Two sisters watched the Beatles on television one February night, and neither of them was ever quite the same afterward.
Ann Wilson was born on June 19, 1950, in San Diego, and four years later, on March 16, 1954, Nancy Wilson was born in San Francisco. Their family eventually settled in Bellevue, Washington, where the sisters grew up surrounded by music. Their father was a Marine, their mother was a trained pianist and choir singer, and the girls shared a bedroom where the radio seemed to be on constantly.
On February 9, 1964, thirteen-year-old Ann and Nancy, who was not yet ten, sat down to watch the Beatles perform on *The Ed Sullivan Show*. Something about that night stayed with both of them. They didn't know it at the time, but watching the Beatles would change the direction of their lives.
In 1970, Ann answered a newspaper advertisement from a local band called Heart that needed a singer. She got the job without knowing that her name would eventually become inseparable from the band. Around the same time, she fell in love with Heart's manager, Michael Fisher, who was avoiding the Vietnam draft. The couple eventually moved to Vancouver, Canada, and Ann went with them.
Nancy stayed behind for a while. She played folk clubs and finished college. Then, in 1974, she dropped out and crossed the border to join her sister. She brought an acoustic guitar sound that Heart had never had before. That guitar would become an important part of the band's identity, even though the music industry would spend years questioning whether she was really playing it.
In 1976, Heart released its debut album, *Dreamboat Annie*, through Mushroom Records, a small Canadian label that few people outside the Pacific Northwest knew. The singles "Magic Man" and "Crazy on You" quickly became hits, and the album climbed to number seven on the American charts. Success had arrived, but respect did not necessarily come with it.
Journalists asked Nancy directly whether her guitar was even plugged in. Then tabloids took a closer look at the album cover, where Ann and Nancy were posed back-to-back, and began spreading a bizarre rumor that the two sisters were actually secret lovers rather than siblings. The rumor followed them from city to city as they toured.
In 1977, a radio promoter repeated the same rumor to the sisters backstage. Ann and Nancy were furious. Instead of letting it consume them, they took that anger into the studio. The result was "Barracuda," the lead single from their second album, *Little Queen*. It became one of the defining songs of their career, born directly from the frustration of two women who had finally heard one insult too many.
The hits continued through the late 1970s, but when the early 1980s arrived, Heart's momentum began to slow. Some people in the industry started treating the band like a relic from the previous decade, a group that had been important once but was finished now.
Ann and Nancy had no intention of disappearing.
In 1985, Heart released its self-titled album and completely changed the band's position in the music world. The sisters' powerful sound was combined with the polished production and MTV-friendly style of the decade. Songs like "What About Love," "These Dreams," and "Alone" helped turn the album into the only number-one record of Heart's career. It eventually sold more than five million copies in the United States alone.
The decade that had seemed ready to bury Heart ended up making the band bigger than ever.
Over the years, the recognition continued to grow, but one honor seemed to keep going to other artists. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted one act after another while Ann and Nancy Wilson waited.
In December 2012, that wait finally ended when Heart was announced as part of the 2013 induction class alongside Rush, Public Enemy, and Donna Summer.
On April 18, 2013, Ann and Nancy Wilson walked onto the stage at the induction ceremony. Chris Cornell of Soundgarden introduced them.