Face the Music - Fanny, or, "So you thought you knew 70's rock. . ."

[Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank]

I thought I had a decent handle on 70’s rock. Turns out, there are still groups for me to discover. After watching their live performance video, I watched and read some interviews. Interesting stuff, as you would imagine. Almost any group would have stories about touring and performing at that time, let alone an all-woman band in 1970.

Fanny performed from 1969 to 1974, their most successful lineup consisting of sisters June and Jean Millington on guitar and bass respectively, Alice De Buhr on drums, and after much lobbying, Nickey Barclay agreed to join them on piano & organ. They toured with/opened for Deep Purple, Chicago, Jethro Tull and more. Earning the admiration of David Bowie among others, they had moderate success but never cracked the big-time.

They weren’t a gimmick group, but a lot of people at the time wrote them off as such. It probably didn’t help matters that they called themselves, “Fanny”, which means, “ass” in America, and something quite the opposite in England. Their story has almost all the rock cliches - bad contracts, love affairs, etc - avoiding only the classic, “horrifying descent into drug/alcohol addiction.” They hung out/recorded with a who’s who of 70’s music. For example: Lowell George, Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Keith Moon, and Barbara Streisand, which is probably the first and last time in history those final two names have been listed back-to-back. The group clashed constantly over creative matters. June, the guitarist, was a fan of Motown girl-groups for example, whereas Nickey, the piano/organ player, hated them with a holy passion (one reason why she was reluctant to join the group). Still, they managed some solid songs, and they were obviously no pretenders when it came to their instruments.

Here they are in a live performance, but they have 4 studio albums, and I think they’re all on Youtube if that’s your interested.

Blind Alley - with Nickey Barclay on lead vocals. She reminds me of a less shrill Ruby Starr, which is a good thing IMO. Great energy on this one.

Ain’t That Peculiar - a fun Marvin Gaye cover. June on vocals and slide guitar.

Thinking of You - the softer side of Fanny, with nice harmonies from the Millington sisters.

Hope someone gets something out of this. I discover interesting things on Youtube and I like to share it. It was either this, or post about the guy who uses his pet minks at ratters. . .

A link to a similar thread I made a little while back, featuring Chuck Prophet.

[hogarth]

Speaking of discovering new veins of '70s rock, I’ve been listening to the playlist “Années 70 Rock Québec” on Youtube:

Out of 131 songs, there are probably less than half a dozen that I’ve heard before: some Pagliaro songs get airplay on English-Canadian rock radio, and Mashmakhan’s song “As the Years Go By” is pretty common. There’s some great stuff there. I don’t understand all of the lyrics (especially the joual stuff), but I’m pretty bad with English rock lyrics too!

[pulykamell]

It’s more late 60s, but they’ve got a couple albums in the early 70s, but are you familiar with Love? I had never heard of them growing up with classic rock stations, and they have become much more well known in the past 20 years. But if you haven’t, you really should check them out.

[Johanna]

Fanny is an excellent call. My first wife introduced me to them decades ago. It’s really good to see them appreciated. Fanny and Suzi Quatro were the first to prove to the world that WOMEN can ROCK.

[RealityChuck]

I remember Fanny, but the one who “proved” woman can rock was April Lawton of Ramatam.

[P-man]

@RealityChuck

I remember Fanny, but the one who “proved” woman can rock was April Lawton of Ramatam.

I disagree. Sister Rosetta Tharpe proved women can rock.

[RealityChuck]

@P-man

I disagree. Sister Rosetta Tharpe proved women can rock.

I won’t disagree – but that was proto-rock, before the genre was established. April Lawton showed a woman could play hard rock guitar.

[Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank]

proved women can rock.

I’m glad the time as passed for such distinctions, though in their era, all of the women spoken of here did just that.

I haven’t listened to ANY French-Canadian rock. Not sure how much I’d like that, but I’ll give them a listen. As for a band named, “Love”, nope, never heard of ‘em. I’ll google “Love band” and hope I dont’ get sex supplies

Ramatam is a bit much for me, but I’m glad for variety. Never know what will catch your ear.

[Johanna]

Absolutely, April Lawton rocks with the best of 'em. That was some sonic delight. Thank you. I notice the year was 1972, which is contemporaneous with the rise of Suzi and Fanny. So let’s confer the award jointly on all three of 'em. Coincidentally or not, 1972 was also the year of “I Am Woman”—which is obviously not rock ‘n’ roll, but it proclaimed “I can do anything!”

Sister Rosetta was the prophet who led the women out of the wilderness to the promised land of Rock, even if she didn’t get there with them, she’d been to the mountaintop!

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank

I haven’t listened to ANY French-Canadian rock. Not sure how much I’d like that, but I’ll give them a listen. As for a band named, “Love”, nope, never heard of ‘em. I’ll google “Love band” and hope I dont’ get sex supplies

Love

Love is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965. During their period of greatest influence, they were originally led by Arthur Lee[5] who wrote most of their songs, though some of their best-known songs were written by Bryan MacLean. One of the first racially-diverse American rock bands, their music drew on an eclectic range of sources including folk rock, hard rock, blues, jazz, flamenco, mariachi and orchestral pop.[6]

While finding only modest success on the music charts, Love would come to be praised by critics as one of the most influential American rock groups of all time. Their third album, Forever Changes (1967), is generally regarded as their masterpiece, and was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2011.[7]

Two songs off that album, Alone Again Or and A House is Not a Motel, are as strong as anything put out by California groups in 1967. Love was huge in Los Angeles, rivaling Buffalo Springfield. Broke up for pretty much the same reasons, too, so that there never was a good follow-up album.

[markn_1]

And The Shaggs proved that not all women can rock.

(Link to Youtube audio recording of their “song” My Pal Foot Foot.)

[pulykamell]

@markn_1

And The Shaggs proved that not all women can rock.

That one is kind of up in the air. I actually do like them. Apparently Frank Zappa loved them. It’s a weird, weird piece of rock history, and, objectively, they do sound awful – or should sound awful – but there’s some kind of charm there.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

I hope that some of you remember that Goldie and the Gingerbreads, whose lead singer Goldie (born Genyusha Zelkovicz) became Genya Ravan of Ten Wheels After, was the first all-female rock group signed to a record contract back around 1965. Goldie was pop, but Ten Wheels After was blues-rock with Ravan belting it out like Janis.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Exapno_Mapcase

I hope that some of you remember that Goldie and the Gingerbreads, whose lead singer Goldie (born Genyusha Zelkovicz) became Genya Ravan of Ten Wheels After, was the first all-female rock group signed to a record contract back around 1965. Goldie was pop, but Ten Wheels After was blues-rock with Ravan belting it out like Janis.

And of course I meant Ten Wheel Drive, even though my brain somehow conflated the group with Ten Years After. :smack:

[whitetho]

Fanny had two Billboard top 40 hits in the U.S.: Charity Ball (#40, 1971) and Butter Boy (#29, 1975).

[drad_dog]

@Exapno_Mapcase

Love

Two songs off that album, Alone Again Or and A House is Not a Motel, are as strong as anything put out by California groups in 1967. Love was huge in Los Angeles, rivaling Buffalo Springfield. Broke up for pretty much the same reasons, too, so that there never was a good follow-up album.

The 4th Love album Four Sail, with mostly new personnel, is very worthy too.

[Ukulele_Ike]

I’ve always thought of Forever Changes as a pretty damn famous rock album, I dig it myownself. Never occurred to me that Love was an obscure band.

As for other early racially-mixed L.A. rockers, check out The Rising Sons, a strong blues group that got together in 1965 and was the first band for BOTH Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. Not sure why THEY’RE not more appreciated.

Rising Sons

[Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank]

@whitetho

Fanny had two Billboard top 40 hits in the U.S.: Charity Ball (#40, 1971) and Butter Boy (#29, 1975).

I never heard them on the radio, though admittedly, I was just a bit young to catch their heyday. I caught a lot of other artists of the time, though. Maybe they were a bit more fleeting than others, or they just weren’t popular in my home town.

Somewhere in my reading, I found out that,“Butter Boy”, written by bassist June Millington, was about David Bowie. Now that I’ve actually listened closely to the lyrics, I think I understand why Bowie was such a big fan.

WRT The Shaggs: Are they truly doing what they WANT with their instruments, or just merely doing the best they can? I’m not at all convinced they can even call themselves musicians at the time of those recordings.

[Johanna]

Later on, in the '70s, the Shaggs had actually learned to play their instruments and sing, and they put out an album that was musically at least minimally competent, albeit not notable in any way.

[Johanna]

@Johanna

Later on, in the '70s, the Shaggs had actually learned to play their instruments and sing, and they put out an album that was musically at least minimally competent, albeit not notable in any way.

There must be a lesson in that somewhere.