In 1976, Heart were riding high. Their first album Dreamboat Annie had yielded two instant classics, Crazy On You and Magic Man. They were touring non-stop, winning fans as an opener for Rod Stewart and Steve Miller.
To capitalise on their successful debut, their label, small Canadian indie Mushroom, took out an ad in the trade papers modelled as a send-up of the cover of the salacious tabloid newspaper The National Enquirer.
The ad showed a cropped, bare-shoulder photo of the Wilson sisters, making them appear as if they were naked. Beneath it was the caption “It was only our first time.” The suggestion of an incestuous relationship was sleazy, but typical of the times.
“To Mushroom executives, it was a funny, badass sales technique,” singer Ann Wilson said. “But to me and Nancy, who were raised by a feminist mother, we felt really violated.”
(Image credit: Mushroom Records)
The ad wasn’t the only problem with the label. There was some dodgy accounting, and a sense of frustration that they didn’t have the infrastructure to support the band’s rise.
Cut to a Heart soundcheck a few weeks later. Guitarist Roger Fisher and drummer Mike Derosia were jamming on a galloping riff, part Peggy Sue, part Bonanza: dum-didda-dum-diddadum. They recorded it on cassette as an idea for the next album.
“We’d been opening for a band called Nazareth in Europe,” said Nancy. “Nazareth had a hit with a Joni Mitchell song that they covered [in 1973] called This Flight Tonight that had kind of that riff. So we kind of borrowed that. And we made it into Barracuda.
“We saw the guys from Nazareth later, and they were pissed. ‘You took our riff!’ But that’s kind of what everybody [does]. You borrow from what you love, and then you make it your own.”
On the night of the soundcheck jam, at the after-show party, a record promotion man described as “a real sleazeball with a satin jacket” approached Ann Wilson and asked, “How’s your lover?” She pointed to boyfriend Mike Fisher – brother of Roger and Heart’s manager and sound engineer – and the guy smirked and said, “No, your sister.”
“She was really pissed off about it,” said Nancy. “And so she left; she turned on her boot heel, and she stormed away from the room and went up to the hotel room and just wrote the words to Barracuda in their entirety.”
The band merged Ann’s lyrics with the galloping riff, and Barracuda was born. The song emboldened the band to leave Mushroom. They had a clause in their contract that if their producer Mike Flicker left, the agreement was null. Flicker, equally frustrated, left, and the band signed with Columbia.
In response, Mushroom took five of Heart’s demos, combined them with five live tracks and released an unauthorised album, Magazine. Heart sued to block it. They won, but had to finish the album for Mushroom. The label went under three years later.
Meanwhile, Heart’s proper follow-up, Little Queen, featured Barracuda, which became a signature hit. “[Barracuda] has emerged as a single with gnashing teeth,” wrote Cashbox. “It’s an aggressive rocker, tempered with sparkling production and Ann Wilson’s alluring lead vocal. Sounds like just the combination for top 40 radio and impressive singles chart performance.”
“I hope the song will come in handy now when women are thinking about what they want to do and not do,” Ann said.
Fifty years later, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, the song resonates more strongly than ever, and the Wilson sisters are still fighting its corner. In 2018, they sent a cease-and-desist letter to John McCain’s campaign after Barracuda was played without permission at the Republican National Convention, and they did the same seven years later when Barracuda was picked to soundtrack a military parade organised at the behest of President Donald Trump.
“Barracuda, written and performed by Ann and I, is a powerful piece of music that was never intended for political use,” Nancy posted. “As daughters of a US Marine Corps major, we hold a deep and abiding respect for the men and women who serve in our Armed Forces.
“On a day meant to honour that service, it’s important that music used in such settings reflects not only the tone of the event but also the wishes of the artists who created it.”
