Beverly Diehl

I *did* listen to it again. I wanted to listen for the story between the lines stuff that gets left out per courtesy and/or legal department recommendations.

Ann and Nancy didn't want to be the Beatles' girlfriends, like their friends did - they wanted to be the Beatles; to play their own music, write their own songs, to be feminine and sexy and powerful.

K & S discusses Ann's struggles with her weight going back to pre-adolescence, and the pressure this put upon her, and the band - as if the ONLY accepted standard of beauty is thin, and the only measure of musical quality for a femme-led band is not voice, nor songwriting quality, nor musical performance, but the size and shape of the female members.

Ann talking frankly about her love/obsession for Michael Fisher. Quitting the band and taking off for Canada (whence M. Fisher had gone to escape the Vietnam draft), and living with him in a little round house over a stream, in a bed built on driftwood branches.

Nancy and her own similar but differing ideas and in the end, determination to find her own way.

* The intriguing details about the Magazine album, and finishing it under armed guard.
* I loved hearing about the "birth" of one of my favorite songs, Mistral Wind.
* The many stars who tried (and failed) to bed the Wilson sisters, either separately or together.
* Ann referring to "the song writing me," something I often feel about a story.
* The glimpses of the birth of the Seattle grunge movement, and Ann as one of its "mothers," down to sheltering its stars in her home and (platonically) in her bed.
* I cannot now remember which Heart band member wore unitards so as to show off his third nipple.
*The birth of the Lovemongers acoustic group.
* The 1995 official Heart hiatus as Nancy needed to work on babymaking.

Nancy's voice is sweet, and she has a way of inflecting sentences in the MIDdle, almost as if they are a QUEStion. Ann's voice is richer and lower in timbre, but was also somewhat raspy, and I wondered if she recorded her narration with a cold.

There are also sections read by their sister Lynn, and by others, like their co-songwriter Sue Ennis, and the band's former manager (and Ann's ex) Mike Fisher, lead guitarist (and Nancy's ex) Roger Fisher, Howard Leese, and more. It surprised me a bit that the exes would cooperate to the point of recording audio material.

When the music industry said they were finished, Heart was just getting started.

I suspect that genuine Heart fanatics who've followed every Rolling Stone and Circus and fanzine interview may feel like there's nothing genuinely new here. But for those like me, who genuinely enjoy the music, but haven't hung on every interview beyond the lyrics, there's a lot of insight here. It's also a fascinating look at the growth and changes in the music industry over the decades.