Singing high and loud: The Ann Wilson interview

Ann Wilson made Robert Plant cry.

At the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C., Wilson (on vocals) and her younger sister Nancy (on guitar) performed Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” with a rock band, orchestra and chorus.

As the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin – among the evening’s honorees – watched, Wilson turned in a transcendent “Stairway,” from the balladry to the banshee wailing. She was on fire. Plant, the song’s co-author and its original vocalist, wiped away tears.

It was, in a roundabout way, a moment of full circle for Wilson, one of rock’s great singers, and the only woman in the genre with the chops to pull off such a tricky (and famous) tune and give it expressive new life.

Going all the way back to the early/mid 1970s, when Ann Wilson was growing up in Seattle, Led Zeppelin was her jam, and Robert Plant her rock ‘n’ roll hero.

Full circle.

Heart (1979). Photo: Portrait Records.

Ann and Nancy Wilson are, of course, at the heart of Heart, the 50-million-selling band that put “Magic Man,” “Crazy on You,” “Barracuda,” “Little Queen,” “Straight On” and a half dozen more into the rock ‘n’ roll vernacular. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

Ann is in Clearwater Thursday, Sept. 10, for a Capitol Theatre show with her band Tripsitter. Find tickets here.

The road to right here, right now has been rough and rocky, as the Wilson sisters have squabbled often over the years, throwing doubt on their future together (see the very end of the interview for the answer to that question). There have been plenty of solo projects along the way.

In 2024, Ann was diagnosed with cancer, and following successful treatment went back into the studio, and on the road.

She talked about it all in the documentary film Ann Wilson: In My Voice, released last spring.

And she talked to the Catalyst.

St. Pete Catalyst: First things first. How’s your health?

Ann Wilson: It’s beautiful. I’ve been clear of any cancer for about two years. I just go in and get checked every six months. I just did that, and everything’s still clear. And I feel great. I’ve been on a Heart tour since then, and the old body held up really well!

Is playing a Tripsitter show a little less pressure for you? You don’t have to play every one of the Heart hits.

Yeah, sure, because it helps keep it interesting. Not that a Heart set isn’t interesting, because it’s always interesting to me, but to play some covers, to play the songs that we’ve written with Tripsitter … we have three Tripsitter albums out, so there’s a lot to choose from that’s just ours. We include some of that. It’s a real mix, what we play. There’s some Heart stuff, there’s some Tripsitter stuff, there’s a couple covers. It’s great fun.

When you choose covers, do you still reach back into the Zeppelin bag, and the Beatles bag? The old standbys.

Well, I never felt good about doing Beatles covers, because I don’t think anyone can do ‘em as good as the Beatles. But yeah, we still do a Zeppelin cover now and then.

But I was just listening to you singing (the Beatles song) “I’m Down” … that was so cool.

Yeah, that was a long time ago, too. [Laughing]

One of the things I always loved about Heart was the way you blended acoustic and electric music, often in the same song. Was that a conscious thing?: “Let’s not just rock all the time, and let’s not be folkie balladeers all the time …”

No, I think it probably came from our family, because we had a really musical family. The parents were always singing, and playing the piano and ukuleles … there was just always music going on in our house.

Oh, and also there was Led Zeppelin, there was the Beatles, there was all these bands who were able to travel freely between acoustic and electric. And blend the two, especially Zeppelin did. They would have this huge, heavy velvet-hammer rock band with an acoustic guitar at its heart.

And that just really was inspiring to Nancy and I as songwriters, early on. We just carried that on.

Music was everything. Nothing was as important as music – boys weren’t important, clothes weren’t important. [Laughing] There’s a girl sitting on the side of her bed with a guitar, and maybe she has somebody else on the other bed with their guitar … and that’s how they learn how to play, one to the other.

How important was Led Zeppelin in your evolution?

Very important, because they showed rock with acoustic at its base, better than anyone, and we could relate to that.

And also, they were important to me because Robert Plant probably taught me how to sing high and loud. He and Aretha Franklin, I think, were responsible for my singing style. Get up there and just wail, you know?

Did you always know how to wail like that?

No. I didn’t always know how to do that. It’s just something that happened by chance during a band rehearsal; we were trying to put Heart together. And the men in the band wanted to do some Zeppelin songs, but none of them could sing that high. They couldn’t screech and howl like that. They didn’t have the thing. So it fell to me, because I had the higher voice. And that’s how I learned.

Why did you make the documentary?

After all this time, nearly 50 years or so, I’ve been associated with Heart. So I’m not Ann Wilson, I’m Ann Wilson of Heart. I just wanted to be able to step out from behind that moniker, you know, and just be myself. And show people about my own life. What goes on behind all that. And what my life has been like for me, just as a person.

And it came out really good!

There’s some revelations in it. I talk about my love life and my life as a parent. Just all kinds of stuff that goes on. Like you know, how much stuff goes on in your life? So much stuff. You can’t cover it all in a documentary, but you can sure scratch the surface and give people a feeling of who you are.

Is it sometimes difficult, or made difficult, for you to pull you away from Ann Wilson of Heart? I assume you are two different people.

Yeah, yeah. I just think there’s so much interesting stuff that goes on in a person’s life. Especially when they travel around as much as we do, you know? We totally travel all the time. So you meet a lot of people, you see things of the world, and it makes you a pretty well-rounded person.

The Kennedy Center Honors: Was that a special moment for you, singing “Stairway to Heaven” with Led Zeppelin right there in the room?

Indeed it was. There was nothing to do except go out there and sing the song. Just pay attention to the song and not worry about who was in the audience and all that. There were a lot of luminaries there that night, watching.

You cut “Magic Man” with Dolly Parton for her Rockstar album in 2023. What was that experience like?

She did an amazing thing with that. She just seemed exactly like what she says she is. When she came into the studio, her assistant laid out this big spread for us. And Dolly was just being hospitable, you know? She’s a tiny little thing, and all dressed up and made up, big hair, the whole deal. She WAS Dolly Parton.

And she was really sweet. She wanted to hug everybody. She was warm. I felt she was really authentic.

So, I have to ask if you and Nancy are speaking. Will there be more from Heart?

Yeah, we’re so past all that stuff now. We just finished a new album, and we’re gonna go out on tour next year.