FEATURE:
Second Spin
Heart - Dreamboat Annie
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THEIR sixteenth studio album…
IN THIS PHOTO: Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Marks/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
Beautiful Broken was released in 2016 but, today, I am charged with shining a light on Heart’s incredible debut of 1975, Dreamboat Annie. Heart were formed by Steve Fossen (bass guitar), Roger Fisher (guitar), David Belzer (keyboards), and Jeff Johnson (drums). They evolved from an existing band, White Heart. Since 1973 the vocalists for Heart have been the sisters Ann Wilson (lead vocals, flute, guitar) and Nancy Wilson (vocals, guitar, mandolin). To me, they are the heart of heart, as there has been three different line-ups through the years. It is the core of the Wilson sisters that, to me, defines the band’s sound. Heart have released some fantastic albums through their career, but I think their strongest album is their first. Dreamboat Annie was first released in Canada in 1975. Heart were based in Vancouver at the time, and the album was recorded there. It wasn’t until 1976 when Dreamboat Annie was released in the U.S. I really love the cover design of the album, and the Wilson sisters look incredible! It is a great photo, and I really love the tracks throughout. There was a smattering of praise when Dreamboat Annie was released, and it is one of these albums that I feel warrants more acclaim. Mike Flicker’s production is wonderful, and the entire album is really enjoyable and memorable. Magic Man, and Crazy on You are, perhaps, the best-known tracks from Dreamboat Annie, and they are songs that still sound great today.
The album reached the top-ten in the album charts in America, and it sold an impressive 30,000 copies across Canada in its first few months. Heart’s future looked uncertain as early as that debut. The popularity and success of Dreamboat Anne indirectly led to a break between the band and label. The group tried to renegotiate their royalty rate to be more in keeping with what they thought a platinum band should be earning. Mushroom's (a Canadian label) unreasonable stance in negotiations, and their opinion that perhaps the band was a one-hit wonder, led to Mike Flicker leaving the label. The relationship broke down completely when the label bought a full-page ad in Rolling Stone mocked up like a National Enquirer front page. The ad used a photo similar to the one on the Dreamboat Annie album cover, showing Ann and Nancy back to back with bare shoulders. The band moved to another label and signed with Portrait Records. Mushroom insisted that the band was still bound to the contract which called for two albums. So, Mushroom released the album, Magazine, with incomplete tracks, studio outtakes and live material and a disclaimer on the cover. One has to feel sympathy to the way Heart were treated at the beginning, and I guess that sort of marred Dreamboat Annie to an extent. The fact they managed to keep releasing albums and are recording today is testament to their determination and resilience.
Although grittier, Rock-driven women in music was fairly common by the 1980s, when Dreamboat Annie arrived in 1975, there were very few artists like Heart. In this article from UDiscoverMusic, we learn more about Heart’s start and the rise to Dreamboat Annie:
“By the mid-80s, the idea of female-fronted bands taking ballsy hard rock to the top of the charts had ceased to surprise. Credible all-girl metal outfits including Girlschool and Vixen could command big sales and critical acclaim, while arena-sized anthems such as ‘I Love Rock’n’Roll’ and ‘Love Is A Battlefield’ had, respectively, turned Joan Jett and Pat Benatar into bona fide international stars. Any female singers that record companies took a punt on in the pre-punk 70s, however, were still liable to be marketed as the next Carly Simon or Joni Mitchell. So in 1976, when Heart, a Seattle-birthed but Vancouver-based outfit fronted by sisters Nancy and Ann Wilson, notched up consecutive Billboard Hot 100 hits with tough, Led Zeppelin-esque rockers ‘Crazy On You’ and ‘Magic Man’, the industry quickly sat up and took notice, waiting to see what the band’s debut album, Dreamboat Annie, would have in store.
This suggests that the band were an overnight success but, in reality, Heart had waited a long time for commercial vindication. Starting out as Hocus Pocus, they’d paid their dues during the early 70s, slogging through soul-destroying club gigs in and around the Pacific Northwest, before circumstances and personnel reshuffles inspired a move north of the border. They officially became Heart after lead vocalist Ann Wilson’s guitar-wielding sister Nancy joined in 1974; when the band nailed their debut album, Dreamboat Annie, for small Vancouver imprint Mushroom, their Fleetwood Mac-esque line-up included two romantically involved couples: Ann and guitarist/manager Mike Fisher, and Nancy Wilson and Mike’s lead guitarist brother Roger.
Recorded with help from local sessioneers and producer Mike Flicker (Poco, Al Stewart), Dreamboat Annie was heavy on aggressive, yet inherently melodic radio-friendly rock. Showcasing Ann Wilson’s tough-but-tender Robert Plant-inflected vocal capabilities and the band’s knack for dirty, hooky riffs, ‘Sing Child’ and the strutting ‘White Lightning & Wine’ demonstrated that there was plenty more where the breakthrough hits came from, though the intricate mini-suite ‘Soul Of The Sea’ and elegant, folk-flecked title track confirmed that Heart also harboured additional reserves of ambition.
Dreamboat Annie was initially released with little fanfare in Canada in the summer of 1975, and its first single, the stately, semi-acoustic ballad ‘How Deep It Goes’, flew under the radar. However, interest snowballed after Heart scooped the choice opening slot for Rod Stewart’s highly publicised Montreal concert in October ’75; when Mushroom’s LA-based US division granted the album a full US release on 14 February 1976, it eventually peaked at No.7 on the Billboard 200 chart and shifted over a million copies”.
When we talk about the great introduction of the 1970s, Heart’s Dreamboat Annie is not brought up as often as it should be. The sheer variety and emotional blends through the album is amazing, and I don’t think the songs sound at all dated. Nancy and Ann Wilson paved the way for many other women in music, and I think Dreamboat Annie is a hugely significant release.
I will end by bringing in a positive review for Dreamboat Annie – as I have seen a few that are mixed and do not have many positive aspects -, but Ultimate Classic Rock wrote about Dreamboat Annie in 2016 and talked about its legacy:
“The way Dreamboat Annie mixes these loud, aggressive moments with more nuanced, stripped-back songs — notably the string-kissed "How Deep It Goes" — is perhaps more impressive, though. (In fact, the title track appears in three separate guises: dreamy '70s soft rock, fantastical folk and easygoing, banjo-tinged rock.) It's a template and approach Heart would employ on all of their future albums, and signaled the band as a unique, thoughtful entity.
"It was a real first to see two women who were not just the ornaments, but the writers and the singers and the players too," Nancy Wilson told In the Studio With Redbeard. "I think if anything that it did for other women in the biz, it gave them a lot of encouragement and a lot of hope."
Perhaps even better, the musicians and players in Heart's orbit had enormous respect for the Wilson sisters' talents, especially Ann's powerful voice. That dynamic studio chemistry helped Dreamboat Annie's songs — and Heart themselves — evolve. "As a band we really solidified our own character by the end of the Dreamboat Annie sessions," Nancy Wilson said in Heart: In the Studio. "A lot of styles and poses that we offered up in clubs were stripped off for the all-original new Heart that felt most like us to us".
I think Dreamboat Annie is a classic debut, and one that is not talked about nearly enough. Maybe there were more mixed reviews in 1975 and 1976 than now, but I still feel Dreamboat Annie is underrated and undervalued. In their review of 2014, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“In the 1980s and '90s, numerous women recorded blistering rock, but things were quite different in 1976 -- when female singers tended to be pigeonholed as soft rockers and singer/songwriters and were encouraged to take after Carly Simon, Melissa Manchester, or Joni Mitchell rather than Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. Greatly influenced by Zep, Heart did its part to help open doors for ladies of loudness with the excellent Dreamboat Annie. Aggressive yet melodic rockers like "Sing Child," "White Lightning & Wine," and the rock radio staples "Magic Man" and "Crazy on You" led to the tag "the female Led Zeppelin." And in fact, Robert Plant did have a strong influence on Ann Wilson. But those numbers and caressing, folk-ish ballads like "How Deep It Goes" and the title song also make it clear that the Nancy and Ann Wilson had their own identity and vision early on”.
There is so much to enjoy through Heart’s debut album. The fact that they defied the impression of what a woman in music should be in the 1970s is incredible. The band – and the Wilson sisters – were performing a style of music popularised and dominated by men, and they were doing it as well (if not better) and with their own style and direction. A phenomenal album that stands the test of time, I think Heart’s Dreamboat Annie is deserving of…
ANOTHER listen.