Milli Vanilli: История обмана и взлета R&B дуэта

German R&B group

Milli Vanilli ('/m//ɪ//l//i// //v//ə/'/n//ɪ//l//i/ MILee vəNILee) was a German R&B music act from Munich. The act was packaged by Boney M. founder Frank Farian in 1988 and consisted of Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus as the lip syncing performers, with the two actual main studio singers, Brad Howell, and studio singers, Charles Shaw, Jodie Rocco, and Linda Rocco, as Girl You Know It's True in the United States, achieved international success and brought them a Grammy Award for Best New Artist on 21 February 1990. They became one of the most popular pop acts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with millions of records sold. However, their success turned to infamy when it was discovered that Morvan and Pilatus did not sing any of the vocals on their music releases. Their Grammy award was revoked. In 1998, they recorded a comeback album, Back and in Attack, but its release was canceled after Pilatus died the same year.

Rob Pilatus, from Munich, met Fabrice Morvan, from Paris, during a dance seminar at a club in Los Angeles. They reconnected again in Munich and bonded over their experiences growing up in European cities; Pilatus said, "Maybe it's because we're both black people who grew up in foreign cities that don't have too many blacks." In Munich, they attempted to find work as backing singers, then formed their own act and recorded an album for a small German label that sold a few thousand records. According to Pilatus, they struggled financially and lived in a housing project. The German music producer Frank Farian, who had previously created the disco group Boney M, invited Pilatus and Morvan to his Frankfurt studio to listen to a demo, "Girl You Know It's True". The final mix of "Girl You Know It's True" was finished by studio performers—including Charles Shaw, John Davis, Brad Howell, and twin sisters Jodie and Linda Rocco—in March and April. By May, Pilatus and Morvan were touring Spain, France and Italy, lip syncing to the pre recorded tracks and thrilling crowds with their distinct style — spandex shorts, thigh high boots and cornrow hair extensions. According to Pilatus, "We would ask Frank, 'When are we going to be allowed to give some (artistic) input?'. And he would say, 'Yeah, yeah, but right now we need you to go out and do promotion. Of course, you'll get to do it, just work with us'. That's how he strung us along." In January 1990, the album Girl You Know It's True was certified 6× platinum by the RIAA after spending seven weeks atop the Billboard Top 200. It spent 41 weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard Top 200 and 78 weeks on the charts overall. It was also certified Diamond in Canada, denoting sales of over a million units there. Milli Vanilli won the Best New Artist award at the 32nd Grammy Awards, as well as three awards at the 17th American Music Awards. However, the duo was not without their detractors, as Rolling Stone Magazine named them "worst act of 1989" and Girl You Know It's True "worst album of 1989". In July 1989, MTV launched a Club MTV Tour featuring Was (Not Was), Information Society, Paula Abdul, Tone Loc and Milli Vanilli, with Downtown Julie Brown & the Club MTV dancers. The first public sign that the group was lip syncing came on 21 July 1989, during a live performance on MTV at the Lake Compounce theme park in Bristol, Connecticut. As they performed, a hard drive issue caused the recording of the song "Girl You Know It's True" to jam and skip, repeatedly playing the partial line "Girl, you know it's " through the speakers. "I knew right then and there, it was the beginning of the end for Milli Vanilli", recalled Pilatus of the incident. "When my voice got stuck in the computer, and it just kept repeating and repeating, I panicked. I didn't know what to do. I just ran off the stage." In a March 1990 issue of Time magazine, Pilatus was quoted proclaiming himself to be "the new Elvis", reasoning that by the duo's success they were more talented musically than Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. This was denied by Fab Morvan in 2017, saying that Pilatus had never used those words and that the quote was taken out of context, likely due to Pilatus still not having a full grasp of the English language. On the 21 April 1990 episode of In Living Color, Keenen Ivory Wayans and Damon Wayans parodied Milli Vanilli in a sketch, mocking the duo's accents, fashion sense, and dance moves. This led to further jokes on the duo, such as David Letterman's top 10 list describing 10 jobs they could do other than music.</blockquote>

Because of growing public questions as to who sang in the group, as well as Morvan's and Pilatus's demand to Farian that they be allowed to sing on the next album, on 14 November 1990, Farian announced that he had fired them and confessed they did not sing on the records. Confronted by Los Angeles Times reporter Chuck Philips, Pilatus confirmed the deception. "It's true: Milli Vanilli Didn't Sing", read the newspaper's headline. "I feel like a mosquito being squeezed", Pilatus said. "The last two years of our lives have been a total nightmare. We've had to lie to everybody. We are true singers, but that maniac Frank Farian would never allow us to express ourselves." were filed under various U. S. consumer fraud protection laws against Arista Records, Pilatus and Morvan. One such filing occurred on 22 November 1990, in Ohio, where lawyers filed a class action lawsuit asking for refunds on behalf of a local woman in Cuyahoga County who had bought Girl You Know It's True. When the suit was filed, it was estimated at least 1,000 Ohio residents had bought the album. An estimated 10 million buyers were eligible to claim a refund, and they could keep the refunded recordings. Adding to the controversy, in December 1990, singer songwriter David Clayton Thomas sued Milli Vanilli for copyright infringement, alleging that the title song of All or Nothing used the melody from his 1968 composition "Spinning Wheel", a hit for his group Blood, Sweat & Tears. A documentary film, Milli Vanilli, about the affair was released in 2023. An interview is shown in which the duo justify their work with Farian to escape poverty. The film, without describing them as innocent, points out that a great many people knew about the deception, but the singers became the scapegoats; the popular narrative was incomplete and misdirected at the two public faces of a much larger operation. In an interview about the film, Morvan said: "People thought they knew the story, but they didn't."

In 1992, RCA signed on to release the album as the debut of the newly created group Try 'N' B. The self titled release included three additional tracks not on the Real Milli Vanilli release: "Ding Dong", "Who Do You Love", and a remake of Dr. Hook's "Sexy Eyes", and featured original Milli Vanilli vocalists Jodie Rocco and Linda Rocco. Because of significantly better sales under the name Try 'N' B in America, a slightly modified Try 'N' B debut album was released internationally. It featured guest singer Tracy Ganser, a Ray Horton lookalike named Kevin Weatherspoon, as well as Jodie and Linda Rocco. and even signed with a PR firm in hopes of breaking into acting. As they told the L. A. Times, "We think we have the potential to become actors. After all, we got a lot of practice while we were in Milli Vanilli. But the most important thing to us now is the new album." Morvan and Pilatus moved to Los Angeles, California, and signed with the Joss Entertainment Group. Sandy Gallin was their manager. They recorded the album Rob & Fab, which was financed by Taj Records in 1992 and released by Joss Entertainment in 1993. Almost all the album's songs were written by Kenny Taylor and Fab Morvan, while Morvan and Pilatus provided the lead vocals. Werner Schüler, a German bassist and songwriter, was the producer. Due to financial constraints, Joss Entertainment Group was able to release the album only in the United States, the priority market to Milli Vanilli. A single, "We Can Get It On", was made available for radio play shortly before the album's release. However, the lack of publicity, poor distribution, and their steep fall from the height of pop culture visibility after the lip syncing scandal contributed to its failure. It sold only around 2,000 copies.

The duo were featured and interviewed for the premiere episode of VH1 Behind the Music in 1997. To restore their careers, Farian agreed to produce a new Milli Vanilli album with Morvan and Pilatus on lead vocals in 1997, leading to the recording of the 1998 Milli Vanilli comeback album Back and In Attack. Some of the original studio singers even backed the duo in their attempt to recover some of the fame that had been lost so quickly. However, Pilatus encountered a number of personal problems during the album's production. He turned to drugs and crime, committing a series of assaults and robberies, and was sentenced to three months in jail and six months in a drug rehabilitation facility in California. On the eve of the new album's promotional tour on 3 April 1998, Pilatus was found dead of a suspected alcohol and prescription drug overdose in a hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany. His death was ruled to have been accidental. Farian died in January 2024.

Morvan spent the following years as a session musician and public speaker while working on writing and performing his new music. In 1998, he was a DJ at famed L. A. radio station KIIS FM. During this period he also performed at the station's sold out 1999 Wango Tango festival concert before 50,000 people at Dodger Stadium. He then spent 2001 on tour before performing in 2002 as the inaugural performer at the brand new Velvet Lounge at the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando, Florida. In 2003, Morvan released his first solo album, Love Revolution. In April 2011, Morvan released the single "Anytime" on iTunes. In 2015 TMZ reported that Morvan was working on an album with John Davis, one of the original Milli Vanilli singers, called Face Meets Voice. In 2016, he appeared in a documentary style KFC commercial that focuses on his life and music career after Milli Vanilli. John Davis died on 24 May 2021 from complications of a COVID 19 infection.

On March 13, 2021, Variety announced a feature documentary was in the works directed by Luke Korem and produced by Korem, Bradley Jackson, Keep On Running Pictures and MRC. Korem said that "the truth of what happened is more bizarre than anyone knows there are so many layers, characters, and twists that have never before been revealed". On his Facebook fanpage, Fab Morvan announced on 4 July 2022 the new documentary film about Milli Vanilli in the works, which he was involved in. On June 1, 2023, it was announced Paramount+ had acquired the documentary film Milli Vanilli, directed by Luke Korem. The film was shown at the Tribeca film festival in 2023. The Hollywood Reporter released the trailer on September 13, 2023, and announced the documentary would have a global release on October 24, 2023.