Nancy Wilson has revealed the Heart album cover that really pissed off the male members of her band.
During an appearance on Billy Corgan’s Magnificent Others podcast, the guitarist detailed Heart’s unique, and oftentimes difficult, gender dynamic.
Describing it as a “tricky eggshell walk,” Wilson explained that she and her sister, singer Ann Wilson, were expected to keep silent about groupies and other dalliances the men were enjoying on the road.
“We knew their wives and their girlfriends, but we would see them with the groupies and not tell the wives or the girlfriends about the groupies,” she admitted. “And so there was a brother sisterhood where, you know, what happens in the band stays in the band.”
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Still, Wilson noted the bigger challenge was managing the egos of her male bandmates when the majority of public attention was lauded onto her and Ann.
“Attention just naturally would fall on me and Ann together as a focal point,” Nancy recalled, before pointing to the album cover that really drew the ire of her bandmates. “The guys were on the back cover of (1980 album) Bebe Le Strange. And just me and Ann, the big black and white closeup of me and Ann on the front cover really pissed them off.”
The front and back cover of ‘Bebe Le Strange’. Epic
As Nancy remembered, it wasn’t just that Heart’s male members were pushed to the back cover, but the manner in which it was done.
“[The picture] was the back of our heads with the hair,” she explained, “and their pictures were inserted on top of the back, in our hair.” Nancy then paraphrased her bandmates’ complaint: “So we were just the out of focus guys in the background, in your hair.”
Why Heart Had to ‘Relinquish’ Their Band Democracy
Nancy went on to note that despite each of Heart’s lineups being “really a family,” having a true democracy never worked due to her and Ann’s oversized roles.
“What the public perception wants to focus on is something as simple as you at the center of it, or me and my sister at the center of Heart, you have to kind of relinquish the idea of complete democracy in many ways,” Nancy explained. “Because you are the songwriter. You wrote the lyrics, right? You wrote those songs. That was your soul coming through that speaker that put your own melancholy into the world. And that’s what me and Ann were, the songwriters.”
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“So every band member, first we made the mistake of being their girlfriends, and then there was a lot of different lineups after that, after the first lineup.”
Heart will launch their 2026 tour on Feb. 15. Nancy was quick to point out that the band’s current lineup is “the best lineup ever.”
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Gallery Credit: Corey Irwin
