Frank Farian, the successful German record producer who masterminded the dance-pop duo Milli Vanilli and propelled them to Grammy Awards until they were revealed to be little more than lip-synching puppets, died Tuesday at his home in Miami. He was 82 years old.
His death was announced by Philip Kallrath of Allendorf Media, a spokesman for Mr. Farian's family.
Farian was no stranger to the pop charts in the late 1980s, when he brought together Rob Pilatus, the son of an American soldier and a German dancer, and Fab Morvan, a French singer and dancer, to create one of the most popular songs. popular pop music. sugary chocolates.
He was born Franz Reuther on July 18, 1941 in Kirn, Germany. His father, a furrier turned soldier, died during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, leaving Franz and his older brothers, Hertha and Heinz, in the care of his mother, a schoolteacher.
Coming of age on a steady diet of American rock 'n' roll records, Farian eventually became an artist. He topped the West German charts in 1976 with “Rocky,” a bouncy German-language rendition of a hit by American country artist Dickey Lee.
Like Boney M., Milli Vanilli was built around telegenic performers who knew how to rock a sparkly stage suit and move their feet. Unlike Boney M., they didn't actually sing, at least not the music that made them famous.
Pilatus and Morvan later insisted that they did not begin with the intention of deceiving the record-buying public. They had been gaining attention, if not a lot of money, performing songs in nightclubs when they landed an audition with Farian, who in the late 1980s was one of Germany's leading record producers. It didn't go well.
While Mr. Farian was impressed by her camera-ready image, her singing was a non-starter; He considered his brief performance to be “very bad,” as he explained in a 1997 episode of the VH1 series “Behind the Music.”
Still, Farian saw potential. He had recently recorded a new song called “Girl You Know It's True” with session musicians, including vocalists Brad Howell and Johnny Davis, but he didn't believe the singers had the looks necessary to seduce MTV's young audience.
“Then I had a crazy idea,” he told VH1, recalling how he approached the two of them to act as the faces of his new act.
Although they initially resisted the idea, the future stars of Milli Vanilli couldn't pass up a record deal with “this mogul, superstar, famous, billionaire” record producer, as Pilatus told VH1. “It's okay,” he recalled thinking, “as long as they pay me.”
Milli Vanilli made history, for all the wrong reasons. Their hit album, “Girl You Know It's True” (1989), produced three number one singles in the United States and, by the early 1990s, had sold more than 10 million copies, according to VH1, as the supposed pop stars toured the world. her enchanting the audience with her squeal-inducing dance moves as she mouths the voices of others.
Milli Vanilli survived a public embarrassment after a concert in Bristol, Connecticut, in July 1989, in which the pre-recorded vocal track began skipping, repeating the “Girl, you know it's…” fragment and leaving a shaken Mr. Pilatus runs off stage. scenery. Things really started to fall apart after the group took home a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1990, inspiring a closer look at the mechanics of this platinum-selling pop machine.
“I wasn't happy when everyone was saying, 'Yeah, Milli Vanilli won the Grammy,'” Farian told VH1; Such attention, she said, made her want to sink under a table. He eventually confessed to the plan and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences rescinded his Grammy. Both Farian and executives at Arista, the record company that released Milli Vanilli's album in the United States, said the label had not been informed that Pilatus and Morvan did not sing on it.
Still, Farian did not regret it. In a 1990 interview with The Washington Post, he called the ruse an “open secret.” Milli Vanilli, he said, was “a project.”
“We were two people in the studio and two people on stage,” he said. “Some of it was visual, some of it was recorded. “These projects are an art form in themselves and the fans were happy with the music.”
At the very least, the venture was a commercial windfall and contributed to Farian's reputation as Germany's leading producer.
Information about his survivors was not immediately available.
As for Milli Vanilli, the two men in the eye of the storm later attempted a comeback, which was cut short in April 1998 when Pilatus, who had long struggled with substance abuse, was found dead of a stroke. heart attack at 32 years old in a hotel. in Frankfurt.
The infamous act of which he was the face lived on, as one of pop music's great jokes. But, as a member of his management team, Todd Headlee, suggested to VH1, maybe there's another way to look at it: “I mean, they shouldn't have won the Grammy, they should have won the Oscar.”
