The high road and positivity is never the easy way but always the best way.
Nancy Wilson
I feel like I've had a lot of painful situations that I intentionally delete from my memory.
Ever since I could remember, women's issues have been pretty urgent.
The Seattle explosion was what saved rock from becoming too pompous! A great moment in music!
Ann and I were the main writers in Heart. We had the leadership role, and the guys in the band sometimes had a hard time with that.
In many ways, we might compare to The Pretenders more than others, but still, we created our own category.
One of the things I've heard musicians say that's true is, 'I would play for free. I would play music forever, but you have to pay me to travel.' I know we're always going to make music. The traveling part - that is the most wear and tear on any human.
I really love singing. I love singing harmony, mostly.
We came from an era when women normally did not rock.
I have endless admiration for people like Chrissie Hynde who've been out as the only girl in a band. I'm not sure that, even as a little Marine Corps brat, I would've been able to deal with that.
We really had boundless optimism about the place of music in the culture - and in the world.
Prince, I think, trained amazing musicians to bring more to any musical table they come to.
'Heartless' is something Ann and I wrote together.
We were wild-eyed hippies from the late '60s. We still had the exuberance of the mind-expanding '60s - that Tolkienesque, Zeppelin, androgynous, wood nymph, forest fairy kind of innocence. It sounds stupid now, but we felt we were changing the world with music.
One night, I remember being really sick in bed with chills and a fever when Ann came in all excited and said, 'I have these lyrics! Let me read them to you!' They were the lyrics to 'Crazy on You,' and in my fever haze I said, 'Yeah! Those are really good!'
We're notorious for living up to our namesake. We're all about love. That's how we roll, even when it's to a fault.
There are some beautiful things about people like Katy Perry, who are bold enough to go up on a pink cotton-candy cloud, with a guitar, in a tutu, and sing all by herself.
If you're in a rock band, you're never too tame.
Everyone makes mistakes.
I have a favorite blue Telecaster. It's an old '60-something, which I play at every show. That's probably my favorite all-around stage guitar.
My highest score karaoke song is 'Ben,' by Michael Jackson.
There have never been a lot of female guitarists out there, so most of my influences were male. Acoustically, I followed Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon. Also, John Lennon and Paul McCartney - both incredible acoustic guitar players.
We're trying to elevate humanity and not preach to humanity in the way we approach our art. We're always just trying to get a good party going.
We always had a lot of admiration for feminists who were out there trying to change things for the better for women, who were trying to find equality in the workplace and at home.
I know, in so many cases, a lot of the women who came up through the singer-songwriter, Lilith Fair era, the earlier Lilith Fair era, did say that we were influences on them.
There's nothing quite as raw and honest as one person and one instrument.
I play a lot of classical music around the house.
Being mothers, we try to stay home as much as possible and attend to the children.
I've been through a lot of heartache in my day, and you turn to music to prop yourself up. It's a healing thing, and it's a powerful, powerful, beautiful thing.
I saw Led Zeppelin live for the first time when I was thirteen.
We've never been as active politically as we have been as artists. But politics always brush up against the arts, oh, about every four years in this country.
With 'Brigade,' we sort of decided to kind of revamp ourselves and put on the military garb and become more of a fighting unit, you know, like the title of the album, and sort of fight for it.
A dream set would include songs by other artists like Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, and other favorites. More obscure Heart songs like 'Wait For an Answer' and 'Nada One' would be fun, plus fan favorites like 'Love Mistake' and 'Language of Love.' Endless possibilities.
Sleazy people are always in this business. They run the business, pretty much. There are a lot of barracudas.
My favorite acoustic is the Nancy Wilson Signature Martin.
When you're in your twenties, your brain hasn't even finished baking, and your hormones are giving you all kinds of direction of which ways to go.
I always have dogs with me, even on the road. We call them port-o-pups.
I like playing. Guitar... on a loud rock stage... with colored lights. Everything sounds better with colored lights!
We've been around for awhile, had a lot of success. Got a chance to sit around and go, 'Oh, yeah, we're pretty good.'
We're not just 'ladies in rock.' We're weird people!
It's the ultimate compliment to be imitated or at least be somebody's influence, for sure.
We get notes sent to us backstage from college students that say, 'My parents used to play your albums all the time! I grew up with you, and I love the new stuff.'
The electric guitar was a big step for me, but I didn't spend a lot of time trying to adjust. It wasn't like, 'Hey, little lady, come strap on this here big guitar.' We took it in steps as much as possible.
We had the idea as women that we could walk into music and be good at it and be as good as any man and have a career in it without being taken advantage of. So basically, those things came true. The obstacle course was just more difficult than we ever anticipated. We were optimistic and very naive.
I'm a chameleon when it comes to guitar playing and like to stretch out into different territories.
We've come through on a very strange path, and it's all somehow worked out.
Heart weren't part of a movement like grunge; we were our own kind of movement.
I really like the Budda head with a big Orange cabinet with Celestion 30 speakers and my '63 Fender Telecaster.
I tried to play 'Barracuda' on 'Guitar Hero,' and because you have to anticipate and push buttons, it's really counterintuitive.
I have done a few solo projects that I really enjoyed and would love to have time to do more. Key word here is time!
