Stevie Witch-hat photo

[cindyshealed]

Do any of you have the rather well known B & W photo of Stevie in the Witch hat? It's very casual, possibly backstage circa Rumours or Tusk. Just a cheap, Halloweenish black witch hat. It's in Mick's 25 Year retrospective book, but I've loaned it to somebody over a year ago.

Thanks!

Cindy
ckellyhouc@aol.com

[michelle2677]

here you go


http://buckinghamnicks.net/sn/images/SNicksWitchyWoman.jpg

[kathy1]

i like that photo.

[belladonnadream]

I've always loved this pic~ I had 2 books once and totally chopped up one cutting out all the good Stevie pics and this is one I liked best!

[michelej1]

[Heart thinks they might have been branded witches because of Stevie's personna]

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/entertainment/story.html?id=62a27219-e02b-4160-885d-342aa398075b

Telling tales from the Heart
Wilson sisters took long, hard road to respect

Heath McCoy
Calgary Herald


Saturday, October 27, 2007


spotlight

Heart performs Sunday at the Jubilee Auditorium. Tickets at Ticketmaster and Unionevents.com

- - -

Nobody who thinks about the group Heart actually pictures a band. Instead, we immediately think of the two sisters ever at the forefront, Ann and Nancy Wilson.

Serious rock babes in the '70s, they brought us such imminently memorable FM staples as Barracuda, Crazy On You and Magic Man. Tarted up and teased in the '80s, they became a power ballad hit machine with the slick, MTV pop of What About Love?, These Dreams and Never. And, in a turn that was a lot less successful commercially, they stripped away those frills in the '90s, performing for a time as a folk-rock group, The Lovemongers.

When we imagine the Wilson sisters, any of these incarnations may apply. What doesn't apply is a whole lot of controversy. But that was not always the case. When Heart's first album Dreamboat Annie was released back in 1976, rumours spread across the rock world that the Wilsons were witches.

"Yeah, there was some really strange stories swirling around us then," remembers singer Ann Wilson, 57, in an interview to advance Heart's Oct. 28 show at Jubilee Auditorium. "Of course, it was all totally bogus. There was another rumour that the Magic Man (as in the song) was really Charles Manson and that we gave all the money we earned from playing to try and free Charlie."

Where did such a bizarre tale originate? "I think it's because back then Fleetwood Mac was really happening and there was Stevie Nicks with her (White Witch) image. I don't have any disregard for people that are witches, but that was never us."

But Ann is quick to add: "I think any woman who was kind of uppity back then might get called a witch."

By uppity Ann seems to be referring to that strong feminist archetype, which is not something that immediately comes to mind when we think about Heart, though perhaps it should. After all, the very idea of two women fronting a band in the macho hard rock arena was rare indeed in the '70s. The sisters faced plenty of disrespect in their early days, even from their own record label.

When the Seattle rockers got their first big break in 1976, signing on with the Vancouver-based Mushroom Records, one incident in particular soured Heart on the company. Mushroom released a full page ad featuring the Wilson sisters posing together, bare shouldered, with the suggestive caption: "It was only our first time." The implication was that they were lesbian lovers. "It pissed us off," Ann says. "It was sleazy and unnecessary. We were just young girls who were in relationships with guys in the band. We were sisters and we loved each other, but this made it into some old perv's male vision.

"There was all kinds of disrespect for us then. A lot of not being taken seriously. Guys would say to Nancy: 'You're a good lookin' chick. Is that guitar really plugged in?' And she's up there with her fingers bleeding. It was really insulting."

Some might say Heart lost any feminist cred they had though, in the '80s. Their many hit videos from that decade present the Wilson sisters as the sort of glammy, leather and lace wearing sexpots that you were just as likely to find in a typically sexist Kiss video. Looking back, are the sisters comfortable with the image they cultivated in that era? Not entirely.

"At first it was a lot of fun," says Ann. "It was like playing dress-up. It was all very theatrical. But then, as things rolled along we felt like changing and everybody was going 'Oh no! That's not what you do in the '80s!' "

Eventually the sisters did rebel against their '80's image with their folky side project, The Lovemongers. "It was time for us," Ann says. "We wanted to . . . blow the water out of the pipes."

Notably, she says, on Heart's current tour, while the band covers material from their entire career, the '80s is only touched on briefly, despite all the hits the band racked up in that decade. "There's a couple of songs from that era that have stood the test of time and those are the ones we do," she says. "But we don't hit the '80s too hard."

As well as playing a handful of newer songs on the tour -- including some from 2004's Jupiter's Darling, which saw Heart return to its hard rock roots -- Ann is looking forward to tackling songs from her new solo album. Hope & Glory finds the singer applying her still powerful pipes to songs written by such artists as Pink Floyd (Goodbye Blue Sky), Led Zeppelin (The Immigrant Song), Lucinda Williams (Jackson) and Bob Dylan (A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall). While much of the album consists of duets with the high-profile likes of Elton John, Rufus Wainwright and Gretchen Wilson, there are a number of tunes where Ann is backed by her sister -- which translates perfectly at a Heart show. The songs on Hope & Glory were chosen because together, Ann says, they form a powerful anti-war message. "These are songs that have been meaningful to me my whole life. I consider them to be milestone songs and I wanted to put them together in a way that formed a message and a theme. You could stand them all up in a room and they could have a conversation."