TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/120390/1203440.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.8 KB | 86 lines

                                                                                MUSIC, Page 123

Fans, You Know It's True


Milli Vanilli lose a Grammy for not singing, but have lots to
say


    Here's an idea: give the withdrawn Grammy to Arsenio Hall.
He started all this. "We were tired of being made fun of by
Arsenio Hall," said Rob Pilatus, 25, at a rowdy press conference
in Los Angeles last week. Pilatus, one half of Milli Vanilli,
was struggling to explain how the duo's yearnings for legitimacy
had provoked their German record producer, Frank Farian, into
confirming what had long been show-biz rumor: that Pilatus and
Fab Morvan, 25, were in fact techno-puppets, fronts for a
studio-manufactured sound that sold 10 million copies of the
album Girl You Know It's True, on which they never sang.

    Producer Farian was using the same studio singers --
Charles Shaw, Johnny Davis and Brad Howell, the latter two of
whom are credited with background vocals on Girl -- to make the
new Milli Vanilli album, due out in January, and Rob and Fab
were having none of it. After all, as far as the public was
concerned, they were Milli Vanilli: they were the ones who went
on tour and shook their booties; they were the ones who accepted
the Grammy last year for Best New Artist. They demanded to sing
for themselves. When the producer remained adamant, they fired
him, he issued the now notorious announcement, and the National
Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences withdrew the Grammy.

    How did the pair get into this charade in the first place?
It was, according to the boys, something out of an MTV Oliver
Twist -- "a pact with the devil," Pilatus explained. He and
Morvan were living a marginal life in a Munich housing project
when, in 1988, Farian offered each of them $4,000 (plus
subsequent royalties) to be seen but not heard as Milli Vanilli.
"We just hope [our fans] understand that we were young, that we
just wanted to live life the American way," said Pilatus. Some
fans don't seem all that sympathetic. Two have filed lawsuits
on behalf of deceived record buyers. The boys say Arista
president Clive Davis knew they didn't sing on the album; Arista
heatedly denies it.

    At the press conference, skeptical reporters received video
and audio tapes of Pilatus and Morvan demonstrating their own
singing, then goaded the duo into a 15-second version of Girl
You Know It's True. The performance, with their trademark
dreadlocks shaking, only proved once more that looking good was
what they did best.

    In fact, in this age of video-driven, computer-written pop,
you need a superstar to sell a song. Using studio personnel to
supplement and even define a group sound is not an unheard-of
practice in rock: Remember Phil Spector's use of other singers
under the name of the Crystals, or Brian Wilson's hours in the
studio concocting Beach Boys tracks? The new wrinkle is that the
people who provide the sounds may not be exactly . . . well,
charismatic on camera. Today's concert audiences want to see
re-creations of videos, and that often demands intricate,
high-energy choreography of a kind that makes live vocalizing
extremely difficult. Madonna, Janet Jackson and the New Kids on
the Block have all resorted to some lip-syncing in their recent
shows to see them through the rigors of dancing. They have
never, though, used surrogates for the sound that bears their
name.

    The Millis' sound, of course, was commercial enough, but it
never rated high on the soul meter, no matter who was actually
doing the singing. The whole controversy, in fact, is juicier
than any of the duo's music. One thing can be said with
certainty of the Millis: nothing so became their leaving like
the life of it.


By Jay Cocks. Reported by Elizabeth L. Bland/New York and
Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles.