I had the opportunity to watch this documentary back in August of 2021. The documentary is set to premiere on May 22nd on PBS.
FANNY: The Right to Rock is the story of June and Jean Millington, two Filipino-American sisters who started a band in the sixties and became a beacon of light, and gave all women, the right to rock.
Fanny was the first all-female band to release an LP with a major record label (Warner/Reprise, 1970) and, despite releasing Top 40 hits, touring extensively with bands like CHICAGO, Steely Dan, and citing David Bowie as one of their biggest fans, their groundbreaking impact in music has seem to be lost in time.
The fact these two sisters were Filipina people-of-color during a revolutionary time in music history is shocking. Fanny made headlines as the first all-female band to make major label releases and were often written about in press as challenging male ego and defying the odds. Seeing these women play their instruments and play them well was something not common to the time — and they were just doing it.
Their story is absolutely fascinating. Their house on Fanny Hill served as a home to many women in music, where they enjoyed a sisterhood and a love, a home of openness to people of all kinds, even housing the likes of Bonnie Raitt.
Much of what is known of Fanny is lost in music history. David Bowie himself stated he would live to see the day that Fanny would be recognized as the band that everyone should know — and we should live to see that day.
More than 50 years later since the start of Fanny, the women have reunited and they’ve recorded a new album.
The first thing that caught my attention while watching this documentary was how legit their music sounded of their time. Of course, why wouldn’t their music sound legit, right? I guess hearing a women of color band making music decades ago was something we never even heard of or thought about… Many photos in media we see of that time are white-centric, with white role models donning long locks and wavy hair with retro outfits.
Through these images I saw women who looked like me, women of my own kind: Filipino women of color making music, and being a whole hell of a lot good at it.
Their voices were true to their time, too, with their Beatles-esque meets Carpenters songwriting. They were lauded to be the female Beatles by their management and publicists. But what startled me was how no one, absolutely no one in their time, talked about how they were Filipino. They were obviously women of color and looked different from their peers, but that fact was left out of the conversation.
I love how openly June talks about her “Pinoy pride” and how she wants to loudly embrace her heritage. Representation is important as it’s always been, and I’m glad to see she that she still advocates and champions it, to this day.
Fascinatingly, she talks about growing up in Sacramento and dating boys and how parents would say their sons cannot date that “woman of color.” They even persuaded their sons that if they stopped dating her, they’d buy them a Mercedes (which one did and ended up getting). To talk about the culture of their time compared to today is such an entirely different era, and goes to to show how history and time changes so fast.
It is quite moving and inspiring to see the story of Fanny — their history and time, the accomplishments they’ve made, headlines they had. They were so iconic, and what wrecks my brain is knowing how in the hell do more people not know about them?! Why are they not more well-known?!
Seeing the image of Fanny in my YouTube spiral of videos, circulating in the hidden throes of the internet and the mere image of seeing these women in rock, is fascinating. Filipino sisters, in the sixties, on-air and on tour, playing iconic venues in Los Angeles like the Troubadour and being adored by the likes of “Butter Boy” David Bowie is quite phenomenal.
I believe everyone needs to know the impact Fanny made today — in music, for women, for people-of-color. They were the first of their kind and opened those doors. When other artists would write pop tracks and don sexier outfits (which they tried to push onto the young Fanny in their early teens and twenties), these women stayed true to themselves. They were a four-piece guitar, bass, keyboard and drums vocal act. They were a light to many and opened many doors to taking females in rock seriously, especially as musicians who could hold their own and said no to the regular expectations society put on them.
The word fanny itself as a name is enough of a statement, as it is defined as a vulgar term concerning women’s sexual organs. It’s bold, “punny” and perfectly encapsulates what these women are all about.
Fanny made an impact. And it’s time the rest of the world knew it too.
“Fanny: The Right to Rock is essential viewing for every student of rock history, not to mention feminism,” Marjorie Baumgarten of Austin Chronicle, states.
beauty within 