Talking to Heart frontwoman Ann Wilson about some of her musical heroes, names like John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Annie Lennox and Robert Plant come up. Every one of those musical trailblazers epitomize artistic bravery and independence, with Lennon, Simon, Lennox and Plant coming out of iconic groups for solo careers.
So with those kind of pioneers as inspiration, it is not surprising that Wilson continues to forge new creative paths five decades into her Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame career.
The latest step is Fierce Bliss, her third solo album and first featuring her original songs. Alongside covers of Robin Trower's "Bridge Of Sighs," the Eurythmics' "Missionary Man," Jeff Buckley's incredible "Forget Her" and Queen's "Love Of My Life," featuring Vince Gill, are such new songs as "Greed," "A Moment In Heaven" and "As The World Turns."
I spoke with Wilson about the writing of Fierce Bliss, how she chose the covers she included on the album, her musical heroes and why she'd want to do a duets album with Simon.
Steve Baltin: Let's start with the originals. Was there one song early on that you wrote that jump-started the process?
Ann Wilson: I think the first one I wrote was "Black Wing" and then that opened me up to be able to just journal. That's usually how my process starts. I'm just writing things down that I feel, and then if they translate to songs, great. I think the grid connects, and then as the world turns it just opened up for me.
Baltin: At what point did you start writing or at what point did you start journaling?
Wilson: Probably late 2020 when we came off the road with Heart and at the end of '19 and then came COVID, so between February and October, we were in lockdown here in the house. So I think that's when I started journaling.
Baltin: Was it "Black Wing" then where you knew that this was going to become the Fierce Bliss album?
Wilson: I didn't know. I really didn't. I just started writing and I just had a few demo ideas. But I did have this bucket list idea that I wanted to go and develop my demo at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. So I went over there and I met these musicians that are now my band and we started working on the demos and they just opened up in this way that rarely ever happens in my experience. You all like each other, you can hang out, you can joke around, you can be serious, you could be vulnerable. The ideas are flowing, everybody is a great player, and they have a lot to bring to the fire. And pretty soon, we had 11 songs, and I had help from Warren Haynes and Kenny Wayne Shepherd and just all and Vince Gill. And a lot of people joined in and it was a great creative experience overall for me, it's just like cross pollination. It's a really cool new ways.
Baltin: The more you get to infuse new creativity into things, it excites you because Heart's been a band for 50 something years. Vince had a 40-year solo career. When you get to collaborate with different people who all have their own skill set did you find it was invigorating?
Wilson: Yeah, totally. And it's healthy to push yourself to change and expose yourself to risk. And I think that's what Vince is doing with the Eagles. He is such a band person. He's had this amazing solo career, but when I first heard him play, he was with Pure Prairie League, and they were doing rock and they were sound checking on Zeppelin stuff. And he was just tearing it up on the guitar. He can do lots and lots of things, and there's nothing quite like the thrill of being in a band. A solo career is cool too, but it's much different than being in a band where you're part of a team.
Baltin: So for you, because you got along so well with the musicians on this, does it feel like the perfect mix of getting to be both in a band while still getting to explore your solo stuff?
Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. We can hang out, we can commiserate, and we can go to the mountaintop with each other. That's about as good as it gets for a band.
Baltin: I also love the fact that you recorded at Muscle Shoals. When you're in a place like that, it has such a history, you feel it. Were there artists that you really felt being there or sounds that you really enjoyed recording there?
Wilson: Oh, sure. The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, just all those early R&B and soul records. I especially felt the magic of guys like Spooner Oldham and those musicians that just laid the groundwork for everybody else for decades. Yeah, it's a real cool place and it's just really unassuming and small and funky. And the people that own it set you up and then they get out of the way. And it's just really great. And it's just so down home. It's not in the middle of a city, so you don't have all that distraction. It's just in this little sort of strip mall place and you just go there to work and you just get focused. It's really cool.
Baltin: Is there one record that first comes to mind when you think of the Muscle Shoals sound?
Wilson: Oh yeah. I always think of Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones.
Baltin: Good writing is subconscious. So was there anything lyrically that surprised you when you went back and revisited on the record?
Wilson: Oh, all kinds of things. Almost every song has something in it that I didn't know what I was thinking until I said it. Yeah, songs are feel, they're not cognitive, for me anyway. I don't get out there and analyze what I'm gonna write. I don't self-edit anymore because that was totally blocking me. So it's, I just put everything down and then go back and work with some things that glow. "Black Wing" is one of them. That's almost like a '70s song. It kind of connected me to my younger self. Another one would've been "As The World Turns," which is just this more philosophical vision that I could only have arrived at now at my advanced age of like the world isn't ending because you have this stress, the world will always turn.
Baltin: What were you looking for in people that you collaborated with?
Wilson: Well, the people that I collaborated with on writing for this were Tom Bukovac and Warren Haynes. And Warren and I have been friends for about five years. And he had this idea to write a song that was a long sort of rock epics, like the Zeppelin "Rain Song" or something that is long, had to go through a bunch of changes. And he sent me his little iPhone demo of him just playing guitar on this thing that was probably 10 minutes long and that became "Gladiator." And then he sent me another idea that was straight blues, which became "Angels Blues." And I went up to Connecticut to where Gov't Mule was making two albums at once. They had taken the power station, two rooms in the power station, one for blues and one for rock. The first day we went in and did "Gladiator," the second day we went into the blues room and did "Angel's Blues." And it was just easy. I got to be the lead singer for Gov't Mule for a couple days, which is really cool. And then with Tom Bukovac, it's so easy writing with him. He just came over to a tour bus one night and I showed him the words to "Greed," and he can pick musical ideas and melodies just out of the air. He's got that amazing ability just to feel what's right. It's really great cross pollinating with these different musicians and seeing how they do things and taking advice from them and letting them inspire me.
Baltin: Going back to the covers now for a second, I love the ones you chose. Doing "Bridge Of Sighs," you could not find a more classic '70s guitar riff.
Wilson: Yeah, I've always just loved that song and just wanted to sing it so much for decades [laughter]. I just finally didn't listen to anybody and said, "Okay, I'm doing it." It's dark. I'm doing it. And I think Kenny Wayne Shepherd just completely nailed that one.
Baltin: I love the fact that you did "Missionary Man," because I'm actually interviewing Annie Lennox this week. So take me through how you chose that one.
Wilson: I've never in my long life so far, have lived through a time that is more materialistic and more egotistical and more superficial. And the song "Missionary Man" is right for the times. If you think of it, like the great big commercial evangelical mega-churches that exist now, with 10,000-person congregations, and all the money that changes hands and all that. I thought, "Let's take this song and just blow it up into a big mega-church production and get like a 40-person gospel choir, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd just mangling the guitar, just make it huge, and as kind of a comment on the time." So that's what we did.
Baltin: You can know a song for years but once you actually get into the nuances of singing it, you can discover new things. Was that the case for you?
Wilson: Yeah. I think especially in that Jeff Buckley song, "Forget Her." I changed the voice, so that the story is being told by an observer rather than by the person that's happening to. And that made me think, "Wow, this is even more intimate because it's more objective in a way, but still just heart-wrenching."
Baltin: I purposely didn't ask about that one 'cause that I'm obsessed with that song. That is, to me, one of the greatest songs of all time. And it's just something that, there's something about the emotion in that song. Let's go back for a second. What made you choose that particular song, to begin with?
Wilson: Well, again, it was an example of a song that I just loved so much, and I couldn't be satisfied till I was inside it. It's almost like sex in a way where you get into this state where you just have to have it, you have to be it, and that's why I chose that song. I like the arpeggiation and in the guitars and the emotional pull of the whole chord progression. And just the way he sings, the story.
Baltin: You could choose any Jeff Buckley song, you can't go wrong, but there's something about the emotion of that song. As you started to do it for the first time, did that spirit of emotion just take you over?
Wilson: Yeah, it did. And also it was funny because my guitar player, Tom Bukovac, is going through a divorce. And so when we were doing that song, he was just struggling to stay on top of it. It was moving him so much. And so I suppose watching him struggle made me all the more emotional too. It was just a powerful moment there in Muscle Shoals doing that song. It was just like we walked into another world for a while.
Baltin: Have you heard any feedback from Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox yet about the "Missionary Man" cover?
Wilson: I have not. And I did have some experience writing with Dave Stewart but I've never met Annie, and she's one of my best, most amazing singer choices of all singers. So I really hope that she digs it.
Baltin: Were there songs from the record that you were very pleasantly surprised to see how audiences responded to them live?
Wilson: Yeah, "Forget Her" is one of them. "Love of my Life" was one of them. I'm always suspicious of how many ballads a live audience can sit through, because I don't give people enough credit. If the ballad is done with the right kind of power and intent, it's beautiful live. And we do "Bridge Of Sighs" live too. So we're doing lots of ballads in our set and from the new record and they seem to just be fine with it. So I was really happy about that.
Baltin: It feels like you are enjoying your musical freedom right now.
Wilson: Yeah. And what's cool about that and also a little weird about it is that it takes you all this time to realize that you can do what you want. I spent so many years when I was younger just being afraid to venture out, you know? And "Oh, well they might not like it" or following rules that weren't my own. And I don't feel that anymore. Why did it take so long?
Baltin: What was the moment where you realized you didn't have to follow the rules anymore?
Wilson: It's been a gradual process of realization. I think probably about 2016 when I started doing my solo thing. It gave me this fresh outlook that I could just go out, and back then I was doing the whole set with no Heart stuff at all, just all covers. And people dug it, did some really great experiences with that. So that was the beginning of me starting to go like, "Hey, I don't have to be stuck here with my feet in a cement."
Baltin: Are there artists that are the standard for you in terms of doing their own thing?
Wilson: That's right. And [Joni's] a really good example, especially when she departed around the Hejira time. That was a big jump for her. And she just did it. She didn't worry, she got bitter later when people didn't follow her and Dominguez, but still, that was really super brave.
Baltin: There's probably no musician living today that I respect more than Robert Plant because you want to talk about someone who just refuses to live in the past.
Wilson: Yeah, and he's a musical nomad, he will go from the space shifters to country, to Americana. And he's great. I really respect him as a storyteller and as a free agent.
Baltin: Who's that one artist that you would love to do like a full album project with like he did with Alison Krause?
Wilson: Oh God. It would have to be someone like Paul Simon, just incredible songwriter and intellect and musician. It is Paul Simon.
Baltin: So what is the one Paul Simon song you wish you had written?
Wilson: I would love to have written "One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor," of course "Bridge Over Troubled Water," one of his best. Yeah, there's just so many songs that he wrote that are so amazing. "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog after the War." I mean could I ask you? [laughter]
Baltin: What is it you want people to take from Fierce Bliss when they hear it as a complete work?
Wilson: It's a portrait of an artist who is still moving on. It's just not satisfied to rest on any kind of laurels or rock hall stuff or anything like that, just somebody who's chasing the muse.
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