After Heart jumped onto the rock scene in the mid-1960s, the band’s fate was fraught with name and lineup changes. Within fifteen years, they had already changed four names, and Roger Fisher and Steve Fossen, the founding members of the band and essential part of their sound, had already left. In a recent interview with Rock History Music, Fossen said they had a chance to save Heart at the time, but they couldn’t take it.
“Well, and if you think back, what if Heart would have powered through their troubles and their tribulations and stuck together? Where would we be right now?” he said, trying to imagine what it would be like if he had stuck with the band and Heart had continued.
Steve Fossen continued agreeing with the interviewer’s statement about how taking a break might have helped them. He exclaimed, “You know, I think you’re right. A break would have probably been wise and probably would have stuck. We would have been able to stick together in a way that made sense probably.”
“Had we taken, you know, like, what’s that song? ‘Take Five,’” the musician said humorously, “Yeah. If we could take five and think about it for a while… Because it was a hard thing to break up that chemistry. But it’s almost like it had to be done.”
Fossen and Derosier, who were in the band at the height of its fame, left Heart in 1982 due to ‘creative differences,’ but underneath their separation were complicated romantic relationships and money issues. Even though he parted ways with Heart decades ago, Steve Fossen has been an active musician and continues his stage life with Heart By Heart.
As for the fate of Heart, after several lineup changes in the early ’80s, the band continued in the rock scene with different lineups despite several hiatuses. The Wilson sisters, who joined the original members in the mid-1970s, are the band’s surviving members and, of course, the two pioneering female figures in a male-dominant industry.
