The controversy over Milli Vanilli still lingers like a stain over the entertainment industry that just won’t go away. It’s been over 30 years since it was announced that Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, the faces of the musical group, were just that – the faces. Many other singers, women and men, had sung the lyrics to the songs.
In 1991, Pilatus and Morvan did a commercial mocking their lip-sync controversy for Carefree Sugarless Gum. My father saw it and asked, “How could so many people be so fooled?” It’s probably for the same reason people have failed The Invisibled Gorilla Test. If you don’t know what that is, it was an experiment in the 1990s in which of six young adults (three wearing plain white shirts and three wearing plain black shirts) were passing around a basketball in front of a video camera. The object was to count how many times the ball was passed among those wearing white. From the right of the screen, a person in a gorilla suit walks in, stops in the center, play beats their chest, and exists to the left. It’s as clear as day but because the people are moving around passing the basketball, people have said they haven’t seen the person in the gorilla suit.
The signs were there that Pilatus and Morvan weren’t the singers. We just didn’t really listen. Pilatus was born and raised in Germany and Morvan was born and raised in French. Yet, they sounded like they were born and raised in America on the songs. Even watching them in interviews, they spoke poorly broken English. But Pilatus and Morvan were good dancers. And that’s how people were easily confused. It’s been said people with speech impediments, especially stutters and stammers, can sometimes sing so beautifully so at first they were given the benefit of the doubt.
And they exploded during the late 1980s and early 1990s in a way very few musical groups do starting out. The irony is if they hadn’t been so successful, it wouldn’t have matter nor made much of an impact. People often have their voices dubbed for singing in movies. It was done for all the kids in Bugsy Malone. It was a joke in The Great Muppet Caper when Charles Grodin’s voice was dubbed. And even George Clooney, nephew of singer Rosemary Clooney, joked his singing had to be dubbed in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Hollywood has even had to redub actor’s lines. Andie MacDowell’s South Carolina accent was deemed too much for Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Glenn Close did it. And James Keach did it for Klinton Spilsbury on The Legend of the Lone Ranger. And even though it’s been almost 35 years, an unidentified actor was brought in to dub Dick Durock’s voice on The Return of Swamp Thing. Neither he nor the film’s director knew about it nor did they ever discover who did it.
But Milli Vanilli’s ruse was the work of German music producer Frank Farian who had done this in the late 1970s with Boney M. The documentary titled plainly Milli Vanilli currently streaming Paramount-Plus looks at the scandal. If you’re wondering why it took this long, I’d theorize there were a lot of NDAs that have expired in recent years. The documentary is a tawdry story of greed and exploitation. While the documentary only hints at it with a few mentions, it’s obvious Farian, who isn’t interviewed and only featured in archival footage, saw Pilatus and Morvan, two young black men who were poor, as an act he could mold to make a few bucks.
It was the typical entertainment play. Get a bunch of young niave performers who know little to nothing about contracts and legalities, have them sign this and that, throw a lot of money at them that they will have to pay back if they break a contract, and basically treat them as indentured servants. The sadness is that so many people went after Pilatus and Morvan who were victims more than they were instigators. In the biopic Elvis, Tom Hank’s Tom Parker keeps a very detailed itemized list of all the expenses he help The King with. One of those $1.25 for gas about 20 years earlier. Imagine holding someone to repay you $1.25 for 20 years earlier. That’s the industry Farian and Parker were in.
I remember talking with the lead singer of a music band from my home town that was trying to make it big in the mid-1990s. He said there’s a lot of things you must know before you sign a record contract. And that’s exactly what some music producers don’t like. Anyone who asks too many questions doesn’t get the nice recording contract. Just about every biopic about the music industry has the greedy producer or record executive holding a contract over the performers’ head.
Because of their young and inexperience, this was able to hook Pilatus and Morvan in. They wer known mostly in Europe as dancers and had appeared in some European music videos when they were asked to meet with Farian at his Frankfurt, Germany studip where they heard a demo of “Girl You Know It’s True.” The irony was the song was never really expected to explode as much as it did. The real singers were Brad Howell and Charles Shaw with additional vocals by twins Linda Rocco and Jodie Rocco who were in Germany. Ingrid Segieth, who was Farian’s girlfriend at the time, had “Milli” has her nickname.
As the song became more popular and their first album went up the charts, a second album and more hit songs was inevitable. It’s noted in the documentary the European album covers didn’t have Pilatus nor Morvan listed anywhere. Of course, executives from Arista Records, which released the albums plead ignorance. And it becomes one big He Said, He Said, She Said debate among Segieth and the Arista executives. That’s not really as interesting as some more personal details.
Segieth talks at length about a maternal relationship she had with Pilatus which is both a little disturbing and very sad at the same time. Pilatus was an orphan in Germany. Worse, he was a black orphan in Germany. Even though he was eventually adopted, the trauma of being rejected stuck with him for the rest of his life. He was also the only black child around white German children who called him Kunta Kinte. So, it’s just natural for people who were shy and mocked when they’re in their youth to take whatever attention they receive in adulthood a lot differently.
And as their popularity rose, it was also only natural for the real singers to feel like they were being short-changed. Shaw tried to go public earlier on but Farian was able to use the fact Shaw was black as a way to create doubt and to show Shaw was just seeking attention. Yet, still a lot of people knew they were lip syncing and weren’t the real singers but they kept their mouth shuts because they were trying to break into the industry as well or were making enough off the album sales and concerts.
Despite what people have thought, it wasn’t the infamous concert where the track skipped on “Girl You Know It’s True” that led to the the scandal going wide. (I also must note as it’s been pointed out by others, the track skip exactly with the lyric “Girl you know it’s” being repeated over and over with “true” not being heard. It’s almost as if the sound system knew they were all fake.) No, it was 1990 Grammy Award win for Best New Artist and Pilatus and Morvan getting a big head.
Morvan said they tried to wait out Farian for more money and Farian blew the scandal wide open admitting himself there were other singers such as Shaw, Howell, the Rocco Twins and John Davis. As the line for the 1992 movie Diggstown goes, “Never try to hustle a hustler.” The horror that people were willing to go after Pilatus and Morvan and not as much Farian shows you not only how racist people were but how they needed someone to blame. And as long as your more behind the scenes, the least people can blame you when things go wrong.
If you don’t know much about the later years, you probably can still guess why during the one-hour and 46 minute documentary features just Morvan and Pilatus isn’t there and referred to in the past tense. He began to abuse drugs shortly after he cut ties with Pilatus after they attempted a comeback where they really sang. On April 3, 1998, he died of a drug overdose in Germany. He was only 32.
Morvan moved to Amsterdam, fell in love, got married and started a family. In an odd irony, the documentary is produced through MTV Productions, which is responsbile for building Milli Vanilli up and then cutting them loose when the scandal broke. Even as a young kid, I never understood why so many people were upset. They knew that there was no Sebastian crab singing “Under the Sea” in The Little Mermaid. So, why were they upset about the Grammy Win? I mean, “Artist” is a very vague term. I remember hearing of a piano concert that was a person bringing out a tape recorder he set on the piano and played a recording.
I mean, comics have paid people to write their jokes, even stealing them from other comics. A guy I know from college commented that Denis Leary went into acting because comic Bill Hicks had died and he didn’t have any new material to steal. It’s a cutt-throat business. Many script writers have said they’ve seen their ideas and plots used by more well-known writers. Supposedly the Grammy win led to the “Best New Artist” category being cursed with many winners since 1990 having career problems or groups disbanding.
Well, time heals all wounds and it wounds all heals. Morvan and Pilatus, may he rest in peace, deserve more what they received from us 30 years ago. They were really just young men in their 20s who got too much too fast too soon. Farian and the executives at Arista and those at MTV should’ve stopped this monster before it exploded. When Ashley Simpson was caught lip-syncing on an episode of Saturday Night Live in 2004, there was criticism but it quickly died down. However, people went after Beyonce at the 2013 inauguration of President Barack Obama for lip-syncing.
So, it’s obviously was a race issue even though no one wants to admit it. And Farian knew exactly what he was doing. Seeing him speaking at Pilatus’ funeral is the worst. If one thing is for certain, you will definitely hate him after seeing this documentary. Hopefully, you will feel something for Pilatus and Morvan who deserve some vindication.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 