It’s been 10 years since classic-rockers Heart put out Desire Walks On (Capitol), their most recent disc of new material. During that time, frontwoman Ann Wilson and her sister, guitarist Nancy Wilson, recorded and toured with their unplugged side project, the Lovemongers, and Nancy did the music for husband Cameron Crowe’s films (Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky). Last year, the Wilsons put Heart back together and embarked on a summer tour that resulted in a new live album, Alive in Seattle (Epic). Now they have an album’s worth of new songs that they’ll draw from when they perform next Thursday at FleetBoston Pavilion.
"We were having a breather from the album-tour cycle," explains Ann over the phone from a tour stop in Miami. "We finally got to the point where we just went, ‘God, we have all these songs — let’s do it.’ We’ve been doing it together since we were children, so it was a natural magnetism that got us back together. It was the first time we had been plugged in again in some years, so that was a really inspirational thing — to get really physical with it again."
When Heart emerged from Seattle in the mid 1970s, Ann’s banshee wail and the band’s Led Zeppelin–inspired thunder boogie made them instant rock-radio favorites. A decade later, they transformed themselves into one of the hottest corporate-rock outfits of the 1980s with the smash power ballads "These Dreams" and "Alone." Alive in Seattle focuses on the early days, making room for showstopping cover songs that include the Zep standards "Black Dog" and "The Battle of Evermore" and a stomping run through the Sonics’ 1960s garage-rock classic "The Witch."
The cast of characters behind the Wilsons has always been something of a revolving door. This time out, the sisters are surrounded by two of the biggest hard-rock studs of the 1990s: guitarist Gilby Clarke, who replaced Izzy Stradlin in Guns N’ Roses, and bassist Mike Inez, who has played with both Ozzy Osbourne and Alice in Chains. The revamped Heart line-up is rounded out by Brian Wilson keyboardist Darian Sahanaja and Lovemongers drummer Ben Smith.
"We’ve known Mike for a long time because he was part of the big Seattle scene with Alice in Chains," says Ann. "He’s such an incredibly cool guy and a great bass player. Finally we went, ‘Why don’t we just ask him to be in the band?’ " Inez and Smith appear on Alive in Seattle, but Clarke and Sahanaja are touring with the band for the first time this summer. "Nancy went out and auditioned a whole bunch of guitarists, and of all the guys she listened to, she said Gilby was the only one that had feel. We were looking for somebody who was raw and heavy. He’s so great because he’s kind of a star in his own right, but he never pulls those kind of cheesy star moves. I guess you can tell we’re still in our honeymoon phase with the band."
Heart are planning on hitting the studio as soon as they get off the road; after that, they’ll shop the finished album around to labels. The four new songs on Alive in Seattle find the band recapturing the straight-up rock vibe of their early work. "That’s really where we are headed, and I think that’s where we live," Ann affirms. "But when you say Heart and rock and roll, you have to know that it has the acoustic guitar at its center. Because whether Nancy is playing acoustic or not, she plays every guitar as if it were an acoustic guitar."
Heart perform next Thursday, July 10, at FleetBoston Pavilion; call (617) 728-1600.
