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New Jersey, 1971
Photo by Deb Frost |
After Nickey joined the
band and the album release was imminent, the question of a
new name was raised – by the four themselves, by Richard
Perry, by their label and by their management, the Blue
peacock Company. Everyone felt that what was needed was a
woman’s name, something short, memorable and at once
feminine and bold. After considering a series of suggestions
the band settled on the name FANNY, and the rest was
history. June would later explain, “We really didn’t think
of [the name Fanny] as a butt, a sexual term. We felt it was
like a woman’s spirit watching over us.” |
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Leading up to and following the band’s first
(self-titled) LP release, Reprise Records wasted no time in
exploiting the name through promotional photos and
advertisements showing the women of FANNY from the back, and
distributing bumper stickers urging record buyers to GET
BEHIND FANNY, and a later advertising campaign proclaiming
FANNY: THE END OF AN ERA. “Both slogans were my doing,”
Nickey has said. “I suggested them as a joke, but [manager
Roy] Silver and the label took them seriously and ran with
them. They certainly got people’s attention… I was also
playing on the different slang meanings of the term fanny in
America and the UK.” |
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The band had already attracted serious notice in LA even
prior to the release of their first album. As one of the
favourite local bands at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, they were
booked there so often that it was effectively a residency
for them. Fellow musicians and scene-makers including George
Harrison, David Bowie, Deep Purple, the Rolling Stones, the
Who, the Kinks, Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson,
Rodney Bingenheimer and Kim Fowley admired Fanny and helped
promote the band by word of mouth at the top levels of
the music industry, but the public would be slower to
“get behind” the band. |
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While the band’s first album release, FANNY,
was groundbreaking in that every note on the album
was sung and played by women, the rock press was
generally less than impressed. Fanny was mistakenly
seen as more of a novelty act than as serious
musicians with something to say. One reviewer wrote
that the band was “trying too hard.” Fanny was
blazing a trail, but most reviewers had no reference
point, no basis of comparison for judging a group of
women playing rock music.
Fanny would have to become that reference point.
In England, where the word “fanny” is a slang term for a
woman’s vagina, the band were hailed as outrageous
feminists. But the members of FANNY did not necessarily
consider themselves to be feminists, at least not in the
early days; they were musicians first and women second,
dressing more like the guys, fighting to gain credibility in
a man’s medium. Nickey Barclay later talked about the band’s
physical image: “We did feel the pressure of having to prove
ourselves. When we first started performing, we just went on
stage wearing whatever we were wearing. It amounted to us
apologizing for being women, shying away from any kind of
glamour or attractiveness on stage.” The band’s look became
more feminine and stylish once they had proved themselves
through the hard grind of international touring.
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