Milli Vanilli

For a moment, German dance pop duo Milli Vanilli was at the top of the music world. Their debut All or Nothing was a global hit packed with chart-climbing singles and they had just won a Grammy for Best New Artist. Then, it was revealed that members Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus were simply the faces of the music, not the voices, and their career came to a sudden and ignominious end. The public learned that they were models who publicly lip-synced to tracks recorded by studio vocalists Brad Howell, John Davis, Jodie Rocco, Linda Rocco, and Charles Shaw under the guidance of producer Frank Farian (Boney M., La Bouche, No Mercy). They became the first act ever stripped of a Grammy award, soon symbolizing everything people disliked about superficial pop music. Yet for all the scapegoating, they were far from the only dance-pop act to be fronted by lip-syncers in the late '80s (the Martha Wash-voiced Black Box and C+C Music Factory spring to mind), nor were they the only Europop act to employ similar marketing tactics. They simply had the bad luck to be the most successful and visible case to appear to the general American public. Following a period of public backlash and ridicule, Pilatus and Morvan rebranded as Rob & Fab, while the studio musicians emerged as The Real Milli Vanilli. Milli Vanilli was the brainchild of German producer Frank Farian, who previously masterminded the European disco group Boney M. and the session-musician rocker supergroup Far Corporation. Seeking to fuse European dance-pop with elements of American rap, Farian assembled a number of session musicians and vocalists, including rapper Charles Shaw and two American singers living in Germany, John Davis and Brad Howell. Realizing that he had a marketable record but an unmarketable image, Farian hired two aspiring models and former breakdancers, Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, to pretend to be the group in videos, concerts, interviews, and the like. Pilatus had been born in New York in 1965, but grew up in Munich, spending some time in an orphanage after his parents (an American soldier and German mother) gave him up for adoption. Morvan was born in 1966 on the island of Guadeloupe, lived in Miami for a time, and moved with his mother to Paris; he had been a trampoline athlete until he suffered a neck injury in a fall. Both skilled dancers, the two had met sometime around 1984 (differing accounts list their meeting place as Munich, Paris, or Los Angeles) and were attempting to make it as singers, dancers, models, or whatever they could. Their exotic look and long dreadlock extensions were just what Farian was looking for. Milli Vanilli's first album, All or Nothing, was released in Europe in 1988 and was an instant success. Retitled Girl You Know It's True (after the lead single) and trimmed a bit, the record was issued in the U.S. in early 1989. Its catchy, lightweight pop-rap proved equally popular with American audiences; "Girl You Know It's True" raced up the pop charts to number two, and the next three Milli Vanilli singles -- "Baby Don't Forget My Number," the ballad "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You," and the Diane Warren-penned "Blame It on the Rain" -- all hit number one. Despite near-universal critical distaste (Farian's productions often recycled the same sounds and drum tracks), Girl You Know It's True sold an astounding seven million copies in the U.S. alone; internationally, Milli Vanilli sold approximately 30 million singles. In December 1989, as the fifth single "All or Nothing" was climbing the charts on its way to the Top Five, rapper Charles Shaw revealed to a New York reporter that Pilatus and Morvan had not actually sung any vocals on the album. Shaw quickly retracted his statements (apparently paid off by Farian to keep quiet), claiming that they were merely a PR stunt for his own album. Milli Vanilli was soon nominated for a Grammy award for Best New Artist, even though the rumors continued to swirl. And in early 1990, they won it, beating out the Indigo Girls, Neneh Cherry, Soul II Soul, and Tone-Loc. Success (or at least fame) was beginning to go to the duo's heads, particularly Pilatus, who was given to extreme mood swings and erratic behavior, and developed a cocaine problem. In an interview with Time magazine, Pilatus compared himself and Milli Vanilli favorably to Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney, and Mick Jagger, and was roundly ridiculed for his statements. Additionally, Pilatus and Morvan had been pressuring Farian to let them sing all the vocals on the next Milli Vanilli album. Exasperated with them, Farian exposed the whole scheme in November 1990 and the public was furious. Pilatus and Morvan were stripped of their Grammy (ironically, the committee had justified its vote by citing the duo's "visual impact"), and a class-action suit was filed against Arista Records, allowing anyone who believed they'd been defrauded into purchasing the group's records to apply for a rebate. Arista dropped them and deleted Girl You Know It's True from their catalog, making it the biggest-selling album ever taken out of print. In 1991, Farian attempted to re-form Milli Vanilli with the original session vocalists (including backup singer Gina Mohammed), this time crediting them and billing them as the Real Milli Vanilli, while also adding a Pilatus/Morvan look-alike named Ray Horton. However, the resulting Moment of Truth album flopped. Meanwhile, Pilatus and Morvan regrouped in 1993 as Rob & Fab; however, with their credibility damaged beyond repair, their self-titled debut reportedly sold only 2,000 copies total, despite an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. Farian had also attempted yet another album, this time renaming his group Try 'N' B and retooling the lineup again to enhance its visual appeal (which meant discarding the original singers); however, Sexy Eyes also stiffed. In 1997, the duo's image was slightly resuscitated in the public eye after the premiere of the then-new VH1 show, Behind the Music, which detailed the group's story. They even tried to record a new album with Farian's help. However, after several arrests and a stint in rehab, Pilatus died in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 3, 1998. Morvan went on to pursue a solo career, releasing Love Revolution in 2003. Decades later, a biopic of the duo's story was filmed, while a documentary titled Milli Vanilli was released in 2023.
© Neil Z. Yeung & Steve Huey /TiVo