Yahoo Lifestyle Heart’s Wilson Sisters Overcome Obstacles to Kickstart a Tour Fans Thought Might Not Happen: Concert Review
Even if Heart were to be proven incapable of delivering the goods in 2025, and even if the infrequency factor of how little touring they’ve done in recent years weren’t something to keep in mind, this is a group whose live appearances ought to compel a mandatory pilgrimage. Attention, as they say, must be paid — paid out of a lingering feminist appreciation for the Wilson sisters’ contribution to changing the landscape back in the stone-age 1970s… or out of the undying crush felt by most of the male and part of the female populations of a certain age… or just out of deference to one of the great rock song catalogs from that original era.
Or, to paraphrase Bono: Sarah Palin stole “Barracuda,” and we still should be stealing it back by continuing to acknowledge how radical that material was at the time, and how utterly effective it still is in sending an electric charge through your gut today.
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Headlining a show Monday night at L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, the second city and third date on the group’s national arena tour, Heart had overcome some serious odds and sequential setbacks in even being there for a commemoration or celebration to take place together. There were some elephants in the room that went unaddressed on stage, although it was easy to imagine that maybe Nancy Wilson was speaking metaphorically on behalf of herself and her sister when she talked early in the performance about the L.A. fires. “You guys are so resilient to get through it together in the spirit of togetherness,” she told the crowd. “So, congratulations on survival.” OK, so she probably really only intended this as a single-entendre statement, but still: Right back at you.
To recap some of the obstacles, in very short order: Famously, the Wilson sisters just weren’t on speaking terms, or certainly not on rocking-together terms, anyway, for a critical chunk of the 2010s. (Since their reconciliation, “the stage is where most of the healing takes place,” Ann recently told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s a safe place for us to be.”) Then they were on again for a 2019 tour, then off again for the pandemic, followed by Nancy touring her own version of Heart, then on again for 2024 comeback shows… which came to a halt when Ann was knocked out by cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy. Many of those dates were rescheduled for a post-chemo 2025, including this one in L.A., with close to 40 more shows set to follow through the spring and summer.
After getting past all these speed bumps in the recent past, one more reared its head at Crypto Arena, when Ann Wilson came out onto the stage, unexpectedly, in a wheelchair, where she sat for the remainder of the set. Those who were back in their seats before the set started up heard an announcer say that she would be seated, due to a dislocated elbow… setting aside fears that it might be due to a serious cancer recurrence or some other factor. (Speculation had arisen after videos of the tour’s first two shows in Las Vegas, where apparently it went uncommented upon on stage at all.) Now with a short silver bob in place of the long, dark hair she sported before the tour got halted last year, Wilson rested her left arm on a pillow through the night, but appeared in high spirits, and is said to be expected to be back on her feet a few more dates into the tour.
In any case, two things were immediately apparent, whatever mystery there might have been surrounding Ann’s rollout: (A) It would probably take a much more serious act of God than whatever Wilson was experiencing for Heart to postpone again, after they’d already been through so much to get here. And: (B) Yes, it is possible to belt from a seated position.
When the band’s 1976 breakthrough smash “Magic Man” took its natural, climactic, pre-encore place in the set, fans might have been thinking about how that was historically the hardest song for the singer to justify continuing to perform over the decades, since for her it’s such a determinedly adolescent song, with its reference to Mom objecting to a bad boy coming around to bespoil teen innocence. But, with all that has transpired, one line really rings true in a way it never quite did before:
Growin’ up in a hurry... Indeed, aren’t we all.
O.G. Heart fans might say: You can say that again. This tour could be dubbed the Starting to Feel the Years Tour, not just because of the setbacks Wilson has been dealing with, but because opening act Squeeze (which is on all the dates through March 14, after which Cheap Trick takes over the support slot) is currently down a man. Co-leader Chris Difford has apparently taken ill, although the less Squeeze-attentive parts of the audience may not have noticed, since primary lead singer Glenn Tilbrook is holding down the fort quite effectively.
But these little twinges the audience might feel about everyone being mortal only added, if anything, to the evening’s personal potency, and the vitality of a reconvening of the tribe that supported the Wilson sisters from the outset, along with strays picked up during the MTV years. The most obvious question those holding or thinking of picking up tickets for future shows might be asking is whether Ann could still deliver some of the most demanding wailing in the rock ‘n’ roll canon at age 74, with or without the recent issues. The answer is a happy yes, with an asterisk. Her lung power seems surprisingly undiminished, and the same goes for her sense of pitch. There is an unmistakable rasp when she goes into her very highest range, but once you make the necessary mental adjustment that you’re getting an exact duplication of how she sounded as a 25-year-old, it’s pretty smooth sailing for the “Dreamboat Annie”-and-beyond material. Which is to say, there likely wasn’t anyone in the Crypto crowd who wished they’d stayed home rather than letting her go crazy on them, again.
You’re not just paying your money for a victory lap, you’re getting a true performance of this feisty and gentle catalog. It doesn’t hurt that there are five young, or younger, bucks on stage putting their muscle into the vintage material; only one of the accompanying players was around even as recently as the 2019 tour, but fans take it for granted that this has been the Ann and Nancy Show for 40 years now. Which, with no disrespect to the original Hall of Fame members who were once near-equals, is more than enough to justify Heart as a going concern. Either one of these sisters would have been history-making, possibly, if she’d been an only child.
Nancy, who can always be counted on for a very signature kind of vigorous strumming, takes over the lead vocals as always on “These Dreams,” the plaintive 1985 smash that came to them from the hands of Bernie Taupin and Martin Page, in that period when then they were compelled to record covers to stay ahead. The only sign that they might have done anything regrettable is when Nancy (who does about three-quarters of the talking) is introducing that song and says, “Some of you guys were with us in the late ’70s, and then there was the early ’80s, and then there was the mid-’80s…” — and she allows herself to have an eesh look on her face before moving on to the more-rocking-again ’90s. “But we came out alive with a couple of nice songs…” Included in this time-tested category, presumably, is the (Ann-sung) medley of “Alone” and “What About Love,” killing two mid-period power ballads with one stone.
One of the best reasons to attend a Heart show now, though, is to hear some of the songs from their first, most classic period that might have seemed B-list at the time, but come off as nothing but A-grade now — starting at the top of the set with “Bebe Le Strange,” which sounds as good as about anything these days but doesn’t give away too much of the store too early. And, though it wasn’t their most massive song at the time, is there any Heart song that tops “Straight On” — which we can still disagree on, as to whether it has an Al Green or actual disco-rock beat? Nowadays in concert, Heart lets “Straight On” effortlessly flow into a cover of David Bowie’s five-years-later “Let’s Dance.”
Nancy acknowledged the group’s origins as a li’l Led Zeppelin wanna-be — echoes of which are still evident in some of the originals performed, like “Mistral Wind” — prior to the group taking on “Going to California,” which wound up being only the first Zep cover of the set, succeeded in the “encore” portion by “The Ocean.” That was it for covers, although Nancy paid tribute to Eddie Van Halen with her solo instrumental “4 Edward,” preceded by telling the story of giving Eddie an acoustic guitar after he admitted he didn’t even own one. The loss invoked in mentioning the late guitar hero came and went quickly, but lingered a bit more when the sisters dedicated the set’s one true outlier — “Sand,” a song they did as part of their “side hustle” project the Lovemongers — to the treasured gardener who was cut down by AIDS and inspired the track.
The back-to-back punch of “The Ocean” and “Barracuda” couldn’t have been a better way to end the night, and of course not many groups from this era could cover a Zeppelin classic and then imply that they’ve got something harder to follow it. What seems normal now is still insane when you think back to how it began, or imagine it if you can’t… the boldness and effortlessness of coming out of the gate in rock’s most patriarchal era, saying: She ain’t heavy, she’s my sister.
In the opening slot, Squeeze got an unusually generous set allotment, performing for just over an hour, with — as previously mentioned — Tilbrook holding it down for both himself and the absent Difford… and, like Heart, filling things out in the 2020s with a few more players on stage than would’ve been seen four decades ago. There was a new addition to the set, “Trixie’s Hell on Earth,” a chamber-pop piece that Difford and Tilbrook recently found left over from stuff they were writing in the pre-fame ’70s, from an album of unrecorded early compositions they plan to put out later this year. Otherwise, it was the fairly brilliant classics, faithfully performed — apart from a teasing, satisfyingly slow-burn rendition of “Tempted” that only went full-force at the end. What’s worth being reminded of, and what you might not remember without catching the band live, is what an underrated lead guitarist Tilbrook was and is; tossed off amid those super-short new-wave quickies were some Steely Dan-worthy leads.
Heart setlist at Crypto.com Arena, March 3, 2025:
Bebe Le Strange
Never
Love Alive
Little Queen
Straight On/Let’s Dance
These Dreams
Crazy on You
Dog and Butterfly
Dreamboat Annie
Going to California
4 Edward
Mistral Wind
Alone/What About Love
Magic Man
Sand
The Ocean
Barracuda
Squeeze setlist:
Black Coffee in Bed
Footprints
Is That ove
Up the Junction
In Quintessence
If I Didn’t Love You
Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)
Trixie’s Hell on Earth
Goodbye Girl
Slap and Tickle
Tempted
Hourglass
Take Me I’m Yours
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