Review: With ballads and ‘Barracuda,’ Heart shows it still has bite in Charlotte

When you go to a rock concert headlined by a couple of septuagenarian sisters, and you’ve never seen them perform before, and their biggest hits came in the 1970s and 1980s, what can you reasonably expect?

In the case of “Heart,” fronted by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, you can expect to be pleasantly surprised at how exceptional they still are. I was.

“Heart” headlined a show in Charlotte Saturday night, walking on-stage after Cheap Trick opened the show in a way I’ve never actually seen a musical act open a show before (more on that later). And the Wilson sisters wasted little time after that, performing crowd-pleasers like “Magic Man,” “Alone,” “What About Love,” “Never,” “Crazy on You” and a striking cover of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.”

Ann Wilson, the lead vocalist on almost all of Heart’s biggest hits, still reaches almost every note that she belted out 40 years ago. Nancy Wilson can still make a guitar do things musically that it doesn’t seem like a guitar would be able to do.

And they have lots of stories, about the first song they wrote together (“Magic Man”) or their parents’ house, which is what happens when you grow up together as siblings and have written and played music together (off and on, but mostly on) for six decades.

It was also endearing to me that Heart showed that rock and roll, while fun, can be a lot of hard work. Ann Wilson, who is 73, would introduce most of the songs briefly before launching into them, and in about half of those introductions she would sound somewhat out of breath at the beginning after all the oomph she had put into the previous song. She also would use a stool while singing occasionally. But when it came time to perform, those concessions to age melted away, and she never sounded even slightly out of breath while singing.

Wilson’s voice can sound wispy and ethereal (“Dog and Butterfly”) or furious (“Barracuda”). It is an instrument in itself, still finely tuned.

Meanwhile, in a 95-minute set, I lost count of how many times Nancy Wilson changed guitars, but she played each of them seamlessly and took over lead vocals adeptly for “These Dreams.”

The crowd at Spectrum Center wasn’t a sellout, but the lower bowl and the floor the Charlotte Hornets no longer need for basketball (since they missed the playoffs — again) were packed with middle-aged fans. Many of them undoubtedly remember Heart songs from roller rinks, school dances or MTV, and many of them have glasses.

With that in mind, the video screens on this tour — now a standard at every major concert — could be bigger. Directly behind the stage, there was an enormous screen, but it mostly showed nondescript, abstract images rather than what’s actually happening on-stage or some sort of high-production value music video counterpart to whatever song is being played.

Two smaller screens on either side of the stage did show the action and gave plenty of close-ups of the Wilson sisters and their talented band.

However, opening act Cheap Trick wasn’t afforded the video-screen treatment at all. The screens were off during Cheap Trick’s entire 62-minute set. Couple that with the fact that the three band members in front of the stage were all wearing hats of various sorts and I can guarantee you that at least 80% of the crowd never got a decent look at any band member’s face. I certainly did not.

As for the music, Cheap Trick hit several high points with “I Want You to Want Me,” power ballad “The Flame” and “Dream Police” (preceded by a series of realistic-sounding sirens). As for verbal crowd interaction, Cheap Trick doesn’t seem to believe in it. There were no introductions of songs and barely any introductions of band members either.

And what did Cheap Trick do exactly that I’ve never seen before at a concert? The band began playing before the concert’s scheduled start time.

Having attended well over 100 concerts (yes, I am that old), I can tell you that is rare. The closest I can remember is James Taylor strolling out once about seven minutes after the scheduled start time. Jimmy Buffett used to be fairly prompt, too. But usually, it’s at least 15 minutes after the advertised start time that a show begins, and sometimes it’s more like 45-60 minutes. It’s one of those seemingly unspoken agreements between the audience, the concert promoter and the musical act to allow time for everyone to settle in before the show begins. Even Broadway shows usually start a couple of minutes late. Movie theaters run loads of previews first to make sure you can stand in line to buy overpriced popcorn and still not miss the first five minutes.

But for a show advertised to begin at 8 p.m., Cheap Trick actually walked on-stage at 7:57 and was playing by 7:58. This surprised a lot of fans, because the aisles were suddenly full of people scrambling for seats in the dark. It was no big deal, but it was odd.

That was all forgotten a little more than three hours later, though, when Heart closed down the show with Ann Wilson wondrously wailing on Heart’s final encore of “Barracuda.” As one of that song’s lyrics goes:

And if the real thing don’t do the trick

You better make up something quick

But there’s no need for Heart to make anything up.

The Wilson sisters remain the real thing.