Season 2, Episode 7:  “Girls Do Not Enter” ft June Millington

NARRATION: When I first saw a 1971 video of the all women band called Fanny, my first thought was, ok Asian-American women fronting a kick-ass rock and roll ensemble fifty years ago? How do I not know about this? 

Fanny was the first all women band to be signed to a major label. First all women band to crack the Billboard top 40. They should be a household name, how are they not a household name? 

The next thought came rapid fire, ooh they can play. The bass player was in the pocket so lithe with groove, and the guitarist was shredding. The drummer hit with raw power and the keyboard player was an engine. 

In the video, they’re in front of this cobalt blue screen and you can tell that it’s all recorded entirely live, complete with false song starts, and banter between the musicians. As the band plays, the camera keeps zooming in on their faces, which are hyper serious, almost solemn. It was then, during one of the closeups, that this wave of emotions started to well up in me. 

I was in this kind of memory cloud. I flashed on those times that I’d get to a venue and the male sound engineers wouldn’t even look me in the eye, but only talk to my male band mates. But I felt like I had to be nice because they were the ones in charge of making sure I sounded good. Or the times when I’d be collaborating with a male musician that everyone told me was amazing, but then homie would decide he knew more about my songs than I did. 

And then this entirely other memory came up. That one cold January night in the West Village when I ran into the curator of a prestigious Jazz festival in the street. He greeted me warmly, and then boldly told me well you’re not Jazz and you haven’t been for a long time, as if he understood my own story and identity more than I did. Excuse me? 

I snapped back to the present. To that blue screen video. Fanny? They must have had it worse. I knew they had fought to get where they got, but how did they fight? What was the fight like? And on top of all that, were they able to tell the world who they truly were? I got curious. So I called up the band’s co-founder, Filipina-American guitarist and trailblazer June Millington, and I asked her. 

My name is Meklit and this is Movement, music and migration, remixed.

June Millington grew up in Manila, right after World War Two. Her father was an officer in the US Navy. Her mother was Filipina. She and her sister Jean were in that awkward in between place they didn’t quite fit in with any group. But they always had each other, and eventually, they had music. 

June Millington: Seventh grade, we had to go to Assumption College, which is a Filipino all girls school run by nuns. Can you imagine? But they gave me a gift at the end of the year for being, I guess, a good girl. When I say they, I'm talking about My Angels and My Ancestors.

Meklit Hadero: Mm hmm.

June Millington: So, there the whole class was sitting in front of Mother Milagros. You can't make this stuff up. I mean, it's incredible. Mother Milagros was the strictest of the strict. She had her veil on, the whole thing. And she always had her ruler in her hand, you know? And I heard this sound coming down the hall. The hall was actually an open air veranda. You could see trees, you know, you could smell the air. I heard this sound coming down the hall and I got up out of my chair like I was a sleep sleepwalker and she didn't say a thing and nobody said a thing.

I was like, they didn't even see me. I mean, I got up, I walked to the hallway, walked down about two or three classes and at the far end in the corner was a girl sitting playing a little guitar. And I remember exactly the thought that hit me, which was why didn't anybody tell me? I was shocked. I knew immediately that was my stairway to heaven, baby.

Meklit Hadero: And what did they not tell you?

June Millington: There was a guitar.

Meklit Hadero: There was a guitar? 

June Millington: That such a 

Meklit Hadero: That it existed?

June Millington:That such a thing existed, that there's the golden tones, the invitation to go on a magic carpet ride.

Meklit Hadero: Mm.

June Millington: It was all there. I could feel it, I could hear it. Well, that little girl, She never turned around from the corner to look at me. I never saw her before. And I never saw her since. 

NARRATION: That encounter came at a fateful moment in June's life. 

June Millington: I couldn't stop talking about it. I went home and I just talked about guitar, guitar, guitar non stop. 

NARRATION: A month later she turned thirteen. At the same time, her family started preparing to leave the Philippines for good. 

June Millington: And my mom made a trip to the Southern Philippines, her last trip. And she came back with a small Mother of Pearl inlaid handmade guitar. Made in the southern Philippines.

NARRATION: It was a birthday present for June but in the end for Jean as well. 

June Millington: Of course she wanted to play too. So by the time we got on the ship two months later, we had two guitars, because I wasn't gonna let her play mine all the time. You know? That's how it is with sisters.

Meklit Hadero: Mm hmm. Always. Yes.

June Millington: Yeah.

NARRATION: The family boarded the SS Cleveland in Manila, bound for California. They had a month at sea to practice guitar, and also to prepare themselves to enter a new reality. 

June Millington: And I remember, after we crossed the gangplank, I saw a white man kneeling on deck, coiling a rope. And I just was so shocked because I didn't know that white men would do common labor.

Meklit Hadero: Oh, wow

June Millington: I had no idea they were all officers, CEOs of companies, 

Meklit Hadero: Wow

June Millington: Rich and positioned.

Meklit Hadero: Yes.

NARRATION: June was in for many surprises in California. 

The family settled in Sacramento. There were Asian kids, black and brown kids, kids who spoke Spanish. But once again the two Millington sisters didn't quite know where they fit, and so pulled closer together. 

It was 1961 in California. The Beach Boys put out their first single, “Surfin”. "Run Around Sue" was on the radio constantly. The Millington girls were soaking it in, and they had decided to start a band. 

June Millington: My second song that I wrote was called “Miss Wallflower of 62”. And we played it at the Junior High Variety Show with two other girls and it was a hit. And right away kids passing us in the hall would say, I like that song and then rush on. Well, that was enough for us. I mean, we existed instantly. That was all we needed to be seen, to have a light reflected off of us. Oh my God, what a big deal, we were committed from then on. 

NARRATION: By 1969 the sisters had played in a handful of bands and moved down to LA, dreaming of a record deal. They got plenty of gigs, but no deals. 

That year they decided to play one last open mic night at the Troubadour, then pack up their things and go back to Sacramento. What they didn't know, was that the assistant of a rising star record producer was in the audience that night. And she called the next day. 

June Millington: The phone rang. And I answered it and this woman says, what are you doing? And I said, well, we're, we've just loaded our bus. We're just about to leave and she said, No, no, no, wait, hold on, don't go, don't do anything. And she told us to go to a studio, about ten minutes away in Hollywood.

NARRATION: They went to the studio, and there they met Richard Perry.

June Millington: Richard Perry was always looking for raw talent that he could develop. And he was really good at developing talent. Look at all his hits.

NARRATION: Richard Perry is one of those people that, even if you don't know his name, you know the people he worked with Barbra Streisand, Harry Nilsson, The Pointer Sisters, Carly Simon there are a lot. But those records all came later. In 1969, Perry was just getting started.

June Millington: Richard's big hit at the moment was “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” by Tiny Tim. What's the tie in? We were considered to be a novelty act.

NARRATION: Perry believed that America was ready to fall in love with an all female rock band. And he had just found them. 

June Millington: He fell in love with us and we fell in love with him. 

NARRATION: At this point, things moved very quickly. Perry convinced Warner Brothers to offer the band a record contract without even hearing them play. The label then rented a Spanish-style mansion just off the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, where the band could live together and play music at all hours. 

At that point, the band was just June, Jean and a drummer, but they soon added a fourth woman to the line-up, matching the classic rock band quartet. The last thing they needed was a name. The label and the band wanted something feminine, but also a little edgy. They came up with Fanny. 

Their self-titled album came out the next year. The cover showed the four woman, shot from behind, arm in arm. They're wearing bell bottoms, hair flowing all the way down their backs, and in a playful gesture, one of them is grabbing another woman's butt. 

The album included a cover of the Eric Clapton guitar feature, "Badge," which had been a hit just the year before. Coming from the first all female rock band to put out a major label record, it was a statement. 

But it very quickly became clear that even though the novelty factor had helped to launch their career, it would also have costs. 

June Millington: I mean, half the time, people expected to see a topless band, and I am not joking. I am not joking. I mean, I remember one of the first gigs that we played out of state was in Iowa. You could tell they were expecting a topless band.

Meklit Hadero: Was there ever, going to be a moment because of the misogyny like that you were ever going to be thought of as a band, just a band? Did you ever just want to be musicians without the extra label?

June Millington: All the time, all the time. You know, I mean, when we started off in high school, yes, it was, Oh my God, we're going to be the first all girl band to make it. But once we got down to LA. It was just so big, it was so insurmountable. 

Meklit Hadero: Yeah

June Millington: And we couldn't just, even when we wanted to be known as like, just a band, I put that in quotes, the just, they wouldn't let us because all the, I would say at least 99, maybe 99.9 percent of the reviews, even if they liked us, there would be a disclaimer. But you know, I don't really like to see girls up on stage or the guitar player is so derivative.

 And it was truly horrible. It was all of society saying, girls do not enter. And on the other hand, wait, we can make money off of these girls. Maybe we should let them do a few gigs with us. And all girl bands were never allowed to do gigs together. Never.

Meklit Hadero: You mean on the same bill. Like it had, you had to be the only one as the novelty.

June Millington: We were huge fans of this band called Bertha in L.A. Huge fans. We knew each other. We never did a gig together. Never. And as a result, we grew apart, which is too bad. You know, because we woulda, we coulda had some company on that, this long, strange journey.

NARRATION: It makes me think of all the novelty acts in music history, who ultimately managed to transcend their novelty not just musically, but in the public imagination. I mean the Monkees were a made for TV imitation of the Beatles. But they also made great songs that are remembered and played to this day as just that, great 60s pop songs. No disclaimer, no asterisk. I mean, the Beatles themselves were kind of a novelty act when they first started, with the haircuts and goofy antics. And yet the world was ready and willing for them to be so much more than that.

For Fanny, the weight of their novelty was so much harder to shake off.

They returned with a second album in 1971, "Charity Ball", which included their first top 40 hit. They released another album in '72, and another in '73. They got to record and tour with their heroes. But for June, there was also this sense that they had hit a wall, or really, a ceiling. They couldn't quite break through to that next level.

June Millington: I was in the Bay Area once and I saw an article in the San Francisco Chronicle or something like that where Queenie Taylor, who worked with the Fillmore, she gave this quote and I sat there and I didn't say anything to anyone, but I was so hurt. She said that we were just copycats. She said we were a one trick pony. I Just sat there and I, yeah I melted in the humiliation of that comment. Just humiliated. How? This is a woman. How could she say that? This shit went on for years, you know?

Meklit Hadero: Wow. 

June Millington: I mean, I think that's part of the reason why we fell apart.

Meklit Hadero: Because of that pressure.

June Millington: Yeah, I mean. Here's the thing that you may not realize. I worked so hard that I actually, after the gigs, kept practicing. So I had a tape recorder brought up to my hotel room with a little amp, and I kept practicing that night after the gig. And sometimes when I woke up and then it'd be all packed up and we'd be off to the gig, the next gig, of which it finally got to the point where I didn't even know where we were going. It didn't matter. 

Meklit Hadero: Right

June Millington: I mean, if you watch all those rock shows we were on or, you don't see me smiling too much. Maybe a couple of gigs, but my main thing was play your ass off. Do not make a mistake because I knew I was representing all women and girls coming up. And I was not,

Meklit Hadero: That's a lot of pressure.

June Millington: It was a lot of pressure. It was a lot. I liken it to being on a bad acid trip. Which, I had one that I remember. I didn't take acid that much, but it's like one minute you were having fun, the next second you're thinking, where am I? Who are all these people? Why are they pointing at me? Why are they laughing at me? You know, it's,

Meklit Hadero: Right

June Millington: It went back to my childhood. Just like that.

NARRATION: Part of what’s so interesting to me about the Fanny story, is that even with all the attention on their identity on who it was making these badass records the music world could never actually see the whole of their identity. 

In 1970, no one was talking about intersectionality. The idea hadn’t been invented yet.

Meklit Hadero: You know, when I think about that kind of era in music, and I think about, like, when I think about, like, Sly and the Family Stone, for example, and how being a mixed race band was, like, this huge part of their narrative. It's like, y'all were that too, but that didn't make it as a part of the narrative. Was that something that was important for you?

June Millington: Well, Jean and I didn't realize it at the time, but nobody talked about the fact that we were half Asian. That we're Filipina, actually, in culture, so it hurt. But we couldn't address it because we didn't quite know it yet. So it was a deep and lingering hurt, but we couldn't say, Oh, this is hurting. This part of my psyche is hurting. 

Meklit Hadero: Right

June Millington: We didn't know. And that's even worse, I think, in retrospect. You know, the whole package deal was very, very what, in the Philippine language, halo halo. Which is actually a dessert where you have all sorts of stuff mixed up with ice, which on a hot day when you're walking around Manila and you could buy  halo halo from a guy with a stand was amazing. But Halo Hollo was our life.

Meklit Hadero: Mmm.

June Millington: It was all mixed up in this topsy turvy. How were we going to negotiate our way through the Filipina or Filipino-ness in the music industry? We didn't even run into anyone. We didn't play with other bands who were Filipino. You know, it was big enough that Santana made it, and he was Latin, so you can't, you cannot imagine what a lonely place we were in. We didn't have a mirror looking back at us saying, It's okay, you guys are good. It's okay. 

NARRATION: June Millington left Fanny in 1973, after their fourth album came out. She has recorded and toured with many bands since often including her sister Jean but over the years, her focus has turned more and more towards mentorship. In 1986, in a collaboration with the Angela Davis she co-founded The Institute for the Musical Arts specifically to nurture the musical talents of young women and girls. 

We recorded our conversation from the IMA studio in rural Western Massachusetts, where June continues leading classes and camps to this day. 

June Millington: Every single camp, every single summer, what I say to the girls is, don't worry about failing. You're gonna fail. We're all gonna fail together at this camp. I'm gonna make a lot of mistakes. But, pick yourself up. Don't lose heart. Why? Why are you going to lose heart? You don't know where life's taking you, you know? We didn't know we were gonna meet all the Beatles . You know, we didn't know about all the good luck and fortune that was gonna happen with all the disappointments. 

It's only in retrospect, now that I can see it, see the balance, and see the different lessons that we've all learned. And I can pass on that nugget: don't let yourself be humiliated, even by the smallest mistake that only you recognize. You know, a lot of times they're the only one who knows. Don't show people that you just made a mistake. It doesn't matter. There's always, you know, there is literally always the next moment. And I mean that sincerely. There is always the next moment. And that is your chance for rebirth. 

NARRATION: What surprised me so deeply about June’s story, was how in her life as a musician, visibility and invisibility went hand in hand. Like there was that first moment when June and Jean started the band, and they suddenly emerged out of the shadows of high school obscurity.  But then came those years when Fanny was on the Billboard charts, and yet so invisible to audiences, that people who had even bought tickets to their concert thought they were strippers. 

And what about the baffling fact that back in the early 1970s, no one in the press no one was talking about the fact they were Asian. Being women with instruments was so much of a shock that the story just stoped there. 

It reminds me of a truth that one of my heroes, Kimberlee Crenshaw, zeroes in on. Kimberlee Crenshaw is a scholar, civil rights advocate, and the creator of intersectionality, which refers to, and I’m quoting here is, the interconnectedness of social categories, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, and more. She’s talking about the ways that for example being a white woman, and being an Asian woman, are very different experiences. Because race and gender overlap in a human life. 

Kimberlee Crenshaw invented this idea because she realized that when we don’t have a framework to incorporate information, we just don’t see it. For me, intersectionality is an antidote to invisibility. I like to compare it to the invention of the telescope. You know, the tool that finally let us see that those black patches in outer space were really full of galaxies, except that intersectionality turns the lens towards us so we can see ourselves and society. 

When I first read about intersectionality in college, it was like getting wings. I was like, oh, yes! I am black, I am a woman, I am an immigrant, to name just a few categories and I don’t have to cut any of these parts of myself off. Now, in 2024, learning about the life of June Millingon, with the gift of intersectionality, I can see her on her own terms immigrant, queer, Filipina, American, buddhist, woman, musician, organizer, educator and more. The culture can see her now too. Finally, after fifty years, the world has caught up to June Millington. 

Movement is produced by Ian Coss and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our editor is Megan Tan. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are supported by the Mellon Foundation and distributed by PRX.

If you enjoyed this story, consider sending it to a friend, or leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. Believe me, this stuff really does help people find the show. If you happen to be curious about my albums, or performances, you can learn more at meklitmusic.com. Movement will be back with new episodes every other Tuesday through the summer and fall.