From the moment she heard a guitar being played in an empty classroom at her convent school in the Philippines in 1961, June Millington knew what she wanted to do with her life: rock and roll. 

So when a girl called up June and her sister and asked if they wanted to start a band, the answer was hell yeah. 

They went on to become Fanny, the first all-female rock band to release an album with a major record label. June and her bandmates moved into a house in LA, toured the world and won fans like David Bowie. But they were also up against sexist stereotypes, skeptical audiences and critics who couldn’t believe that a group of women could rock just as hard as any guy. 

But June wasn’t about to let that stop her. This is the story of how she stuck it to the man and blazed a trail for generations of female musicians to come.

 

June is the co-founder of the Institute for the Musical Arts, which offers workshops and events for women in music: https://ima.org/

 

We want YOUR stories for our Girlfriends hotline! Did your bestie ever bail you out of an awful date with a fake emergency phone call? Or show up on your doorstep with three weeks’ worth of lasagne when you’d just had a baby? Or sit with you in solidarity while you grieved the loss of a beloved grandparent? We want stories that are big or small, meaningful or silly.

Record yours as a voice memo (under 90 seconds) and email to [email protected]. Please don’t include your own name or anyone else’s real names.

 

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.