Music producer Frank Farian has died at the age of 82. His family announced this. Farian is best known as the producer of the duo Milli Vanilli and as the founder of Boney M.
The German pop music producer and former pop singer Frank Farian is dead. He died peacefully at home in Miami at the age of 82, the Allendorf Media agency announced on behalf of his family.
Farian had produced famous pop music classics since the 1970s. He is known for hits such as “Rasputin”, “Rivers of Babylon”, “Daddy Cool” and “Ma Baker”, among others.
As producer of the group Boney M., Farian wrote pop history with hits like “Rivers of Babylon” and “Ma Baker”.
Most successful Producer from Germany
Since the success of his sad hit “Rocky” in the mid-1970s, he has barely performed – that was “over at some point”.
His huge success as a producer then began. With more than 800 million records sold, Farian is considered the most internationally successful producer from Germany. The breakthrough surprised even him. “The success was a huge surprise. I always thought I wouldn’t make it. It didn’t look like it at the beginning,” he once told the dpa news agency.
Farian’s duo Milli Vanilli was certified six times platinum in the USA in 1989 – and caused one of the biggest cheating scandals in pop music history.
Milli Vanilli scandal
He founded the globally successful groups Boney M. and Milli Vanilli. The first Milli Vanilli album was certified six times platinum in the USA in 1989, and the Munich duo won a Grammy for best new artist. But with Milli Vanilli, Farian also caused a scandal that is still considered one of the biggest frauds in pop music history.
The two singers who performed for the duo did not sing the songs produced by Farian themselves. The story is currently being retold in the movie “Girl You Know It’s True”, in which Farian is portrayed by Matthias Schweighöfer.
Farian, who co-produced but said he had no direct influence on the film, said it was less than 80 percent true. But Schweighöfer embodies him excellently. Before his death, Farian also announced that a new Milli Vanilli album with previously unreleased songs would soon be released. The video for the second single has already been shot.
Worked with Stevie Wonder and Meat Loaf
Farian was born Franz Reuther in Kirn an der Nahe. “I never knew my father; he died in the war before I was born. My mother was my personal rubble woman. She removed all the obstacles and made everything possible for me, even though we had no money,” said Farian. At the age of 14 he moved to Saarland and trained as a chef.
He recorded his first record with his band Die Schatten in 1963 in a former cowshed. From Saarland we went to Rosbach near Frankfurt and later to the USA. The producer also worked with artists such as Stevie Wonder, Meat Loaf and Terence Trent D’Arby.
Farian once emphasized that he had not been able to decipher the secret of his great success. When he mixed a song, he thought about his time as a chef. “It’s always about the ingredients. You can say you become a musician, but a lot of it is luck. Success cannot be planned.”
Katja Preißner, SR, tagesschau, January 23, 2024 2:16 p.m