The True Heartbreaker Tour
Seeing my teen rock idols one more time broke my heart
I don’t attend a lot of rock concerts these days, it has to be something pretty special. Heart is always special.
But when I saw them this week, it jolted me.
They performed this week at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles where for a band that’s been around since the 1970s, was pretty full for a large venue. A lot of fans came to see The Royal Flush Tour, which was postponed after lead singer Ann Wilson was diagnosed and treated for cancer last year.
Still, even though the tour photographer came on early to tell the audience that Ann would be performing in a wheelchair, not because of the cancer but because of an elbow injury, it was a shock to see her rock and roll out in that wheelchair. Her famous long mane of dark hair now short and gray.
Like many teen girls in 1976, I was a junior in high school, I was enthralled by Ann and Nancy, the Wilson sisters who are the heart of Heart. Ann had the most powerful voice, Nancy kicked ass as the high-kicking guitarist. “Crazy on You?” Minor miracle, it just grabbed me with everything it had. “Dreamboat Annie” lulled me. And of course, the magic of the “Magic Man.”
In 1980 when I was in college, I saw them in Phoenix at the Memorial Coliseum, memorable not only because the tour supported one of my all-time favorite albums, “Dog and Butterfly,” but also we parked on a side street far from the venue and our car was broken into and the yellow down jacket that my mother made for me from a kit was stolen. You think down jacket and Phoenix, hot, but I went to school at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, cold, and we drove two hours to see them.
I didn’t see them again until 2013 when my friend Tere told me about seeing Heart in Las Vegas with two of her high school friends and I was envious, I won’t lie. But when Heart came to Los Angeles, Tere took Marcia and Nancy, those friends, to see them at the Hollywood Bowl with a Meet-and-Greet. And Tere included me.
It was the Heartbreaker Tour and this is the concert where we met Ann and Nancy, couldn’t touch them in any way, no arms around each other, that type of fan stuff. They each gave us a guitar pick with their names on them, like receiving communion from the priest, our palms outstretched as they placed the thin, triangular wafer in our hands. No touching.
So when Heart came to Los Angeles to pick up The Royal Flush Tour after Ann’s treatment, Tere got a box at the back end of Crypto and the four of us met again. At dinner before the show, we reminisced about the previous concerts we’d seen together.
The one at the Greek where Tere and I went up to the stage and literally drummed on it while shout singing the lyrics to every song, our idols right in front of us, no barriers. The one at the county fair in Pomona where I made it through all the traffic it took to get there just as they were playing their last song. The one at the Forum where Tere played Nancy’s guitar backstage. The second one at the Hollywood Bowl where we hoped not to see Ann wearing that outfit ever again, we all thought it a questionable fashion choice. Truthfully, we weren’t enamored with the braids either. We loved her but we had judgments, too.
Really, we were always bedazzled by the Wilson sisters, who didn’t tour for some time when they had their own falling out over family issues in 2016. But we are old fan girls. Whenever they were in town, the four of us went. I see Tere many times a year but I only see Marcia and Nancy at our Heart reunions.
And this one was sad. Nancy Wilson’s legendary badass kicks are no more; Ann doesn’t hit the notes anymore, either, her own range is beyond her. There was Heart in there, of course, the band still takes names, but it just didn’t land the same. It was melancholic.
I’m not being ageist here, it didn’t so much make me feel like they were old, even though Ann is 74 and Nancy is 70, but it made me feel old. I’m 65 and I was with a trio of 62-year-olds and when we looked at the superstars of our teen years, suddenly we felt our own mortality, some of our limitations. We are right behind them. Things having to do with aging are starting to come at us.
Over the years, Heart has come back time and time again, the voice in place, the guitar brought to life. And I’m not predicting anything here but I did feel like we were seeing Heart for the last time. Heart can tour, Heart can not tour, it’s just that the magic is gone, man. It’s slipped away. We left enervated, not energized.
I’m on the young side of old at 65 and I realize, I don’t know how I will enter my old age, what will happen, how it will come, how I will leave.
But I’m going to do what I do until I can’t do it anymore, just like the sisters are doing. It is both bittersweet and beautiful at the same time. It might turn into something else, too, who knows, that’s the wonder of it all. I can come around again a few more times, I think, before I take my leave.
“We’re getting older the world’s getting colder
For the life of me I don’t know the reason why”
— Ann Wilson, “Dog and Butterfly”
