While watching her own upcoming documentary, In My Voice, two thoughts flashed through Ann Wilson’s head.
First, what a wild ride the past half-century had been, from blazing a trail through the ’70s with kid sister/guitarist Nancy in the rock band Heart, all the way to last month’s psych-tinged new release with Tripsitter, Consecrated Ground.
“But the other thing about a documentary,” says the 76-year-old, “is that you don’t generally hear people say all these nice things about you.”
Wilson might be best-known as one of the greatest vocalists of the rock ’n’ roll era – but it’s notable how many of the talking heads on In My Voice are guitarists. From Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell to Paul Stanley of Kiss, this genre-crossing cast bears witness to an artist who has clicked with the six-string community all the way through her career.
“I guess it’s because I’m a singer, so I sorely need someone to back me up,” considers Wilson as she prepares to share her memories of life amongst the axe-list. “I just need one person to play guitar and then it’s like, ‘Let’s make music together.’”
Nancy Wilson
I started out with Nancy, of course. As a kid I had mononucleosis and couldn’t go to school for three months, so my grandmother gave me a nylon-string acoustic. I’d try to figure out chords, but when I wasn’t playing, Nancy would pick it up and just rule on it.
It was so easy for her. You’d put on Simon and Garfunkel records and she could just completely play like Paul Simon. I’m four years older, but she just went sailing past me. I realized she was a killer player when she was only eight or something.
Nancy played acoustic when she started coming up to Vancouver to sit in with Heart in ’74. But pretty soon she got her hands on an electric guitar. One of the keys to her electric playing is that she approaches it as if it were an acoustic.
She was friends with Joni Mitchell’s main guitar guy and got some of the tunings out of him and made them her own. Now, of course, she’s a complete original – no-one plays like her.
Brian May
Heart toured with Queen in 1982 and Brian May was such a gentleman – very sweet and highly intelligent, a joy to be around. The most amazing thing that happened on that tour was in Edinburgh. We had a day off and Queen invited us to a dinner at a high-end Scottish restaurant.
In our camp nobody was a really heavy drinker, but times being what they were, there was champagne to start, then a different wine for each of the five courses, then a big dessert with cognac. That night I remember Freddie Mercury wanting to gossip with me, like two singers together.
Jerry Cantrell
I still remember meeting Jerry in the early ’90s. There’d been a concert with a bunch of northwest bands playing, and we all ended up out at Nancy’s farm out in Woodinville [Washington]. We were laughing and jamming, and it went on ’til everybody had drank too much to drive – so everyone just slept there.
Jerry and I were the last ones awake, and we decided it would be a good idea to clean the house. So we did the dishes and the leftovers. There was a bottle of champagne left over, so we went down to the stables and fed the horses a bunch of apples – and gave them some champagne.
Jerry Cantrell doesn’t care about notes lined up like a scale. He loves the songs to move around. He hears way more than seven tones
By the time the sun came up, we were friends. There was no weirdness at all. There wasn’t even an age differential that anyone cared about. It was just two musicians together.
Jerry’s guitar style is truly original. He once told me, “All the bands that are really huge, they figure out what their thing is, then they lean into it hard until people want to puke.” It was rough language, but I knew what he meant: you just figure out what you’re saying and you don’t do anything else.
That’s what Jerry does. He doesn’t care about notes lined up like a scale. He loves the songs to move around – y’know, kinda fluid. I think he hears way more than seven tones.
Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil
In those years the Seattle scene was very close-knit, and my house was the only one actually in the city. So whenever there was a show all the bands would end up there. We’d drink beer, swim in the pool; some would leave, some would sleep on the carpet.
It was a safe house – an awful lot of industry guys were coming from LA. Like all of a sudden, there’s some guy outside their door wearing a plaid shirt, wanting to sign them, and it was very uncomfortable for them.
I always had a bunch of guitars. People would sit cross-legged on the rug and we’d light the fire, push the furniture back, turn the lights out, and let the fire do its job. It was mostly acoustic. Chris Cornell was around; he was a great player – he could really accompany himself well. But he was really shy. It was the same with Eddie Vedder. He was a really quiet guy, then he’d get onstage and be this monster.
Kim Thayil came over a lot, too. I thought his style was super-sophisticated. He didn’t care for just one time signature. He couldn’t just count “1-2-3-4” – he had to let it roll. The ideas in Black Hole Sun alone are not your typical guitar-shredding solos. They’re very painterly.
Jimmy Page
Starting out as a guitar player, I’d sit at Jimmy Page’s knee and learn everything I could from the Zeppelin records. The thing about Jimmy is that method or scales don’t even figure in his repertoire. It’s just so crazy and dissonant: I guess it’s right-brain stuff.
My favorite guitar moments are latter-day songs like The Crunge or No Quarter. Over the years we’d cross paths, and those guys always walked around with a serious gravitas. You didn’t feel like going up because they had their own atmosphere.
Nancy and I played Stairway To Heaven for the Led Zeppelin tribute [at the Kennedy Center in 2012] and after the show, they sat us all down and gave us, y’know, a rubber chicken dinner.
We met Page and Plant, and they were very happy and said they really liked our performance. That was a big deal because so many bands have tried to cover Zeppelin, and they don’t enjoy being covered by people that don’t feel it.
Warren Haynes
I’ve done a bunch of work with Warren. He gave me my choice of five songs when I sat in with Gov’t Mule at the LOCKN’ festival in 2017. We covered Black Dog and from that time forward we’ve been band friends.
I’ve recorded at their studio in New Haven, and Warren sat in on my solo album Immortal. We did a Tom Petty song called Luna. His playing is just so smooth and smart; he really knows how to play the blues.”
Tom Bukovac, Ryan Wariner, Paul Moak
My latest band Tripsitter are playing on a remarkably high level. Ryan is blossoming; Paul is an amazing all-around musician. And Tom Bukovac – what a mind! His technique is over the top, and he’s so current because he does that Homeskoolin’ thing.
He can play anything. I’ll say, “Let’s try something orchestral,” and he can do it. Sometimes he’ll come to a session with one little phrase and everyone will do flips when they hear it. Then a whole song would come out of it, like Miss One And Only from Another Door.
Every day on tour is a story with Tom. One time we were on a private plane to Nova Scotia for a private gig. It was a long flight and everyone was tired; not saying much. But about 10 minutes in, Tom broke out a Rolling Rock, and pretty soon everyone had one. Then everyone had some bourbon, and the rest of the flight was so fun. That day, alcohol was the social lubricant we all needed.
- Tripsitter’s Consecrated Ground is out now and the In My Voice documentary will be released in November.
