Nancy Wilson credits The Beatles for guiding Heart’s journey

Heart's Nancy Wilson shared that The Beatles "drove us to our calling" when she and her sister were still children.

The 71-year-old guitarist explained that she and her sister and bandmate Ann Wilson, 75, never set out to "break a glass ceiling" when they stepped into the music world.

The Wilson sisters started Heart in the early 1970s, with the group officially coming together in 1973 before releasing their debut record Dreamboat Annie in 1975. Mixing elements of hard rock, folk, and soaring vocals, Heart quickly gained fame as one of the first female-fronted rock groups to reach huge commercial success. Over the years, they have sold more than 35 million albums across the globe and were honored with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

When asked about their impact on other women in the male-dominated rock scene, Nancy told WJFF Radio Catskill: "It's so interesting because that question has been more and more frequent as we've gone along because there's been more and more change and more successful women out there in the business world, in the corporate world, in all levels of the workforce, including entertainment and music."

Nancy joked that they approached the industry like "military brats" who "took no prisoners," while also revealing that The Beatles had been their strongest inspiration during childhood.

She added: "We never walked into this thinking, like, 'We wanna break a glass ceiling.'

"We were just driven — because The Beatles came out when we were little kids, and The Beatles just drove us to our calling. It was just like we were aimed like a pistol from the minute… We already had music in our family — lots of singing and playing piano and harmony singing and ukuleles and aunts and uncles and grandparents — so we had all the gifts given to us in a musical family just to go straight into music with, and the calling was loud and clear. But the fact that we were women didn't even register in our minds at the beginning. We were just little kids, so we had no sexual identity to conform to at the beginning. So we just went ahead, like the military brats that we are — we just joined forces and took no prisoners. [Laughs]."