved
and those we thought we could put our spin on and make our own. We got
our own songs on the albums, too, but none of our songs were ever
pushed for singles. It was kind of frustrating after a while.

We were really thankful when Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden,
and Pearl Jam started coming out of the Northwest. We were like, “Thank
god, that era is done! We can be a real rock band again.” Some of those
songs, though, from the ’80s are really good. We chose them well and we
still like to play them; they’re really beautiful songs. We don’t have
any animosity towards the songs, we just had a lot of other hard stuff
to get through in that era.

I want to talk about another part of your career that gets
overlooked. How did you not win an Academy Award for your performance
as “beautiful girl in Corvette” in Fast Times at Ridgemont
High?

[laughs] Right! The cameo award!

The next time you talk to your husband (writer/director Cameron
Crowe), can you tell him Fast Times at Ridgemont High is the greatest film ever made?

I will! It was a beautiful movie. Still is.

Are you still doing soundtracks like your work for Vanilla Sky?

I was. But his next film is Marvin Gaye, so there’s already a full
score and the music’s already done for that one. Plus, Heart’s doing an
album now.

You live in Los Angeles now, but you spent plenty of years in
Seattle. What do you miss most about that area of the country?

Everything! We aren’t going to Seattle on this tour, but Portland is
close enough that I’ll just drink in some of that air and hope it
rains.