Nancy Wilson has revealed the surprising reason she and her sister Ann walked out during a Led Zeppelin concert.
The incident took place in 1969, when Nancy and Ann were just aspiring musicians. They attended the Seattle concert to see headlining act the Fifth Dimension, but Led Zeppelin just happened to be opening. During a conversation on the 100 Guitarists podcast, Nancy recalled the eye-opening experience.
“Jimmy [Page] had his violin bow going, and he was doing his Echoplex magic – you know, pretending that he’s summoning the music out of the air with his Echoplex repeat,” the Heart guitarist recalled. Meanwhile, Led Zep frontman Robert Plant had the young women blushing. “We were like, ‘Oh my God, the singer. He’s so suggestive.’ He’s got his shirt wide open, he’s got his bare chest, and his jeans were really low riders. He was moving in this way that was so super suggestive, and we were kind of shocked.”
READ MORE: All 92 Led Zeppelin Songs Ranked Worst to Best
As Nancy explained, the Wilson sisters were just doe-eyed teenagers at the time. They’d never seen something as sexually-charged as Plant’s golden god embodiment.
“We were in a little folk band at the time,” Nancy noted. “We were from the suburbs, right? So, we were kind of square little hippie chicks. [Led Zeppelin were] just being so suggestive and lewd, and then, he sang about ‘squeeze my lemon,’ and we’re like, ‘Oh! We must leave the premises!’ We were just shocked [and] actually walked on Led Zeppelin at the Green Lake Aqua Theatre.”
Heart’s History With Led Zeppelin
While the Wilson sisters’ first exposure to Led Zeppelin may have been shocking, they soon became passionate fans of the English band.
Nancy was especially taken by Page’s distinctive guitar sound. “His acoustic playing just really caught my ear,” she admitted elsewhere in the 100 Guitarists interview. “This was very English folk, like Celtic, Irish…earlier than American folk. Really draws from the old country sounds and stuff like hurdy-gurdies and all kinds of crazy modalities and all these really tasty things.”
READ MORE: Led Zeppelin Albums Ranked Worst to Best
In recent years, Heart have regularly mixed Led Zeppelin covers into their set lists. The Wilson sisters also famously performed a powerful rendition of “Stairway to Heaven” at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors, with the surviving members of Led Zeppelin in the audience.
Heart Albums Ranked
This list of Heart Albums, Ranked Worst To Best, wasn’t an easy one to compile, because unlike many long-running groups, the band has never made a bad record.
Gallery Credit: Annie Zaleski
