Heart Have Never Been Asked to Play ‘SNL,’ Ann Wilson Reveals: “We’re the Last to Be Considered”
In 1975, Heart, the rock band led by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, released their first album, Dreamboat Annie. The band will celebrate their 50th anniversary milestone with a 2025 tour; but, as the Wilsons revealed in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, just because Heart have been around for decades, doesn’t mean they’ve gotten their due. In fact, the famous sisters — who have had nine top 10 hits, including two number ones — have never been asked to perform on Saturday Night Live.
When asked if the band thinks they have gotten their due, Ann responded, “I don’t. We’ve just always felt like we’re the last to be considered — never been asked to be on SNL, all that kind of stuff. There’s some ‘No, these guys aren’t hip enough’ role that’s in place, and we’ve never understood what that is.”
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Nancy added, “In the ’90s, we kind of started to say, ‘Are we legends yet?’ We’d been around for years, from the ’70s through the successful ’80s albums — the videos and the big hair and the kabuki of it all — into the ’90s when it was cool to be with the grunge players that we loved. Then we put out an album [Desire Walks On] that kind of stiffed. We were like, ‘S—, we’re not legends yet.'”
Heart previously reunited in 2023 to play concerts again after the pandemic, but sadly had to take a break after Ann was diagnosed with cancer. Luckily, the 74-year-old has fully recovered and admitted in the interview that she is feeling like herself again. However, after taking a break for several years, Nancy shared that they need “plenty of rehearsing” to prepare for their upcoming tour.
She continued, “Unlike a lot of entertainment, we do a 100% skin-in-the-game live rock show. That requires a lot of warmup and a lot of physical training to have flexibility and strength underneath you.”
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Beyond celebrating such a momentous anniversary and Ann’s cancer recovery, the tour is also about finding a common ground as sisters again. Over the years, they have had their ups and downs, and Ann shared that playing together on stage is immensely healing for them and their relationship.
She shared, “When you get a cut or a scrape, it doesn’t just heal overnight. It takes maybe a couple of weeks to come back to its new form. I think every time we go onstage together, we get a little bit farther back to the inside jokes and the language we developed through our childhoods. We came up together side by side — learned how to play guitar together and how to sing by sharing a bedroom in our parents’ house and just doing nothing but that all day long. It’s a lot to come back to.”
Tickets for Heart’s Royal Flush tour, which includes Cheap Trick, Squeeze, and Lucinda Williams as opening acts on select dates, are on sale on their website. Tell us in the comments: what’s your favorite Heart song?
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