Nancy Lamoureux Wilson (born March 16, 1954) is an American musician. She rose to fame alongside her older sister Ann Wilson as guitarist and second vocalist in the rock band Heart.
Raised in Bellevue, Washington, Wilson began playing music as a teenager. During college, she joined her sister who had recently become the singer of Heart. Considered the first hard rock band fronted by women to achieve widespread commercial success, Heart released numerous albums throughout the late 1970s and 1980s; the albums Dreamboat Annie (1975) and Little Queen (1977) generated chart singles such as "Magic Man", "Crazy on You", and "Barracuda". The band also had commercial success with their eighth, ninth, and tenth studio albums, Heart, Bad Animals, and Brigade, which were released in 1985, 1987, and 1990 respectively. Heart has sold over 35 million records.
Wilson has been lauded for her guitar playing, noted for blending elements of flamenco and classical guitar styles with hard rock. In 2016, Gibson ranked Wilson the eighth-greatest female guitarist of all time. She is also an accomplished singer in her own right, being the lead vocalist in the song "These Dreams", which became Heart's first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2013, Wilson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Heart.
Early life Nancy Wilson was born March 16, 1954, in San Francisco, California, the third and youngest child of John Wilson ( 2000), and Lois Mary Wilson (née Dustin; 2006). She has two older sisters, Lynn and Ann Wilson. Both of Wilson's parents were natives of Oregonher father from Corvallis, Oregon, and her mother from Oregon City, Oregon. Her middle name is derived from her grandmother, Beatrice Lamoureux. Wilson is of French Canadian and Scottish descent. She was raised in Southern California and Taiwan before the family's United States Marine Corps father retired to the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, Washington, where they relocated when Wilson was six years old. The family lived in a Colonial home in the Lake Hills, Bellevue neighborhood.
On February 9, 1964, Wilson and her sister Ann saw the Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, a moment they each recalled as being profoundly influential: "The lightning bolt came out of the heavens and struck Ann and me the first time we saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show... There'd been so much anticipation and hype about the Beatles that it was a huge event, like the lunar landing; that was the moment Ann and I heard the call to become rock musicians. I was seven or eight at the time... right away, we started doing air guitar shows in the living room, faking English accents, and studying all the fanzines." On August 25, 1966, the Beatles performed at the Seattle Center Coliseum, a show which Wilson, her sister Ann, and bandmates attended, another event both recalled as influential in their early lives.
Ann Wilson attended Sammamish High School in Bellevue, where her father was an English teacher, while Nancy attended the newly opened Interlake High School. After graduating in 1972 and prior to joining Heart, Wilson attended Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, for one year, majoring in art and German, then transferred to Portland State University. In late 1973, Wilson returned to the Seattle area and attended the University of Washington.
Career
Early endeavors Two of the Wilson sisters' friends joined them to form the Wilsons' first music group, the Viewpoints. The Viewpoints were a four-part harmony vocal group. Later that year, Ann purchased her first guitar, a Kent acoustic, with money given to her by her grandmother. Wilson's parents soon bought Nancy a smaller guitar, but since it would not stay in tune, she began playing Ann's Kent guitar. The Viewpoints' first public show was a folk festival on Vashon Island in 1967. In Wilson's words, "We didn't get paid, but since there were people sitting in folding chairs, we considered it a professional gig." The band played at venues such as drive-ins, auto shows, and church socials.
The Wilsons' public debut as a duo took place on Mother's Day at their church. Later at a church Youth Day event, the duo performed "The Great Mandala (The Wheel of Life)" by Peter, Paul and Mary, Elvis Presley's "Crying in the Chapel", and The Doors' "When the Music's Over". The anti-war sentiment, and the irreverence for the venue in some of the lyrics, offended a number of people. By the time they finished, more than half had walked out. Wilson felt some guilt over the event, but "it lit a bonfire under us because we saw for the first time that what we did on stage could have an impact on an audience."
While still a senior in high school, Ann joined a band whose drummer knew a country songwriter in need of a backing band to play on his demos; Wilson and sister Ann entered a recording studio in Seattle to record the demos. During the session, the engineer allowed them to record the song "Through Eyes and Glass", which Nancy and Ann had written. The engineer had his own record label, and liked their songs enough that he offered to make up 500 copies "for a few bucks". Nancy and Ann's first single appeared on the B-side of the country track titled "I'm Gonna Drink My Hurt Away". It was credited to Ann Wilson and the Daybreaks, which was not the name of the band, and it omitted Nancy as co-songwriter. Later, the sisters were returned 250 unsold copies of the record.
1970s During college, Wilson played solo acoustic shows at student unions, performing covers of Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon songs, as well as occasional originals.
Wilson's sister Ann was an acquaintance of guitarist Roger Fisher and bass player Steve Fossen (of the local band The Army) when she answered their advertisement seeking a drummer and a singer. She impressed them with her vocal skills. Within an hour of meeting them, Ann joined the group, which was called Hocus Pocus.
The group shortly reformed as Heart. Pressed by her sister, Nancy joined the band and relocated to West Vancouver. Wilson recalls that "some of the guys" in the band were initially resistant to her joining, and insisted she audition by sitting in periodically. She was given the assignment to work up the introduction to the Yes song "Clap" (from The Yes Album). She learned it, and the next night after playing it with the band at a tavern, was officially made a member of the band.
The band had recorded a demo with Mushroom Records some time before, and producer Mike Flicker remembered them. Flicker saw Nancy as a "diamond in the rough", but was intrigued by the idea of a female rock guitarist.
Mushroom Records released "Magic Man" as a single before Heart's debut album, Dreamboat Annie, had been completed. The song received airplay in and around Vancouver. Portrait Records released the band's second official studio album, Little Queen, in May 1977. The album spawned the track "Barracuda", which reached number 11 on the Billboard charts. The band's third official release, Magazine, was released pre-emptively by Mushroom the following year, and contained eight tracks, some of which had been unfinished; the band sought an injunction and Magazine was recalled after 50,000 copies had already been sold. The dispute over the record lasted nearly two years.
Wilson and the group traveled to Berkeley, California, where her friend, Sue Ennis, was studying to receive a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. Ennis became a writing partner on the group's fourth release, Dog & Butterfly, which they wrote together over the course of a single day. The album was released in October 1978, selling a million copies within the first month. It remained on the album charts for the better part of a year and went on to become a triple-platinum album. It was the band's fourth million-selling album in a row.
During their tour to support Dog & Butterfly, Wilson and Fisher, who were a couple at the time, became estranged. After discovering Fisher had cheated on her, Wilson began dating Michael Derosier. This resulted in tension between the band members, ending with Fisher destroying a guitar onstage and throwing part of it at Wilson in a dressing room. In October 1979, the group voted to oust Fisher from the band; this change allowed Wilson the opportunity to play more lead guitar.
1980s Heart's fifth album, Bébé le Strange, was released on Valentine's Day 1980. The band's sixth album, Private Audition, was released in June 1982 and sold only 400,000 copies; it peaked at number 25 on Billboard. After their series of platinum and gold albums, this was considered a flop. However, Heart continued to do well with concert sales, and had the eighth-highest-grossing tour of the year. During this time, tensions between Wilson and drummer Derosier had increased after several breakups, and both bassist Fossen and he decided to leave the band. Over the next year, they were replaced by bassist Mark Andes and drummer Denny Carmassi.
The lackluster performance of Private Audition led to increased pressure for the band's next album, Passionworks (1983). Drugs became a factor in the band's work during this time. Wilson recalls: "Everything we did in those years had a white sheen of powder over it. There were only a few people on our crew, or band, who resisted. Cocaine was sprinkled over the albums, the videos, and our lives. Cocaine stripped all the humor out of our music. The videos we made were completely without intentional comedy, but were so serious they had an almost comedic feel." After the release of Passionworks, CBS dropped the band due to lackluster sales.
The self-titled Heart (1985) became the band's first number-one album. "What About Love" was released as a single ahead of the album; it became a hit, and crossed over into the pop charts. The album remained on the charts for 78 weeks and went on to be certified five-times platinum. The album had five hit singles, including "These Dreams", a single that featured Nancy Wilson on lead vocals. "These Dreams" had been submitted to the band after Stevie Nicks had turned it down. Though she had not written it, Wilson loved the song from the start. She had to fight to sing it because some band members thought it "did not sound like a Heart song." During the taping session, they received a letter from Sharon Hess, a 22-year-old fan who was dying of leukemia. One of her wishes was to meet Nancy and Ann, and she arrived the same day as the recording of Nancy's vocals for "These Dreams". Sharon loved the song and Wilson dedicated it to her in the album notes. Sharon died just a few days after the final mixes were finished. "These Dreams" became Heart's first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 on March 22, 1986.
The album Bad Animals (1987) was preceded by the single "Alone"; it became the band's second number-one hit, and the second-biggest single for the year. This gave them something they had not had with the Heart album: a number-one single before the tour started or the album was released. "We were following on success, not building to it," Wilson recalled. The Bad Animals tour was to start in May 1987 in Europe, and all the dates were sellouts, including three dates at Wembley Arena. During the tour, Ann began to have moments of panic and stage fright. Nancy would have to step forward and play an unscheduled guitar solo, or other ploys, to buy time for Ann to compose herself. Work began on the following album, Brigade, in 1989.
1990s