NANCY WILSON: THE GUITAR GODDESS
The Woman I Found Because Some Guy Told Me Not to Look
I knew Heart.
We all knew Heart.
They had been bouncing around in the soundtrack of my life for years.
“Magic Man.”
“Barracuda.”
“Crazy on You.”
Heart was just...there.
That's the funny thing about growing up surrounded by so much music. Sometimes an artist can be huge and still exist somewhere in the background of your consciousness. You know the songs. You recognize the voice. You know the band.
But you haven't really listened yet.
Then Heart released an album called simply Heart.
Image: Heart album cover Heart. Source: Discogs.com
Which always struck me as interesting.
This wasn't some new band introducing itself to the world. Heart had already been making records for years. They'd already had hits. They'd already built a career.
And now here they were with an album bearing nothing but their name.
Almost like:
Hello. We're Heart. Let's try this again.
And boy, did they.
The music world had changed. MTV had changed how we encountered bands. Rock had changed. The entire visual language of music had changed.
And Heart walked right into the middle of it.
Two beautiful women.
Solid rock and roll.
Ann Wilson with that voice.
Nancy Wilson with that guitar.
Seriously?
They killed it.
The self-titled album became a major commercial resurgence for Heart, part of a new chapter that introduced the band to listeners who hadn't necessarily come up with their earlier records. Even Nancy Wilson has reflected on the '80s as a period when many people first discovered Heart, despite some of the musical compromises the band made while adapting to the era.
And somewhere in all of that, I heard:
“What About Love.”
Singer Angel sat up.
Whoa.
I needed this album.
Fortunately, I knew exactly where to go.
OFF TO TOWER RECORDS
Of course.
Because this was the old record hunt.
You didn't hear a song, pull out a phone and add the album to your library.
You went looking for it.
And different albums could cost different amounts of money. New releases were one thing. Older records that weren't selling as well might be marked down.
This mattered when your record-buying budget sometimes involved actual pennies and nickels.
So off I went to Tower Records to get Heart.
It was a Saturday evening, and Tower wasn't simply a store.
It was somewhere you hung out.
And while I was there, there was a cute guy playing guitar.
Apparently he was in a local garage band, and he was having himself a very good evening.
There were several of us girls hanging around while he flirted and showed off.
Someone would call out a band.
He'd play something.
Someone would name a song.
He'd play the lick.
Oh, he was enjoying himself.
And, to be fair, we were enjoying him enjoying himself.
Then somebody called out:
“Play some Heart.”
And our young Guitar God said something along the lines of:
Nah. I don't play licks from female guitar players.
What?
And just like that...
He wasn't cute anymore.
Funny how quickly that can happen.
I walked away.
But I didn't leave the store.
Because his disdain had done something he absolutely had not intended.
It became a call to adventure.
I suddenly wanted to know more about Heart.
More specifically:
I wanted to know about the woman playing the guitar.
THE OLD RECORD HUNT
While I was digging around, I found another Heart album.
Private Audition.
Image: Heart album cover Private Audition. Source: Spotify.
It wasn't one of their huge records. In fact, Private Audition came during a more difficult commercial stretch for the band. Even Heart's own retrospective material describes songs from that album as having somewhat fallen through the cracks at the time.
Which meant something very important to Young Angel standing in Tower Records:
It was cheap.
I had enough.
Barely.
I pulled together my pennies and nickels and walked out of Tower Records that evening with two Heart albums.
The brand-new Heart I had come to buy.
And this older record called Private Audition that I had picked up because some cute guy had opened his mouth and accidentally sent me down a rabbit hole.
Thank you, Guitar Boy.
You have no idea what you started.
THE RITUAL
There was a ritual to bringing home a new record.
First, you inspected it.
You looked carefully for visible scratches because, yes, sometimes a brand-new record could have one. If you caught it immediately, you could take it back and have it replaced.
So you checked.
Then came the liner notes.
Who wrote what?
Who played what?
Who produced it?
You looked at the photographs.
You read the credits.
You absorbed the whole thing.
The album wasn't just something you heard.
It was an object you investigated.
Then came the turntable.
I put on Heart first.
Of course I did.
That was the album I'd gone there to buy.
And it was amazing.
First song to last.
So amazing, in fact, that I listened to the entire thing twice.
Eventually I remembered:
Oh yeah.
I bought another album.
So out came Private Audition.
Same ritual.
Check the record.
Read the information.
Put it on the turntable.
Place the needle.
And then...
“CITY'S BURNING.”
Oh.
My.
God.
There is this slight grind of acoustic guitar.
Just enough to pull you toward it.
And then—
BANG.
That roaring guitar comes crashing in and suddenly you're in the middle of this hard-driving rock song.
What the hell was this?
To this day, I think “City's Burning” is one of the most amazing rock songs I've ever heard.
And I've had plenty of time to reconsider that opinion.
I became a Heart fan.
A real one.
I collected the music.
I went backward through the albums.
I followed them forward.
Eventually vinyl gave way to other formats, and now I've got Heart sitting there on Spotify like everybody else.
I know their work.
And after all these years, I still don't think Heart has another song quite like “City's Burning.”
That's not me declaring it objectively their greatest song.
That's not the point.
There's something about that song.
That pull.
That opening.
That attack.
That guitar.
It felt like this crazy little showcase of Nancy Wilson's talent.
Image: Nancy Wilson. Source: PremierGuitar.com
And considering what had happened at Tower Records only hours earlier, the timing was almost cosmic.
Some guy had just told me he didn't play licks from female guitarists.
Then I went home.
Put a needle on a record.
And Nancy Wilson answered him.
This.
I STARTED LISTENING DIFFERENTLY
That's what changed.
I already knew Heart.
Now I started listening to Heart.
There's a difference.
I began collecting their music and reaching backward through the catalog.
And once I started listening for Nancy, I couldn't stop hearing her.
Go back to “Crazy on You.”
Before Ann Wilson even gets the opportunity to unleash that magnificent voice, Nancy has already made her argument.
That acoustic opening, known as “Silver Wheels,” wasn't an accident. Nancy has explained that she was inspired by the kind of acoustic introductions Yes used before epic songs. She also remembered feeling that, because she wasn't a man, she had to prove herself a little harder to be taken seriously as a player rather than treated as decoration on a stage.
Image: Nancy Wilson. Source: GuitarWorld.com
Read that again.
Because somewhere, years later, some guy in Tower Records was still making exactly the distinction Nancy had spent her career fighting.
Male guitarist.
Female guitarist.
As though the second word somehow changed the first.
Nancy herself has talked about the attitudes she encountered: women weren't supposed to do that, people told her. Guitar would ruin her fingernails. It wasn't ladylike. There weren't many women doing what she wanted to do, so many of her own guitar heroes were men: Jimmy Page, Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Paul McCartney, John Lennon.
She learned anyway.
She played anyway.
And she got damn good.
AND THEN THERE'S HEART
Image: Ann and Nancy Wilson. Source: LATimes.com
The deeper I went, the more I realized something else.
Heart is just really freaking good.
Everything about them.
There are the obvious things.
Ann Wilson has one of those voices.
Good grief.
Power. Range. Control. Soul. Rock.
As a singer myself, of course Ann grabbed my attention.
That's why I went to Tower Records in the first place.
But then there's Nancy.
Electric guitar.
Acoustic guitar.
Rhythm.
Texture.
Songwriting.
That wonderful ability to move between something delicate and something that can knock you backward.
That combination became part of Heart's musical identity. Nancy has described the band's signature as hard rock incorporating acoustic guitar, and that contrast is right there in songs such as “Crazy on You.”
And then there is something else I love about Heart.
They're sisters.
Two incredibly talented women standing beside one another without either one's talent diminishing the other's.
Ann didn't need Nancy to be less brilliant so Ann could shine.
Nancy didn't need Ann to be less powerful so Nancy could matter.
They did different things.
And together they created Heart.
The Wilson sisters helped carve out space for women in hard rock at a time when the industry often didn't know what to do with women who weren't interested in merely decorating the stage. Their influence eventually became part of Heart's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legacy.
But Young Angel didn't know any of that.
Young Angel had a record player.
And ears.
Sometimes that's enough.
WHERE IS NANCY?
We've been talking about Guitar Gods around here.
The players who made us stop everything.
The ones who stepped forward with an axe and turned the guitar solo into an event.
Hendrix.
Page.
Blackmore.
May.
Gilmour.
Van Halen.
Santana.
Satriani.
The names come easily.
And the more I've thought about Nancy Wilson, the more I've found myself asking:
Where the hell is Nancy?
Image: Nancy Wilson. Source: Entertainment Weekly.
I feel about her a little the way I feel about Rik Emmett.
I know the accolades exist.
I know musicians know.
I know serious guitar people know.
Nancy Wilson doesn't need me to establish her credentials.
But when we casually start talking about the great guitar players of rock, I don't hear her name nearly as often as I think I should.
And I'm not asking:
Where are the women?
That's a different conversation.
I'm asking:
Have you people listened to Nancy Wilson?
Because I did.
That's how she got here.
Not because I decided I needed a woman in my pantheon.
Not because I thought it would be nice to have representation among the Guitar Gods.
Nancy got there exactly the same way the men did.
She played.
I listened.
That was the audition.
She passed.
THE GUITAR GODDESS
Image: Nancy Wilson. Source: Guitar.com
Looking back, there's something almost perfect about the way I found her.
Some guy dismissed Nancy Wilson because she was a woman.
And I didn't stand there and debate him.
I didn't have an argument prepared.
I didn't know enough yet.
So I went looking.
That's one of the greatest things music ever taught me.
Go listen for yourself.
I went into Tower Records that Saturday evening because Ann Wilson's voice on “What About Love” made me want a Heart album.
I walked deeper into Heart because some guy told me female guitar players weren't worth his time.
And then a discounted record I could afford with the money left in my pocket introduced me to “City's Burning.”
That sent me backward.
And the farther backward I went, the more Nancy Wilson I found.
The girl listening eventually became a girl who picked up an electric guitar herself.
And all these years later, I'm still listening.
I'm still discovering things in those records.
I'm still impressed by those two sisters.
And Nancy Wilson still belongs in my pantheon.
Not Guitar God with an asterisk.
Not “great for a woman.”
Not a courtesy invitation.
Guitar Goddess.
Period.
As for that cute guy at Tower Records?
I never saw him again.
I don't know what happened to him.
I don't know what happened to his garage band.
But I'm still listening to Nancy Wilson.
Funny how that worked out.
Thanks for taking this trip back with me.
What do you remember? Were you there too, or did this story bring back a memory of your own? I’d love to hear it. Share your stories in the comments, and if this made you smile, laugh, cringe, or turn up an old favorite song, share it with someone who remembers too.
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Until next time...
Keep the memories alive. Keep the stories coming. And whatever you do... turn it up.
— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)
#RockNRollAngel #NancyWilson #Heart #GuitarGoddess #WomenInRock #GenX #GenXMemories #80sRock #GuitarGods #DrAYHeath #MysticScribe
Sources
Guitar World — Nancy Wilson on Heart, her guitar playing and the band's history
Guitar World — Nancy Wilson on “Silver Wheels” and proving herself as a guitarist
Heart — “Beautiful Broken” and the rediscovery of “City’s Burning”
Guitar World — Nancy Wilson on the making of “Crazy on You”
