18 November 2025, Honda Center, Anaheim, CA

Getting to this Heart show in Anaheim near the end of a year crazier than anything described in “Crazy On You”, after two missed opportunities (in March the AXS app just would not accept my payment for the huge LA show that evening and in August the Rancho Mirage venue was sold out before I could afford a ticket), withstanding horrendous LA weekday traffic, dressed in concert attire that makes me look cool even if I don’t feel cool, and upgrading my view from sixth row left to second row centre because I was plucky enough to claim an empty seat – which it turned out was alongside Mike Flicker, famed Heart producer, and his family – was all enough to justify being ecstatic as the opening riffs of “Bebe Le Strange” began.

Above all, I was euphoric at hearing Ann and Nancy Wilson live, singing gorgeous songs, being up close, seeing Ann looking so beautiful and sounding remarkably good after her significant health challenges.

And I was letting go of so much shitful energy that was going on around me and affecting me lately. So I was on my Skechers-attired feet jumping and pumping and grooving and singing to most of this show.

There is never a bad Heart show. Some have been greater sonically than others, some set lists better than others, but the mainly no-fuss staging – no visuals on a big screen boasting their legacy, just the songs and the playing, always stellar – and their just being them, Ann and Nancy, love mongers, music mavens, sisters in life and work, that is usually more than enough. I needed to see this show because I worry I might never see them again. This satisfied on that basis and then some.

I’m one of the few that can take or leave the Led Zeppelin covers. They do them brilliantly but there is too vast a catalogue of Heart songs, more of which I would like to hear in a limited set on a double bill with another iconic band. They did not include “Mistral Wind” or “Dreamboat Annie” and what I would give, on a tour coinciding with their 50th anniversary, to hear a few deep cuts like “How Deep It Goes” and “Just the Wine” and “Treat Me Well” and “Angels”. (Or anything from that most underrated album, Private Audition.) Or hear Ann tell the backstory of “Magic Man” with a tribute to the man who inspired it, Michael Fischer, who died this year, in the way Nancy so eloquently told the backstory to “4 Edward” explaining her gifts, past and more recent, to Eddie Van Halen.

But there is a thing about Heart and my connection to their music that makes my experience of seeing them even deeper and more poignant than that of some other fans. For most of their 50 year recorded career, I have borrowed their songs for my own secret storytelling, stories that have occupied my head (and some very private, personal writing) since the age of 12, where one of my imaginary protagonists becomes a monumentally successful singer-songwriter. I am probably not the only vividly inventive storyteller out there who does such a thing in their imagination. What it means, though, is that the songs have meanings for me far beyond whatever the songwriters – Ann, Nancy, Sue Ennis – might ever have intended. I wouldn’t be surprised if at times my intentions and theirs actually intersected, but I would need to drink a lot of wine and sit down with Nancy to talk about that unashamedly to find out, and that will probably never happen… And yet I sometimes think about the conversation I had with her in 1998 when I told her about my daily lip-synching adolescent adventures to the Dreamboat Annie album, and her beautiful response. I wrote about that in this story some years ago.

So anyway, in that context of my harmless appropriation, “Love Alive” is important. So are “Crazy On You”, “Little Queen”, “Straight On” and “Barracuda”. Led Zeppelin’s “The Ocean” is not but “The Rain Song” is always beautiful to behold even if I don’t feel any specific connection to it. A cover of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” was cool and yet confounding. And maybe I was one of a handful of people that knew all the words to “You’re The Voice” (John Farnham, 1986), which Heart had recorded live some 34 years earlier, but I would have traded it for “The Perfect Goodbye” in a heartbeat.

Ann and Nancy are, by their very presence, exquisite to behold. But then I wondered, reflecting on the acrimony they were going through in 2017, and then the glorious reunion in 2019, about the current dynamic. Because while there was some gently ironic verbal interplay about descriptive adjectives between them, there was very little visible affection or closeness, and when they didn’t hug at the end of the show, or even hold hands to take a bow, I felt a bit strange about it.

Also I felt a bit strange about not knowing who all their supporting players were. I hadn’t been paying attention since I last saw them in 2019 and as good as their band seems to be, it also seems to be a long way from players that were part of the versions of Heart I recall.

But life is short, and these sisters are not wasting any more time. They have a lot of life still in them. Nancy still has the crazy kicks. Ann displays feats of determination and endurance to sing as well as she sings at age 75, to have survived cancer and earlier this year a broken arm, to perform an entire show not fully seated but using a stool to lean back on, aided to walk on and off stage, and who knows, maybe she has instructed Nancy not to pander to her or offer any kind of physical gestures that might make it look like she is frail. (There is a documentary on Ann’s life and work coming out next year and I am excited for that.)

But oh how I longed for them to stand closer together – it is really hard to get good pictures of them together in one frame – and to hug at the end.

Their music embraced me, though, and that was most likely their chief priority.

On the way home, I started listening to The Road Home, their unmatched mid-90s “unplugged” Seattle concert that I have always wished I had been at. That was 30 years ago; at the time they were 20 years into their recording career and already considered vintage. I am thankful that there are so many eras of Heart, so many recordings, and several, if not ever enough, experiences of seeing them live.

May age never weary them, even as it ages them, these ageless goddesses of rock.

By the way, Cheap Trick’s set was fun. There is no universe in which “I Want You to Want Me” and “Dream Police:” are not supremely fun to sing along to. A few photos are included just because.

I need a new camera. Between this camera’s slow death and Heart’s moody lighting, it was harder to get the kinds of images I have been able to capture of the Wilson sisters in past years. But I was there. Here is the visual evidence. Click through and enjoy, keep the love alive!