Frank Farian, born in 1941, has passed away at the age of 82 at his home in Miami.
During his career, his music projects sold over 850 million records and were awarded 800 gold and platinum certifications.
Boney M was founded in the mid-1970s by the music producer, who not only wrote several of the band’s songs, but also sang all the vocals. In the beginning, there were no real band members, just models who fronted Frank Farian’s recordings. Some years later people were added, and Marcia Barrett, Liz Mitchell, Maizie Williams and Bobby Farrell finally made up the permanent members of the group. The band broke through with the song “Daddy Cool”, and released several hit songs, including “Rasputin” and “Rivers of Babylon”.
Boney M: Marcia Barrett, Bobby Farrell, Liz Mitchell and Maizie Williams.
Foto: Andre Csillag/REX
The German music group Milli Vanilli was founded in the late 80s, and consisted of band members Robert “Rob” Pilatus and Fabrice “Fab” Morvan. In 1990, the group won a Grammy, but had to give it back shortly after. It turned out that it was not “Rob” and “Fab” who sang, neither on stage nor on record. The frontmen left the band, and Milli Vanilli’s next album was titled “The real Milli Vanilli”. Now it was the real singers who sang and were on the cover. Even so, the fans were not satisfied, and wanted the old band members back.
Some of Milli Vanilli’s most famous songs were Girl you know it’s true”, “Baby don’t forget my number”, and “All or nothing”.
Music artist Michael Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf, wrote the album “Bat out of hell” together with Jim Steinman. The album became the third best-seller in the world. Meat Loaf and Frank Farian’s collaboration was less successful. Frank Farian produced the album “Blind before I stop”, which was a huge fiasco, and put Meat Loaf out of business.
Last week, Frank Farian was included in one of the music questions in SVT’s “På spåret”.
