Heart's Nancy Wilson explains why supporting Queen was 'life-altering'
They opened for the band at Elland Road in Leeds
Last updated 28th Mar 2025
Heart's Nancy Wilson joined Jackie Brambles on Greatest Hits Radio for a Great Conversation. The pair chatted about the band's beginnings, getting their breakthrough and what it was like for them supporting Queen in Leeds.
Heart are known for their huge hits 'All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You', 'Alone' and 'These Dreams', and Nancy also opened up about the role models who inspired her and the band.
Back in 1975, the band were given their breakthrough when Rod Stewart asked them to open for him, after the original band fell ill last minute. Then, just a few years later, the band were asked to open for Queen at Elland Road, in Leeds.
Nancy revealed what it was like supporting the iconic band, and what they got up to backstage, she said: "We did a series of shows opening for Queen, along with Nazareth at the time, and so we got to watch Queen many times from the side of the stage after we finished our set, and watched Queen perform up close, it was life-altering."
She continued: "It was so great. They were so insanely great, like they were so musical, they borrowed from classical and they reinvented something that was completely, they're all stylistically in the rock language you know, so they made a new language of their own.
"And Brian May became friends, we're still buddies, I still follow him on Instagram. We go 'Hey!. Freddie (Mercury) was just enamoured with Ann (Wilson), of course. The diva, you know that she is, and the diva that he was, so he would be backstage going ‘Oh oh, oh Ann!’.
"You know, and she'd be like, ‘Yes, yes’. You know, and they would get together like a couple of chickens and they would fuss about eye liner or something, and he would borrow her black eyeliner, you know to wear."
Nancy went on to explain that all of the role models she had were male. "We had Led Zeppelin, you know we had Deep Purple, we had Elton John," she explained. "You know we had Yes, we had Cream, we had (Jimi) Hendrix, but you know when you think of Grace Slick that was more like a psychedelic San Francisco sound, it wasn't a hard rock sound like Zeppelin.
"We had Led Zeppelin, you know, so our role models were guys in rock and since... you know, Fleetwood Mac and Heart happened in the real rock space. Like Janis Joplin was R&B..."
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