Heart’s Nancy Wilson has revealed her hilarious remedy for her unplayable first guitar, and it’s a story that anyone with siblings can relate to.
Alongside her older sister, Ann, the guitarist would go on to be the foundation of American hit-makers Heart. Yet, despite being born into a musical family, quality guitars were something of a commodity in the Wilson household.
“When the Beatles showed up, it was like, ‘I must have guitar!’” Wilson says of her earliest influences while guesting on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast. “It absorbed me, it still does. When I was nine, I felt my purpose was to learn every Beatles song, and every hit song.”
So, she got her hands on a guitar. But it was far from the Dean, Gibson, and Fender electric guitars that would later propel her career.
“I got the worst guitar of all time,” she laughs. “It was a $30 rental from the Band Stand music store down the road. It was a three-quarter-sized Lyle plywood guitar with a dowel neck. The strings were really high off the fretboard. It was life without Fs; no barre chords allowed.”
There was, however, one good guitar in the family ranks. Naturally, she was drawn to it – but it belonged to her sister.
“Ann got a good guitar from our grandma, because we were all interested in being the Beatles,” Nancy explains. “We didn’t want to be like the guys; we wanted to be the guys.
“Her guitar was really playable, so I'd sneak off with her guitar, and she'd get really pissed off at me.”
Wilson has previously revealed that her neighbors had tried to discourage her from playing guitar for one specific reason, but play she didn't listen, and she soon established herself as one of many guitar greats to have come out of Seattle, making a fan out of Jimmy Page in the process.
Last year, Wilson made the news when her custom-built baritone was stolen from the stage on the eve of Heart’s US tour. Thankfully, the guitar was tracked down after the band took the story to local news and social media channels, and it got its live debut alongside Chappell Roan – a fitting maiden voyage for the sparkling purple axe.
