Heart | Crazy On You
Ann and Nancy Wilson wrote this song about Mike Fisher, who was an original guitarist for Heart (he eventually stopped performing and became their sound man) - he and Ann were dating. Roger Fisher, who is Mike's brother and also played guitar in the band, is also credited as a writer on this song.
According to Ann, she felt that the world was crazy and sometimes maddening, but her relationship with Mike kept her balanced. "The world had gone to hell in a hand basket and the culture was just standing on its ear and everything was overwhelmingly in trouble," she recalled to TeamRock. "Bombs and devils and the Vietnam War and the gas crisis. It was very frustrating. So I poured that frustration into the words of the song. I was in a very close relationship with Michael. When you're in that situation you just climb up into your love's lap and say: 'Oh God, what do we do about this world?' That's the feeling of the song."
This was Heart's first single. They were based in Vancouver at the time and signed to a small label called Mushroom. When the album became a hit, they moved to Seattle and signed with a label owned by CBS Records.
Nancy Wilson recalled how the instrumentation was inspired by a classic Moody Blues tune. "I remember I had a bad flu and was kind of delirious," she said. "The lyric was so great that it kind of lifted me up in my sick bed. Two days later I was better, and we started to set it to music. We were listening to a lot of Moody Blues back then. There was a song called Question that had this fast, fiery guitar rhythm. That was our idea for the groove. Then Roger Fisher came up with the really cool riff over A-minor to F, and that gave it some more beautiful momentum."
The original band members were from Seattle. According to the liner notes for one of their greatest hits albums, they moved to Vancouver when some of the male members of the band would have been subject to the draft in the Vietnam War. They returned to Seattle when there was no longer a threat of them being called up in the draft. Unfortunately, their Vancouver years limited their exposure in the US at a time when they could have been one of the top bands there.
Source: Songfacts
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