POP MUSIC; Rob and Fab: Do You Know Us?

POP MUSIC; Rob and Fab: Do You Know Us?

By Steve Pond
  • March 14, 1993
Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan had just left their hotel when they heard the shout: "Milli Vanilli!"
Mr. Pilatus flinched, then waved tentatively at a young woman who had spotted them on the busy sidewalk. "When are you coming out with something new?" she yelled with a grin, and Mr. Pilatus relaxed. She was a fan, who might not even remember why Milli Vanilli is a dirty word to these guys.
But Mr. Pilatus and Mr. Morvan can't forget. Milli Vanilli is the name of the group that made these two young Europeans rich and famous through a combination of looks, luck, MTV airplay and a swing in pop music toward dance-oriented songs. But then they turned into a laughingstock a little more than two years ago. Their producer admitted that his two lead "singers" didn't sing on their multimillion-selling album, "Girl You Know It's True," but simply accompanied their flashy dance steps by lip-synching onstage and in videos.
More than two dozen lawsuits followed, as did instant banishment from pop charts that at the time were full of dance-pop artists who lip-synched in concert and relied on technical help in the studio. The duo became poster boys for the newly scorned genre of music, enshrined in countless stand-up comedy routines and stripped of the Grammy Award for best new artist that they had recently won. In the aftermath, friends and family deserted them, Mr. Pilatus attempted suicide, and the record company with which they planned to make their comeback went bankrupt.
Now the two men go by the name Rob and Fab, and they're banking on the dubious idea that everyone can forgive and forget their sordid past. To that end, they're here peddling an eponymous album that will be released on Tuesday. They're also trying to redeem themselves, not to fans who greet them on the street but to radio programmers and disk jockeys in San Francisco for an annual convention. Instantly recognizable with their long braids, they've just walked through a lobby full of conventioneers, and nobody even acknowledged them. In addition, few stations have played their single, "We Can Get It On." The message is clear: fans may remember them, but the record industry doesn't want to hear about, or from, Rob and Fab. Changing that fact may be harder than Michael Jackson convincing the nation he's just a normal guy.
"It's going to be a long, hard, uphill climb for them," says Ken Barnes, editor of the industry trade journal Radio and Records, which tracks playlists for more than 200 major-market radio stations. "An undeniably great record would provoke an outbreak of forgiveness on the part of radio, but when their single came out, we couldn't find a single one of our stations reporting it."
  • Unlock more free articles.
Create an account or log in
Rob and Fab's manager, Robert Perry, tries hard to put the best face on this seemingly disheartening information. He says that the single has been released only in isolated markets, and besides, he adds, the album has two or three likelier hits. But Mr. Perry, who works for Proserv Basketball and Football, a Washington-based company better known for representing athletes like Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing than for making inroads into the music industry, concedes that this is a difficult project.
"My first reaction when they called me last summer," he says, "was 'Rob and Fab? No way. I don't want to represent those lip-synchers.' But I met them and thought they were genuine and honest. And frankly, if this works, it's gonna be the comeback of the century."
Part of Mr. Perry's strategy is to let Rob and Fab speak for themselves, so they repeat their lines like mantras: "We don't blame anybody but ourselves." "We were naive and stupid." "We know a lot of people don't even get one chance, so we're grateful for a second chance."
Another part of the strategy -- and perhaps the riskiest -- is to let them sing. That's why they're at the convention, but since they're with a tiny independent company, Joss Entertainment, and have virtually no credibility, they're not booked into a local club or at one of the convention's official showcases. Instead, Ron Alexenburg, an independent promoter, has invited about three dozen programmers and deejays to hear Rob and Fab perform in his hotel suite. "In the industry we somehow made ourselves a lot of enemies," says Mr. Pilatus shortly before the performance. "And today is a great possibility for us to change that picture of us."
They need to change that picture quickly, because after selling seven million albums in this country and 10 million worldwide, these former big spenders haven't generated income in two years. "I thought I was gonna retire in '95," says Mr. Pilatus. "One million, two million, three million seems like a lot of money. But if you spend $80,000 a month, it's really nothing. From one week to another, the gold mine stopped, and we didn't know how to deal with money in the right way. So we need to work, we have to make money."
MR. PILATUS, WHO IS 28, AND Mr. Morvan, who reluctantly admits to being 26, were discovered because of their looks and dancing ability, not their musical talent. Mr. Pilatus, a breakdancing champion from Munich, Germany, met Mr. Morvan in that city's trendiest nightclubs in 1986, and at the urging of friends soon began performing with his Parisian lookalike. They talked of making records, and in 1988 were recruited by Frank Farian, a producer who was assembling a Euro-pop dance band.
Aware that their English was subpar and their accents heavy, they were determined to be pop stars, so they went along with Mr. Farian's plan to use other singers on the Milli Vanilli album. They would make token appearances in the studio for show, then leave to promote the record while the real singers took over. Full of lightweight, critically reviled dance-pop ditties, the album nonetheless contained three songs that became No. 1 hits and made stars of pretty-boys, who countered criticism with arrogance. "Musically, we are more talented than any Bob Dylan," Mr. Pilatus once said. "Musically, we are more talented than Paul McCartney. . . .I'm the new modern rock-and-roll. I'm the new Elvis."

EDITORS’ PICKS

"We went with the wrong attitude to America, too successful with a too big attitude," he says now. "We were not really knowing how grateful we should be just to have the chance to even lip-sync a record and be exposed to five billion people worldwide." Adds Mr. Morvan: "We had nothing, and then we had everything. So everything was taken for granted."
Rumors that they couldn't sing started early on: Mr. Pilatus remembers attending the Evander Holyfield-Buster Douglas boxing match in Las Vegas in October 1990 and hearing fans shout: "Milli Vanilli! You guys bring your playback with you?"
But the real trouble began in 1991. The pair left their manager, Sandy Gallin (whose clients now include Michael Jackson), for a German friend, Carsten Heyn. Two weeks later, angered when his frontmen insisted they be allowed to sing on the second Milli Vanilli album, Mr. Farian held a news conference and the roof fell in.
"Right after the scandal -- one, two, four weeks after the scandal -- I still believed we had a chance," says Mr. Pilatus. But the feeling didn't last. Mr. Heyn, they say, alienated everybody in the industry who hadn't already written them off; soon he signed them to Taj Records, which was "the first company to throw $50,000 at them," according to someone familiar with the deal. With no track record and serious financial problems, the small Nevada-based label tried to capitalize on the pair's notoriety by sending them into a cut-rate Reno studio. Mr. Pilatus and Mr. Morvan virtually lived on the premises for close to six months, but Taj had enough money for only a day or two of recording at a time.
"There were fights over the budget every day, fights over producers every day," says Mr. Pilatus. "It was not very healthy."
Mr. Morvan adds: "When you're big, everybody is your friend. And when you're out, you're left alone just like that. Boom."
Eventually, Taj filed for bankruptcy. Mr. Pilatus and Mr. Morvan returned to Los Angeles, without much money and without the friends who had surrounded them in better days. The first week after the scandal, they say, they got a few phone calls of support; the next week, one or two calls; after that, nothing. Mr. Pilatus's adoptive parents, whom he says had thrown him out of the house when he was 15 but considered him a "wonder kid" once he made his first million, asked him to change his name. (He has since made peace with his parents.)
"Rob and Fab were alone in America," says Mr. Pilatus. "No family, no friends, just a big staff of business people around, lawsuits, incredible spending habits." They stayed in this country, though, because they couldn't bear to return to Germany in disgrace. "If someone assaults you with words in English, it doesn't really hurt much," says Mr. Morvan. "But in your mother language it's different. You get hurt really deep inside. If we went back then, everybody would say, 'Oh, a loser.' "
Late in the year, in a move that seemed to damage their credibility beyond repair, Mr. Pilatus climbed onto the balcony of a high-rise hotel on Sunset Boulevard and threatened to jump. "I was manic depressive," says Mr. Pilatus. "That was the worst year of my life. My father died; my family got harassed. I mixed alcohol with pills, and it was, like, the most stupidest thing I ever did. The reaction was enormously negative on my life, because of the fear in the industry to deal with a crazy guy."
He shrugs. "At that time I didn't talk about no problems. Now I talk to people about therapy, and about finding yourself. I read books." He jumps to his feet, opens a drawer and pulls out a self-help manual. "Here. 'You Can Heal Your Life.' "
Both men went through therapy in the aftermath of the scandal; it's something Mr. Pilatus recommends to "every teen group who gets big, because the difference from a normal human to a star human is very hard to take." They bolstered their self-confidence when they appeared in a chewing gum commercial, mocking the scandal by lip-synching Italian opera. ("We really sang it, too," insists Mr. Morvan. "We spent a week on that.") Another boost came when Taj was bought by the California-based Joss Entertainment and the singers finished their album at a more hospitable studio in Oakland.
A GUEST APPEARANCE ON "THE Arsenio Hall Show" last October was crucial to launching their comeback single. But after the appearance, which was well received, Joss lacked the money to put "We Can Get It On" into record stores. "Before that I had tried to get Joss to give up the rights to the album so I could take it to a major label," says Mr. Perry, the duo's manager. "But Joss assured us that distribution and radio promotion would happen after Arsenio Hall. Neither of those happened, and because of that the single died, and none of the majors who had been interested would touch them."
Since then, he says, Joss has reorganized its finances to the point where it can finally release "Rob and Fab," which contains some Milli Vanilli-style pop but has a harder, more hip-hop-influenced sound. Radio stations in some isolated markets are playing the album, but there's still resistance.
"I warn the industry, they shouldn't underestimate the fact that Rob and Fab still have a lot of fans," says Mr. Pilatus with a touch of the old confidence -- or perhaps old arrogance. "And they should try to forgive us. Because we weren't bad for the music industry. We changed the music industry. Now bands have to sing live, now people watch who sings on the record, now people want to hear the real music and not just plastic bands anymore. So I think we changed the music business to a better, more honest way."
Mr. Morvan adds: "That's why everybody is really singing out now. Jodeci, Color Me Badd . . . " Mr. Pilatus jumps in. "Michael Bolton, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston . . ."
In other words, the record industry was changed for the better when they were thrown out, and that's why they should be welcomed back. Since the scandal, it's true that studio singers have received more credit for their contributions, and the widespread practice of lip-synching in concert has diminished. Still, few would credit Milli Vanilli for the success of singers like Ms. Houston, whose hits predate theirs. And few, besides Mr. Pilatus and Mr. Morvan themselves, would predict much industry acceptance for a pair who are seen, at best, as dupes.
"I think the industry wants to make sure that we're legitimate and not, like, a scam again," concedes Mr. Morvan. "It's crazy that people think that might be a slight possibility."
Mr. Pilatus adds: "Crazy. I mean, I've been through one suicide, I don't want to go through
another
one."
"Nobody knows," adds Mr. Morvan softly. "We can't even explain, really, with words, what it feels like to be humiliated everywhere, around the world. And tonight I'm sure they won't know what to expect."
Mr. Pilatus says: "But I'm a little bit scared. I have to talk during the song, and it makes me nervous that I don't forget my lines." He looks over at his manager. "Can we rehearse it one time, maybe?"
Three hours later, they face a hotel room full of programmers and disk jockeys. Mr. Alexenburg greets guests by announcing, "Welcome to the Clive Davis suite." He's referring to the fact that Mr. Davis, then head of Columbia Records, first heard Billy Joel play "Piano Man" in this suite -- but nobody misses the irony that the same executive now heads Arista Records, which made millions from the first Milli Vanilli album but subsequently offered refunds to settle the post-scandal lawsuits, many of them from fans who claimed they had been deceived.
After the key radio personnel arrive and sample the open bar and free buffet, Mr. Alexenburg introduces Rob and Fab. Mr. Pilatus picks up his microphone, and there's a blast of feedback. He shrugs. "That shows you that the mike is on, yeah?"
There's no stage here, simply a clearing in front of a grandfather clock, a small side table and a window covered with a gold curtain; to the side is a rack of audio equipment to provide pre-recorded backing tracks and background vocals. Scanning the crowd for women to play to, Mr. Pilatus gets through his raps without stumbling, then defers to Mr. Morvan, whose high, passable voice is clearly the stronger of the two. The performance is not as mindlessly athletic and exuberant as the ones they delivered as Milli Vanilli, but tonight they have less space to work with and more things to think about.
Near the end of their second song, though, they break into the kind of frenetic unison dancing, braids flailing, that was once their often-derided trademark. It gets a rise from the audience, and immediately afterward Mr. Pilatus breaks into a rap that ends, "Who do you think we are, Milli Vanilli?
No!
This time it's for real!"
Later, they stay to chat with the programmers, pose for an endless series of publicity photos, sign CD's and posters, and eagerly sample from the buffet table. Out in the hallway, meanwhile, four young conventioneers try to bluff their way to Mr. Alexenburg's suite but are stopped by a security guard for not having invitations. "You mean we need an invitation?" one of them shouts derisively. "To hang out with
Milli Vanilli?
"
Inside the suite, though, Mr. Pilatus and Mr. Morvan act as if they've won this round in their battle for redemption. "Things like this today, they make us happy now," says Mr. Pilatus. "Because now we really sing and people still didn't leave the room."
A version of this article appears in print on March 14, 1993, Section 2, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: POP MUSIC; Rob and Fab: Do You Know Us?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Comments

Post a Comment