JUNE MILLINGTON — Nothing Like the Sound of Music
by Sue Barrett
 There’s nothing like the sound of music/
To take my spirit home
(June Millington — ‘Ladies on the Stage’)
June Millington was born in the Philippines and moved to California with her family when she was 13. With her younger sister Jean, she began playing in all-female bands while in high school and, in 1969, their band (which became known as “Fanny”) was signed by Reprise. Fanny was the first all-female rock band to be signed by a major record label and to gain international recognition. In 1973, June left Fanny, with the band breaking up a short time later. Since leaving Fanny, June has released a number of albums; played guitar for other performers (including Cris Williamson); and become involved in record production (e.g. Gwen Avery, Rashida Oji, Melanie DeMore, Pam Hall, Holly Near, Mary Watkins, Ferron, Bitch & Animal). In 1987, June co-founded The Institute for Musical Arts (IMA), a non-profit teaching, performing and recording facility dedicated to supporting women in music and its related businesses, whose activities include Rock ’n’ Roll Girls Camp sessions. June was honored with the Audio Engineering Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 and the Outmusic Heritage Award in 2005. In 2007, Fanny received the ROCKRGRL Women of Valor Award at Berklee School of Music in Boston, and June is currently working on an autobiography of her experiences in rock and in women’s music.
So how did you become a performer?
It started when I was a kid in the Philippines. I was playing piano when I was like eight and the family would get us to play for guests and other members of the family. Then my sister [Jean] and I picked up the ukulele — and the same thing — we’d sing for everyone. We had a passion for music — it obviously touched something deep within us that we needed to be connected to — and that remains to this day.
When we got to the United States [Sacramento, California], when I had just turned 13, we had just switched to guitars and we started to play in hootenannies and little events. Then we met other girls and started a band. I think we were in the right place at the right time. And I think that we were meant to do it — it feels like destiny. The hardest part was conceiving that we would remain an all-girl band and that we’d try to go to LA to get a record deal (which, in the ’60s, was unheard of). At that time, from ’65 to ’69 when we were in our high school band, most guys didn’t really think of girls as, “Oh, I want you in my band.”. It was more like, “Will you be my girlfriend?”. Now it’s, “Oh, I’d love to have you in my band, you’re a kick-ass guitar player.”. Then it was, “What! You play guitar? No way!”.
And when did you begin to write songs? And how you go about writing your songs?
I began to write songs as soon as I picked up the guitar — IMMEDIATELY. It was an essential form of self expression. It really brought us to life. You had to do it. I try to make sure that I have the time to write. It’s really just carving away the time. If I set aside even a half day, I can write a song. But, also, a lot times it will just come and I can feel it — I can feel the spirit of the song start to enter my body — so I’ll just try to put other things aside and let it come through me. That’s a fun aspect of songwriting. That’s the spiritual side. That’s the higher calling part to which I am attached.
When did you become aware of performers singing songs about lesbian lives?
It was when I first heard and met Cris Williamson [a couple of years after leaving Fanny]. I really was not in touch with it before then. I’m sure that there were [performers singing songs about lesbian lives], for instance, I loved Dusty Springfield — I loved her songs and her voice — but I didn’t know that she was a lesbian.
My then girlfriend at the time was Jackie Robbins, who had met Cris. We were living in Woodstock, New York and Cris sent Jackie a live concert tape. I was just in the house doing my thing and I heard this music in the living room. It was pretty loud — I liked it, it felt good. Then I heard this amazing eruption of emotion and applause, after probably every song, but definitely at the end of the show. Jackie said that Cris wanted her to play on her album and so she ended up in LA working on The Changer and the Changed. I didn’t know it, but Cris actually was a fan of mine, because she knew of Fanny. So she asked me to play on the album too. And I did.
It was a very gradual change for me to understand what was happening on that cultural/personal level. I was just so intent on my mission to do music come hell or high water that I was missing a lot of the subtleties of life — which is why I’d left Hollywood. I had intuited that I was in trouble and I had to leave — which was very difficult. It was hard to leave that whole scene, it was hard to leave rock ’n’ roll in that way, it was hard to leave the band that we had worked so hard to establish, it was hard to leave my sister. But I was falling apart. And although I had started to soften in the interim between leaving Fanny and meeting Cris, there were still a lot of hard edges due to the realities of life. I was like the point of a spear or a sword. I had developed myself to be that sharp in order to do what I was doing, so actually meeting Cris and being aware of lesbians doing music was in a way part of what I was looking for.
When I started playing with Cris, some of the women who knew about me (although they didn’t tell me at the time) resented me. There was this whole thing about women who worked with men, this whole men, men, men thing! When Cris let me play drums with her on the road, there were people complaining because I was playing a “man’s” instrument. All that kind of stuff was a big surprise to me. But I had endured so much bullshit already up to that point that I just kind of let it wash off me. My attitude was “this is what I’m doing — deal with it!”. So, yes, I would say that I was considered an oddity, but I would say more I was ignored because Cris was the star. And that was FINE with me, I loved that, I loved not feeling so objectified every second I was on stage. I was in the background — people were going, “Who’s that oriental woman playing with Cris Williamson? Where did she come from?”.
So I played with Cris from 1976 to 1979 and I think I knew deep inside that it was something that I had been searching for. It answered A LOT of questions for me. Cris helped the questions to be answered because I really believe that she came in knowing something, she embodies that, so being with her and playing with her taught me a lot of things. Watching her negotiate all the stuff of the early women’s music and feminism was exhilarating, it was educational, it was cold water in your face. It was everything that life had to offer times a thousand. And that was great because in a way that was rock ’n’ roll. Cris appreciated that I had come out of Fanny and come out of the rock scene because none of what she was facing fazed me. And there was a lot, A LOT of energy coming towards her and some of it was overwhelming to her. I think that she enjoyed having me as company and that I really tended to calm her down, just to have someone to talk to who’d already been through a similar experience.
Can you tell us a bit about your songs that tell of lesbian lives?
Everything I write is authentic to my experience. I can’t separate lesbianism from my spiritual journey — it’s all of a piece. So if I write a love song, it’s gonna to be to someone I love and it’s gonna be a woman, but I don’t necessarily have to lay it out that way. On the last album that I did with Jean, Melting Pot, I have a song called, ‘Say You Will’, which is definitely a love song to Ann who is my partner (we’ve just celebrated our 23rd anniversary). Every time I sing that song, I feel the same thing. And everybody knows that I’m singing the song to Ann.
And can you tell us about some of your songs that are particularly meaningful to you?
There is a song on the Heartsong album called ‘Keep Me Anymore’ that is very, very deep. I don’t do it that often, but when I do, there’s a particular energy that comes through me that’s really palpable. So that’s very meaningful to me.
‘So Good to be Home’ [from Ladies on the Stage] was written in Woodstock, probably just before I met Cris, and that was the first time I realised that magnetically I was aligned in North America — something had been missing, something was not quite gelling internally — and when I felt that I was very surprised. I hadn’t felt anything like that since being on the beach in the Philippines. So it’s a big song for me.
‘Melting Pot’ is amazing in the sense that, by that time, I’d gone through this journey, I’d realised that there is a big world out there and everyone has feelings and viewpoints and I’d learned to be a little more tolerant. For me, it’s political rap, but it’s not hitting you over the head with it.
‘Tell Them’ (from Heartsong) was, in retrospect, a direct result of having worked intensely with Cris through the first national tour she did, in ’76. It literally manifested itself in Woodstock as I was packing my gear to do a gig in Long Island, a solo gig, probably winter ’77 — very quickly. I had to unpack my guitar and capture it as best I could, and only later did I realize what the song was about. It was a very sweet, very poignant energy that came through, and it remains potent to this day. Quite amazing, really.
Also on the same album is ‘Coconut Mentality’ which I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested in, it was me desperately missing the island energy and tropical weather that same winter. Tret Fure, who engineered and co-produced, assured me it’d be fine, and I’m so glad she did.
The title cuts to Running, One World, One Heart and Ticket to Wonderful are all profound to my experience, even now.
‘Running’ was written in ’82, in Milwaukee, a city I came to despise for its not-so-hidden racism. But actually, I was there running from a broken heart, and more — like, the side effects of life itself. But, I was studying Tibetan Buddhism as hard and as fast as I could, and that helped.
‘One World, One Heart’, written in’84, came from a dream I’d had in Hawaii in which some women, maybe kahunas, put a multi-hued cape on me, and I woke right then knowing this really meant something.
And ‘Ticket to Wonderful’ was written with Jean just as the first Gulf War started, in ’91. But it really harkens as well to our first all-girl band in high school, when we didn’t know how impossible our musical dreams were. Or we knew, but simply ignored so-called reality. It just felt too good to play, and it really was all a ticket to ... wonderful. How can I describe it? Everything shimmers, just thinking about that feeling.
99’s ‘Cry in the Mirror’ (Melting Pot) mirrors a breakthrough I had during therapy, in real-time, so it means a lot to me personally.
What to you seems to make people more receptive, or less receptive, to songs about lesbians?
That’s a really big question. And the only place that I can boil it down to is in the listener himself or herself. Unresolved issues in themselves probably would be the cause of a person not being receptive. And being in touch with their own authenticity would make them more receptive, whether they’re gay or not. I think that it’s all up to the individual. If something makes you uncomfortable, then probably you’re not going to be listening to it.
Back in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, to what extent were there risks associated with being an openly lesbian performer?
You would always have the risk of being rejected out of hand. That’s a danger in all aspects of life if you’re gay, that’s for sure.
You’re really taking a look at roles. Even now I see that girls and women are placed in a specific role. No matter how talented they are, they have to look a certain way. And that’s a problem — it doesn’t matter whether you’re lesbian or not — that is the basic problem that all women have to deal with.
Back when I started, in the ’60s and into the ’70s, it was difficult to step away and take a look at these roles because the pressure of society was so heavy. You felt that you were being crushed by it all the time. It was really the motivation and the intent within that carried me and my sister and the other girls forward despite all the obstacles that we saw. There was danger everywhere. Let’s say you didn’t sleep with other male musicians, then you might miss some opportunities. It was even as basic as that.
But you know, I also saw it in women’s music — I saw that who you slept with actually, for a lot of people, figured into how they were moving in that so-called hierarchy. That was a big disappointment to me — it took me a long time to realise that a lot of the things I was struggling with in the music industry in male-dominated Hollywood translated also into women’s music just because so much of it is internalized.
In looking at women in the music industry, what issues do they face in terms of creativity and recognition?
I don’t see girls as having a problem with creating. I see women everywhere creating non-stop. The problem really is how do you make a living at it. At that point, it’s not even just about popularity anymore, although of course that ties into it because you’re not going to make money from your music unless people like it. It really comes down to women being able to assert themselves — but in my view what needs to happen is for them to assert themselves in a healthy way. Part of it is inner work. Part of it is taking a look at the music industry itself — which is in huge flux right now. Although the music industry is still very much stratified, it’s also changing and so a lot of people who are in power are really uncomfortable. This is a great time actually to be doing the kind of work that we’re doing at The Institute for Musical Arts (IMA) — to be really taking a look at what the changes are and figuring out how you can make a living doing music.
Aside from that, the biggest problem is the role that girls and women are supposed to play in being sexy — that has not changed and that probably will not change.
All the rest of the stuff — being lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual — that goes to another strata that I can’t even really comment on because it is so personal to every individual.
How important is good musicianship, including in terms of playing instruments, for female performers?
That’s at the top of the list. I don’t see any point in going into music unless you’re trying to be excellent — which is a lot of work. It’s a huge shock to quite a number of the girls coming into the IMA Rock ’n’ Roll Girls Camp sessions — “Oh, my God, you mean I’ve got to practice!”. I think that the way of the fast food nation and the fast food world is that a lot of kids think that it’s going to happen very quickly (sort of like a reality TV mentality).
Do you think that not developing musicianship and music industry skills might have impeded some female performers in the past, including in women’s music?
No, I saw a lot of women working really hard and I don’t think that’s different in women’s music than in any other aspect of the music industry.
I think the hardest thing is that the political tenet changed so much because we did our work so well in women’s music. So you didn’t need the solace of women’s music — to go to the concert to meet like-minded people — because we had affected change in the world. The amount of people coming to the shows changed because they didn’t need to just go to women’s music concerts. And that was a shock to a lot of performers — really a shock. Shows for “women only” was the battle cry when I first started to play with Cris. If they saw a man, you had to practically sprinkle Holy Water on them. It was the scales tipping that way to get some balance, but people weren’t thinking ahead. What happens if we affect change? What happens if the audience itself changes? What happens if the demographics change (which they did)? What happens when we get older and people our age (who used to do anything to go to a show — they’d drive 150 miles to my shows) stay home because they don’t have the energy or they don’t have the money or they’d rather watch TV or surf the net?
I was one these young women. I was only thinking about what I was doing tomorrow or next week. I could barely think six months ahead! And part of it was because I didn’t make that much money doing music, so I always had to focus on my next gig and also I was ALWAYS practicing. It was a pretty full plate and I didn’t have anybody to help me figure it out. We were just figuring it out all by ourselves — really out in left field. That was fun and exciting and, believe me, it was great times. But, like I said, for a lot of people the shock of things changing was very, very difficult. For me, I’m a little bit luckier, because I still have my rock ’n’ roll roots and I still have all these people that I know from the industry. For the women for whom women’s music was their whole world, it’s been really hard. But change is the nature of life. So I think being mindful is important.
When producing records, do you see your role as extending beyond technical matters?
Definitely. DEFINITELY. I have intuitive hearing — because I’m deaf in one ear. (People ask me if it’s from rock ’n’ roll — but it’s not. Nobody really knew I was deaf in one ear until we moved from the Philippines and I got a hearing test in school in California.) I really didn’t put too much notice on it, but now that I’m working in the world in a different way and I’m aware in a different way, I really see that I’ve got intuitive hearing. So when I’m working with an artist in the studio, I’m listening to it technically, I’m working with the engineer, but I’m also flying in a different realm where I can feel the spirit or the essence of the song. And when I feel that a song is going somewhere that is veering away from that, I always try to steer the artist back. Very often it’s almost impossible for the artist to step away because it’s so personal for them, every single nuance is precious — so part of my job is to be able to step away and give that sort of feedback.
Producing is a great job, but it’s a hard one to learn. I think a lot of people are taking short cuts and so they’re not realising how incredibly work- and learning-intensive a job of a producer is — they just think it’s great to be in control!
So what advice do you have for emerging performers?
You can’t quit. You can’t take a “no” as the end of the world. Work really hard on the craft of music. And try to do the inner work so that you can detach a little bit and see everything more as it really is, rather than your own hopes and pinning all your hopes on just one thing. There are so many opportunities out there to do what you’re doing and also to learn. And that’s comforting in a way. There are going to be lots of down moments, but if you’re mindful and if you’re a little more joyful, then you notice the opportunities that are coming along.
And how can performers go about preparing for fame and coping with fame, including its impact on the people around them?
Do your inner work. I really think that’s the only way. If you’re doing your inner work, then you don’t get caught up in the hologram. Being famous is like keeping a ball up in the air. You need to be awake to it all. What is it that is seducing you? What does that seduction mean? What is it actually doing to you? I don’t think that there’s any way to do it, but to do the inner work and to be mindful. Otherwise you’re just trying to deal with that constantly changing picture and constantly changing projection. You need to be able to figure out what is real. There are a lot of stories of artists — like jazz singers — I think jazz is a really, really difficult milieu in which to have a sustained career — who realise if they can keep on getting really great songs, then they can have a sustained career.
And now to The Institute for Musical Arts…
The idea of IMA is to help all women in music — we want to mentor other women, we want to have a safe place for them to learn, we want to have hands-on workshops and hands-on experiences.
IMA is life affirming and life changing because we are really insistent on taking a look at things all the time and cleaning up the psychic space and really having as clean an intent as possible.
We started to put it down on paper in ’86 and we got our 501(c)3 status in ’87. The first five years were really, really difficult. We were in California from ’87 to ’99. Then we found this place [in Massachusetts] in 2000 and bought it in 2001. It’s been fund raise, fund raise, fund raise. So we would love people to think about donating to IMA — because that is investing in the future.
IMA has a huge agenda and the goals are huge — we’re going to finish the recording studio in the spring, then comes all the girls camps next summer, culminating in the recording camp in August. We’re archiving everything and eventually we’ll be doing documentaries out here, maybe movies. We’re also renovating the small barn, so that in maybe five years, we can rent it out so that the girls can have their own offices, run their careers out of here and help mold what comes next. Everything — the archive, library, music, tapes, videos, the land — gets left to the next generation and the next generation after that. And we’re training those girls now to take over.
Part of what I do at the Rock ’n’ Roll Girls Camps, when I take a three hour slot before dinner, is to have a section called “Foremothers” where I play them cuts of songs (whether it’s artists or musicians) — turning the girls on to the women who have come before.
So what’s coming up in the next year or so?
I’m going to be doing an album next year with Jean and some of the other people who’ve played with us in the past 10 or 15 years, including Jean’s son, Lee. I’m also writing my autobiography — I’m deep in it. There will be a Fanny documentary. And I’ve just got together with someone from LA who wants to write a screen play based on Fanny. I also want to go out on the road, after I turn 60 next year, with Jean and maybe Alice de Buhr from Fanny and a lot of the girls from the Camps and do shows and workshops.
I love my life. I love where my contemporaries are. I love working with the new generation. And I love knowing that we’re leaving this with them — hopefully in really good, stable, steady hands!
Discography:
Fanny — Fanny (1970); Charity Ball (1971); Fanny Hill (1972); Mothers Pride (1973); Fanny Live (1998); First Time in a Long Time: The Reprise Recordings (2002)
Millington — Ladies on the Stage (1978)
Cris Williamson/Jackie Robbins/June Millington — Live Dream (1978)
June Millington — Heartsong (1981); Running (1983); One World, One Heart (1988)
June and Jean Millington — Ticket to Wonderful (1993)
Slammin’ Babes — Melting Pot (2001)
More Info:
www.ima.org
www.slamminbabes.com
JUNE MILLINGTON was interviewed as part of the article, ‘Out There, Every Day: Singing of the Lives of Lesbians, Dykes, Queers, Gay Women…’. June would love to hear from anyone directly, at fabjune@aol.com. Read the article and other interviews (Madeline Davis, Skim, Gretchen Phillips (Girls in the Nose; Two Nice Girls), Ripley Caine, Nedra Johnson, Bernie Bankrupt (Lesbians on Ecstasy), Ferron and God-des (God-des and She).
SUE BARRETT is an Australian music writer, with a special interest in women in music. She witnessed “the incident” at a Cris Williamson/Tret Fure/Judy Small concert that prompted Judy to write a coda for the song, ‘Lesbian Chic’.
c. 2008
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