The following is an interview that appeared on the now defunct Technodyke website.
In mid-March of this year, I finally caught up with Jean Millington, June’s sister and co-founder of Fanny, as well as the group’s bassist and one of their vocalist. She and Nickey Barclay were the only ones to play on all five albums credited to Fanny (four for Reprise Records and one for Casablanca Records, June and Alice having left before the last album). She also wrote, with Nickey, Fanny’s biggest single, the tongue-in-cheek “Butter Boy”. In the last of my series of interviews with the original members of this historic all-woman band, she shares what it was like to be a part of history. This is what she had to say:
Technodyke: It’s my understanding that your mom bought you and June your first guitars.
Jean: Right, she knew that my dad just wasn’t going to support it, so she kind of sneaked around his back, and I guess did the credit thing at the music store, so we could pay for our guitars on time or whatever it was.
TD: How did you end up playing bass?
Jean: Well, at the time we were doing folk music together with these two other women, and I mean from the Hootenanny times, and we decided to form a rock and roll band, and then the one gal who was going to end up being in the band with us, Cathy Carter, there was just no way she was going to play bass. So June and I talked about it, and she said, “Well Jean, I’m going to play lead guitar and Cathy cannot play anything but rhythm guitar, so you’re going to have to play bass.” So, it was kind of one of those things, we needed a bass player, so all right, I’ll do it. I have no idea how to even go about it, but let’s check it out.
TD: Was it hard to learn how to play the bass?
Jean: We are really self-taught, and at the time…I had no idea that when June played an “A” chord on the guitar, I had no idea where the “A” was that corresponded to that chord she was playing. I literally had no idea how to play bass, so it was just completely by ear. Okay, well this note seems to fit, this note seems to fit alright, no concept whatsoever. So then all I did at first was listen to records and just try and figure out what the bass part was, and went from there, and then gradually learned that oh, they’re playing in this key, so this must correspond with that key, you know, that kind of thing. It really was like hunt and peck, like on the typewriter or something, at first. So in that regard, it was very difficult, but also, but it sure developed my ear.
TD: Who do you consider some of your inspirations for bass playing?
Jean: Paul McCartney for sure. He’s extremely melodic and opened just so many different vistas of how to play bass than what was in the “Louie Louie” days. Bass was, shall we say, basic…at the time. So he expanded the horizon as far as bass playing goes. Then Verdene White from Earth Wind & Fire was just an amazing bass player, and also somebody that I hung out with and really taught me a lot and was kind of my boyfriend for a while was Will Lee. He’s the bass player on the David Letterman show. He’s a fantastic bass player…and he showed me a bunch of stuff. He used to play with Barry Manilow, and that’s how I ended up meeting him because he was on the road with Barry Manilow, and we were in Texas some place, in Houston or something, and came up and introduced. So that’s actually what used to happen a lot. We’d meet other bands, and we’d watch them play, and there were I can’t remember, you know, exactly whom but on more than one occasion after the other bands. If there was something in particular I wanted to learn, I would go up to that bass player and ask him “how did you do that?” So I learned a whole lot like that, but my bass playing heroes are, whom I said, not to (forget)… James Jamerson who played on a lot of the Motown records, you know, Four Tops and all of that stuff. So those were my bass influences.
TD: Looking back, what was it like to you to be part of what many people considered to be the seminal all woman rock and roll band?
Jean: You know, part of me was able to see the big picture and be really proud to be part of that whole process, but remember that we were in our late teens and early 20’s when we started doing this whole thing. That’s a period of tremendous pressure and internal growth. So I would say maybe a quarter of me was aware of the big picture, but three quarters of me was just so caught up in trying to survive the whole process of having four people together on a daily basis, traveling together, and doing all the group therapy that we had to do in order to stay together. So, we were really too busy for the most part to think about that a whole lot. We were just involved in the process more.
TD: I’m going to ask you about the individual albums. Let’s start with the first one, Fanny.
Jean: That was an extremely difficult album to do because, first of all, it was our first real experience with being in the studio, so there was a whole lot of experimentation, not to mention that when we signed, we had Addie Clement on guitar, and then that whole configuration changed. Then Brie Howard was also in the band playing percussion, so that changed, and so then we were looking for a keyboard player. So as we were recording, we were also looking for a keyboard player. It was half way through that process, as far as I can remember, probably within the first year that we ended up finding Nickey, so then we re-recorded some things and then recorded other things. So it was a lot of fun, and of course that was the first album and being in Hollywood and being in the studios and meeting all those people and blah blah blah. So that really was a whole lot of fun, but in some ways it was extremely difficult, because we were so up in the air about who was going to be the other member in Fanny.
TD: The second album was Charity Ball. Fanny already had one album under their belt and some touring. So what was it like when you went into this album?
Jean: Well, of course we had a lot more experience and we knew more what we wanted. The songwriting was getting more sophisticated, and at that point, Nickey was listening to a lot of English music, and in some ways, I think that her songwriting was more further developed and more intricate. “A Place in the Country”…that was such an R&B based song and just the lyrics and everything were just terrific. We found out later, a few years back, that there’s a really big fan of ours who was in Vietnam in the infantry at the time, and he said that actually that became their platoon song, because the lyrics in it were just inspirational for them. So, I love that song and “Cat Fever”. As far as live songs, songs that really pushed and just showed off the playing and the band, those were two of the better ones. And “A Little While Later” was quite sophisticated, I thought, a lot of time changes and more intricate chords and like that. And I love the song “What’s Wrong With Me?”, that was so definitive of what was actually happening in my head at the time. I mean, like I said, we were very young and a lot of insecurities were going on. So that’s the stuff that a lot of the young people asked themselves, what’s wrong with me, how come I can’t, I’m not motivated. Why can’t I make myself do this and that and the other thing, and I should be more productive and blah blah blah. I mean, a lot of musicians, of course, torture themselves.
TD: Looking through all the songs, the two big songwriters were June and Nickey. It seems that you only had the occasional song that you wrote. Was that because the other two were coming up with so much material?
Jean: Yeah, that’s right, and as I said, I was extremely insecure, and there was that whole dynamic of June was my oldest sister and always the leader. I was really scared to see what I could come up with. So, I mean, all that stuff was rolled into that scenario.
TD: The third album is the one that many fans of Fanny consider the best one, which was the album Fanny Hill, recorded in London at Apple Studios. Give us your thoughts on Fanny Hill.
Jean: Well, we were completely thrilled to be recording at Apple Studios with Geoff Emerick, who was the engineer for the Beatles. Again, we were more knowledgeable about how to get sounds in the studio, what we wanted, etc. I know for June that was particularly thrilling, because Richard was always into the big band production kind of things, and in a lot of ways, I think he smoothed out our sound too much in the studio. It was a lot more exciting and raw live than what turned out in the studio, and that’s because of the production stuff that Richard was used to producing. For instance, June would turn up her amp to ten, and he would always go up in the studio and turn it down to three or four. At one point, there was some contention going on, and June asked Geoff, “Well how does George get that sound?” And Jeff said, “Well he has the amp all the way up.” [laughter] So what could Richard say, you know? So June was able to have the sound turned up. Plus, on some of those tracks, we had an orchestra. Like for the song “The First Time”. There was an orchestra that played with us, strings, and that was the first time that had happened, so that was really a thrill. And we were, of course, more popular, especially in England. We were touring there, and there was a lot of fan support and a lot of people turned out to see us. So I remember that time period as being really satisfying.
TD: Now you talked about how much better you felt Fanny was live, and one of the bonuses of the box set is that they include quite a few live songs.
Jean: Yeah, mm-hmm, and that really was largely due to our insisting that that happen.
TD: For example, the live version of “Charity Ball” is almost twice as long as the studio version.
Jean: Yeah, and because that was one of the definitive songs that was a fairly large hit for us. Of course, then, we played it in a thousand ways between here and Sunday, and of course, then you start to get bored and you start to do stuff, do the whole jammy thing, and people, especially since it’s a blues day song, being able to play that sort of jammy kind of thing really thrilled people. And it was fun to do, you know, so that’s what we’d do. I thought the live version really showed off our playing as well, the ability as a rock and roll band. Actually, when we listened it last year, June and I were both stunned at how good it was. [laughter] Because that takes a hell of a lot of rehearsal to get those kinds of blues changes and everything there, everyone’s real tight and knows exactly what’s going on, and can still spontaneously jam on stuff and then everyone instinctively knows when we crescendo and it’s time to go back into the voice or like that. So we were both pretty impressed with ourselves actually.
TD: Fanny Hill was also the last album that Richard Perry produced. Tell me your impressions of Richard Perry.
Jean: Well, I think first and foremost, he really is a wonderful person with a very kind heart, but he’s also from the old New York school of producers and how music business is done. So we were very young, we were naive, we had no idea what was going on. So he always thought of us as “The Girls”. It was pretty sweet, because in a way, we were sort of like his harem. Not that we were doing all that stuff, but his harem in the sense that he loved to take care of us and have us over for swimming and parties and introducing us to people. He was thrilled to be able to be one of the first people to take us to great restaurants and all that kind of stuff. So in that way, it was a wonderful relationship with him. But musically, because he was of the old school and used to doing big productions like with Ella Fitzgerald and like that, I don’t think he really quite knew how to deal with a rock and roll band. So, in that regard, I wish we could have had the vocals rougher. I wish it wouldn’t have been so flattened out and the voices made as thin sounding as they were. I wish the tracks hadn’t been so smoothed out and the rawness taken out. So, it’s a mixed bag, but overall, I think Richard is a wonderful person.
TD: Let me ask you about the last album that all four original members played on, Mother’s Pride. That album was produced by Todd Rundgren. I understand that not everybody in the group was satisfied.
Jean: I don’t think anybody in the group was satisfied with how that turned out. We had chosen Todd Rundgren as the producer. Bernie Taupin, who is Elton John’s writing partner, really wanted to produce the band, so he was a contender as well. But for whatever the reasons were, our management and the record company were really pushing for Todd Rundgren to produce the band. I actually think Bernie would have done a better job. And so one of the things that happened with Todd was we explained to him one of the reasons we were so upset with Richard and didn’t want to work with him was essentially our input was not included for the final mixes, and everything came out too smooth sounding, and we wanted more raw and more live sounding and all that kind of stuff. Todd reassured us that wouldn’t happen, and he was really for the band, and one for all and all for one, etc., and he turned out to be a complete jerk, because when it came to mixing the album, he essentially locked us out of the studio because he was running out of time, and he needed to start rehearsing with his band, so he figured the fastest way was to have just his input. So he locked us out of the studio. I think he was a real jerk, and I’m not thrilled with that album at all.
TD: Before Fanny started recording Mother’s Pride, all of you did some kind informal demo recording in London, which the box set was able to include because Alice held onto the tapes. How do you feel about those demo songs finally making their appearance and how they came out?
Jean: I think they just so outshine the stuff on Mother’s Pride, even without proper vocals and everything on there. For example, “Beside Myself”…I mean, the track that we cut in the demo is just so superior to what we came out with Todd, which to me sounds very sterile and studied. Even though it doesn’t hardly have a vocal on it because I was just learning how to sing it and the lyrics weren’t quite finished and all. Nickey sings part of it because she knew what the melody was. It was a song that she wrote. I see so clearly the difference with what we could do on our own and having somebody produce us. I don’t think we were ever produced properly. We didn’t know enough at that time and/or have enough confidence in ourselves to really step up and say, “No, that’s not all right with us”.
TD: Let me ask you a question about Fanny’s manager, Roy Silver. In my interview with Nickey, she talked about how much she didn’t like him. What can you say about Roy?
Jean: Well, in retrospect, I don’t like him either [laughter], but I was very young, very impressionable, looking for my father, and Roy was a very powerful person. I was attracted to the power, what can I say? He ended up doing a lot of wrong things. He had a lot of vision. If only he could have stayed on the path and really harnessed all of his energy. Roy had a lot of vision, but he had a lot of issues. He kept shooting himself in the foot. So, in retrospect, I don’t like him because he was not a man of full integrity.
TD: Do you think he exerted kind of a Svengali-like influence?
Jean: Oh, you bet, you bet. Like I said, I was very young and impressionable and looking for my father.
TD: Do you think that he made a lot of wrong decisions for the band?
Jean: It’s really hard to say. You know, it is what it is, it was what it was, so therefore my philosophy is everything that goes down is as it needs to be for it’s the highest learning of every single person. Had Fanny been really meant to be a tremendous success and all of us living like the Rolling Stones, that would have happened, but that was not our path. To me, every single person is following a path, and every single situation that they bring into their lives is part of their path so.
TD: It would be safe to say that you were probably considered the most beautiful or glamorous member of the group. Did this cause you any problems?
Jean: It’s hard for me to really have a clear view of that. I knew that everyone considered that and so perhaps there was insecurity from the other girls because of that, but my overall role in the band was the peacemaker and mediator. So I more than made up for it I think.
TD: I’m going to ask you about the other members of the group. Tell me what your overall feelings are about Alice and her drumming.
Jean: I always thought that Alice was a great drummer, but one of the reasons that she and June didn’t get along was June always wanted Alice to experiment and do all this new stuff. There was a lot of fighting when we were arranging songs because Alice just didn’t want to do that. So it was hard for me to see at that point, because I was very defensive of June and not being defensive of Alice, and trying to be the mediator and peacemaker. But in retrospect, now that I hear the albums, I go shit, she was a fucking great drummer. And she’s a tremendous person. She’s always had one of the kindest, sweetest hearts I’ve ever known, and she’s very intelligent and always does her best to do the right thing. But as far as a drummer, she was a great drummer. She was right to just stay with what she was doing and not trip off and try to do all these intricate things that June wanted, which really would have been the role of a percussionist. If we had stayed together, that’s what would have happened. We would have added a percussionist to the group.
TD: When Alice came on board as the drummer, how did you it make you feel back then when you found out that she was gay? Did that bother you in any way?
Jean: Only to a certain extent. First of all, women were not accepted as musicians. It’s just that I was feeling a little nervous about if that would become the primary focus of the publicity about the band. As far as on a personal level, I mean, God, Alice is such a terrific person, it was not a problem, but in terms of just thinking about the overall publicity that we intended to happen for the band, we were a little nervous about how that would come about. For a long time, we never really talked about that at all. Not that if we were asked directly that we would deny it, but we certainly didn’t offer the information.
TD: Let’s talk you about your sister, June. Tell us about your relationship with her.
Jean: Well, I think she’s absolutely brilliant. She is one of the most prolific songwriters that I know. I think she is completely underrated. Her stuff is not recognized, but that has a lot to do with my philosophy on people’s paths, because I don’t think that she fully accepts herself. So, to me, whatever you really think about yourself, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, that is what you manifest in your life. So she doesn’t have a whole lot of self-esteem, and I think that translates into why she is not successful like she really should be with the amount of talent that she has. And same thing for me, why I’m not successful in that way is the lack of self-confidence. And I think that’s her path, and if those things hadn’t happened, June wouldn’t have gone off and played with Tret Fure and Cris Williamson. She would never have started going into women’s music and producing. Her path has been a trailblazer for a lot of things for women’s music, so what can you say? But for me, the dynamic with June is that I was always her shadow. I was her younger sister who supported her, and it took years and years to individuate from her, but that had to do with what my lessons are and how I see myself.
TD: In the Fanny booklet, it talks about June’s breakdown a little bit. What did you think contributed most to that?
Jean: Her extreme paranoia that everyone was out to do her in, i.e., the record company, the publicist, all of that stuff. The situation with Nickey, our manager, our producers, I mean, all that stuff. She just was extremely paranoid about the world, but that has to do with what her individual issues are. So she thought that she would be safe in the women’s world. What ended up happening is she got screwed over by Olivia Records, she got screwed over by people she produced, all of that stuff, and again, to me, that has to do with your individual lessons and that you attract people into your life that trigger or reflect whatever your issues are. So the more we recognize ourselves, the more success in whatever way it manifests that we have in life.
TD: It’s my understanding around the time of the last two albums that all the original members did as a group, your sister June was struggling with her own personal issues about her sexual identity. Were you aware of it at the time, or did she kind of keep it quiet, or were you just in another space, or what?
Jean: It wasn’t so much she was struggling with her sexual identity as she was struggling with the partners that she chose, that I can see, because when she was really struggling with her sexual identity was before we ever started recording, before we ever got a record contract. I mean, when she was 15, 16, 17, 18, when we were on the road and just, like in Canada and all of this, I mean I knew she was really struggling with her sexual identity at that point, but it does not come to mind that she was having a lot of difficulty with the sexual identity per se once we were recording and in the studio and had a record deal. It was really about the partners that she chose. When June was younger, there had been a lot of dysfunction in our family and my father chose to make her his confidant, so June was jerked out of childhood, so June had a lot of anger about the world and how it ran. She had no patience for a lot of different things, and she was suspicious of everyone, a lot of the issues that young people deal with who come from a dysfunctional family. I came from the same family, but I dealt with it in a whole different way. I was just a complete good girl. I tried to fix things. I was the peacemaker and mediator, and June was the volcano. So it seemed like that she always chose partners who had a very difficult time accepting June for who she was. You know how contentious relationships go. On top of that, Fanny was on tour all the time, so to have a partner with whom you had a contentious relationship when you saw each other, that just was very, very difficult for her to deal with. And so, of course, when you’re struggling with those kinds of issues, the insecurity that happens when you’re in love with someone who you’re always afraid that something is going to blow up and they’re going to go out of your life, that would be the struggle, as opposed to per se the sexual identity.
TD: Tell us your impressions of Nickey Barclay.
Jean: In a lot of ways, she is one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. She is a terrific songwriter, an incredible musician and …one of the most screwed up people I know. I haven’t spoken to her in years, but from speaking to Alice and what Alice has to say about her, she still hasn’t dealt with what her issues are. I would be fine to see Nickey. I’d probably be fine to do some work with her, and especially because I have a whole lot better idea of who I am and what my boundaries are and what I will and will not put up with. I think I could survive working with Nickey again at this point. I couldn’t have said that to you 10, 15 years ago as I was becoming clear on who I am.
TD: It’s my understanding that there was often some discord between June and Nickey, because June had one vision and Nickey had another vision. Do you think this hurt Fanny, or did it drive it to be better?
Jean: I think overall it hurt Fanny because we couldn’t hold it together. When you have two extremely powerful personalities who are extremely insecure, it’s a recipe for disaster. Both June and Nickey are extremely powerful people with tremendous insecurity, and so then a lot of defensiveness and miscommunication and all that kind of thing. So I think in the long run, it really hurt the band.
TD: Why do you think that they could rarely seem to find any common ground?
Jean: Well, because when someone is extremely insecure, it’s their way or nothing…you have to hang onto that in order to feel okay about yourself as a person. You hang on tooth and nail to what you believe is the right thing, and so if anybody else has a different opinion, it’s a threat
TD: I noticed from the liner notes, June and Nickey rarely wrote anything together. In my interview with Alice, she thought that maybe if June and Nickey could have learned to write songs together that it might could have different.
Jean: I think it would have been a tremendous combination. Nickey was very bold, a lot of rock and roll, a lot of very driving kind of music. She did a lot of intricate lyrics and intricate chordal changes and everything, and June was more along the sophisticated Motown, R&B kind of songwriting. So it could have been a really tremendous combination.
TD: Let’s talk about the one Fanny album that you all did after Mother’s Pride, Rock and Roll Survivors. When that album was done, June had already left the group and Alice had left, so it was just you and Nickey and Patti Quattro and Brie. Tell us about that album and the struggles making that album.
Jean: It was a very difficult period for me, because what I really wanted to do was play with June and Alice, but for their individual reasons, they had quit. I wanted to continue playing. I wanted to continue having the band, and somehow Patti Quattro came into the picture. I think she’s a wonderful person, and has a lot of wonderful qualities but being a good guitar player and songwriter is not one of them. She’s a real flashy player. She looked terrific. She always had flashy clothes, and she was very tall, so she compensated for her lack of musical ability by what her appearance was. That phase of Fanny was also when the glam rock was happening, so it sort of went along with the times, kind of showed that we had a rock and roll stage show with costume changes and hoods and masks and the bit. But that is also what was happening at the time, you know. So doing that album with Vinnie Poncia was kind of like an experiment, because I had only ever really worked in the studio with June and Alice. I was in a place of extreme pain and paranoia myself and just doing my best to survive. So in retrospect, I had my head up my ass during that whole time. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just struggling to stay alive and still have the band and still be productive and being as extremely insecure as I was during that time period. So it was what it was. I’m not particularly proud of the album. Musically, I think it’s the weakest album out of all the albums that Fanny has but for the time, it was happening. It was a rock and roll glam show.
TD: That album did have the distinction of yielding Fanny’s highest charting single.
Jean: Right, “Butter Boy”, which is really interesting. [laughter] The song that I wrote that Nickey helped me finish. I think that’s just so ironic, as Alanis Morrisette says…It’s ironic.
TD: It’s my understanding that the song was about David Bowie. How did that song come to be?
Jean: Well, when we were on tour in England and I was still with Roy, we had met David and I had ended up getting together with David. He was married to Angie Bowie at the time. She supposedly allowed him to have extramarital affairs, but after she found out that David was seeing me for the third or fourth time, well. I suppose once or twice was okay, it meant nothing to David. Three or four times, it was getting serious. So she really flipped out, and it became difficult to see David after that, especially because he lived in England and I was in the States. But we carried on with a relationship for maybe a little bit more than a year. The song was sort of tongue in cheek. I mean, I think David is a wonderful person too.
TD: When Fanny was still with Richard Perry, the group did some work with Barbra Streisand on a couple of albums. What was it like working with her?
Jean: She really blew me away actually. I had never been with an artist who really studies style, so she sang through “Stoney” three times, and each time it was a completely different style. I had never ever seen anybody do that. She was actually kind of nervous herself, because she had never worked with a self-contained band. She had always worked with an orchestra. So she was really amenable and friendly and wanting to do the right thing and worked hard and all. I mean, I’ve heard all these stories about Barbra and how difficult she is to work with and all of that, but she was an angel when she worked with us. I think she was thrilled to be working with a self-contained, all-woman band.
TD: Let’s talk about the recent reissue on Rhino Handmade. I know that the idea had been kicked around for awhile about putting some of Fanny’s stuff out on CD, but it always seemed to get bogged down. How did you feel when you finally heard and finally knew that it was really going to be done?
Jean: I was completely thrilled, because I think that we just never received the recognition that I feel that we deserved to have. I mean, the integrity, the quality of the music, the musicianship that was happening at that time, it’s just completely buried. When people think about first girl bands, they think of the Go-Go’s, for heaven’s sake. Not that I take away any of what they did, but they were a very pop-oriented band. They were not, in my mind, exactly great musicians. They were adequate. They did good records. But as far as being a band band, I don’t consider the Go-Go’s a tremendous playing band, and Fanny was indeed that. As far as an all-woman band who really kicks and was able to play rock and roll and be as good musicians as Fanny was, I don’t really think there’s been another all-woman’s band like us. So, in response to your question, I would really love it if we were recognized as such.
TD: Do you know what the response to the box set has been yet?
Jean: From what I can tell, not that I hear a whole lot about it, people are really responding very well to it. There’s a lot of good buzz about it, but other than that, I mean, we’re not on the Tonight Show, so what can I say? It’s had a slow movement and they’re just hoping to sell, I think they printed 5,000 copies, and they’re hoping to sell that within the space of a year which to them is a successful reissue. 5,000 isn’t a whole lot of albums, even though it is a box set. It is four CDs. But I’m happy. I’m happy that it even came out, and there are people who have heard it, and the response has been wonderful.
TD: Have there been any print reviews about the box set? I thought I had heard that Rolling Stone gave it a pretty good review.
Jean: Yeah, they did, and that was the issue in December. They rated us as one of the top ten reissues of the year. That’s terrific to have it mentioned in Rolling Stone. That’s wonderful.
TD: Critics were a bit dismissive of you all initially back in the 70’s. Do you think the critics are kinder to Fanny now?
Jean: Probably overall. There just isn’t enough publicity on us for me to give you a really comprehensive answer on that.
TD: Why do you think people had such a hard time at the time believing that you all could play your instruments instead of thinking that you all were like some female version of the Monkees, or Josie and the Pussycats, or something?
Jean: Because women just don’t play like that, and especially at that time. It was just a male domain. There were just men that played rock and roll music. So people are always skeptical of change, and they just had never seen it, and they didn’t believe it could happen.
TD: Did that hurt the feelings of the band a lot at the time?
Jean: Nah, we were too busy being mad at each other.
TD: In recent years, you’ve been working with your sister. How do you feel about the stuff that you all have been doing for the past, what is it, 20 years or so?
Jean: Well, it’s not really 20 years. I didn’t work with June for a long time. I was having kids, so I’d say it’s probably only the last ten years that I’ve been doing work with her. I think that the music that we do is just so sophisticated and very rhythmic and intricate and wonderful, you know. But, it’s again, how do you get this out into the public eye? You need the backing of a record company with the funding, or you need to have a terrific manager, or you need to be able to pay publicists to do the right thing, etc., etc., and we just don’t have that kind of funding. So it is what it is. I’m very proud of the work that we do.
TD: So what else have you been doing the past few years?
Jean: I do some music stuff, but that’s not really the work I do. The work I do is I’m a certified herbalist, and I also do healing work, all homographic re-patterning, so I help clients with their issues, the emotional issues, and work in the energy field and shift things and, you know, so I’m really involved with very alternative cutting-edge kind of work.
TD: Do you ever do any session work anymore?
Jean: Yeah, just last week. Teresa Trull is producing some tracks for an artist named Diedra McCullough, and Leo and I went and played on four cuts. Last year, Leo and I played on Lisa Collins’, she’s a singer from San Francisco…really wonderful big momma kind of voice, produced by Mary Watkins…and we played on that whole album. But other than that, really the work that I do is the healing work.
TD: How do you feel about your life at this point in time? Do you feel pretty contented?
Jean: Yes, absolutely. You know, I’m quite happy with many, many things that are happening in my life, and I’m finding peace with myself. The whole point of this life is to be able to get up in the morning and really enjoy who you are as a person and be able to enjoy little things that happen in your day and not think of all the stuff that you didn’t get done or that you don’t have. I mean, that stuff drives you crazy. So yes, overall, I’m very happy with my life.
Jean’s Pop Matters Interview
(What follows is an interview Jean Millington did with a website called PopMatters)
If you don’t know who Fanny is, you will by the end of this article.
Though debate continues about whether the discourse of “Women in Rock” reinforces gender separatism in popular music, the fact is that female musicians, historically, have endured a plethora of issues completely foreign to their male peers. Women have had to wage combat in the male-dominated medium of rock and roll, fighting sexual objectification and condescending remarks of the “You play good for a girl” variety. Fanny was among the first bands to fight the status quo head on and illustrate to the narrow-minded masses that a group need not the Y chromosome to rock harder than Led Zeppelin.
Signed to Reprise in 1969, Fanny included sisters Jean Millington (bass) and June Millington (guitar), with Alice de Buhr (drums) and Nickey Barclay (keyboards). June Millington proposed the name “Fanny” to the band members, thinking it represented a female guardian angel watching over the group as they endured the inevitable sexism. Reprise capitalized on the band’s name in a marketing campaign that nearly rendered the music secondary to the obvious double entendre – “Get Behind Fanny” (the slogan was actually a joke suggested by Barclay that management took quite seriously).
Producer and pop marksmen Richard Perry helmed production on their first three albums—Fanny (1970), Charity Ball (1971), and Fanny Hill (1972) – but brought their sizzling stage show down to a simmer in the studio. Matters improved little when Todd Rundgren was enlisted for Mother’s Pride (1973). The albums simply did not accurately convey the true measure of each band member’s musicianship nor did they contain the rawness of their concerts, which were among the most heralded rock and roll events of their time.
Jean Millington recently spoke with me about the tail end of Fanny’s career that culminated with their last album, Rock and Roll Survivors (1974). By then, June Millington and Alice de Buhr had left the band and were replaced by Patti Quatro and Brie Howard, respectively. With the advent of glam rock, Fanny’s stage show had become more theatrical. Fanny joined a roster of similarly glammed-up and costumed acts like T. Rex, KISS, and Parliament when Rock and Roll Survivors found a home on Neil Bogart’s Casablanca Records. Fanny gave the label its second Top 40 hit when “Butter Boy” charted at #29 in February 1975. Unfortunately, Fanny had disintegrated by the time the song reached its chart peak.
Though our conversation focused on the end of Fanny’s career, Millington reflected on some of the group’s earlier work for Reprise, all of which was released on a deluxe four-CD set by Rhino, First Time in a Long Time (2002). In listening to the music four decades later, and hearing Jean’s vivid recollections, let the record show that long before The Runaways, The Slits, Hole, and Sleater-Kinney took the stage, the members of Fanny were blazing trails and emphasizing that there was more to a name than cheeky sloganeering. (Note: additional portions of this interview will appear in PopMatters’ forthcoming retrospective celebrating the 35th anniversary of Casablanca Records.)
Did the band consciously approach Rock and Roll Survivors as a conceptual piece?
Yes. Nickey was always extremely influenced by the English rock and roll scene. I still consider her to be quite a musical genius. At that time, it was the whole glam rock era. With the addition of Patti into the band, who was very theatrical, that was just the direction it was taking. We thought, Why don’t we go ahead and make a cohesive thing and have a direction. It’s really about after all that we’d been through, we had still survived. We were rock and roll survivors. It really was a conscious thought.
Describe your relationship with Vini Poncia. Was he selected by you or management to produce Rock and Roll Survivors?
He was selected by management. We hung out a lot with Vini on a very personal level. Basically, in retrospect, I understand what had happened. Richard Perry collaborated a lot with Vini. I don’t remember what project Richard was involved with at the time but I kind of get the feeling that we were handed over to Vini because Richard was really busy. Plus, I don’t think the rock and roll thing was Richard’s forte at that time. I think he thought that Vini could do a better job for us. I don’t think he really got who we were. He’s a really great guy, and we had a lot of fun with Vini, but as a producer, I don’t think he was really as strong as what we actually needed.
Did you interact much with the other acts at Casablanca?
Not really. I think that the most that the band stayed together after June and Alice left the band, whatever configurations that we put together, was a year and a half, maybe just a year. The band fell apart. We didn’t have time to build relationships within the context of the record company, like it happened at Reprise Records.
In retrospect, would you have done anything different with Rock and Roll Survivors?
Yes! (laughs) We just really lost the hard-rock edge we had with (the original) Fanny. The original Fanny, there was just so much real, deep musicianship and such a groove that happened with the four of us. As far as the musicianship of it all, June definitely is a heavyweight. Patti, she’s fine and all of that, but she’s just much more about the appearance and the theatricality of it. To me, there just wasn’t enough “meat”, if you will. I listened to it within the last year and I was just kind of appalled of how “non-groove” it sounded to me. For heaven’s sake, cutting “Sally Go ‘Round the Roses” with Brie singing the lead vocal, that should have kicked ass. I cringed when I heard the track. I said, “Jesus I can’t believe we sounded that wimpy!”
Going back to your earlier work, what are your impressions now of the albums you did with Richard Perry? What was it like with him in the studio?
I really was kind of loathe to listen to those tracks because what would happen is that Richard was very much pop-oriented and, frankly, I don’t think he did the band justice on record because we would cut these tracks that were really biting and big and then Richard would “pop-ify” them. Of course, we’d be sent out on the road and he would mix while we were gone. There was nothing we could do. We felt like he took the starch out of a lot of the tracks. I just have to tell you a quick story about my sister June. We were recording in Apple Studios and Geoff Emerick, who was The Beatles’ engineer, was engineering the tracks. There was this one song – I can’t remember which one it was – and June had her amp turned up to ten. Richard went into the studio, he turned her amp down to three or four, and June was just fit to be tied. Somehow the dialogue came up with Geoff, and June said to Geoff something along the lines of, “How did George (Harrison) get that sound?” and Geoff replied, “Well…he had the amp on eleven” (laughs). For the most part, I don’t go back and listen to the tracks. Then, when we had the reissue with Rhino Records (First Time in a Long Time 2002), I actually listened to the stuff and I was quite impressed. I really was. I was surprised because we had been so upset by being locked out of the studio.
Tell me about working with Todd Rundgren on Mother’s Pride (1973).
One of the major reasons we went with Todd was because we had these meetings with him and he knew that, with Richard, we had been locked out of the studio. We thought, He’s a musician, he’s hip, he’s cool, he’s one of us. At the end of the day, he locked us out of the studio because he wanted to get it over and done with and go record with his band. We were absolutely pissed.
Do you own the masters to any of the Fanny material?
I have no control over it. Right now, June is really trying to work with a man named Tim McHugh. He’s in L.A. and I think he’s quite a well-known film editor. He’s got quite a bit of heavy credentials. June is working with Tim with getting the rights to different things. Between him and Alice, they were able to get copies of a show we had done in Germany called The Beat Club. It was a whole hour. At the time, we had been on the road. That show was just absolutely slamming. They’re trying to figure out how we can get the rights to it. She’s making inquiries. We’re trying to find out from Warner Bros. what we can do. I think at present time it’s something ridiculous like $150 for every ten seconds of a tune.
You really have such an important legacy.
Not to be egotistical or anything, but I don’t there has been a women’s group since Fanny who played with as much depth, musically, as Fanny did.
Is there a chance that Fanny would re-unite?
It would be an interesting thing to come together and do that. I just don’t know…Nickey is in Australia. From what I understand, she still harbors a hell of a lot of resentment. For the longest time, June was just mad as could be and could never, ever think of working with Nickey but June’s really been working on her emotional issues and I think June has gotten to the point where she’d consider it. I honestly don’t know if Nickey would be able to do that. I’d be up for it. I’m sure Alice would be up for it too. I just don’t know at this point about Nickey because she said some pretty vitriolic things in an article that came out about two years ago.
The April before last, we went to Berklee School of Music and we were presented with a lifetime achievement award. They contacted us. Me, June, and Alice rehearsed for about a week. The three of us performed as a trio at the presentation. I must say, it really rocked. Alice, at that point, had not played in forever. She really just didn’t do music at all whereas of course June has IMA (The Institute for the Musical Arts) and the Rock and Roll Girls Camp. She’s producing and she still plays and I’ve also been playing pretty much once, if not twice a year with June and my son, Lee Madeloni. He’s a great drummer. When June and Lee and I perform, it’s pretty unbelievable I have to say. We still absolutely kick butt.
When Fanny was in our heyday, what was always wanted of us was to go into that T&A and sell the sex. We resisted for a long time. One of the reasons June left the band was she felt like we were pushed too much into looking like sexual objects. She hated it. The thing is, it did happen to us. At the time, I thought, Okay well we’ll break barriers and we’ll do such and such, and I thought for sure by 2009, things would have changed. They’re worse than they were in the ‘80s, I think. Women are just exploited and it’s not about the talent. It’s so disrespectful to women what’s come about. A lot of the young girls either have anorexia or are incredibly overweight. There’s this whole thing of where do we fit in? What are we supposed to be? In the arts, music, theater, and in movies, women are still considered that the more sex appeal you have, that’s what’s going to sell. If me, June, and Alice resurge—we’re all almost 60—there ain’t gonna be a lot of T and A! (laughs) It would be on the merits of who we are, musically.
—Christian John Wikane, PopMatters Website