The new film “The Runaways” touts that 1970s all-female band as rock ‘n’ roll forerunners. But Fanny had the Runaways beat by several years.
Fronted by Sacramento sisters June and Jean Millington on guitar and bass, Fanny wasn’t the first all-female rock band, but it was the first to record a full-length album on a major label, in 1970. The group made four more albums — one at the Beatles’ Apple Studios in London — toured extensively and backed Barbra Streisand in the studio.
Yet when people recall female bands, whether it’s the Runaways or the Go-Go’s or Sleater-Kinney, Fanny rarely factors.
“I think the machine just moves right on,” June Millington said. “It just chews up whoever was there, and here come the new ones.”
Millington, 61, lives in Massachusetts; sister Jean, 60, lives in Davis, Calif. June has continued to perform and record and produce other musicians. Jean, mother of two grown children with her ex-husband, former David Bowie guitarist Earl Slick, is now married to drummer Leo Adamian and works as a healer and herbalist.
They still play — sometimes under the name the Slammin’ Babes — and Jean will take her bass to Massachusetts this summer to record with her sister.
But it is as Fanny they made their mark.
As Susan Shaw, co-author of the 2004 book “Girls Rock! Fifty Years of Women Making Music” said in an e-mail: “When Fanny appeared on ‘Sonny & Cher’ with the top-40 single ‘Charity Ball’ in 1971, no one was like it.”
With high-powered producer Richard Perry and Reprise Records backing the band, Fanny got sweet gigs even in the early days.
“I remember touring with Chicago, and those guys would watch us from backstage every night,” Jean recalled.
The band members just wished they could get more credit for their musicianship.
The punk-edged Runaways relied on three chords and attitude — “They were adequate musicians, and that is about it,” Jean said — but Fanny arrived at a time of multipart harmonies and greater musical complexity, when the Beatles, Eric Clapton and Motown artists were standard-bearers.
Yet every time Fanny played, even years into it, the band had to win over male audience members and club owners. Jean recalled a club owner, during a return tour of England, where Fanny already was a hit, directing the band: “‘This is the dressing room for the girls, and this is the room for the band.”‘ The pressure got to June.
“To do all that work just to be recognized that you can play at all — I was just worn out,” she said. “I basically imploded.” June left Fanny, moved to Woodstock, N.Y., and found solace in Buddhism. The band made one more album with new guitar player Patti Quatro — Suzi’s sister — and a new drummer before calling it quits.
Unlike the Runaways, whose reputation grew when former members Joan Jett and Lita Ford became famous as solo acts, Fanny’s legend is a quiet one. And that’s too bad, author Shaw said.
“Fanny challenged the notion that rock was an exclusively male genre, said Shaw, who is director of women’s studies at Oregon State University. “When I introduce Fanny to my students, they’re amazed, and they love their music.”
