Crate Digging is a feature series from Consequence that takes a deep dive into music history to turn up several albums all music fans should know. In this edition, rock icons Heart chart out 10 (errrr… call it 9.5) essential ’70s rock albums everyone should hear.
You simply cannot recount the history of rock music without touching on a humble little band from British Columbia fronted by two talented sisters — Heart . (Just listen to their Story Behind the Song episode for proof.) Their mix of folk, hard rock, and pop hooks couldn’t have been more emblematic of popular guitar music in the 1970s, and it just so happened they could shred some axe to boot.
Of course, their style was informed by the incredible art that surrounded them. Nancy and Ann Wilson might have been extremely talented musicians and writers, but they were also dedicated fans. They spent their time in the midst of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young singalongs, trying to learn Led Zeppelin songs, or fawning over Rod Stewart’s stage presence.
“It’s the reason Heart is on the planet, you know? Albums like this,” Nancy explains. “All of our DNA imprints came from all of these types of records.”
So, we connected with Nancy and Ann to compile Heart’s list of 10 essential ’70s rock albums they think belongs in everyone’s collection. The sisters take turns gushing over albums from some of the most foundational artists of the decade — even finding common ground for one particular record (no spoilers!).
Read on to see which rock albums form the 1970s Nancy and Ann Wilson think everyone should own.
Editor’s Note: These interviews were conducted prior to Heart postponing their tour due to Ann Wilson’s cancer treatment.
Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin IV
Ann Wilson: To me, that has got to be the perfect Zeppelin album, not just because “Stairway to Heaven” is on it, but because of every single track on there. I mean, there’s not a clunker in the bunch, you know? Not that Led Zeppelin ever did any clunkers. Every single song is so perfect, in my way of thinking.
It’s just, “Stairway to Heaven” is the icing on the cake — the big epic number. But then you have “Going to California” and “Black Dog” showing the band in all its power.
Nancy Wilson: After the Gold Rush was kind of like a blueprint for all of us in the late ’60s. Well, actually, I think came out in the early ’70s, but it’s informed by the late ’60s human-potential movement. Me and all of my school friends (who all played guitars) and our parents (who were youth counselors in the church youth group) would go on field trips over the weekend and talk theology and talk spirituality and talk relationships and learn how to do exercises. Really cool human relationship studies stuff, essentially about really being there for each other.
That album came along right at that moment. There were groups of us all the time in rooms with wine and fireplaces and a lot of acoustic guitars and people learning all of those Neil Young songs… We could sit down and play the entire Harvest album top to bottom; all the way through, just all of us singing in a room together.
We were creating our own identity through the music. That was a really good time to be had by all.
Ann Wilson: Now, lots of people, my own husband in particular, think that Tommy is the ultimate The Who album, but I happen to think that Quadrophenia is. It’s just one beat further and so much more pulled together to me. There’s a lot of great things in Tommy , but, boy, you look at “Love, Reign o’er Me” and “Bell Boy,” and just all of those cool songs. Amazing stuff. The band is just, again, at the top of their game — at the very, very top, the apex of their power.
[And] the movie — Ugh! It may as well have been made yesterday. It’s like an art film by today’s standards, I guess, but I think it’s right up there with cult classics, you know? It’s really great.
Nancy Wilson: It’s the reason Heart is on the planet, you know? Albums like this… All of our DNA imprints came from all of these types of records, like Wish You Were Here .
After Dark Side of the Moon , it was a big lunar landing, sort of. ‘The next album after Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. It’s coming! It’s coming!’ It’s an event. You must tune into your terrestrial radio station. I remember the first time I heard the beginning of it, on a hotel radio that was part of the TV set in the hotel room, which they used to always have so you could tune into your favorite radio station. We were in Montreal, and the first airing of Wish You Were Here was going to be at a specific time on this specific station, on rock radio stations all around the world, and we tuned in. We set aside the hour to listen to it.
We sat there and tuned in, and probably smoked some pot, waiting for the moment to hear it for the first time. Event listening, you know? You had the sense, like when you go to a live rock concert, where you’re all experiencing something together at the same time, and there’s a unification about it that’s really inspiring. So, when we heard the beginning of Wish You Were Here , it comes out of nothing, and it grows out of a single cell and it looks like the cells of the music multiply and it grows and it grows and it grows into the first iconic four notes that David Gilmour plays at the beginning of the album. Goosebumps!
And you’re like, “Oh man, I’m seeing God already!” The first four notes and the big, swelling D-minor chord, like on a big pipe organ sort of sound, brings you into the church of Pink Floyd. It was really an unforgettable moment. And to this day, I tell you, it’s my favorite Pink Floyd album.
Ann Wilson: What can I say about Wish You Were Here? There’s a million things. You can get lost in that record. It’s so opinionated in that Roger Waters way, and then it’ll turn around and do the David Gilmour beauty thing. It’s just so fantastic. It never lets up for a minute.
I once was sitting around jamming with some people and we were playing “Welcome to the Machine,” and my daughter was there. She was a little kid at the time. She was listening, and we were playing “Welcome to the Machine” ourselves and doing the voice that it’s sung in. It scared her so bad. She had to run out of the room. She thought it was a ghost, you know? I thought that was such a truism. When you hear that voice, it is the voice of a machine, of a really scary, hollow machine. That was the irony about that record, too. At the moment that it came out, they were being signed by CBS Records and being heralded as the ultimate cool band of the moment by the industry. And then, here they come with this record that’s so anti-industry. It’s a screed against the terrible music business.
I thought that Wish You Were Here was a huge success as an art project, and also as a commercial success. When does that ever happen?
Nancy Wilson: Blue was one of the most incredible shows I ever saw. I went with this girlfriend, and ’cause Blue had come out, Joni Mitchell was on the road. She came through Seattle at the Paramount Theater. We smoked a joint and then we went to see Joni Mitchell because we loved the album so much. It is still one of her finest works, among many fine works.
So, we smoked a joint we went to see Joni at the Paramount, and the opener was Jackson Browne. I’d never heard of him. He came out just himself with a guitar and a piano, like she did. It was just one man, a couple instruments, and he did his first album pretty much in its entirety, which I just fell in love with. It was kind of life altering. What a perfect match up! Jackson Browne opening for Joni Mitchell on her Blue tour.
When she came out, it changed my life forever, because I was an aspiring solo artist and acoustic player myself. Ann being four years older, she was already kind of off and doing rock bands with bass, drums, and amplifiers and stuff. But I was still kind of stuck at home because I was underage. So, my aspiration was to be like Joni, to have, even if it was a small, an appreciative audience, just to build up my repertoire of original material and go out to be a poet, sort of a laureate, acoustic performer.
She played “Carry.” She played “A Case of You,” which is one of the all time best songs ever written. It’s just a perfect song. She was self-effacing and charming and funny and wonderful, and it’s just everything you wanted to be. Everything I wanted to be is what she was. And so, you know, my mind, it actually could have exploded. It was so important. It was an indelible imprint on my soul that I’ve always taken that with me. That album, Blue , was a beginning of something that I still carry with me my whole life long.
Ann Wilson: That is by far, to me, The Stones’ finest hour. They just sounded like The Stones , you know? Like nobody else. They had that little wobble in their sound, and a greasy sound — like on “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” No other Stones record has that.
When I first got it, when I was a teenager, it still had the actual working zipper . You could zip the pants down — and there was nothing in there, of course. It was just a record cover. But you still could. It was interactive, you know? In a Stones kind of a way.
Nancy Wilson: Paul Simon is definitely one of the best songwriters who ever lived, and that album — in particular, the title song “Bridge Over Troubled Water” — is perfect. You can sort of name them on one hand or two, the all-time-best-ever songs that probably actually helped people on the planet. Like, helpful to humanity, like a moment in church where the spirit is revived, you know? The hope is restored in humankind for songs like “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” There were other living rooms with guitars and martinis being poured and tears being cried and everyone singing along to that song.
One of the things about great albums and great songs is that they’re telling your own life story back to you. They’re mirroring us to ourselves, and that song in particular is a pure gospel song in the best way possible. It will never be dated.
Ann Wilson: [ Every Picture Tells a Story is] Rod Stewart when Rod Stewart was the coolest of the cool. And just the players he had on that album with him, Ronnie Wood and all those guys, they put together a record that was unforgettable. Classic, beautiful stuff.
I saw him live back then too, one time, and he was rolling around on stage like he was playing football. He’s a singer throwing his mic around and everything, but he was really throwing his body around, doing somersaults on stage and everything. It was pretty amazing for Rod Stewart.
Nancy Wilson: That album could be — well, it’s hard to pick one favorite Zeppelin album, but that could be top three anyway. That album is so funky, and just the production of it alone, you feel like you can hear the walls and the room where they recorded… you feel like you’re in it with them. It’s a granular sounding album, where you really get the textures and you really get all the promiscuity and the sexuality and the wild flowers growing outside the studio window. You could smell it and feel it and taste it and live it with them.
Zeppelin was always so very clever with their dissonance and their unlikely little guitar turnarounds and changes. How did they do that? My curiosity was always piqued with the ‘crunch,’ because it sounded like they’d made an error because they were trying to do a complicated rhythm… it could have been, or it could have been a mistake that they repeated on purpose just to throw everybody off. They just had so much mysticism and mystery in their stuff. It’s like, what did they do? How did they do it? How do you play that? Like, trying to learn the crunch. Heart tried to learn the crunch many different times and we gave up.
It’s kind of like following a musical treasure hunt to try to find some prize. But that’s Led Zeppelin, you know, they’re just undefinable.
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