Rob Pilatus

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Rob Pilatus was born in 1964 or 1965 in Munich and died in 1998. His father was an African-American soldier, his mother a German dancer. He grew up in an orphanage in Bavaria and then with an adoptive family in Munich. As a teenager he worked as a model and breakdancer, and in 1987 he appeared as a backing singer for the group Wind at the Eurovision Song Contest in Brussels, where Wind came second. In 1988 he met Fab Morvan, with whom he briefly formed Empire Bizarre.

Music and breakthrough

The producer Frank Farian discovered them both and turned them into Milli Vanilli. Pilatus and Morvan turned out not to be singing on the records. The voices came from Charles Shaw, John Davis and Brad Howell, while the duo supplied the images with their looks, their hair extensions and their dances. The album Girl You Know It's True became a worldwide hit with three number ones, Girl You Know It's True, Baby Don't Forget My Number and Blame It On The Rain. In 1990 the duo won a Grammy for best new artist.

Influence

The fairy tale ended on 15 November 1990, when Farian admitted that the duo had not sung themselves. The Grammy was withdrawn four days later. In 1992 Rob & Fab appeared with their own voices, but that album hardly sold. Pilatus later ran into trouble with the law and drugs and was found dead in a hotel room near Frankfurt in 1998. His story is regarded as the best-known example of lip-syncing in pop history.

Listening