Heart Speaking Pelican? Like Hell They Can!

Heart Speaking Pelican? Like Hell They Can!

Sylvie Simmons

FEATURES

On the sofa from the right: Ann Wilson, Denny Carmassi, Howard Leese. All in black. Easy on the eyes on a filthy British day. Don’t mind God going out on the town, but does he always have to piss on London the next morning?

Ann: courtesan eyes, mortuary-curtain hair and raffish black beret with the words “Bad Animals" on it. A tribute to Motley Crue? “We’re the bad animals,” she replies with a nice dirty laugh. “It’s just something we call ourselves among ourselves.” Those who think Heart’s idea of bad is Nancy putting two sugars in her coffee know nothing about nothing. There’s stories to tell, but with a new album to promote this isn’t the time to tell ■ them. Bad Animals, it’s called, the one with the nice cave drawings on the front (‘ ‘On the album there are the five figures in different colors, and on the inside each of the figures has a symbol on it, so you can decipher who’s who,” says Howard, peeling a banana. “But you have to do that yourself.” Clue: the walrus is Paul).

It’s the usual collection of strength and sweetness which, apart from a couple of screw-ups, Heart has delivered for the past decade-plus. The grit and the rubies still jostle comfortably alongside the fluff in I the bellybutton of heavy rock.

Heart’s always had its own special place in the great hard rock hierarchy and have never been the easiest band to pin j down. They were fronted by two women i back in an era when a woman’s place in rock was on her knees in the dressing room or gaping at some straining crotch from the crowd. A band that would come out with something sweet and folkie and, just when you’d pegged them as flower children would belt back some tough, jagged metal. A band that’s survived trends, three Heart transplants, and more broken-romance stories than a year of daytime TV, and who came through a couple of years (’82, ’83) and a couple of albums of sinking fast.

Then, the next minute you look, it’s a change of members, a change of record company, a change of management, a change of image, and four million albums are shooting out of the stores and onto happy drooling turntables everywhere. So what went on?

“We just pulled ourselves together a little bit in terms of what we wanted to do” I is what. “We got serious and worked harder."

“It got to a point,” says Howard, “where we had to say ‘a lot of this isn’t working, so let’s fix the part that’s broken and leave the part that^ not broken as it is.’ ” What with various love-affairs and bust-ups in the early ’80s—Fisher brothers Mike and Roger, drummer Michael Derosier and bassist Steve Fossen were replaced by Denny Carmassi (ex-Gamma) and Mark Andes (ex-Firefall), both still happily in place—the band was the first thing they sorted out. “We wanted people who wanted to be in Heart,” says Ann. “And then,” Howard interjects “we made wholesale changes in our business setup; and just got our noses down to the grindstone and made better music.”

“It got to a point,” says Ann, “where we could just tour and tour and tour our heads off, and break our backs, and still not get anywhere. We were spinning our wheels and it was really frustrating. So we just thought, well, let’s rethink this and do whatever it takes to get ourselves back in motion again! It was no longer worthwhile to be just stuck in the mud. I don’t know, it’s hard to describe what actually turned the key to make us do what was necessary to get going again—I think it was just frustration and boredom. And fear” She laughs.

It’s a hell of a thing when you stop to think about it. There you are, doing what you do, taking care of business and getting on with your work and someone quietly decrees that you’re over and done with, a dinosaur—that it’s time to crawl off to a corner and die and make way for some tight-assed cheekboned shrimp in leather.

“I think that age works against us sometimes with these business guys,” Ann nods, “because it’s always much more exciting when things are new—new faces. It’s absurd when you have to go on your knees in some office and beg, ‘Please back us up.’ It’s just not happening.”

“Everybody wants to break a new band,” Denny says, philisophically. “That’s kind of the whole thing about rock ’n’ roll: there’s such an emphasis on youth and the Next New Thing that’s going to come, you know.”

“We’d already been around twice as long as bands usually last,” says Howard. “So they figured: well, they’ve had a great run, seven big hit albums or whatever, so they’re finished, let’s sign a new band. But we take it more personally than that.” He smolders. “We felt we still had something to offer.”

The latest effort, Ann reckons, is “our best work so far.” I’ve got to agree. Certainly their strongest, most consistent stuff since the glorious early years. The mood in making the album was “workmanlike and exciting, a nice atmosphere,” Ann smiles. “We went in and we just went for it, just thrashed, you know.” Ron Nevison—who should have been included in with the list of changes only I forgot—their producer, did the trillion-selling Heart album and, in spite of being a hell of a taskmaster, was back again. The track all three say he surprised them most with was “Wait For An Answer.” “The best thing we’ve ever done,” states Howard, unequivocally, and the other two nod. “It’s got the best lead vocal on it. I get tired just listening to it. It’s a real special song for us, very difficult to play. It took a lot of physical and mental energy—we had to take a break between every attempt at recording it because it was just so demanding. I think it just shows what Heart sounds like to the nth power—it’s a distilled version of everything we’ve ever done. It starts quietly and builds and builds and when you think it’s reached the peak it goes up again; and you figure that’s got to be the last one and it goes up again, and when we get to the end”— he breaks down in theatrical sobs—‘‘it’s just too much to take!”

‘‘There’s no reason in the world a person could listen to that record and have that song go by them,” laughs Ann. “It really sticks out.”

Which brings me, neatly if indelicately, to the subject many readers undoubtedly plodded all this way for: cleavages! Wasn’t all that long ago that the look in the Heart female department was your basic metal-mama bobo: pre-Nikki striped spandex and shagdos, buttonedup satin with the odd bit of froufrou. Suddenly a Heart video’s on and red-blooded boys are slavering like Labradors. OK, Ann the Vamp we can take; but Nancy? Nice, angelic Nancy? The little bit of fluff thrusting her frontage at the front row?

“Well, you know she never thought of herself as a bit of fluff and neither did we! She’s just growing up,” says Ann, bigsisterly. “She’s becoming a woman—I mean, for God’s sake, she’s 32 years old now! She’s in love, she’s gotten married, she’s blossomed.”

To the point where she’s not standing for getting tossed the wimpy little ballad thing to do? Does Ann feel competitive?

“No, no, no. I’m glad she can sing more, because I always thought she was a good singer, and all it takes to change from a good singer to a great singer or even from a singer to a good singer, usually, is experience. It means doing it more and more and more. And live, of course, it’ll take some of the responsibility off me, which will be great, because we’re going to play longer than ever this year. It really does kind of get to me after a certain amount of touring; I start tb sound a little husky, and this will help me.”

“Ann is amazingly powerful, though,” says Denny, jumping to her defense. “She can sing like nobody else can, night after night: it’s amazing. Since I’ve been in this band we’ve never had to cancel a show because of Ann.”

“I’ve been lucky that way,” the vocalist shrugs.

So how are they feeling now—stuck, as they are, in a hotel room—at the prospect of another long tour?

“We’re looking forward to playing, but I don’t think there’s anybody here who’s looking forward to the drudgery of travelling every day,” says Ann. “If we could just take that time onstage and pull it all together and just have that and not have the dragging yourself from town to town...”

“Right now we’re chomping at the bit to go out,” says Denny.

“It sounds great, now... ” says Ann.

“But six months from now,” says Howie, “it’ll be hunhh—the hamster wheel!”

And do they still take their dog, bird and lizard menagerie on the road with them?

“That’s kind of been exaggerated,” says Ann. “We did have one little dog on the road with us for a few tours, but she’s too old to go now. She snaps at people and stuff now.”

Anyway, they need all the room they can get for the ever-expanding wardrobe and make-up kits. What with this new glamorous look of theirs, does it get to be a pain in the arse having to put on the damn stuff?

“Nance and I get real cross with it on the road sometimes because we have to put on make-up three times day.” That’s Ann, not Howard. (“My hair and skin are just ravaged from the demands!” he screams.)

“Once in the morning, because you have to leave your hotel room and walk into a lobby where there’s a bunch of kids waiting—so you have to look good for them. Then you have to do it again before the show—and then you sweat it all off so you have to put it all on again to go meet people. It’s like this constant apply and reapply, and it just gets real old. But what are you going to do? Be Linda McCartney? Fresh-faced, no make-up, cowboy boots and an old hippy skirt? No!”

Heck, Suzanne Vega’s making a fortune doing just that!

“Yeah, but it’s different in rock ’n’ roll,” reasons Ann.

“Even the boys wear make-up in rock ’n’ roll,” says Howie.

And wear higher stiletto heels.

“Well, let them get shin-splints!” huffs Ann.

It’s a tough life being a sex-symbol, “but it comes with the territory,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with sex in rock. I think rock is basically a sexy form.” Exactly. None of us fell in love with Robert Plant for his big IQ, did we?

“That’s right,” Ann laughs. “So to be worried about being called a sex symbol would not be in keeping with being in rock ’n’ roll.”

But, what with their general maturity and having-been-around-ness, it must be odd being on the receiving end of drooling attention from tiny boys or girll.

“It’s kind of flattering,” says Ann.

“It’s sort of fun,” says Howard.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 40

“It’s nice work when you can get it,” says Denny, and you can’t say it any better than that.

“The letters I like,” says Ann, “are the ones we get from guys in prison. They’re going like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been stuck in here for two years because I was bored and I stuck up a liquor store or something and I only have five more years and, God, whenever I think of you... ’ and then it starts going bleuuugggshhh (censored) and it’s signed ‘Mad Dog’!”

Good to hear my close personal friend Mad Dog’s still writing letters!

Meanwhile, back on the outside, is there any kind of ongoing contest among platinum bands that we should know about? Like “Let’s show fill-in-the-blank that we can pack bigger crowds, sell more records and get more weird letters than they do?”

“Sure!” says Howard. “That’s part of being in a band. It’s sort of fun though; it’s not real big animosities or anything. We hang out with all the guys in other bands, we’re old friends. You still go, ‘Hey! We’re doing better in the charts than they are!’ But it’s not vicious or anything: I don’t go, ‘Gee, I hope they don’t do well so’s we’ll do better.’ But if you’re on a sports team, you want to win, and if you’re in a band you want to be number one. Being number one,” he grins “is the best!”

Which they’ll probably be by the time you read this, so on to Future Stuff. I seem to recall plans to make some kind of musical movie after this album, written with close friend and longtime collaborator Sue Ennis.

"Yeah,” says Ann, “we were trying to write a movie and we had the script was almost finished, and then at about this time last year Sue had to have brain surgery—she had a tumor in her head— and that kind of scrapped the project because she was mainly writing the script. It was almost done, too. Now it’s like the wind has gone out of our sails on it because of that. She’s OK now.

“There are other things in the wings though, such as a solo album for me, which will be after this tour’s over. And Sue and Nancy and I are working on this story for an animated feature film for theaters which Nancy came up with”— she was originally writing it as a children’s book—“called Dreamfriends. And it looks like Disney’s pretty interested in it. We just have to flush out the characters and get the actual dialogue.”

Are the guys involved in any of these projects?

“Well, Nancy asked me to do some of the music,” says Howard, “but I sort of think that if you want to do solo things you should do them by yourself.” Fair enough. It must be why they call them solo. “I mean, if we all play, it’s Heart.” A problem Ann keeps running into, “because what / want to be doing is Heart, and so it’s hard to think how my solo album’s going to be any different! I guess I have some thinking to do.”

So the men will sit back with their feet up?

"No, no!” says Howard. "I just did a part of a score for a film that just got finished, and I’ll be doing more of that kind of stuff. Heart keeps me plenty busy at the moment. I’m not that ambitious anymore because any ambitions I had we’ve already attained time and time again. So I’d just as soon have the time off. There’s so much other fun stuff to do.”

“No kidding!” says Ann. “Like travel.”

“The last thing I want to do when we have a break is go into the studio,” says Howard, reasonably, “because the first thing we’re going to be doing is going into the studio!”

So what’s the biggest misconception about Heart these days and how are you going to clear it up, I ask journalistically.

“I think the biggest misconception— still—is that the band consists of Nancy and I as leaders, and that the guys are some kind of.. .behind us somehow.” The Wilson sisters as the despotic harpies who hire and fire dog or butterfly depending on whether or not they’re premenstrual that morning? Ann nods: “A lot of that stuff was just what people wanted to write—they wanted a story, so they would write anything to make it a bit more interesting, about the harpies and everything.”

“From the first day I joined this band,” attests Danny, “on the the Private Audition tour, they never said to me, ‘You have to play the song this way.’ Man, I tell you, it was really cool.”

“See, when you work with people who obey your every whim, it’s a lie,” says Ann. "Because deep down inside they’re going, ‘Oh, Jeez I hate her, all she ever does is boss me around.’ And then pretty soon you have a blow-up. It’s much better when you work with people.

“Anyway, what we’re going to do to clear it up is what we’ve been doing all along—just telling people it’s not the way it is.

“Actions speak louder than words, so that’s why we’re doing all the interviews together,” says Howard. “We don’t do anything separately. It makes us seem a bit more like Bananarama—not quite as serious as it really is. When it’s taken that way it’s—I don’t know—more exploitive.”

“And it makes Nance and I feel horrible,” says Ann. “Because Heart really is a five-way thing.” a