Fifty Years Ago Today Fanny Showed Us How To Play....Rock 'n Roll

On November 23, 1971, the all-female rock group Fanny recorded their session on the West German TV show Beat Club based in Bremen. 

Fanny was several weeks away from traveling to London to record their third album Fanny Hill at Apple Studios. Their seven song set included three songs from that forthcoming album - "Blind Alley" as well as covers of The Beatles '"Hey Bulldog" and the mid-1960's Marvin Gaye Motown hit "Ain't That Peculiar". The other four songs were from their second album Charity Ball which had been released earlier that year. In addition to the title track, Fanny also performed "Place in the Country", "Thinking of You" and the Stephen Stills penned "Special Care". 

Against a blue screen backdrop, Fanny would play these seven songs in 35 minutes and 51 seconds when one accounts for tuning between songs and a couple of false starts. Over those 35 minutes and 51 seconds, Fanny is as raw and yet as tight as any rock 'n roll band has been before or since. Fifty years ago today, Fanny showed us how to play....rock 'n roll. While Fanny leaves everything on the table at the conclusion of the set with nothing left to give, the listener is left wanting more.

It is hard to fathom that exactly a half century has passed since that session. It is even harder to fathom why Fanny hasn't been in the pantheon of rock 'n roll over that same half century. This was a group that more than belonged in the same company of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. Yet they would soon become relegated to obscurity. 

We can thank Beat Club for having the foresight to preserve this footage for these many decades and to eventually place it on YouTube in 2019 for everyone the world over to see. If not for this video, comedian Bill Burr would not be featuring them on his Netflix series F is for Family. While I do not have a Netflix series, I can say this video has impacted me as much as it has impacted Bill Burr. As an aficionado of late 1960's and early 1970's rock 'n roll, I had never heard of Fanny until watching this footage during the early days of the pandemic in June 2020. I had no idea there was an all-female, multiracial band in the early 1970's that could play the way they did. Some who observed the footage thought this was a new band disguising themselves as band from the 1970's. But this was no disguise and there was no disguising their talent.

People who view the footage will invariably be drawn to one member of the band in particular. Some are drawn to the intensity of Nickey Barclay on keyboards, while others are drawn to the manic drumming of Alice de Buhr with others focusing their attention on Jean Millington's chops on the bass and her vocals. For me, it was June Millington's guitar solos and especially her use of the slide guitar on "Ain't That Peculiar". Whichever band member draws you in first will eventually lead you to the talent of her bandmates and their collective tightness as a unit. I have watched this video more than any other video on YouTube.

Back in August, Beat Club saw fit to unlist the video so they could post the individual songs. I have posted "Charity Ball" at the top of this post, but I recommend you watch the whole thing in its entirety here. It might be the first time you've seen and heard Fanny, but I promise you that it won't be the last.