(Paris) The duo did not sing on their blockbuster record: Milli Vanilli, a documentary broadcast from Wednesday on the Paramount platform, deciphers the story of this group, the perfect scapegoat for a music industry primarily guilty of this deception.
It was in 1988 that Milli Vanilli burst onto the pop landscape, driven by the hit Girl You Know It’s True, in the stable of Frank Farian, a German hit maker already responsible for the success of Boney M.
Impeccable plastic, beautiful faces, outstanding dancers, dreadlocks in the wind, the new stars, Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, are hitting the TV sets and even winning a Grammy, the supreme musical award in the United States.
It’s all a fairy tale for the pair, who met in Munich – where Pilatus is from – and who until then made a living as dancers for TV shows or occasional models.
The revelation of the deception causes a worldwide shock wave.
In the documentary (1h40) that director Luke Korem devotes to this affair, we notably see an epic press conference, when the Milli Vanilli try to explain themselves. Morvan is prostrate and Pilatus cannot argue, cornered by aggressive reminders.
When he suggests a pact with the devil to get out of their modest circumstances, a journalist barks: “your talent would have been enough to get you out! “. “That’s a remark from a white guy,” someone says lucidly off-camera.
The duo will notably be forced to return their Grammy.
The documentary, however, goes further and seeks to reestablish the scale of responsibilities, with Frank Farian at the forefront, then the managers of the Arista record company.
“We finally see all the layers, by not stopping at “Rob and Fab, they lied””, rejoices Fab Morvan, pilloried when the ploy was revealed.
Rob Pilatus, another figure in the tandem, died in 1998, fallen into hard drugs and for a long time designated, alongside his friend, as the only villains in the story.
“Overnight, we became lepers,” says the survivor, a Parisian with Guadeloupean roots, 57 years old, now based in Amsterdam, father of four children and who has never stopped playing music.
An underlying racism emerges from the film, as established by American music critic Hanif Abdurraqib. Their audience, mostly white, could not stand being cheated by two black artists.
Producer Frank Farian, who refuses to speak in the documentary, criticized their Bavarian accents for Pilatus and French for Morvan, as told by the producer’s assistant and ex-lover, Ingrid Segieth, who testifies in the film.
He therefore recorded the titles with voice doubles – singers present in the documentary – while Morvan and Pilatus signed a contract without reading it. “We were too naive,” the survivor rewinds.
The trap closes. The duo takes a liking to success, to a jet-set life – “we were comfortable in this hot bath”, describes the Frenchman today – and gets bogged down in duplicity. But, as Morvan says in the film: “the lie takes the elevator when the truth goes up the stairs.”
