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Mon 30 March 2026 18:00, UK
Like many legendary female rock stars, Heart’s Ann Wilson grew up idolising male musicians.
This wasn’t typically a conscious choice – nor was it something that she thought about until she became a name in her own right. Like many of her peers, Wilson’s main exposure to the kind of rock ‘n’ roll energy she’d go on to replicate in her own stage presence was from rock’s most defining male faces, many of whom provided the framework for what a true rock star looked and sounded like.
Wilson also joins a long list of admirers whose first lightbulb moment was watching The Ed Sullivan Show, with performances that felt so electric it’s like they were bursting out from the television screen – for Joan Jett, it was Elvis Presley. And for Wilson, it was none other than the iconic Liverpudliat quartet itself.
The Beatles were Heart’s bread and butter, and once Ann had seen them perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, cross-legged on the floor with her sister, Nancy, it was (ironically) like seeing the world technicolour for the first time. “There was something about it that really messed with our minds,” she later said. “And we were never the same after that.”
After this, they “pressured” their parents and grandparents to support their musical hobby by buying them guitars, realising early on that they weren’t into the band in the typical, lovestruck Beatlemania way – they wanted to be them, so they made it their mission to one day step on stage and play to a sea of adoring faces in the same way.
However, in time, Wilson discovered a better, deeper love that surpassed any excitement she ever felt towards the Fab Four. Once, while stuck with all her favourites on heavy rotation – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elton John – she discovered the one record that became her North Star, leaving the kind of impact that The Beatles didn’t manage to come close to achieving.
And the record that truly changed it all was Led Zeppelin IV. When she first heard it, she instantly knew she had to try to recreate it, and that, while she was listening to all other material that shaped her artistic expression, none of it “hit me where I lived”.
She told Classic Rock, “It had a lot to do with Robert Plant’s lyrics. That’s the album when he really started to write in a more masterly way.”
Elsewhere, Wilson credited Plant with showing her the way, not just sonically, but in exploring her own potential, especially in an industry that can often be obsessed with what’s “normal” for male and female singers to do. In Wilson’s mind, Plant was always the blueprint, existing somewhere outside of those expectations, which made her care less about it all, too.
Suppose it’s no surprise, therefore, that she also once mused to Classic Rock Revisited about replacing Plant as the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, should they ever reform, and live her fantasy of officially stepping into his shoes. She said, “Hypothetically, if they ever needed a lead singer and Heart was not active at the moment, then, sure, I would.”
Concluding, “I would go and play with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones any day of the week.”
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