Heart was started in 1963 in Canada by guitarist Roger Fisher and Steve Fossen, but at this point it was called The Army. In 1969, Ann Wilson auditioned for the group but was originally a back-up vocalist who sang ballads. When the band wanted to cover Led Zeppelin, they asked Ann to sing lead because none of their voices were high enough. Also in the band where Mike Fisher on Guitar (Roger's brother), Brian Johnstone on Drums, and John Hanna on keyboards. Ann Wilson wanted to rename the band to Hocus Pocus to sound more psycodelic. Later they would name the band White Heart. Ann kept influencing her younger sister, Nancy, to join the band but she declined. Finally, when Mike Fisher left to become the band's sound manager, Nancy decided to come into the band as an acoustic player and would fill in on electrics, after that they shortened the name to Heart. Before Nancy was in the band, they were searching for record labels to sign them, but every major record label declined. They went to Mushroom Records-a small indie label who agreed to help them make a demo. Mushroom agreed to sign Ann but Ann wanted the whole band to be signed. In 1975, Heart began to record their debut album, "Dreamboat Annie" and Brian Johnstone and John Hanna left and were replaced by Mike Derosier and Howard Leese who both both workded for Mushroom. In 1976, "Dreamboat Annie" was released and singles "Magic Man", "Crazy On You", and "Dreamboat Annie (Reprise)" all became hits in Canada selling around a million records, so they released the album in the US where it easily sold another million. The cover of "Dreamboat Annie" showed Ann & Nancy back to back-appearing to be topless so a few reporters decided to start rumours that they were lesbians. They were not however, because when Nancy joined the band she began to date Roger, and Ann was dating Mike Fisher. Musroom records kept portraying the Wilson Sisters too sexy, and Ann and Nancy felt offended and the other band members felt they were not getting enough attention so the band switched to Portrait/ CBS Records and began to record "Little Queen". This album had hits like "Barracuda" which got back at the reporters who accused them of being lesbians, and also "Love Alive", "Little Queen", and "Kick It Out". Mushroom records came back and said that Heart had signed a two album contract with them and they wanted to release "Magazine" and album Heart had started, against the band's wishes. The matter went to court and Musroom was allowed to release "Magazine" but Heart was allowed to finish up the album. "Heartless was the hit from "Magazine". Also in 1978, Heart released "Dog and Butterfly" which had hard rockers on one side of the record-side A "Dog" and softer ballads on Side B "Butterfly". This album had songs like the title track and "Straight On". By the time of 1980, both the Wilson/ Fisher relationship ended and Roger was kicked out of the group. Howard Leese, who was the keyboardist and other lead guitarist in the group took over Roger's position. The band released "Bebe Le Strange" with songs like the title track which Roger co-wrote, "Even It Up", "Break", and "Sweet Darlin'" and "Silver Wheels" which is an instrumental played by Nancy on "The Lady", one of her acoustic guitars. On "Sweet Darlin", Ann wrote this song and played all the instruments and co-produced it. The next year they released "Greatest Hits/ Live". This album featured a cover of Aaron Neville's "Tell It Like It Is", and The Righteous Brothers "Unchained Melody". When this album was converted to CD form, "Unchanied Melody", and "Strange Euphoria" and "Hit Single" which were musical combinations and fun songs of the band were taken off. The cover of this album featured each of the bandmembers representing a previous album: Steve Fossen-"Dreamboat Annie", Howard Leese-"Little Queen", Mike Derosier-"Magazine", Nancy Wilson-"Dog and Butterfly" and Ann Wilson-"Bebe Le Strange". In 1982, they released "Private Audition" which featured "This Man Is Mine", "City's Burning", and "Situation". This album, unfortunatly, didnt sell well and is no longer made. After this album, Steve Fossen and Mike Derosier lect and were replaced by Spirit, Jojo Gunne, and Firefall bassist Mark Andes and drummer Denny Carmassi. In 1984, Ann and Mike Reno of Loverboy made a duet of "Almost Paradise" for the "Footloose" soundtrack. The same year, "Passionworks" was released and had songs such as "How Can I Refuse" and "Allies"-which was written by Jonathon Cain of Journey. This album didnt sell well, but did sell more than "Private Audition". In 1985, Heart signed with Capitol Records and would come back larger than ever with their self-titled album. This album featured "What About Love", "Never", "Nothin' At All", and "If Looks Could Kill". It also had "These Dreams" which was offered to Stevie Nicks but Heart took it Nancy sang it and it became Heart's first number one hit. None of these tracks were written by the band, because it was standard to have songs written for them or their record label would not promote the album. On July 27, 1986, Nancy married Rolling Stone Magazine writer Cameron Crowe (He would later become a director). In 1987, Heart released "Bad Animals" and had "Alone"-Ann's first number one hit, "Who Will You Run To", "I want You So Bad" and "There's The Girl" which Nancy co-wrote. "Brigade" was released in 1990. "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You" was on this album and was written by Robert John "Mutt" Lange for a man, but Heart liked the song so they switched the gender around and the song became controvercial and even banned in Ireland. This album also had "Wild Child", "I Didnt Want To Need You", "Stranded" which Nancy sang and "Secret". Heart released "Rock The House Live" in 1991 and had hits like "You're The Voice" which was considered to political by MTV and they would not air this video. After that album, Mark Andes and Denny Carmassi left and were relaced by Fernando Saunders, and Denny Fongheiser. Also in 1991, Ann adopted her first child, Marie. "Desire Walks On" was released in 1993 which featured "Will You Be There (In The Morning)" sung by Nancy, "Black On Black II"-which they wrote, and a cover of Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells" with both Ann and Nancy on vocals along with Alice in Chain's Layne Staley. This album was certified gold but is no longer made. Ann and Nancy along with their friend and songwriter Sue Ennis, Frank Cox, and Ben Smith started The Lovemongers. They released an LP of "Battle of Evermore" (Another Led Zeppelin song) and "Here Is Christmas" which would be re-released into "Heart Presents a Lovemonger's Christmas" which was remastered again in 2004, and also "Whirlygig". In 1995, Heart did a live acoustic show called "The Road Home" which featured that song, and acoustic versions of some of their hits. Led Zeppelin Bassist/ Keyboardist John Paul Jones produced this album and played mandolin. This was Howard Leese's last album for Heart. In 1997, "These Dreams: Heart Greatest Hits" was released which featured hits from their whole carreer but was unofficial and no longer made. There were other greatest hits collections made before this. In 1998, Heart released "Greatest Hits [1998]" which had songs from them from 1976-1984 and a cover of Air Supply's "Strong, Strong Wind". Also that year, Ann adopted her second child-Dustin. In 1999, Nancy scored for Cameron Crowe's movie "Jerry Maguire" and did a song called "Sandy". Before that, Nancy did a song called "All For Love" on Cameron's "Say Anything" movie. In 2000, Heart released "Greatest Hits 1985-1995" which was the follow-up to "Greatest Hits [1998]". Also, Nancy scored for Cameron's "Almost Famous" and the two of them welcomed twin boys. William James Crowe (James was Cameron's late father) and Curtis Wilson Crowe (Wilson is Nancy's maiden name). In 2001, Nancy scored again for "Vanilla Sky". In 2002, "The Essential Heart" was released. Also Ann underwent the Lap-Band surgury to help her lose weight. Also, They went on the "Summer of Love" tour. This featured, Scott Olson on Lead Guitar, Mike Inez of Alice in Chains and Ozzy Osbourne on bass, Tom Kellock on Keyboards, and Ben Smith of the Lovemongers on drums. In 2003, they went on the "Alive in America" tour and Gilby Clarke of Guns 'N' Roses replaced Scott on Lead guitar, and Darian Sahanaja of The Wondermints and Brian Wilson would replace Tom. They would also release a CD and DVD of "Alive In Seattle" from the "Summer of Love" Tour. In 2004, Heart released it's first studio album in over ten years. "Jupiter's Darling" was released under Sovereign Artists label and has singles such as "The Perfect Goodbye", "Oldest Story In The World", and "Make Me". Because of the new release, Epic Records remastered three albums-"Little Queen" (Bonus Tracks are: "Too Long A Time" with the same melody of "Love Alive", and a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"), "Dog and Butterfly" (Bonus Tracks are: Live recording of "Heartless", and studio versions of "Feels", and "Little Bid") and "Bebe Le Strange" (Bonus Tracks: "Jackleg Man" and a live recording of "Break"). Other albums that have been remastered are "Dreamboat Annie" and "Heart" in 1995 on 24K gold discs, and in 1999, "Dreamboat Annie" again, but this time was made to look like it's original casing as a record. They also went on tour, but Craig Bartock replaced Gilby Clarke, and Debbie Shair filled in for Darian on keyboards who was on tour with Brian Wilson. Craig (along with Nancy and Ann) wrote many songs, and co-produced (With Nancy) the new album. Heart has been a major band for almost 30 years, and will continue doing what they love.