Sara Polo Madrid

Madrid

Updated Friday, March 22, 2024-02:17

They were the biggest stars on the planet but their reign did not last even two years and the setback was terrible.

Fabrice Morvan

is almost the only one left alive from the

Milli Vanilli

case , the biggest pop music scandal in history that marked a before and after in the relationship between the public and the industry in the early 90s.

Yesterday, half of that precursor duo of

boy bands

pointed out unceremoniously to that industry from a central hotel in Madrid . He has forgiven the German producer who made it, the press that destroyed it without ever asking his point of view, the public that lifted it to the skies and let it plummet from one day to the next. He has forgiven himself, above all, but the Fab of

Rob & Fab

will never absolve the music mogul who catapulted them (and later abandoned them when things went wrong) in the United States,

Clive Davis

, creator, among others, of Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and Patti Smith and, at 91 years old, the other survivor in history today. His accusation is enough as a cursory reminder of what happened, if anyone has forgotten it.

«Clive Davis knew perfectly well that we did not sing our songs.

He had heard us speaking with our French and German accents, it was evident that they were not our voices but he blinded him to the deal

. When he saw that he was selling records like croissants he went crazy, he told us that he didn't even need to invest in marketing because the radio stations adored us, the people adored us," he recalls. "I'm not going to play the victim, I'm not, I take responsibility, but it bothers me a lot that, neither then nor now, were the right questions asked or the people who caused everything that happened to us investigated."

To know more

Frank Farian.

The producer of the Milli Vanilli scandal who got rich with Boney M

  • Editor: LF ROMO

The producer of the Milli Vanilli scandal who got rich with Boney M

Fabrice Morvan.

"We were the butt of all the jokes"

  • Editor: LUIS FERNANDO ROMO

"We were the butt of all the jokes"

What happened to them, in short, was that they were caught playing

back

at a macro-concert of a macro-tour that they had just undertaken after having won a Grammy for Best New Artist that had gone slightly to their heads. That a failure in the tape left a duo who had recently revealed in

Time

magazine that they had

"more talent than Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger"

with their asses in the air live,

was like throwing a steak to the vultures. .

The domino effect came from Germany. Producer

Frank Farian

, creator of

Milli Vanilli

, fed up with the duo rebelling against

playback

and demanding to sing their new album, called a press conference to reveal that, in reality, the voices behind those two attractive black men were those of some much less attractive American singers. The second chip was thrown in by

Fab & Rob

themselves

with a public apology and the return of the fraudulent Grammy. No one could stop the avalanche that came after them.

There was no mercy

.

"I'm not going to play the victim, I'm not, I take responsibility for what I did"

Fab Morvan

says

that it has taken him 35 years to tell his side of the story, the one that cost him first the absolute degradation of drugs and then his life due to an overdose of his best friend before he turned 33, which he was about to end the professional career of a young Parisian of Guadeloupean origin who danced

breakdance

and dreamed of singing.

If last year it was vindicated in a documentary, it is now sponsoring a German

biopic

directed by

Simon Verhoeven

, which will hit Spanish theaters next Wednesday:

Milli Vanilli: girl you know it's true

.

«There was a time when just hearing the name Milli Vanilli caused me unbearable pain. "I cut my hair to erase that identity

," she says, pointing out the dreadlocks that she wears tied up in a high bun, and that she carefully keeps not too long so that they don't bother her when she dances. «But for me everything now is a celebration. I have done my job, I have displayed an important emotional intelligence and I have forgiven to give back the self-esteem that was removed from me the moment they prevented me from singing," he says, and sentences, with a sad veil in his eyes: "If they had let us sing, everything would have been different.

He has even forgiven himself professionally. Now you sing your songs yourself. Yes, I have returned to where I always should have been. We dreamed of recording our own album, I just wanted to lock myself in the studio and sing. Music has always been therapeutic for me, it has absorbed all the horrible things that were said and that is why now it is all joy, it breathes positivity. It's my victory. Your career today is more modest, would you like to be a star again? No, no, I don't care at all. The goal in my life, now, is to bring a dose of happiness to people. It is a form of altruism through music. Now I am a complete artist: I write, sing, dance, I develop all facets of who I am. And that includes my story. If someone can learn something, then great.

"If they had let us sing, everything would have been different"

Do you miss your partner Robert Pilatus? Oh yes, every day. Right now, as we speak, he is here with me. Because we started this journey together and we always continue it together. Maybe when I get back up there I can meet him again and ask him if he's proud of me. When he was an addict and only moved among addicts, his colleagues told me that he never had a bad word towards me. And it was an act of greatness to let me go and continue on my path. They were two absolutely different people, personally and professionally. How do you think that magic was generated when you were together? I had a personality, he was completely opposite, but when we put our characters together an explosion occurred, as if a chemical reaction was generated. You were precursors of a way of making music. Today, many singers use Autotune. Technically, that's not his voice either... It's exactly the same, there is no difference: if you don't know how to sing but you can defend a song on stage, they put you in the studio and the machine sings for you. Marketing changes and in the '80s, when we racked up five number ones, one number two,

sold

33 million singles and 15 million records, people saw a new future in the music industry and they didn't like it. But what we did was iconic.

"Autotune is the same thing we did: if you don't know how to sing but you can defend a song on stage, the machine sings for you"

The new future now involves artificial intelligence. Are you afraid? Of course, now anyone can record an album with your voice, where are the artist's rights? On a creative level, however, I find it very interesting. Does he use AI, on a creative level, for his songs? No, no, no, no, no, I do everything myself. I already learned the lesson. I also draw, paint, write, I do everything with my hands, I never resort to the digital world. When you look back, do you consider Milli Vanilli a musical, dance, fashion project...? Today it is studied in schools in all those aspects, we were pioneers of everything that is happening right now with social networks. People told us we just wanted to be famous, now everyone wants to be famous. It's human nature. What did she feel when she got back on stage, after the scandal, and she was able to sing with her voice? I told myself that my life had just begun.