WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . JUNE MILLINGTON: Not here to fanny about

June Millington was a striking figure in the early Seventies when she sang and played in a band with her sister Jean. If her name isn't well known the band's certainly was.

They were called Fanny.

In America where they formed (California in the last Sixties) the name wasn't especially controversial, it meant bum. But in Britain when they took off it meant something different, the lunar opposite of a woman's bum.

“We really didn’t think of [the name Fanny] as a butt, a sexual term,” said June later. “We felt it was like a woman’s spirit watching over us.”

It was a pity such controversy followed them around – along with snide comments and rude jokes – because the band were something unique at the time: a four-piece all-women hard rock band which won praise from David Bowie and opened for major acts like Humble Pie, Jethro Tull and – unsurprisingly – Slade.

And June was a full-blown hard rock guitarist and adept on slide.

Fanny were connected: their first three albums were produced by Richard Perry; they appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test in the UK and American Bandstand; Geoff Emerick engineered their third album Fanny Hill and Todd Rundgren produced their fourth album Mother's Pride.

And that was when June quit the group she founded.

Born in the Philippines, June Millington grew up with music in a busy household as the eldest of seven children.

She played piano as a child, learned ukulele and got a guitar for her 13^th birthday which she took with her when the family sailed back from the Philippines to the US where her father had been born.

The family settled in Sacramento and as Philippine-Americans, the kids felt like outsiders but music helped them build friendships.

June and Jean became a folk duo but then the Beatles broke and pop music was everywhere.

June took up electric guitar and with Jean and two other girls formed the Svelts which played around parties and local military bases.

“Girls weren't supposed to go electric, so the resistance was incredible at first. Was it fun? You bet. By keeping our grades up at school, we began to lead successful double lives as Philippine-American girls by day, budding rockers at night, except we didn't do rock as much as we did girl group songs and Motown which meant He's So Fine and Heatwave with [the Beatles'] The Night Before and [Smokey Robinson by way of the Beatles'] You Really Got A Hold On Me thrown in.”

There were the inevitable line-up changes around the Millington sisters, a name change to Wild Honey and a move to LA.

Enter Richard Perry and in late '69 a name-change to Fanny. They opened for the Kinks and Procol Harum.

And away they went.

Because of their musical backgrounds, June and Jean also did session work (Barbra Streisand oddly enough) and they continued to tour and record.

They were in the vanguard of a movement which -- aside from a few examples like Goldie and the Gingerbreads fronted by Genya Ravan -- didn't exist at the time: all female rock bands.

“We did feel the pressure of having to prove ourselves,” said keyboard player/singer Nickey Barclay.

“When we first started performing, we just went on stage wearing whatever we were wearing. It amounted to us apologising for being women, shying away from any kind of glamour or attractiveness on stage.”

On the cover of their self-titled debut album they were seen from the back (to emphasise the US meaning of their name) and it included a cover of Cream's Badge which – to be honest – does sound like a Sixties girl group on a rock song.

The star on the album – aside from June's guitar playing – is the band's Barclay who wrote many of the MOR songs but elevates everything with her piano and organ playing.

June was still holding onto her folk and folk-rock roots too for the songs she co-wrote with Jean. Songs like Come and Hold Me don't sound like hard rock.

That would come with their growing confidence.

But she could belt out I Just Realised.

Charity Ball their second album is better and harder with Fanny sounding closer to the power pop of Badfinger and Big Star. There's some edgy funk creeping in on Soul Child (a Barclay-Millingtons co-write).

For their third album they covered the Beatles' Hey Bulldog (a suitably heavy instrumentation but the vocals a bit on the light side).

What was becoming clear is that June Millington's writing was extending her in different directions: the strange country-influenced soft-rock of You've Got a Home, the moody wah-wah funk of Think About the Children (interesting lyric too) and mainstream pop with Sound and the Fury (which sounds autobiographical as she finds herself).

By Mother's Pride, her final album with the band, June is delving deep into her dissatisfactions on Long Road Home, delivering enjoyably escapist pop (Summer Song) and enjoying herself on the acoustic folk-blues of Polecat Blue which opens with “bitch, bitch, bitch”.

But an overview of Fanny's recording career to this point would suggest that producers Perry and Rundgren aimed for more MOR polish than the edgy rock Fanny were capable of. Just check I'm Satisfied at the end of Mother's Pride.

The real essence of Fanny's hard-hitting rock is best heard on the recently Live At Beat-Club '71-'72 which rips out of the speakers and collects their tough-minded performances.

It is a thrilling rock'n'roll album of its period and June's guitar playing skids between Hendrix, Blue Cheer and Robin Trower.

But it was a hard ride and when June left she did so out of a survival motive: a breakdown was beckoning and she needed to get out of the band she'd founded with her sister and away from LA.

She moved to the East Coast and over time rebuilt her musical life and moved through women's festivals with various artists. She joined Jean again in different projects, spoke out strongly on lesbian rights, started her own small label, produced and recorded her own music.

June Millington – 76 at the time of this writing – has been a unique figure in American music and a role model for women who followed in her wake: from Suzi Quattro, the Runaways and the Go-Gos to feminists and the LGBT communities in the 21^st century.

But if you want to hear her just rock out, then check out Live At Beat-Club '71-'72 (at Spotify here).

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For other articles in the series of strange or interesting characters in music, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . go here.