Ex-Milli Vanilli star: "We were thrown to the wolves"
More than 30 years after the Milli Vanilli fraud scandal came to light, former superstar Fabrice "Fab" Morvan sees himself as a scapegoat. "We were thrown to the wolves. In a way, we were the scapegoats and everyone else shirked their responsibility," said the 57-year-old in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
"When the story came out, everyone kept their mouths shut - and could just carry on. They were able to pay their children's college fees, their mortgages and they climbed the career ladder because they were associated with a very, very successful project. But Rob and Fab? They were just forgotten about and talked about badly. They became a punchline, they were no longer respected."
The childhood friends Morvan and Robert "Rob" Pilatus had met in Munich and had their beginnings as club dancers in discos like the P1. As the pop duo Milli Vanilli, produced by Frank Farian, they became superstars at the end of the 1980s and their disco pop hit "Girl You Know It's True" sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
Rob Pilatus died in 1998
The Grammy they won in 1990 was revoked after it became known that they had never sung themselves, but had moved their lips to the voices of others. The scandal surrounding the band is considered one of the biggest cheating scandals in music history.
Sony is releasing a best-of album to mark the 35th anniversary of the band's founding, and the film "Girl You Know It's True" by director Simon Verhoeven will also be released in December - with Matthias Schweighöfer as Frank Farian.
Morvan now works as a singer and songwriter and has four children. His friend Rob was only 33 years old. He died in 1998 and was buried in the Waldfriedhof cemetery in his home town of Munich.
In the midst of the Milli Vanilli scandal, many individuals who were involved maintained their silence, allowing them to continue benefiting from the project's success. Despite this, Fabrice "Fab" Morvan and Rob Pilatus, the band's members, were often forgotten or criticized, their reputations tarnished.
The music history-making duo Milli Vanilli, comprised of childhood friends Morvan and Pilatus, gained fame under the guidance of music producer Frank Farian, reaching peak success with their disco pop hit "Girl You Know It's True".
Source: www.dpa.com
