Fab Morvan - Finding My Own Voice

 

 

So, picture this. We are at the Shrine in Los Angeles, California. It's 1990. We are at the biggest party in music industry. It's the Grammys. We just finished performing [sings] Girl, you know it's true. Ooh, ooh, ooh, I love you. [audience chuckles] We're now backstage holding our breath, listening to the emcee to call out the nominees for our categories. Best new artist. We are Milli Vanilli, and let it be Tone Lōc, Soul II Soul, Indigo Girls, but not us. Please don't do this. “And the winner is Milli Vanilli.” The crowd goes crazy. We froze, but we have to get out there with big smile on our faces as well. 

 

So, we get in there, and we hold the award high, and dedicate it to all the artists out there with a dream. We're living a fairy tale. But there was a but. We had a secret, underlying all the good times. So, now, I met Rob when I was 19 years old in Munich, Germany, and he was 22. He was raised by a family in Germany. They were white and he was black. And because he was black in school, he got teased a lot. So, when he became of age and could defend himself and retaliate, he adopted the motto, “It's better to be feared.” I was born in Paris. My motto was, “It was better to be loved.”

 

We were opposite in personalities. He was loud and had a healthy appetite for life and very spontaneous. I was quiet, shy, and always thought twice before doing anything. But we connected. We did what young men do. We love music, dancing, girls, going out, having fun. We had a name in the club scene. We were part of it was because we looked different and we had worked really carefully on this. One night, we were watching TV, and we had seen this program on pop icons and we noticed one thing, “Hmm, they have good hair. [audience laughter] Hmm, okay. Good hair. All right. Okay.” 

 

After thinking about it a little bit, we decided, this is it. Braid. The girls are going to love it, it's going to be sexy. Let's go for that's one. Through the grapevine, one of the biggest producers at the time, Frank Farian, heard these little kids, they could dance, they could sing, and they had great hair. [audience laughter] So, we were invited to the studio. And there, right away, we were seduced by the music factory and the state-of-the-art equipment, the gold records on the wall.

 

So, we're at the mercy of the big producer. We were eager to please him. When it was time to sign a recording contract, hell yeah, where do we sign? And the only thing that rang true to our mind was, in our mind was advance money. We need to get some food, get some clothes, and refresh the trademark, the hair. [audience laughter] Even though there was no attorney, no manager's presence, we signed this paper. But later, we found out that it was not just for one single, it was for three albums. 

 

Now, we're in Studio A with Frank Farian. He's about to press play, and we're about to listen to Girl You Know It's True for the first time, instrumental. The music starts and we're like, “Wow, the music is rocking.” For the next four minutes, Rob and I fantasize about being on television. When it stops, first question is, when are we going to record? And he mumbles, “Yeah, we need to talk about that.” But then, something happened, something weird, because we're all smiles, we're all positive. And then, the room got cold and felt like it was getting darker and they were fighting. The voice was getting louder, louder and louder until the producer, Frank Farian, walked away. 

 

Rob turns to me and says, "They don't want us to sing on the record." I'm like, “But we signed a recording contract not long ago.” [audience chuckles] And then, he's hesitating to tell me like, "Look, they want us to lip sync." I'm like, “Lip sync?” Like, "No way. Let's get out of here." But here came the punchline. All the money that they had given us, they said, “Okay, you can walk away. Just go on, move on with your life,” but pay this back.

We were broken, so we were against the wall. 

 

All the money had been given us. We used it to live, to eat. So, now the trap that they are carefully prepared is closing slowly but surely. The only thing for us to do is to join them, because we can't fight them. And the only way to get out was to get deeper in. So, now we're promoting the record. And it's exciting, because people are responding to the song, they're responding to us. And this is like, “Wow, we are rock stars.” When I say ho, you say hey. Ho. 

 

Unison: [00:44:08] Hey.

 

Fab: [00:44:09] Ho. 

 

Unison: [00:44:09] Hey. 

 

Fab: [00:44:10] Ho.

 

Unison: [00:44:10] Hey.

 

Fab: [00:44:11] Just like that. Imagine a young man [audience chuckles] feeling that. Now, we got girls galore. It's everywhere. We have so much choices. Oh, God. [audience laughter] We don't know what to do with ourselves. We turn our hotel room into party central. You need food, room service. You need alcohol, room service. We go to the club, no problem. Bring your friends. Everyone knows who we are. So, now, we're working and working harder and harder. We hate the idea of lip syncing, but we love performing and making people happy. 

 

Now, we're working. We're working, but then every night, every night, it's me, myself and I faced with reality. I didn't sing on the record, Rob didn't sing on the record, we didn't. And that was a secret that we were holding at the Grammys. Now, Frank Farian, the great businessman that he was, already was working on the second album. We sold by now 30 million singles and over 7 million albums. But we're done. We decided, “This is it. We're going to pull the plug.” We said, “It's over. We're done. Do whatever you want. Take us to court, do whatever.”

 

And he sent a very clear message. He said, "I took you in, I'll take you out." [audience chuckles] “Whatever, dude. We're out.” A few weeks later, our assistant came running while we were finishing our morning run. "The cat is out the bag. The cat is out the bag." We understood. Frank Farian flew to New York and told the world they didn't sing on the record. We know the backlash is coming. Before we could even get back to the house, the trucks are there outside parked, camera, microphone, salivating at us. Arriving, we walk through the gauntlet. "Fab, Rob, Rob, Fab, you have anything to say?" 

 

We walk through, we turn the TV on, bam, it's everywhere. It's media frenzy, Milli Vanilli lip syncing, as if we were the mastermind behind it. Being punched. Boom, boom, boom, every day by public humiliation. And it's hard to take. It's very difficult. We're alone. Everybody left us there by ourselves. So, we call out a press conference when we give back the Grammy that we didn't want in the first place. We go home and this is it. Like, what are we going to do now? I get a chance to talk to my family, to my mom, and she tells me, "Make it right, so that you can walk with your head up high, no matter how long it takes." 

 

So, I thought about it. After some soul searching, I realized that music was part of my life and I couldn't live without it. So, I worked on myself, my skills as a songwriter, producer, musician, and I felt better. I felt hope. Rob, on the other hand, took it a lot harder. And he went in a spiral down. Hanging out with the old friends, doing drugs to remove this pain that he had, because everything was taken away. It was from famous to infamous, just like that and it hurt. The press said Rob died of an overdose, and I said, “No, he died of a broken heart.” 

 

When the news came, my ears just-- they rang. And suddenly, I realized that he's not coming back from this one. It's over. I guess he got his wish. Immortality. He'll be young forever. So, I looked at the horizon and I said to myself, I'm going to channel this pain into music, which I love. I worked on an album called Love Revolution, and I dedicated a song to Rob Pilatus called It's Your Life. And there's no bitterness. I have none. I've learned a lot, made me a better man, and I feel like I lived the life of a hundred men. But before I leave, I'd like to sing a few lines that I wrote for Rob Pilatus. [sings] Oh no, don't take that alley. You will see, it's the wrong place to be for your soul. But who am I to tell you what to do? But it's your life. But it's your life. Thank you.