The Runaways? OK, but female rockers started with Fanny

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — 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, the Go-Go’s or Sleater-Kinney, Fanny rarely factors.

“I think the machine just moves right on,” June Millington said by phone. “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, becoming well-known in women’s music circles. 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 out of her home 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: “Fanny has an incredibly important place in the history of rock.”

When Fanny appeared on “Sonny & Cher” with the top-40 single “Charity Ball” in 1971, no one was like it. Female stars of the day were folk singers, in girl groups or fronting bands with guys plugging in and pounding the drums.

“People at that time did not expect or really welcome women playing electric instruments,” June said.

That was even truer in mid-1960s, when the Millingtons, students at McClatchy High School, played around Sacramento with their first all-girl band, the Svelts, with drummer Kathie Terry and guitarist Cathy Carter.

Winning over doubters at sock hops and frat parties could be its own reward, June said.

“The minute people who were very skeptical realized we were really good, they would literally fall in love with us,” June said.

Such conversions happened often as the Millingtons took their music to the Bay Area, then Hollywood, losing and gaining band members along the way before forming Fanny with keyboardist Nickey Barclay and drummer Alice de Buhr.

With high-powered producer Richard Perry (Streisand, Carly Simon) and Reprise Records backing the band, Fanny got sweet gigs even in the early days, winning well-connected fans along the way.

“I remember touring with Chicago, and those guys would watch us from backstage every night,” Jean recalled.

The slim, stylish Millington sisters were aware they would be judged partly on their looks. Promotional materials and photos often played on the band’s evocative name by shooting its musicians from behind.

“This was the time of Twiggy and the Supremes,” June said. “It was just accepted that you had to do that.”

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 had arrived at a time of multipart harmonies and greater musical complexity, when the Beatles, Eric Clapton and Motown artists were standard-bearers. On its self-titled debut album, Fanny covered Clapton’s and Cream’s “Badge.”

“I learned Stevie Wonder songs, Beatles songs, (Burt) Bacharach and (Hal) David,” June said. 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.

Unable to eat and constantly nervous, “I basically imploded,” she said.

“It was horrifying,” Jean said of her sister’s state. Conflicts within the band and the label’s growing emphasis on the women’s sexuality exacerbated the situation, Jean said.

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 more famous as solo acts than the band ever was, 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.”

June instructs young people as well, through the Institute for Musical Arts. She runs that with her partner, Ann Hackler, and with help from Jean’s son, Lee, a musician and recording engineer. IMA offers performance, songwriting and recording programs for girls.

“We are creating an old girls’ club,” June said with a laugh. She’s also writing her autobiography, partly to encourage female musicians.

Her support for women in rock goes way back. She recalled a visit by eccentric record producer Kim Fowley (played with wild-eyed elan by Michael Shannon in “The Runaways”) at an L.A. gig in the early 1970s.

“He was a fan of ours, and I remember he rushed backstage and said, ‘June, June, we are going to start a band and it will be like Fanny, and we will make a lot of money. What do you think?’” June said. “And I looked at him and thought, ‘Actually, why not?’ ... We had been doing Fanny in part because we wanted other girls to have a chance.”