“Glass ceiling?” asks Jean Millington, bassist and singer in the pioneering all-female rock band Fanny. “I think it still exists, personally.”
Fanny: The Right to Rock—a documentary written and produced by filmmaker Bobbi Jo Hart—offers a compelling case that the enduring legacy of Fanny’s 1970s heyday galvanized and inspired new generations of women musicians.
Yet Jean Millington’s question touches upon an immense sadness, pain, and exploitation lurking in the band’s story: Did Fanny actually crack rock ’n’ roll’s glass ceiling—or did that collision shatter its members in ways that took decades to heal?
Two sisters from the Philippines—Jean and June Millington—are central to the Fanny saga. They arrived in the United States as children in the early 1960s and discovered that music was an escape hatch from the racism and misogyny they experienced in their new country.
The siblings created all-female combos from the very beginning, first playing sock hops as The Svelts. Yet their ambitions grew as rock music transformed popular culture. They soon ditched a repertoire heavy on Motown and British Invasion covers, added new members, and wrote and played their own compositions in an amalgam of rock and blues spearheaded by groups like Cream and the Small Faces.
The (pre-Fanny) self-founded Svelts garage band at the home they shared in Los Altos Hills, California, in the 1960s. Rehearsing from left to right are Jean Millington, Brie Darling, Wendy Haas Mull, and June Millington.
—Steve Griffith
Fanny: The Right to Rock ranges freely from New England to Sacramento to Great Britain as it follows the group’s journey. Yet its vibrant portrait of a band immersed in the Southern California music scene immortalized by Joni Mitchell as the epicenter of “the star-making machinery / behind the popular song” is particularly novel and riveting.
The documentary received a grant from California Humanities (which supports ongoing programming around the film) and bubbles over with images and performances that situate Fanny squarely within a much-celebrated era in L.A.’s musical history. Ace producer Richard Perry—who made records with Captain Beefheart, Barbra Streisand, and Carly Simon—snapped them up quickly after their arrival in Los Angeles.
The band changed its name to “Fanny” and commenced its run of four influential albums, two hit singles, and extensive tours. Interviews and images depict Fanny’s L.A. sojourn in a gauzy and nostalgic haze of soft drugs, free love, and the joys of communal living in a Hollywood mansion named Fanny Hill (also the name of their third album). Yet contemporary admirers such as pop icon David Bowie—the subject of the band’s 1975 novelty hit “Butter Boy”—were not wrong to hear something special at work. The film clips and recordings are authoritative: Fanny was an excellent band.
“I was blown away by the number of major television shows that Fanny was on,” observes Hart, citing a host of U.S. variety shows ranging from Dick Cavett to Sonny and Cher. “They were a phenomenon. And they were phenomenal players. . . . It frustrates me that they didn’t break through as they should have.”
Virtuosity and range made Fanny sublime synthesizers of an array of influences from breezy pub-blues to proto-metal to glam rock. Jean Millington’s bass and Alice de Buhr’s drumming laid down a supple but powerful foundation, as June Millington’s sharp riffs blended exquisitely with keyboardist Nicole Barclay’s forthright melodicism. (Barclay already was an in-demand session star before joining Fanny on the cusp of their fame.)
The costs that accompanied Fanny’s success eventually proved exorbitant. And their trailblazing exploits as women writing songs and playing their own instruments often made them the targets of dismissive abuse and contempt in the misogynistic milieu of ’70s rock.
Hart’s film does leave some darker corners of industry exploitation, predatory contracts, and messy band breakups in the story unexplored, but this narrative condensation leaves considerable room to relate how some members picked up the pieces and forged new lives and new music. Fanny: The Right to Rock’s account of the band’s glory days is bookended skillfully by in-depth footage of a reunion—new songs, old faces—that occurs almost five decades after their first record was released.
Fanny reunion: Bassist Jean Millington, lead guitarist June Millington, and original drummer Brie Darling after the release of their new album Fanny Walked the Earth.
—Bobbi Jo Hart
Along with the Millington sisters, Brie Darling is a key figure in the newest chapter. Darling was a member of earlier lineups and became a featured player once again at the end of Fanny’s 1970s major label run. Her ebullience and determination to see a new record through recording and promotion lifts the entire enterprise—especially when the unexpected and tragic twist of Jean’s stroke scuppers some of Fanny’s best-laid plans just before their reunion release.
The power of Fanny: The Right to Rock is found not only in its argument for the band’s claim to a place in rock’s pantheon, but also in the film’s depiction of how the members have navigated strong currents of memory and regret to make vital music once again.
“It was crucial for me to show these talented and influential women not only surviving, but thriving creatively,” says Hart. “It is a story that deserves to be known and celebrated by a wider audience.”
