You don’t hear too many rockers tell stories about seeing the Beatles in concert in their youth.
So when Heart’s Nancy Wilson said she and her sister Ann saw the group perform in Seattle on August 25, 1966 — one of the last dates of their final concert tour — we were all ears.
As Nancy explains, the sisters attended with the members of their teenage band — and they went with a purpose.
“Our mom and dad drove us there: me and Ann and Bonnie and Sid — our whole little all-girl folk/rock band at the time,” says Nancy, who was 12 at the time. “It was like taking dictation for what it was we wanted to do with our lives. Definitely there was destiny involved. We just had to get guitars and make bands and become the Beatles — as much as we could ever become them.”
The Fabs’ two shows at the Seattle Center Coliseum came toward the end of their final concert trek. After two more dates — one in Los Angeles and another on August 29 in San Francisco — the group stopped touring and would not play what was considered a “concert” until January 30, 1969 on the rooftop of its Apple Corps offices in London.
Their 11-song set at the Seattle Center lasted about half an hour, opened with Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music” and included two songs (“If I Needed Someone” and “Nowhere Man”) from the Rubber Soul album and their latest single, “Paperback Writer.”
Nancy Wilson recalls that her parents drove the four aspiring musicians to the show, sporting matching outfits made by the Wilsons’ mother especially for the night.
“Our mom was a good seamstress,” she recalls, “so she made us matching uniforms to what the Beatles were wearing on that tour — the khaki, mandarin collar, military tunic jackets as well as the double-breasted, wide-collar fitted military jackets. Of course we had skirts instead of slacks. That was before you would wear pants in school.
“We had our opera glasses and our little miniature binoculars so we could take notes and watch the Beatles and their camaraderie and their energy with each other, which was the biggest thrill of all — their body language, the way they would hold their guitars. How John bowed his legs and bounced up and down, irreverently chewing gum. His snidely attitude, and Paul’s bouncy, angelic, baby-faced thing in contrast to John’s dangerous, sexy thing.
“George was every bit the gentleman, kind of like a British clothing model, like a dandy or something. And Ringo was just the goofball who all the kids loved. When you loved the Beatles you loved Ringo first, ’cause you were so young. Then when you’re 12 or 13, you went for the other Beatles.
“Then when the hormones kicked in you went to John.
“I remember being pissed off at all of the girls, who were just screaming and screaming, because I wanted to hear the band, and you could barely hear the music. And the whole place was lit up like it was daytime because of all those Kodak Brownie flashbulb cubes that were going off.
“But it was really exciting and, like I said, life-altering, like, ‘Omigod, this is what we've gotta do with our lives!’ We had guitars already and we were getting proficient and we knew all the Beatles songs. We knew every part they played, and all the harmony parts.”
The Wilsons have lived out that dream, of course. Since forming Heart in 1973 they’ve released 16 studio albums (featuring enduring hits such as “Magic Man,” “Crazy On You,” “Barracuda,” “These Dreams” and more), sold more than 50 million records worldwide, been nominated for four Grammy Awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.
After breaking off its Royal Flush World Tour for Ann Wilson’s cancer treatment last year, the group is back on the road and planning to stay there most of the year. May 31 will see the start of the An Evening With Heart spring/summer U.S. trek, with the band performing two separate sets each night, through June 28.
Meanwhile, Nancy — who’s duet with Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, “A Million Goodbyes,” is sold via the tour’s merch booths — says she’s eager to make “an acoustic Heart” album at some point soon.
“I just turned 71 in March, so I’m feeling even more lucky that I knew what I wanted to do with my life when I was that young,” she says. “To be able to know, and for it to be able to work, is insanely lucky. And that we’re here still doing it... I don’t take that for granted at all.”
