Fanny – Fanny LP orange

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Fanny’s 1970 debut album. For the first time, a group of women (sisters June and Jean Millington, Alice De Buhr and Nickey Barclay) wrote and sang their own songs, played their own instruments and, perhaps most importantly, rocked just as hard as any male band out there. And, as the first all female band signed to a major label (Reprise) and with superstar producer Richard Perry at the board, these four women became perhaps L.A.’s biggest “buzz band,” landing repeated bookings at the Whisky-a-Go-Go with a who’s who of rock’s glitterati in attendance. But, without a reference point with which to review them, the rock press was less than kind, often dismissing them as a novelty act. Fanny would have to become that reference point, and so they did for the generations of female rockers to come after them, from Joan Jett to Girlschool to Courtney Love and beyond. They were truly the Godmothers of Chick Rock.