AUDIO: Heart's sister singers look back

The women of Heart helped carved a path for female singers in the 1970s, but Ann and Nancy Wilson still see women in pop music forced into roles where they are more ornamental than creative.

Ann Wilson saysshe and her sister never believed in barriers to women singing in rock, but the"pole dancer" image of some current stars is a step backwards.

The two looked back on their career with the Vancouver-based band Heart, which began with the release of Dreamboat Annie in 1976, in an chat with Jian Ghomeshi, host of CBC's Q cultural affairs show.

The Canadian rockers known for hits like Barracuda, Dreamboat Annie and Magic Man are currently in the midst of a 20-stop tour of Canada.

The two women recalled feeling sure they would be stars, even as young girls growing up in Seattle.

'You just have to go on not giving a damn and being your own creative self. Otherwise, why are you taking up space?' Ann Wilson

"In the bedroom we shared in our parents' house, I think we felt there were always cameras and a large interested audience watching us as we learned how to play guitar and how to sing," Nancy Wilson said, in the interview broadcast on Monday.

Ann followed a draft-dodger boyfriend to British Columbia and recalled cutting her first rock track, Crazy on You, in a Vancouver studio.

"It was first time I'd really done a rock vocal anywhere, let alone in the studio," she said. "Up until then I'd been the chick in the band who does the backup, occasionally a Led Zeppelin song. But this was our own song."

The only regret the sisters have is doing too few of their own songs in the 1980s, when the band had major commercial success.

"The thing that we always pay lip service to, we never really did, and that's that you just can't give a damn about what people tell you to do," said Ann Wilson.

"You just have to go on not giving a damn and being your own creative self. Otherwise, why are you taking up space?"

Heart plays in Sudbury, Ont., onMonday before moving on to Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary and B.C. stops in Prince George, Kamloops and Vancouver.