Love still drives Nancy and Ann Wilson's Heart beat

For a legendary mistress of hard rock, Nancy Wilson - one half of Heart, with her sister/belter Ann Wilson - sounds soft, cool, and collected during an interview in advance of her band's triple bill Sunday in Camden with fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and Cheap Trick.

The ladies behind femme-Zep-ish albums such as 1978's Dog & Butterfly, the now 40-year-old Dreamboat Annie and 1985's windswept hair metal Heart continue making records, refusing to rest on any laurels. The last several Heart albums - 2004's Jupiter's Darling, 2010's Red Velvet Car, 2012's Fanatic, and brand-new Beautiful Broken - benefit from a cool air of experimentalism, texture, and orchestration to go with the passionate rockouts.

"Making records for ourself" is where the sisters are these days, says Nancy Wilson. "It always seemed as if we were catering to something. Then again, Ann and I have always been rebellious, never looking to follow any beaten path. Maybe just a bit in the '80s, where we had to wonder where our artistic integrity had gone, but we're old-fashioned rebels."

Some Heart albums are more Ann and some more Nancy. The latter, a self-described studio dog who loves the mixing, arranging, and orchestration process, says that Broken Beautiful is more hers. "I had the reins on this one," she says. "Ann, however, took control of Red Velvet Car because I was busy falling in love and not totally on deck with all of the decision-making and songwriting. When you're falling in love, you're so distracted."

Ann apparently fell in love as they were heading into Beautiful Broken, another reason Nancy took the lead there.

Mention of how the sisters alternately fell in love was a reminder that, since the start of their careers, Ann and Nancy Wilson have both dated different members of their band.

So.

Men - a help or a hindrance?

Nancy Wilson laughs as she responds, "Both, depending on the man. It's like that old saying, 'You can't live with 'em and you can't live without 'em.' I think if there's a support system in place, and you're acting adult-to-adult with a sense of unconditional love and forgiveness, only good things will come from any relationship between men and women."

After mention of Heart's early roots, circa 1973, when Ann was its singer, and the 1974 addition of Nancy ("It was a really cool band before I joined, with Ann, of course, having just broken through the model of the 'chick-in-the-band' and coming forward as a big rock singer"), Nancy commences the story of how Beautiful Broken came together.

New songs were written, of course, such as "I Jump." But their new label, Concord, asked that their first new album for the company revisit less-well-known songs from the Heart catalog. "That sounded great and unique, especially since I had been going over some of our old songs being remastered for reissue," Nancy says. "Some of these songs, like 'Sweet Darlin' ', I hadn't thought of in decades, so the idea of remaking them sounded cool. Then Ann chimed in about wanting strings that sounded like Paul Buckmaster," the renowned arranger behind silvery Elton John orchestral works such as "Levon."

So they reached out to Buckmaster himself.

Old or new, original or - in the case of Broken Beautiful's "Two," written by soul star Ne-Yo - a Heart song must have integrity and depth to make it onto one of their albums.

"It can't ever just be a boyfriend-girlfriend song," says Nancy Wilson. "It has to have poetry. Has to be able to help people and stick to your ribs. It can't just be like ice cream melting on a hot sunny day."

Heart, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and Cheap Trick, 7:30 p.m. Sunday at BB&T Pavilion, 1 Harbour Blvd., Camden, $25.25-$100, 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com.