life after lip-synching

“I’m not a bitter man—I can’t
be,” says Morvan (posing
for a tongue-in-cheek photo
at a karaoke club in L.A.).
The duo’s story is now being
made into a movie.
1990
Morvan
(right) and
Rob Pilatus
bask in a
Grammy win.
GROOMER: JAMIE GREENBERG/THE WALL GROUP;
STYLIST: RAHEL AFILEY; INSET: DOUGLAS C. PIZAC/AP
FAB MORVAN
LIFE AFTER
LIP-SYNCHING
Twenty years after winning—then losing—a Grammy, Milli Vanilli’s
surviving member talks about how he weathered the scandal
BY MARISA LAUDADIO
Photographs by JEFF MINTON
PEOPLE December 13, 2010
105
A
fter enduring endless
talk-show jokes, a classaction suit and even
fans driving a steamroller over his band’s
records, Milli Vanilli’s Fab Morvan
could have turned his back on music
forever. Yet in the 20 years since he
and Rob Pilatus were stripped of their
Best New Artist Grammy because
they hadn’t sung a note on “Blame It
on the Rain” or any of their hits, Morvan says he never lost hope. “When
it all crumbled,” he says, “I promised
myself to still go for my dream.”
So for years the Paris-born singer
has been paying his dues, deejaying on
L.A.’s KIIS-FM, teaching French and
lecturing students about the music
industry, while continuing to record.
“It was difficult to rebuild my life with
this stigma,” says Morvan, 44, who’s
now working on dance-music project
SMFM. “When you get beat down like
that, you don’t want to trust anyone.”
Morvan admits he was young and
naive when he and Pilatus, who were
in a Munich cover band, caught the
eye of producer Frank Farian in 1987.
They inked a deal without lawyers,
then were told to lip-synch to studiosinger vocals for one track. (“They
were hired as dancers, not singers,”
says Farian.) “We tried to get out of it,
but we couldn’t pay the money back,”
says Morvan. “We thought, ‘One song
and we’re done.’ ” But “Girl You Know
It’s True” shot to No. 1 and, he says,
MY NO. 1 REGRET
IS ROB’S DEATH.
MY FRIEND LOST
HIS LIFE—THAT’S
HOW DEEP OUR
SITUATION GOT.
I WISH I COULD
HAVE SAVED HIM
SO THAT HE COULD
BE WITH US TODAY”
“they had us.” Over the next two years,
they sold 7 million albums, spawned
trends (spandex shorts, anyone?) and
won a Grammy. “We had fun at first,
but the pressure was huge,” he says.
When the two demanded to sing live
in 1990, Farian outed them. “After
they wouldn’t follow instructions
and wanted to sing—they couldn’t—
we stopped the faking,” says Farian.
With their reputations ruined and
little money saved (Farian earned most
of Milli Vanilli’s royalties), Morvan
says they “did an alphabet of drugs.”
A new album as Rob & Fab in 1993
failed, and Pilatus died of a suspected
overdose in 1998. “Rob didn’t have the
strength to start over,” says Morvan,
who got clean in 1991.
Soldiering on alone, Morvan, who
is single and lives in Amsterdam and
L.A., put out a neosoul album, Love
Revolution, in 2003. And last month
he returned to his club roots with
SMFM’s first single, “Twisted.” He’s
also been playing Milli Vanilli hits
onstage—with his own live vocals.
“In life, you want to walk with dignity,” he says. “I want ‘Milli Vanilli’
to mean when you fall, you stand up
and go forward. And no one can take
that away from you.”
•
GIVING BACK
THE GRAMMY
106
December 13, 2010 PEOPLE
INSET: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
After their trophy was revoked (the
first and only time one has been in
the awards’ 52-year history), Milli
Vanilli returned the hardware at a
heated November 1990 press conference. Morvan says it was “the
right thing to do,” but he questions
artists today who correct their vocals
with technology like Auto-Tune. “If
the machine is doing everything for
you, is it really any different?”