James Conrad writes for BrokeAssStuart.com and plays guitar in Remedy Feelin'. He lives in San Francisco.
In the 1970s, rock and roll was still very much a man's world. However, that didn't deter Fanny from making their mark. Though they unfortunately had to navigate the sexism endemic to the music business and disappointing album sales, numerous peers and contemporaries had no choice but to recognize them as a musical force to be reckoned with. David Bowie, who was once in a relationship with bassist Jean Millington, said, “They were one of the finest fucking rock bands of their time, in about 1973. They were extraordinary: They wrote everything, they played like motherfuckers, they were just colossal and wonderful…They’re as important as anybody else who’s ever been, ever.”
Fanny’s story begins in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, where June Elizabeth Millington was born on 14 April 1948, the oldest of seven chidren. Her sister Jean Yolanda arrived a little more than a year later, on 25 May 1949. As a child, June began learning to play piano and ukulele.
In 1961 the Millington family moved to Sacramento, California. Although the family experienced racism, June and Jean began writing songs together and performed them on their ukuleles, which earned them the respect of their peers.
"We played at the junior high school variety show," June remarked in a 2011 interview. "Kids started coming up to us and telling us they liked it. So it dawned on us this was a way to make friends.”
As the influence of Motown Records and the Beatles loomed large in the 1960s, the Millington sisters went electric. In high school, they formed a band called the Svelts, with June playing guitar and Jean taking up bass.
By 1968, the Millington sisters were invited to join an all-female band called Wild Honey, which included drummer Alice de Buhr, a native of Mason City, Iowa, who had previously played with them in the Svelts. The following year, they signed a contract with Reprise Records, a Warner Brothers subsidiary. Before long, a definitive lineup was established, consisting of June Millington on guitar, Jean Millington on bass, keyboardist Nicole “Nickey” Barclay and Alice de Buhr. By the beginning of 1970, the women unanimously decided to rename the band Fanny.
“We really didn’t think of [the name Fanny] as a butt, a sexual term,” June noted. “We felt it was like a woman’s spirit watching over us.”
Their first self-titled album almost sounds like two different bands. The Millington sisters’ compositions are very much informed by the influence of the Beatles and Motown, but their technical skills come to the fore in particular on their cover of Cream’s “Badge”. On the other hand, while Nickey Barclay’s songs are also soulful, they have a harder edge.
This heavier sound gave focus to the second album, Charity Ball, whose title track hit the very bottom of the U.S. Top 40. The album also included a dramatic arrangement of the Stephen Stills song “Special Care,” which bested the original recording. Though this direction would be pursued further on the following album, Fanny Hill, the Millington sisters stayed true to their roots by including covers of “Hey Bulldog” by the Beatles and “Ain't That Peculiar” by Marvin Gaye.
During this time, the band appeared on television programs like The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The Old Grey Whistle Test, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The David Frost Show, The Dick Cavett Show and Beat Club. They shared stages with acts like Chicago, Steppenwolf, Ike and Tina Turner, Slade, and Humble Pie.
Unfortunately, not all was well. The music press did not take them seriously just because they were women, despite the fact that all four members had been studying their respective instruments since childhood.
When the band played the Speakeasy in London, Michael Watts, reviewing the gig for Melody Maker, assumed they were pantomiming to a pre-recorded backing track and insinuated that “Fanny…will make a great impact by exploiting their sex.”
By 1973, the band's management demanded that they play gigs wearing more provocative feminine attire, a decision the band hated, as it further objectified them.
“This was [during] the tour for [the album] Mother's Pride,” Alice de Buhr related in an email. “They’d avoided using our looks and sex for the first three albums, and thought, ‘Why not use their sexiness? Nothing else has worked.’”
Complicating matters even more, June Millington and Alice de Buhr were both lesbians in an era where intolerance was commonplace – shortly after realizing she was gay, de Buhr was committed to a psychiatric hospital for two weeks. “I was always dating boys, no problem,” said Alice de Buhr in an interview for the Women of Rock Oral History Project. “But I figured it out [that I was gay] and I felt filthy. I felt perverted, and in a small town, that was…real difficult.”
“I didn’t hide it; everybody knew,” said June in an interview with Geoff Barton for Classic Rock Magazine. “The record company just said not to talk about it.”
In the end, the pressure of it all became overwhelming. In 1973 after the album Mother's Pride, June Millington and Alice de Buhr both quit the band. With guitarist Patti Quatro and drummer Brie Howard, Fanny released one more album, Rock and Roll Survivors, scored a Top 40 hit with the song “Butter Boy,” then folded.
After the split, the Millington sisters remained active in the music business, but kept a lower profile. Jean sang backing vocals for David Bowie, appearing on the hit song “Fame.” June found steady work as a producer and released a few solo albums in the 1980s. In 1986, she and her partner Ann Hackler founded the Institute for the Musical Arts, an all-girls music school that also offers support for women in the music business.
As for Alice de Buhr, she transitioned to the business side of music, working as the local marketing director at A&M Records. In the 1980s, she founded Inner Visions Group, a company that distributed special interest videos to libraries and retail outlets.
In the early 2000s, interest in Fanny was renewed when Rhino Records released a box set collecting their first four albums. In 2016, the Millington sisters joined Brie Howard, forming the band Fanny Walked The Earth. Although Jean suffered a stroke and June was diagnosed with breast cancer, the band persevered, releasing a self-titled album in 2018.
In 2021, the documentary Fanny: The Right To Rock was released. In 2023, the Millington sisters, along with Brie, Patti, Alice, and Jean's son filling in on bass, did a brief tour in support of the documentary airing nationally on PBS.
In the film, June declares, “We broke through that barrier, and it wasn't through talking. We just fucking did it.”
