Hard Rock Godess

Introduction

I made the title singular just because it sounds better than what the plural would be.

It seems that rock groups and rock and roll bands have been the domain of men throughout a lot of my life, but that is not the reality in music, give a girl a guitar and she can riff as well as any man.

When Jeff Beck heard the cover of Gun's "Race With The Devil" he said that he didn't think girls could play like that and was slapped down for being a sexist. I think he was showing surprise because the assumption was that only guys played guitar.

I am doing a little research into this and will post it in the vocal Viva community rather than Beat because it is to show that groups of girls have been playing rock for a long time.

The earliest I remember noticing a female playing an instrument associated with rock in a band was Honey Lantree (born Anne Margot Lantree) who played drums and sang with the Honeycombs. They had a million-selling single "Have I The Right?" in 1964 produced by Joe Meek, but the rest of the band were male so does not count for this playlist but you can discover more here.

The first band I will introduce are:

Fanny

Click on the name to visit their website.

They were the first all-female rock act to record an entire album for a major record label, and recorded and released five albums for major labels. Their career broke down the barriers for female musicians in rock. In fact, they were pretty much the original “godmothers of women who rock”

The video is a link to a Beat Club concert in the early seventies. If you have never heard them you will be majorly impressed with what they do.

June Millington's Facebook page is here

I could just stop this post here because Fanny showed how good that they were and all women were.

Girlschool

I have to include the song that that Jeff Beck commented on, and this really does rock, love the sound, and they even took on Motphead in The Saint Valentines Day Massacre EP where they covered Johnny Kidd's "Please Don't Touch", the picture is Motorhead but it's on a Girlschool channel.

Though they have done covers they write their own stuff as well and this is a playlist from their Youtube channel.

Their website is here

The Runaways

I believe were put together by Kim Fowley, and their most famous member was Joan Jett, and they dressed, shall we say, provocatively. Whether this was driven by male record company marketers and managers or the girls themselves, I don't know but the music was excellent hard rock as you can hear on "Cherry Bomb"

Their website can be found by clicking on their name at the top of this paragraph.

L7

L7 took their name from the sixties punk word for "square" and their sound was brilliantly heavy, When I heard "Let's Pretend We're Dead" that was an immediate buy.

It's all about the music and love that bands like this helped smash the norm of male expectancy in rock bands.

The L7 Website is here

The Bangles

THough the lightest of the bands on this playlist there were about six songs that I wanted to choose for this but settled on "Going Down To Liverpool"

Their website is here.

But you have to wonder, if it wasn't for Fanny would we have this many brilliant all-girl rock bands?

Conclusion

By now I will have missed many all-girl rock bands but this article is just an eye-opener to show that girls can rock just as hard as guys. I hope you have listened to all the songs on this playlist, if you have I hope you played them loud.

Sorry if this sounds incredibly cliched.

Apology

I spelt Goddess wrong in the title, it should have been "Hard Rock Goddess" not "Hard Rock Godess" . The problem is that the title is used to make the web page URL so if I change it then the location changes and people using the original link can't find it. My profound apologies.