June Elizabeth Millington (born April 14, 1948) is a Filipino-American guitarist, songwriter, producer, educator, and actress.
Millington was the founder of the music groups the Svelts and Wild Honey, before becoming co-founder and lead guitarist of the all-female rock band Fanny, which was active from 1970 to 1974. Millington has been called "a godmother of women's music", and is the co-founder and artistic director of the Institute for the Musical Arts (IMA) in Goshen, Massachusetts.
Early life June Elizabeth Millington was born in Manila, the Philippines, on April 14, 1948, the eldest of the seven children of Filipina socialite "Yola" Yolanda Leonor Limjoco Millington,Social Security Administration, Social Security Death Index, Master File. Social Security Administration.The Davis Enterprise (Davis, CA: February 6, 2003) and former United States Navy Lt. Commander John "Jack" Howard Millington.Vermont, Vermont Birth Records, 1909-2003. Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, Montpelier, Vermont.Vermont, Vermont Death Records, 1909-2003. Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, Montpelier, Vermont. He had graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1939,United States Naval Academy, Lucky Bag Yearbook, "Class of 1939" (Annapolis, MD):297. and was a son of Professor Howard G. Millington, a noted folklorist.Lee Knight, "A Remembrance of Marjorie Lansing Porter 1891–1973", New York Folklore Quarterly 30:1 (March 1974):77. June Millington's parents were married in Manila in May 1947, and divorced in California in March 1970.State of California, California Divorce Index, 1966–1984. Microfiche. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento, California. Millington is the older sister of bassist Jean Y. Millington Adamian.
Philippines Until they moved to the United States in 1961, Jack and Yola Millington and their children lived luxuriously with Yola's parents Angel Limjoco and Felisa Limjoco (née Lejano) in various Manila locations, including at 56 R. Pascual Street, San Juan (then part of Rizal province); in the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club in Mandaluyong; near the old American School in Pasay; and on N. Domingo Street, San Juan;Eric S. Caruncho, "The Untold Saga of Fanny", Philippine Daily Inquirer (May 11, 2008). and for several months just before they emigrated at the Howell Compound in Quezon City. Additionally, during 1953, Millington and her family lived for a year in Baguio with her grandparents.
At the age of eight, Millington began playing piano to entertain her family, and later listened to music on the radio and attempted to play along on ukulele. Her family encouraged her to sing and play ukulele at gatherings.
Millington and her siblings attended the American School, then located in Donada Street in Pasay in Manila. She later recalled: "the racism we encountered at the American School was crushing."Cassie Marketos, "Creator Q&A: June Millington on 'Play Like a Girl'" Kickstarter (December 14, 2010). By 1960 Millington transferred to the Assumption Convent school located in Makati, Metro Manila. Early in 1961, when Millington was in the seventh grade, she heard a girl play the guitar, which jump-started her interest in the instrument.June Millington, My Space Profile.
On her 13th birthday, Millington was given a small, hand-made, mother-of-pearl inlaid guitar by her mother.
United States Three weeks later, in May 1961, the Millington family left the Philippines for the United States on the SS President Cleveland. While on board ship, Millington switched from playing the ukulele to acoustic guitar. On June 22, 1961, the Millington family arrived in the U.S., and then settled in Sacramento, California.
Millington recalled: "We always felt like "other", never quite fitting in, both in Manila and Sacramento. Being both biracial and bicultural was a really really tough slot in the '50s into the '60s, our formative teenage years." In an attempt to become more popular and make friends, in 1962, Millington and her sister Jean wrote their first song "Angel in White", followed by "Miss Wallflower '62", which they sang with two other girls on their ukuleles at their junior high school variety show. Millington recalled that afterwards, "Kids started coming up to us and telling us they liked it. So it dawned on us this was a way to make friends." In 1962, Millington and her sister Jean began to sing folk songs together as an acoustic duo at hootenannies and similar events, including the songs of Peter, Paul and Mary and other artists featured on the television program Hootenanny.
Later in 1962, Millington and her sister Jean enrolled in the class of 1966 at C. K. McClatchy High School. During 1963, Millington was a member of a YWCA conference group of senior high school students chosen to visit the California State Legislature.California. Legislature. Assembly, Journal of the Assembly, Legislature of the State of California (1963):5839 While students at McClatchy, the Millington sisters formed a band with Zenaida "Zenny" Prodon, an American Field Service exchange student from Meycauayan Institute High School (now Meycauayan College) in Meycauayan, Bulacan, Philippines.
Musical career and biography
1965–1968: The Svelts With her mother's assistance, but against her father's wishes, in late 1964, Millington switched from acoustic guitar to electric guitar and bass after a girl from another school who played drums [Kathy Terry] asked if Millington and her sister Jean would like to start a band. Millington recalled in 2013:
We were like, "Yeah, okay!" My dad took me to a pawn shop and got me a Sears Roebuck guitar with a little matching amp. That was my first rig–a complete and total thrill. Jean and I flipped a coin to see who would play bass in the band. (laughs) I won, so I got to stay on guitar. We learned to play by listening to the radio and by hanging out with boys who were in bands. We were 15 or 16 at the time.
By early 1965, Millington and her sister Jean formed the Svelts, an all-female rock band, with June on rhythm guitar, Jean on bass, Kathy Terry on drums, and Cathy Carter on guitar. According to Millington, the band's name, "came from a word my brother had just learned in school. To be svelte: thin, lithe. It sounded like what we wanted to be, kinda classy!" The Svelts rehearsed initially in Terry's living room in Sacramento.June Millington, "You Never Heard of Fanny?", Ms. blog (May 26, 2011). Managed and promoted by Richard "Dick" Leventon, the Svelts performed at sock hops, air force bases, and frat parties and gradually built a following. In November 2012, Millington recalled:
Was it hard? Hell, yeah. Girls weren't supposed to go electric, so the resistance was incredible at first. Was it fun? You bet. By keeping our grades up at school, we began to lead successful double lives as Philippine-American girls by day, budding rockers at night, except we didn't do rock as much as we did girl group songs and Motown, which meant "He's So Fine" and "Heatwave," with "The Night Before" and "You Really Got Me" thrown in. If people danced to it, we did it. They were all great songs to cut your teeth on and learn compositionally.
Later, Terry was replaced on drums by Filipino American Brie Berry, who was a student at Folsom High School (class of 1967). Before their senior year, Millington and her sister Jean performed during the summer of 1965 as a duo. In September 1965, they copyrighted their song "Footloose and Fancy-Free".27Sep65; EU904739 in Library of Congress. Copyright Office, Catalog of Copyright Entries: Third series (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965):1597.
After graduation from high school in 1966, Millington enrolled at the University of California, Davis, where, hoping to become a surgeon, she majored in premedical studies with a minor in music.Delta Democratic Times (Greenville, MS: August 11, 1971):20. However, after a year, Millington decided to suspend her studies to focus on her musical career.
After a number of personnel changes, including five different drummers, the Millington sisters were joined in 1968 by lead guitarist Adrienne "Addie" Lee Clement (from the Palo Alto band California Girls), recent graduate of Cubberley High School; and drummer Alice Monroe de Buhr who had moved to California at age 17, after the divorce of her parents, in search of fame and fortune. In this four-piece configuration, the Svelts gigged around the West in a renovated Greyhound bus, mainly playing cover songs. By early 1967, the Svelts (Millington, Wendy Haas, Brie Berry, and Jean Millington) had a band house in Los Altos, where they lived and rehearsed.
In 1967, Millington enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where she continued her premed studies for two quarters. However, after playing in clubs on the US West Coast and Nevada, Berry, who had married Michael Brandt, left the band because of pregnancy, and subsequently became the mother of Brandi Angela Brandt.
1968–1969: Wild Honey While Millington attended classes, Clement and de Buhr toured as the Svelts, but later decided to rename the band Wild Honey, and gigged briefly in the Midwest before returning to California. In 1968, Clement and de Buhr invited Millington and her sister Jean to join Wild Honey. Consequently, Millington decided to terminate her university studies to become a full-time musician. Wild Honey played folk songs, Motown covers, and some of their own songs, and played with Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Youngbloods, and the Turtles at fairs and private parties, and auditioned at the Fillmore West with the Doors.
Hoping to secure a recording contract, in April 1969, Wild Honey relocated from Sacramento to Los Angeles to "either sign with a label or go back to school." However, frustrated by "playing all nasty inappropriate little gigs, suffering all the demeaning little scams", and by a lack of success or respect in the male-dominated rock scene, Wild Honey decided to disband after one final open mic appearance at Doug Weston's Troubadour Club in West Hollywood in 1969. They were spotted at this gig by the secretary of producer Richard Perry, who had been searching for an all-female rock band to mentor. Perry convinced Warner Bros. to sign the band to their Reprise Records subsidiary. After Addie Clement left the band, Millington became the lead guitarist, taking a year to learn to play lead guitar. While searching for a fourth member for the band, Wild Honey recorded in various studios with an assortment of women, including former Svelts drummer Brie Berry Brandt.
1970–1973: Fanny
Later in 1969, the band was renamed Fanny to denote a female spirit, although it was a deliberate double entendre.Lisa Rhodes, Electric Ladyland: women and rock culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005):57. Before recording their first album, In January 1970 keyboardist Nicole "Nickey" Barclay, was added to the Fanny lineup."You've come a long way, Fanny!", Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas) (November 24, 2002). Millington was the lead guitarist in Fanny with her sister Jean on bass, de Buhr on drums, and Barclay on keyboards. The band lived in a Spanish style house they christened "Fanny Hill" on Marmont Lane overlooking the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. However, in March 1970, Barclay left Fanny to be a member of Joe Cocker's hastily organized Mad Dogs & Englishmen seven-week tour of the U.S., but rejoined Fanny reluctantly after that tour concluded in May 1970.C. Michael Bailey, "The Colossal Triumph Of Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen" All About Jazz (October 21, 2006). Their first big gig as Fanny was at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium with the Kinks and Procol Harum.