HEART OF MY PIECE
...I speculated, wistfully glow-faced in my brown weave desk chair. My brain halves twiddled in this generation of unharnessed prurience until, just as my amorphous sentiments were beginning to take on actual visages, the phone’s ring rudely cleaved my daydreams.
The CREEM Archive presents the magazine as originally created. Digital text has been scanned from its original print format and may contain formatting quirks and inconsistencies.
HEART OF MY PIECE
by
Alan Madeleine
SEX!
...I speculated, wistfully glow-faced in my brown weave desk chair. My brain halves twiddled in this generation of unharnessed prurience until, just as my amorphous sentiments were beginning to take on actual visages, the phone’s ring rudely cleaved my daydreams. My chief editor struck a grave silhouette against the sun-oranged window. It was an assignment, alright, and already her senses were correlating phone input with my befuddled form. Grins, adieus, the conversation ended, and I was informed that I would cover Heart (figuratively, to be sure) at their Kalamazoo, Michigan date. As was later expounded in an editorial-office circular, “he (even) buys their albums.” The date was later changed to Flint, also known as The City That Alan Madeleine Can’t Get Away From.
So. In a typically journalistic display of fortitude, my girlfriend and I battled the dreaded ennui of the x-way, and successfully arrived at the Sheraton to camp butts in their lime green lounge chairs. For about three sum hours, as it turned out; apologized away later as due to crossing a time zone, rush hour traffic, and other perils of the peri: pate tic.
The first step of our gala evening, then, was a jaunt to, a couple of radio stations with Nancy (do I gotta tell ya Wilson?), bassist Steve Fossen (looking absolutely trendoid—that means yer cool, Steve, don’t sweat it—in a monkey-fur 40’s coat with a 70’s cut), and a PR person in a magenta windbreaker proclaiming “Heart”. Also,: some fellow from Bamboo Productions toting a four-foot-square poster that would serve as a prize in a banner contest at tonight’s concert. And lastly, Tiffy Womby Wilson; ostensibly a dog.
SEX!
...was admittedly far from my mind at this stage in the game, but it was during this limosining that my first hard-core Heart-ifacts were un-earth ed. Wilson sis fans maly just go into ecstacy to learn that there does indeed exist at least one other W.S. (Lynne) who, among other things, tried her luck in a Las Vegas act with her hornblowing boyfriend. Disillusioned with the Vegas touch, she soon renounced it.
We could try Inviting whole audiences out to dinner. -Nancy Wilson
Of course, Mushroom fighting came up, which is neither the Seattle Civic sport nor hallucinogenic aftermath, but rather the well-documented altercation between group and record company. Both group members stated that their rebellion was, to the best of their knowledge, precedental in terms of performers combatting unauthorized release of their material; to the best of my knowledge, 1 had to agree.
New wave washed up jn the conversational course, and Nancy unwittingly exposed her naivete on the whole Sid Vicious extravaganza (“What’d he do?”)—I got the impression that media-tagging wasn’t one of their prime tour past-times, which led me invariably to ask just what those past-times were. Nancy drowsed, “We laugh a lot...
“At least,” she shifted, “we don’t have to all ride in one van like we used to—riding down the two-lane Canadian highways'.” (This brought whole hockey nets full of laughter from those around.) We arrived at the first station, and a 35-millimeter on-slaught ensued. We escaped, disheveled though still intact...
On the road once more, Steve---his face symmetrically framed by hair and monkey fur—commented that the Russian basketball team had even expressed how much they bala-laikaed Heart. “If anything is to create world peace...” he opined, with effected pretense...
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Subjects then followed haphazardly, due to my lax hand in controlling the discussion; among the topics were promotion (Nancy: “We tcould try inviting whole audiences out to dinner...” Steve: “We’ll come to your house...Massage you...”); image (Steve: “Were just trying to live out what our conception of a great band is. Our direction, right now is mostly Dog And Butterfly.”); and playing night after, night; the potential pitfalls thereof (Nancy: “There’s room enough in our songs to do different things each night.” Steve: “I don’t know...sometimes I feel like ‘Mr. Consistent’. If I try to do any improvising, everybody gets lost: ‘Wha-a-aa?’ ”).
Perhaps most significant was the fact that Nancy had requested “Reminiscing” by The Little “Nice Guys” I River Band, and Steve repeatedly reiterated the band’s having been admitted into Studio 54 Creeping middleclass consciousness?
Tying, all of this together on the physical level was the second radio stint, a brief back-to-base, and the ride over to the concert site itself, for which we limo-hopped to one packing Howard Leese, keyboardist/guitaro. Howard quipped flippantly as to the band’s food ways: “Most of us are into the meatless things, but there are a faction of burger fanatics in our management...Our drummer is very burger-oriented.” More roadplay was revealed when Howard recounted some frisbee folly at an airport terminal, which ended up with guitar player Roger Fisher running into an airplane and creasing it to the note of $1,000.
We arrived at the concert hall, and I waxed laconic into total sensory processing. I soon joined the throngs of captive concert males in private Wilson-sister depravity, while my girlfriend and the other members of that inclination got to witness twice as rrtany writhing male bodies onstage . (and this not even counting the opening act!). All of these (us?) adolescents were to come face to face with their most-forbidden subliminal Freudian truths, watching wide-eyed as their Ids shadily hinted the virtues of... SEX!
...I secretly harbored, cognizant that I was actually in the post-concert dressing room of Heart, a virtual Holy Land in the collective mind of its blue denim cults scattered globally about. Ann and Nancy were well-postured on the dressing-room couch like two precious porcelains. Among the questions I didn’t ask: “To the nearest $10,000, how much would it take to persuade you to buff for CREEM?”, “Do you eat pickles whole?”, and “How about a date?” No, fans, these and other unmentionables remained just that.
I angelically asked what they did to amuse themselves whilst on the road, to which Ann replied “Talk on the phone long distance.” Off the road when not recording songs, they are writing songs to be recorded with the help of penpal Sue Innes. Ann was reading Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, and critically acclaimed it “Really neat.” They have been putting both their spare time and money into a hotel in San Francisco (which dispels once and for all the rumored Church #of Satan connection —or does it?). Nancy owns a Jaguar XKE, a Thunderbird, and is buying a jeep, while Ann packs the driveway with a 71 E-Type coupe, a Porsche, a Cadillac Seville and dhumble Plymouth Arrow. She also had a travelling case of clothes that could not be even gotten through the dressing room door. Creeping materialism? f Blatant materialism?! Well, their clothes, at least, are all hand made by their “roadie” Monica (who also was responsible for the delectable—and of course largely meatless—culinary layout). Rare is the time, the girls insist, that they clothes-shop in the cities they visit along tour.
Just prior to re-piling the limo, Ann expressed extra approval of the Flint audience, observing that it takes a good one to go along with the shifting moods of their set and retain some semblance of composure through the quieter interludes. We then headed back to the Sheraton for a night of languor, herbal hospitality, and Colombo re-runs. Road life thoroughly realized, my g.f. and I staggered and swore our ways finally back to the room, for a consummating flourish of...
