‘IMMORTAL’ SOUL,

Ann Wilson pays tribute to artists who passed away

Ann Wilson thinks the world needs a dose of Lesley Gore’s teenage wisdom. The Heart singer opens her second solo album, “Immortal” (due in September), with a version of Gore’s 1964 classic “You Don’t Own Me” that blends acid rock, stoner metal and a dash of grunge. Guitarist Warren Haynes helps turn the pop gem into a ferocious, dirty epic.

“Like Aretha’s version of ‘Respect,’ the song comes from a really innocent time,” Wilson said ahead of her bill with Jeff Beck and Paul Rodgers at the Blue Hills Bank

Pavilion on Friday. “It’s 1964 and Lesley Gore is 18 and she’s singing ‘You Don’t Own

Me.’ It was huge, and it needs to be said again today.”

The tune makes a fitting opening for Wilson’s first LP in a more than a decade: bold, forceful, even jarring.

Wilson has spent so much time fronting Heart, she hasn’t had much time for a solo career. But with Heart on indefinite hiatus, the singer wants to do something totally removed from her legacy with one of rock’s most popular bands. “Immortal” features Wilson honoring friends and favorites who have recently left us — everyone from Tom Petty to Leonard Cohen to Amy Winehouse. Occasionally, the artists are expected. The song choice rarely is.

“At a certain point, it seemed like people were dying at a really fast rate, and I’m not the kind of person that would sit around and cry and mourn; I want to honor people,” she said. “That meant I didn’t want to just cover their hits. I chose songs that really spoke to me.”

This means she skipped “Free Fallin’ ” and “Hallelujah” in favor of deep cuts, like Petty’s “Luna” (also with help from Haynes) and Cohen’s “A Thousand Kisses Deep.”

“The most obvious one was Glenn Frey’s ‘Life in the Fast Lane,’ but there’s no way to honor Glenn Frey without it being a hit,” she said. “That song, it’s about ambition and partying and how those two connected back then.”

On the rare occasion Wilson went with the obvious, such as the Eagles’ tune, she made sure to make the song her own. Her version features a hypnotic beat, funky groove and a little more of that acid rock.

“I had this great drummer, Denny Fongheiser (formerly of Heart), working with me so I had him make it more tribal than rock,” she said.

With the new album coming soon, don’t expect much from her back catalog on this tour.

“I think I will do one, maybe two Heart songs in the set, but people should know, it’s very light on Heart stuff,” Wilson said. “I’m singing stuff that I like to sing, like (the Black Crowes’) ‘She Talks to Angels.’ It’s tremendously freeing and liberating.”

She’s also making plans for her own headlining trek in the fall or winter to support “Immortal.” The idea is to turn each tour stop into a kind of storyteller session where she will talk about why she selected each cover and what makes it so special to her.

“Think of it almost as a musical version of ‘Inside the Actors Studio,’ ” she said.