Fab Morvan (@fabmorvan) is an inspiringly positive singer and songwriter who, as half of disgraced pop duo Milli Vanilli, understands better than most what it takes to rise above the aftermath of a career-shattering scandal. Also, he hasn’t aged in 30 years and might be a legit vampire.
What We Discuss with Fab Morvan:
- How the young and talented duo behind Milli Vanilli got suckered into fronting for other vocalists when they were fully capable of singing their own songs.
- What it’s like to endure and recover from a career-shattering scandal with the world watching.
- Fab’s practical secrets to positivity.
- Why hasn’t Fab aged in the past 30 years?
- What legacy does Fab hope to leave behind?
- And much more…
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By 1989, Milli Vanilli were an apparently unstoppable, chart-topping pop duo from Munich who could do no wrong, and their success seemed cemented when they won the 1990 Grammy award for Best New Artist. But when a skipping vocal track during a performance made it clear they were lip syncing rather than singing live, it invited further scrutiny over their artistic integrity. It was soon revealed that Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan — the public faces of Milli Vanilli — were not the actual vocalists featured on “their” recordings. Rob and Fab returned their Grammy, but the damage was done.
Fab joins us to explain how he and Rob — fully capable dancers and singers — found themselves manipulated by a controlling producer into the trap that sealed their downfall (and Rob’s early death), how he’s grown and remained positive in the aftermath of the scandal, what he’s doing today, and what he hopes to leave behind. Listen, learn, and enjoy!
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THANKS, FAB MORVAN!
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Resources from This Episode:
- Fab Morvan’s Website
- Fab Morvan at Facebook
- Fab Morvan at Instagram
- Fab Morvan at Twitter
- Girl You Know It’s True by Milli Vanilli
- Rob and Fab on The Arsenio Hall Show
- German Producer Frank Farian Admits That He Should Have Been More Candid about the Duo’s Lip-syncing, but Please Don’t Compare Him to Saddam Hussein. by Marc Fisher, Los Angeles Times
- Baby Do You Wanna Bump, Pt. 1 (7″ Version) by Boney M.
- Cupid & Psyche 85 by Scritti Politti
- Milli Vanilli Do It Yourself Kit on In Living Color
- Love Revolution by Fabrice Morvan
- Milli Vanilli to Forfeit Best New Artist Grammy by Chuck Philips, Los Angeles Times
- Milli Vanilli’s Rob Pilatus Dead at 33, Rolling Stone
- Meek Mill’s Photoshop Skills Are Worse than His Diss Track by Jamieson Cox, The Verge
- Blame It On the Rain by Milli Vanilli
- Freedom by Face Meets Voice
Transcript for Fab Morvan | How to Persevere in the Wake of Scandal (Episode 46)
Fab Morvan: [00:00:00] You know how hard it is and how tough you need to be when he comes in and hits you, and I mean you find yourself alone and yeah, you're going to cry. You're going to have those things. I mean, I try not to cry, but the pain, you know you felt this pain of just, you don't know what to do at this point.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:24] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFillippo. On this episode, we'll be talking with Fab Morvan. Now, this guy blast from the past, but also such a positive soul. Really, Jason, you got me this guy, it took forever and I at first was like, why do you want me to interview Fab Morvan? I don't understand, and now I get it. He is just such a positive dude. If you don't remember Milli Vanilli, essentially these guys, they were a huge hit act. And it turned out that they had been lip sinking all of their music, they gave back their Grammy. They immediately were retired in shame, and of course, it wasn't their idea. They could dance and they could sing and they were great performers and they were really positive and interesting and fun guys. It was a classic case of the music industry just ruining these two guys. And Fab came out of it. Guns blazing.
[00:01:22] It's taken him years and years and years, but good thing for him. He doesn't age, right Jason? Have you noticed?
Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:28] Oh, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:29] He just froze in time, is good looking dude. It's amazing. It must work out a lot. It must eat a lot of greens.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:36] I met Fab in the early 2000, and he looks identical. I look at pictures of me and him together, and then him now and then me now and it's like, “Oh wow. I did not take care of myself compared to him.” It's incredible, what he's gone through to look good as he says, but not drinking, not doing drugs like he did when he was a kid, that helps a lot.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:58] Yeah, I love that one of his primary answers was I stopped doing drugs, but anyway, we'll get into that in the interview. We're going to talk about how to recover from a life shattering, very public mess. If he can do it, you can do it. We're going to talk about positivity, but not in that cheesy, just do it kind of way, in very practical methodologies. How to surround yourself with the right type of people. We'll also talk about what happens if you find yourself caught in a terrible situation. How you should handle it, how you should take care of yourself, and how you might handle things differently moving forward. There's a lot of practicals in here that we can take away from Fab, and I just loved the conversation. He was very, very under the weather and he's still just knock this one out of the park, and I was thankful for this opportunity. Don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's episode, so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways here from Fab Morvan. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. All right, here's fab. First of all, the last that I watched today was Arsenio Hall. What year was that?
Fab Morvan: [00:03:05] I think ’93, yeah. That was nine 1993, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:09] Yeah, Rob and Fab. And if I look at the clothes that I was telling producer Jason, I said, look at what these guys were wearing then, because look, you're European, right? But also pop stars and also 80s, 90s. So I'm just like, where do you even get stuff? Like where do you get a mesh shirt that is open all the way in the front? Somebody makes that stuff just for you guys, right?
Fab Morvan:[00:03:33] Yeah. We had some, you always run into -- you know, we're into music. Music is connected to fashion. So you always get connected with designers and can make custom things because the goal is to be different from the rest, from the norms. You want to have your own identities. And the show was promoted for about a month. It was a big thing. It was Ron and Fab’s first single coming out. We can get it on, and we killed them. Anybody can go check it out.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:03] Oh, I'll link it in the show notes because I watched it, and I remember thinking like, one thing I noticed. One, you guys did kill it. Two, they really did a, like a crate, Arsenio stage setup was bombed. They don't have that anymore.
Fab Morvan: [00:04:15] No, they don't. I mean Arsenio really when it came to bring music to the audience that was sitting there but also sitting at home for both audiences, it was an amazing experience always.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:29] Because now you see live musical acts on maybe Saturday Night Live, but it's, you can just tell it's a small stage.
Fab Morvan: [00:04:35] It's very strict.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:36] Yeah, and you had like the full setup.
Fab Morvan: [00:04:38] Bro, you saw us move from like the back to the middle to the front to approach in the audience that were sitting in the front. Yeah. It was fun, man. We came alive that night and it was a fun show. We were able to show what we were capable of doing, and I'll never forget that day.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:58] I want to get to that as well and come full circle. But let's start from the beginning. First of all, you look good. I know you said you're under the weather, but it must be all good because you look good, man. I don't know.
Fab Morvan: [00:05:08] You know when it was downtown one time, it was last year and then this black man passed by his bike, he said, “Man, you look good, so it’s all good.” And I thought about it, the American Edo, like that.
[00:05:19] And I was like that makes total sense, and it's true. Everything is good when you feel good and look good in making things happen, then I'm doing things step by step the turtle always finish the race.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:32] I love The Tortoise and the Hare analogy especially, I'm always bringing that up when people go, “Oh man, you lost this thing or this isn't happening.” Just zoom out far enough on the timeline and you'll be fine.
Fab Morvan: [00:05:46] That’s right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:46] Because you just keep on moving forward. I was just wondering what you have to eat to stay looking almost the same from 1988 to 2018?
Fab Morvan: [00:05:56] Well, first all, I stopped drugs at 25. I mean that was like number one, first thing. And then eventually you have to sleep normal hours if you can.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:08] You're not doing that right now.
Fab Morvan: [00:06:09] No, but you got to eat also properly and educate yourself, read upon whatever, you can study on fooding and sport and what fits your body type. But love what you do, when you love what you do, it shows, and I love what I do.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:31] You said you stopped doing drugs, and I would imagine that that's something that, well, first of all, we know a lot of people can't stop doing that. And I know that that's a part of the story. And again, I definitely want to get to that. I know that you met the other, would you say the other half of Milli Vanilli? I don't know if you say that.
Fab Morvan: [00:06:52] My brother.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:53] Your brother. Yeah, Rob.
Fab Morvan: [00:06:54] Rob Pilatus, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:56] You guys met in Munich, and the only information about this that I could find was they met at a nightclub in Munich, and they decided to form a rock/soul group. Okay, what are you, you're hanging out at a club and you just see another guy, “Hey man, you're a pretty good dancer. We should win some Grammys.”
Fab Morvan: [00:07:12] What happened was we came to Munich, his turf, his territory, not many black people around. Now, we've got other black friends of mine from Paris. And we started dating the same girls. That's how it happened. That's how you heard about me, and I heard about him. And I started seeing him, he started seeing me, and you have that competitive thing going on. And then my friends kind of went back to Paris and I was thinking, well, you know, if he can beat them, join them, join forces. And when we join forces, it felt great, it felt like a unit. It felt like a meant to be a thing. We both loved music. He spoke fair English, I spoke a little bit of English as well. But with little bit of vocabulary that we have, we were able to communicate and realize that music was everything for us. So when that was established, I say, “Eell, let's hang together, let the world know that we are looking for producers.” We want to go into pop music.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:18] So you didn't even really have the ability to talk to one another in that in depth initially because of the language.
Fab Morvan: [00:08:26] Not in depth, but you know, I don't know if you've always spoke English.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:31] No, I speak other languages.
Fab Morvan: [00:08:32] Oh, you speak other language. Okay, so it's more like you will always find a way to communicate what you thinking. And eventually we both spoke better English and then we never had to speak that much anymore because we knew each other so well. So we just to look, a glance, the variation between those glances, we just knew. So if someone would come into the room, we knew exactly now get this personnel, I’m not feeling it. It's just like there was a certain communication. And then if really we needed to say something that we spoke in German together, because of course I didn't speak German, but I studied German in school and then by staying in Germany a little longer and I started to learn how to speak German. So sometime we switched in German people were like, what's going on, on the air, straight up, and then go back to English.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah, Oh, ignore the German. Yeah, exactly. And this is before the days of instant translation, transcription, podcasts, YouTube, yeah. So all right, so you formed the group you get the attention of Farian, who is Frank Farian. And at this point he signs you guys, and this is like, this is before the days of we're now we see, okay, someone like these pop groups where you, I don't know what they call it, almost like music in a can, right? It's like this is designed, these as a boy band, they fit this cutout. We've got the bad guy, we've got the ok guy, we've got the handsome guy, traditional, we've got the tough guy, and this is before all that stuff.
Fab Morvan: [00:10:05] It is. That is true, but if you think about it, we go way back it with duo group. But it was more based on a certain vocal type, baritone, falsetto was based like that. But then later in time, they create the personality because it attracted the girls. So they got smarter, it would become a science. When we came in, we had no idea. We just picked up clothes off the rack, whether it was women's clothes, whether it was man's clothes. We thought it was dope. Man, you like it, I like it. Looks good. That was it. It was enough. No really thought process. To dancing, same thing. I was a dancer when I was younger. I did all the cargo freeze, and we just did it. It had energy and since we were performing for years together, we knew what touched people and all. And then we always were performing in clubs, so we went from small clubs and then ended up on big stages.
[00:11:04] Big stages felt really supernatural for us, and I just felt great. On our stage, we had put extra stairs at the end and we were doing those a Lynchian poses at beginning of the show. Dramatic.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:22] In your women's closet that you've picked up off.
Fab Morvan: [00:11:23] No, no that was different. That was like a thing, it was just a pair of tights we had on that point, all worked out sweaty. It was like, yeah, that would be a good time to just take the shirt off at this time. It was just we love performing, we love show, we love entertaining people. We understood Peaks and Valley in a show, climax and touching, reaching, entertaining, and makes sure that it never forget that you came through.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:57] It's a shame of course to hear how connected you guys were in all the music and lyrics and everything that you guys created. And then kind of behind your back making his own agenda. And you guys were what, like 19 or something?
Fab Morvan: [00:12:12] Yeah, he created this trap and we had no idea about the industry, so we just fell into that man's trap. And the first time we came into the studio was just platinum records everywhere. So you get really inspired like, wow, this is the home for us. We were supposed to be here. So whatever he's going to say, say yes. And as I went, so we started getting a little bit of advanced money. If you tell him he came to the studio, nothing truly happened or was were waiting and waiting and waiting. What I've learned later was that he had a whole four studios before SSLs and [indiscernible] [00:12:57] in each room with teams working. Once he found his front mens, the strong guys. He was like, okay, I got my plan together. Part of my plan is to get yourself, let me send them back. I can buy teams to work. We keep waiting and waiting and waiting until the day, “Hey, I got his song for you.” “Great, let's go.” He plays an instrumental where we'd be rocking in there. Huge. Like it looks so American to us. No, I think it was about 80 channels lighting up.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:32] Oh my gosh. On the mixer. So different 80 different instruments and things playing. It wants to know how old are you at this point? Like 19 years.
Fab Morvan: [00:13:39] I think 20, 21, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:41] So you're not even old enough to have a drink here in the states at this point.
Fab Morvan: [00:13:42] No, that's right. And were just flabbergasted in all of this beat that we hear. And we see ourselves already around the world. Like, “Yo, so when are we go do this, we're ready.” And then he takes us to a room next door where he had a vinyl printer, normal vinyl printer.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:06] Like a record printer?
Fab Morvan: [00:14:07] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:08] I've never seen that. But it makes sense that it exists.
Fab Morvan: [00:14:11] Yep, because back in the days what he would do, he would create the music and we'd go to this black club and test it, just like DJ is doing right now. You know, like they do produce music for the dance floor and check. “Oh, I need to change this.” And he was a smart guy, so he would take it to this African American club and then he would test it, and he knew exactly what to fix after that, give it to the DJ. Get statistics, and just go back. So he takes us to that room where he was doing a cutting and it starts speaking in German with Rob. At this point, I didn't speak German very well. So I'm listening to them and it seems it gets intense and all the joy and happiness that was emanating from the room we left, it switched to that very dark and gray gloomy vibe.
[00:15:04] They were both getting at each other. It was like it was about to look like they were fighting verbal. And then Frank left the room, and I do looks at me and says,”They wants us to lip sync.” And I'm like, I'm trying to understand what that means. Kind of noise, lip synchrony, another word lip sync.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:22] Yeah.
Fab Morvan: [00:15:23] So you said it in English, but I know how he said, but I got it. Like we're not going to sing, and then like we're not doing this.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:34] But you'd already signed the contract at this point.
Fab Morvan: [00:15:35] It sounded total like, well no, we signed the contract not knowing that it was, we signed a couple of pages, but we didn't know that it was---
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:43] Six inches thick.
Fab Morvan: [00:15:45] It was thick, bro. And there was no manager, there was no attorneys. We just signed because we wanted to get signed and get a little advanced money. So we could work on that hair.
Get some new clothes.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:57] Rob was working at Wendy's, right? When you guys signed. He said something like that.
Fab Morvan: [00:16:01] No, I don't think it was working.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:02] No, okay. So maybe that was just a joke for Arsenio Hall.
Fab Morvan: [00:16:05] Yes.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:06] Okay, gotcha.
Fab Morvan: [00:16:07] Yeah, yeah, but we were very with struggling artists.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:11] He's a handsome as burger flipper Wendy's ever had [indiscernible] [00:16:12] This guy flipping burgers, it's like, no, no, him put him at the register. He sells a lot of burger. Let's put him at the register. The girls keep coming back and buying fries.
Fab Morvan: [00:16:23] And then what happened was they came back to us and there is simple, they broke it down for us and said, “Listen, if you don't want to go forward is fine, just pay us back.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:36] Oh yeah, sure. Hold on. Let me sign your 25,000 dollars check.
Fab Morvan: [00:16:39] No, it was not that much, but for us it was too much to just pay back and work that’s how we want to do this. So we just agreed to just to, dumb us, because we had no idea. Yeah, we pay you back by what's -- so when we thought we were getting out of it, we were getting deeper into it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:58] Sure.
Fab Morvan: [00:16:59] So we said, okay, we'll do that one single like one thing and then we out. Oh yeah, just to pull you in a little more.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:09] Sure. He was experienced at doing this kind of thing. I mean he's a producer in Hollywood.
Fab Morvan: [00:17:13] Listen, he's done it before and he sold 120, 130 million records with at other actives called the Boney M.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:24] Boney M. Yeah.
Fab Morvan: [00:17:25] That's one of the few assets when diamond is [indiscernible] [00:17:30] the history of music.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:31] What does diamond again? Is that a million or is it 10 million?
Fab Morvan: [00:17:33] I don't know, but yeah, it's 10 million. But it was—
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:37] Yeah, but it was like eight diamonds, right? Instead of just one.
Fab Morvan: [00:17:41] It’s crazy. I wanted to you in the music industry who was able to accomplish that?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:45] Unbelievable.
Fab Morvan: [00:17:46] And he did that with them. So the guy had experience, we had the youth, he had the experience, we were hungry for this thing, to experience it. So because of the sheer hunger we had and this love and passion we had for music, we said, “Let's go ahead,” not knowing that you know would be seduced by this life, this lifestyle, this rock, pop-rock lifestyle.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:17] Sure. And I would imagine getting a taste for that would change anyone.
Fab Morvan: [00:18:21] Totally.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:23] This episode is sponsored in part by the Great Courses Plus. As you know, you're listening to this show. Being a successful person professionally and personally requires constant learning. That's why we are bombarding you with awesomeness three times a week. Sharpening your skills, understanding more about the world around you. These are all priorities for the high performer and that's what's so great about the Great Courses Plus, unlimited access to learn from top professors and experts about anything that interests you. Business history, science, freaking photography, watch or listened to the lectures at anytime from anywhere with the Great Courses Plus app. What I like about the app is you can turn off the video, sorry. All you ill-fitting suit professors teaching these classes. I don't need to see you.
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[00:19:59] This episode is also sponsored by Rhone. Now they told me to talk about the salient running short sleeve shirt, but I would rather put my face through my display here than talk about that shirt again. I love it. I have four of them and they work great. They keep the man's stink off. Yeah, I wore it actually the whole time when I was in Boston in New York for over the last 10 days. I wore the crap out of these things, and I did all kinds of sports with it and I walked around the city in it and I would just sort of change in whatever I needed to before my interviews or my TV appearances. But I got to say they make other stuff over there at Rhone, they make the commuter pant, they’ve got shorts that are just awesome.
[00:20:36] I don't like shorts. I love my Rhone shorts. They're just really breathable. They feel like athletics shorts, but they don't look like I'm about to have my junk fly out while jogging down West Side highway. You know the shorts Jason.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:20:48] Way to paint a picture for the audience.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:50] You're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. You are welcome, but they've got all kinds of great stuff. Jason, you wear your commuter pants like all the time. I'm wearing Rhone stuff left and right, including the new salient running short sleeve shirt with silvertech fabric. No seriously good products. Go to rhone.com to see more. R-H-O-N-E.com. 15 percent off your first purchase with use of the code Jordan at checkout. Let us know if you have problems with this code. They a had some issues with it because some overzealous or zealous potentially just maybe not over, posted it somewhere and it got a ton of traffic and then like, “Oh you can't post the code.”
[00:21:27] And we're like, we didn't post the code so the code has some issues. So if you have any issues, just email me, jordan@jordanharbinger.com, I'll get you squared away with Rhone there. Rhone.com promo code Jordan. Let me know what else you find there. I'm always down to try new Rhone stuff.
[00:21:43] People are going to ask me this, so I'm going to throw it out there. How did you come up with the name Milli Vanilli? Because I think, of course, everyone says, “Oh, which one are you interviewing? Is it Milli or Vanilli?” It's like, well, I don't know if they name, to accept that as your name. Is this the name of the group, right?
Fab Morvan: [00:29:58] The name, we came up with Vanilli and then the person who was working with the producer came up, her name was Milli.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:10] Really?
Fab Morvan: [00:22:11] Yeah, and we were thinking about Scritti Politti, which was an English band.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:15] Scritti Politti.
Fab Morvan: [00:22:17] Scritti Politti, English band, very cool band, ladies. And we thought, yeah, that sounds cool. And we've stayed with it, and then some people told us it means positive energy in Turkish. So we ran with that for years and then until we met Turkish speaking person who says, not at all.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:37] It doesn't sound Turkish, yeah.
Fab Morvan: [00:22:38] Oh, okay, then, it just sounded cool and it felt like you've represented both person. But for us it was just the name of the group, and I think that happens oftentimes. Pink with Floyd.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22;52] Oh yeah, I never thought about that.
Fab Morvan: [00:22:54] Yeah, I've heard interviews and they went through that so well, but it sounded nice to the ear and colorful, and we were very colorful.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:04] Yeah, well definitely. And yeah, there's a lot and there are a lot of colors involved. In fact, my childhood, one of the memories that sticks is always you guys in the red and the blue. I don't know what they were, giant jackets. Yeah, like go down to about mid-thigh, pair of tights, doing the like kick the leg.
Fab Morvan: [00:23:25] Dr. Martens.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:30] Yeah, the Dr. Martens.
Fab Morvan: [00:23:29] Heavy shoes.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:30 Yeah, I saw that. And I was thinking , you guys are dancing like crazy and just like almost like flipping around and you’re wearing these shoes that each way 10 pounds.
Fab Morvan: [00:23:39] Well, we were fit though.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:40] Yeah.
Fab Morvan: [00:23:41] We were fit, Rob was a soccer player and I was at gymnasts, and I was also a dancer. We'd just love to be physical and to combine it with the dancing and chest bump super high.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:58] Oh yeah, the chest bump, that's like the slow motion in the video. Oh my gosh, yeah.
Fab Morvan: [00:24:02] And then what we did like we took parts of those things, we did our choreograph on ourselves. And on the stairs would go up there and it would run full force, and then like pow!
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:17] Explosive.
Fab Morvan: [00:24:18] Explosion. And it was about -- performing is about emotions and taken the people, who got the music, get them into the feeling, get them deeper into feeling. And we love taking them on that ride because it was fun for us.
[00:24:39] It made us feel alive because we knew once the show was over, it was very sad always, because we were faced with a reality. It's like the mirror comes up and you're like, “Oh damn,” I'm living a dream but it's not truly overweight. It's like halfway.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:59] Because you knew the whole time you had that in the back of your mind that it was [indiscernible] [00:25:03]
Fab Morvan: [00:25:04] Not only that, it's just when I was on stage, and I had John Davis’ voice [indiscernible] [00:25:09] at a bread house voice. So instead of being two on stage, we were four, and I was always aware of that, always. So the fact that you were not truly singing live, I think we compensated and brought more into it, and so make sure that there was no, that he wouldn't have look off.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:35] Sure. So you focused even more on the physicality of the act because you knew that it wasn't your vocals , and you guys—
Fab Morvan: [00:25:43] It was weird thing to deal with. You know, it's like you're fighting with yourself. You want it, but now it's not going to happen. They did it like that. And of course, when a second single came, we were ready to go for number two. But of course, and we were hit with reality again. Like of course, yeah, if they did, the first, can do the same.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:10] Of course, because you just can't switch the vote. You can't change horses midstream. You already have the brand out there.
Fab Morvan: [00:26:15] And then by that time, you're hooked. You press number five or six depending where hotel you're in and then you order the food. 20 minutes later, the food is here and everything appears to be free. Everything is recuperable. Everything appears to be free. So then you can go from the hotel to the limousine and then you go to the club.
[00:26:41] You don't have to pay for nothing. You get bottle service and you're the King at this point, whatever you point, whatever you want, you get. And everybody says yes. It's run by yes, yes, yes. You're the greatest. So it's hard have to one not to believe your own press. You're so young. No one is there to pull you back down to Earth. The family's not around. We are in American now. Parents are in Europe. So you’re own your own, you’re the boss. You have about 70, 75 to 80 people working for you. You've got to pay the bills.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:20] What did your parents think at this point? Well, I mean they must've just been-- did they know? They didn't know that you didn't?
Fab Morvan: [00:27:24] Did they know the magnitude of what we were involved with as far as like the fact that we were bosses, people working for us. And also the fact that we were so famous around the globe.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:40] Did they know that you weren't struggling with the idea that you didn't do the vocals or was that secret like nobody?
Fab Morvan: [00:27:46] No, that came later, that came me later.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:48] So nobody knew except for you and Rob.
Fab Morvan: [00:27:50] My dad and my mom doesn't speak English, my dad kind of speaks English a little bit. So he was like, didn’t say nothing. Told my brother, “Is that's your brother's voice?” And I was like “Forget about him.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:27] Oh man, because you know if it's your kid singing.
Fab Morvan: [00:28:14] Of course. And I were just not trying to go there.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:18] Yeah, it’s like let’s not talk about that at Christmas.
Fab Morvan: [00:28:20] I know I was always on denial for sure. I mean I knew at some point that the train would stop, I was aware of that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:29] You saw it coming, and what's really just crazy to me is that you guys could sing and dance. Why bother with the lip sync thing, right?
Fab Morvan: [00:28:38] It was a control thing. Frank Farian had a plan, and he just wanted to control us and that came out later. We see how we worked with people and he had done it before, and it was just control as much as you can. So when we realized that that's what he was doing, we try to get away from him and it wasn’t easy here. At first, so we were able to get our own tour and we did the MTV tour. Then we do that one to 107 cities in eight months. And that was so much fun when we were in control, and he felt that we were gaining control and he didn't like that at all.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:21] Yeah, I bet.
Fab Morvan: [00:29:22] So he was trying to pull us back with everything possible to get back to Europe, get back to Europe, and we get a second album to make. And we were like, well, hold up.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:34] Yeah, we want to do the vocals now. But he said that, that's not going to work.
Fab Morvan: [00:29:38] And we knew it was not going to work. So it was like, well, you know what? Which is going to play with him, that's what we're going to do. We would piss him off. And we pissed him off so much that he flew to New York and told the world, they didn't sing on the record.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:57] It just seems like.
Fab Morvan: [00:29:59] But he created it all, he was, do you want it to be in control? And he didn't want to see those two guys that he made and created do something else because we were in a process of switching teams. I think he caught with of it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:18] So he just said, you know what? To hell with you guys.
Fab Morvan: [00:30:19] I’m going to tear it up right now.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:20] I'm going to light it all on fire and watch it all burn down.
Fab Morvan: [00:30:23] Oh, yes. I’m not going to let those two, you know, and he actually told us early on, don’t F with me. I don't know where.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:33] He said don't screw with me.
Fab Morvan: [00:30:34] Out of nowhere, out of nowhere. Everything was cool. I think we just finished drinking champagne and signed the contract. All nice, and he comes out with that and I understood that in German, it was very simple. [indiscernible] [00:30:50]
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:50] He spoke to you guys in German. That is so random.
Fab Morvan: [00:30:52] Yeah, he never spoke English with me. He always spoke German. So at first, I was like, “Ah, you know, but I was getting better with it eventually.” So I would follow everything he says, but I don't know why he said that. It was like, after that we like, and we said nothing. We didn't even respond.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:10] Yeah. Because you're just like, “Oh maybe he's joking and it's just awkward.” Right?
Fab Morvan: [00:31:13] And Rob was like, “Yeah, this dude is crazy.” I was like, yeah, don't believe everything you see. He's nice, but we said remember that because that's going to come back, because he said F with me because I can take it all away or something like that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:33] So he's really just like a diabolical control freak.
Fab Morvan: [00:31:36] Oh yeah, 100%. And I saw some outbursts, we did see some things. They were like, wow, that dude is, and his ego was pretty big. The size of the Eiffel tower and the Twin towers put together. Sorry. But you know, it was just a megalomaniac.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:59] Yeah. And you guys are money machines at the peak. I mean I think I looked this up, it was something like 500 million in sales. And I'm guessing—
Fab Morvan: [00:32:09] I don't know.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:10] I'm guessing you don't see royalties from any of the era singles or CDs?
Fab Morvan: [00:32:13] I don't know. Because there was a lawsuit and a fortunately, because Rob ran into a snag, damn Rob signed some papers and suddenly the law suit that we were working on and about to add one. Well everything changed, because now you know, I mean Rob signed something and then defected everything. So it was pretty bad. It was a bad scene. I don’t like the dude didn't have enough money, you know?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:43] Yeah. He would've been fine. Even if he hadn't screwed you guys out of your own careers. How do you recover from something like this? I mean, he goes on television announces that you didn't do the vocals. How do you recover from something like that? How do you rescue your reputation?
Fab Morvan: 00:32:57] First there’s impact. Impact comes in. Boom, and you kind of lost. First, it's a relief. It's happiness because now everyone knows is off your back. Because the monkey was on your back and he was getting heavier and heavier and heavier, so that's out. Cat is out of the bag. But then reality sets in, like you're going to have to deal with the fact that people believed one thing and it wasn't. So now they're going to come just like piranhas. They’re going to come after you, and they're going to have fun because we were easy targets, and I suffer from the get go. And earlier before the news really came out, there was some living color sketch on television and it was hurtful. So everything was like sitting in London in the suites, having a good time, grand all the time, round table, food everywhere, and I see that on television was mute you. Everybody shut the hell up. Let's just stick this out, and then boom. Then it was everybody was quiet. It was like, oops. Okay, so I could see as going down at mountain, I could see the trunk being—
Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:24] Slowly chopped down right?
Fab Morvan: [00:34:25] Chopped down. So we’ll be surely, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:27] Because at first it was like relief. Okay, the cat's out of the bag. But then all right, we're dealing with our friends and family and fans that believed in us. But then you're starting to have a kind of like rubbed in your face, right? Pop culture references of the type that are unflattering.
Fab Morvan: [00:34:41] And the media, and comedians. And I mean, you know it was perfect to have some fun with it, and sing on the record. So they had a good time with it, and then they went hard. It was super hard. And some time they crossed the line and it affected Rob. I knew that it would be ugly. I had gotten ready for it, you know. Like I used that analogy every time when you're in a fight, you get hit on chin, stiff, you ready? It was too chilled. So when he hit his shin. Bam, it took him on the floor. K.O. T.K.O.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:22] Why do you think that it affected Rob more than that effected you at the time? Well, I knew that the train would stop at some point. I was trying to stop doing the hardcore drugs as well, I was trying to limit it, so I could get feet on the ground and get back to reality and make sense of what I was thinking and feeling at the same time. And Rob was not doing that. He was actually going harder because the pain of losing it all. Because we did this to ourselves, we pushed him, and we knew it would happen, and we knew that it would be consequences to that. [indiscernible] [00:36:03] always. But it took balls to say you know what? Let’s just walk away, but let them push us off the boat. When he pushes off the boat, then I guess that's it. And then we'll take it from there, you know? But easier said and done when he comes and the wolves, dogs, the piranha, sharks are after you. And they just want a piece of you. They just want to use you, someone to abuse you verbally. It's tough because you're a human being with real emotions and you don't know how hard it is and how tough you need to be when he comes in and hits you, and you find yourself alone and yeah, you're going to cry.
[00:36:50] You're going to have those things. I mean, I try not to cry, but the pain, you felt this pain of just, you don't know what to do at this point. And you don't know who to turn to because everybody left. The people that were your friends, that you used to take you out, they hang around, nobody calls you anymore. And I was like, oh, all right, so you learn hard lessons like friendship. Those people were just using you and we would just to you, you're being guys that we're going with the flow, having a good time, trusting everybody, naive, didn't know. And that's when we started to learn and our lessons, hard lessons.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:38] A lot of hard lessons all at once.
Fab Morvan: [00:37:41] Yeah, everything came at once, it's like poured on us and I feel very lucky and blessed at I took it a day at a time. I also went to rehab and understood right away, like real quick. Like, “Yo, you better stop this otherwise you won't have any other chance.” And I talked to some of my doctors, and all of them say “Listen, if you focus on your health, make sure you stay healthy and that face looks the same. People are going to be like, okay, do this. If you do this, of course, you're going to have to do the work. You're going to have to do your own work, reinvent yourself, work on your talent. And my goal was to become a singer songwriter always. So I went back to the drawing board and went edit, learn how to play guitar, learn how to write, produced, co-produced my first solo album called Love Revolution after Rob and Fab, because when Rob left us, I was like, I'm going to keep going. I tried for years to keep on going. Let’s go, bro, let’s go. But I was already working on myself and making sure that there is an afterlife, and after Milli Vanilli, because that was my dream and I was never going to stop. I'm pretty, how you say that, resilient.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:06] Yeah, resilient.
Fab Morvan: [00:39:08] I will never ever stop.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:13] This episode is sponsored in part by NetSuite. I remember when this came out I couldn't afford it, or I should say we couldn't afford it because it was for the business, and I was so disappointed because NetSuite does everything. This is like the dashboard for your whole business. If your business was a car, this would be the dashboard that you need. Running everything, automating everything because there are a few things in business as painful as not having any clue what's coming up. Not knowing how sales is going, not knowing what the plan is being executed, not knowing the status of your orders, not knowing how much cash you have on hand, accurate revenue expenses during the quarter. How many people do you have to ask to get these answers? People have hour long meetings just to get the status of this stuff and then you're only getting an update once a week and that's a week old.
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Jason DeFillippo: [00:40:23] I never watched. I never watched the Office.
Jordan Harbinger: 00:40:24] You never watched the oOffice?
Jason DeFillippo: [00:40:25] No.
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Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:46] I want to go back a little bit because you started before everything came down. You started winning awards. I mean, you won the three AMS, and were you guys still like 20, 21?
Fab Morvan: [00:42:59] I was at, I think it was more like 23.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:01] 23, okay.
Fab Morvan: [00:43:02] Yeah, but he was older than me, two years older. He was my big brother.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:06] Right, right. So there's this picture of you guys holding these awards. Were you conscious of this at the time? Like these are explosives?
Fab Morvan: [00:43:17] Oh yeah, oh yeah. Familiar with like you know this cartoon bombs with the mesh.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:24] Yeah. The fuse is lit. Exactly.
Fab Morvan: [00:43:26] The fuse is lit, and it's about to blow up. Yeah, I knew that, and it was scary because we didn't know when it was coming. I knew it was coming. I didn't know exactly when and the aftermath of it. Like how would I take this?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:44] So you started planning for this early because—
Fab Morvan: [00:43:47] In my head yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:47] Yeah. In your head, of course. Because you won a Grammy for best new artists and Rob goes up to the mic and says there are a lot of artists outside that could achieve the same thing. And it's almost like he's saying actually, there's a lot of people out there that could have done this because we haven't done it. Maybe I'm reading into this a little bit. I don't know.
Fab Morvan: [00:44:08] It was a reach-out, that's was it was. A desperate reach out, but also try to inspire anybody. You can make anything happen if you believe in yourself. You try to give you the positives spin in the end, because we couldn't come out and be like “Yo, by the way. We're going to let Frank Farian handle that, you know? If that's what he was going to do, we were not sure again. We were trying to transition.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:40] Because it was a threat from him at that point. But there must have been a part of you guys that said, he's never going to burn this down. It's too lucrative or at the peak of our career. He's not going to do that. He'd be crazy to do that.
Fab Morvan: [00:44:51] We were not sure. Yeah, it was like, but you know his ego was so strong and it was so ready to just tear us down like he told us. So his ego was, like I said, it was all about Mr. Frank Farian.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:06] Tell me about the hours after you win the Grammy. Are you celebrating or are you nervous? Are you silent? Like what's going through your head at that time? Because it's kind of like a staircase and at the end of it is just a drop, but you don't know which step is the last one.
Fab Morvan: [00:45:21] I mean, it was a lot of, there's a lot of drinking.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:26] A lot of drinking.
Fab Morvan: [00:45:27] A lot of drinking, a lot of medicating, that's what it was. Get out of this moment, when you get this any artists is trying to stay in that moment to be in the moment. And we were doing everything we could to get out of that moment, because yeah, it was getting too hot, you know. And the burn.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:55] The fuse is getting closer.
Fab Morvan: [00:45:57] The fuse was burning brighter and brighter, and getting to the explosive part.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:03] Oh man, I can only imagine the pressure that you guys both felt, especially at that age. And then after Frank comes out and tells everybody, look, they didn't do the vocals and there would already been rumors, right? Because I think one of the guys had gone like Geraldo Rivera's cheesy little show and said some.
Fab Morvan: [00:46:22] They was some, but it was Frank’s doing.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:27] So he planted all that?
Fab Morvan: [00:46:28] Oh yeah, he was doing that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:31] Just to what torture you guys?
Fab Morvan: [00:46:33]Yeah. He was just like, let me get those out to picture. He was the one doing that. Yeah, go figure. But I hate things happen the way they're going to happen in life. If I didn't go through those ups and downs, I would never be the person I am today.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:54] I'm sure that that's the case, but at some point, I mean you're so young at this point. How does it feel at that age to literally almost lose everything over night?
Fab Morvan: [00:47:05] You don't feel nothing. You’re numb. With time, you starting to feel, you starting to give a name to what you're feeling. That's comes with like reading self-help books and going to rehab, and talking to the psychiatrist and starting to figure it out. That's the only way I was able to work it out. Meditate, educate yourself, learn more about yourself because I didn't get a chance to grow up as an adult. So it was time to grow up. It was time to see what you are made of. You can really judge a human being on the way up where the machine is there for you. Everything is done for you thing. You can judge a judgment when they're down, what is he going to do next? And I'm still, I'm still going, and I'm building and all in time.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:02] So what was the direct aftermath for you guys personally? I mean, I know you must have had some sort of debris. You had to give your Grammy back, it’s the only time that's ever happened.
Fab Morvan: [00:48:09] Well, that's also a misconception.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:13] Are you elected to give the Grammy back, right?
Fab Morvan: [00:48:15] Well, what happened was we're doing an interview for the Los Angeles Times and we told the journalists, “Hey, we're going to give it back.” And then he did an interview with the Grammy's and he told them that and then they jumped the gun. They say, “Oh yeah, we want it back.” But the reality is come get it, come to my house. But we thought it was the right thing to do, to give it back. That's all. Any decent human being would say, “Hey, you know what, let me get it back to you guys.” We worked hard though.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:49] Yeah.
Fab Morvan: [00:48:50] We work our asses off, you know? But yeah, we're going to give it back. And so we did.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:57] What was the aftermath in the days and months? Of course, you guys had some depression.
Fab Morvan: [00:49:01] Yeah, definitely depression. Yeah, I mean.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:05] But were you going out? Were you living it on the life? I stayed in for months and months and months at a time. Every time we went out, paparazzi would show up. So we decided to like, yeah, you go your way, I do my thing. Like you go out earlier, I'll go out later. You attract less attention.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:26] Did you guys live together at this time?
Fab Morvan: [00:49:28] At this time, yeah. And eventually we decided, “Yo, it's time to live separately, and get your own rhythm and start to work on yourself.” Because we're always together depending on each other, codependency, that whole thing. So Rob had to really get on his feet. I had less of a problem. For me, it was a social thing, his drug addiction turned into a problem.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:56] The drugs for you were a social thing?
Fab Morvan: [00:49:57] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:58] But for him it was an addiction.
Fab Morvan: [00:50:00] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:01] And it doesn't surprise me then that you decided to live apart because you weren't crawling, you were trying to grow away from that and it seems like he really doubled down on.
Fab Morvan: [00:50:10] He doubled down. It's like the decided to slice some family affair. It's a family affair. It's story of two guys grow together and they go the separate ways. That's what happens and that's what happened to us. We grew up together, but we grew apart unfortunately. And I'm not a psychiatrist, but there are things in the makeup of a human being that makes that one human being will lose themselves into alcoholism and drug addiction, because of the fact that he is missing something. When there's a void, you can do anything. You can try to fill it up with anything, being in work like that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:52] Do you think it hit Rob harder because he was adopted, and he didn't have as strong.
Fab Morvan: [00:50:57] That's what I'm saying. I'm not a psychiatrist, but yeah, the fact that there was that love missing, being held as a kid is something that's I believe necessary. And some others work it out because they're stronger and Rob appeared to be stronger but was very sensitive inside. And he lived with that emptiness and always try to fill it up with the wrong things, with the wrong friends, substance abuse, and so on and so on.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:27] What advice would you have for somebody who's going through a really humiliating hard time? Maybe something uniquely embarrassing, where they feel like everyone around them views them differently.
Fab Morvan: [00:51:40] I say F everybody. Regroup, find yourself, work on your weaknesses and your strength. Find a balance between the two. Work on whatever it is that you want to become. Work it. There is no substitute. Discipline, hardcore, wanting it, dreaming about it, live in it. And it's also your health is part of the equation. You have to be healthy to keep up the pace. You got to work out. That's very important on performer, so I have to perform. So physically I don't want to be limited because I remember back in the days I was so fit, I was lip syncing I could do whatever I want. Now I'm on stage every weekends and yeah, here it comes, check it out. Emerge both. I can move after all those years, I'm feeling great. So I say to anyone out there that goes through any struggle like that, find yourself and work on what it is you want to become and that will give you strength first.
[00:52:58] First, you got to fall. Pick up the pieces, crawl, keep crawling, and then you're going to start walking, and you're going to have like a little kick, you know? Then the knees are going to go pop up little more. Suddenly you'd be like a sprinter, shoulders up. Suddenly you can feel your power, you feel your strength, you can feel yourself, you could feel that there is no limit to what you can accomplish, because of the fact that you're putting the hard work into it. Discipline, I'm disciplined. I'm a soldier who till the end as the way it is, for anything you want to accomplish. Whether you want to be an architect, a teacher, give it all you got. We only live once, right? I mean that's a concept you only live once. So why should you be lazy? So live your life to the fullest. You look back, no regrets.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:58] So because to some people that might sound like a very long string of maybe bumper stickers or something than they are going, but how do I apply this?
Fab Morvan: [00:54:07] Like I said, discipline. So if you want to be a marathon runner, what are you going to do? You're going to run, you're going to wake up every morning, have a great breakfast because you need the proper energy, and protein in your breakfast in order to run the distance. Then run that distance every day, time it with your watch. Second day, speed up the process, and so on. And Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Sunday take a day off. You got to take a day off. But that's it, discipline.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:45] At what point after this all went down and you're in your house, you can't go out because of the paparazzi. Did you decide, do you remember a conscious moment where you said, all right, I got to get it together or was this first rehab? Then self-help books and then you just woke up and said, “Hey, Rob hasnot got it together.” Or was this something where you said, “Look, I feel good only when I'm rebuilding?”
Fab Morvan: [00:55:05] No, the here is very simple. Music has given me from the age of, from the age of life, I can't remember. It gave me happiness, true happiness. When I listened to music. Whether it was Earth, Wind and Fire, whether it was James Brown or the Beatles or Jackson Five, it gave me joy. So whatever was going on, like whatever was going on in my life at the time, I would turn on the radio, put in my cassette in, [indiscernible] [00:55:40] flash or whatever. Suddenly, everything would disappear, my surrounding will change. And I feel like, okay, I can deal with whatever happened to me an hour earlier. It just gave me clarity as what happened.
[00: 55:57] So fast forward, music has now been a big part of my life and I can’t, I cannot live without music. So the first thing that came to mind, I was like, okay, it's going to be rough, but music is what I want to do. I cannot live without it. There's nothing else I'd rather do. So for me it was music. So learn how the song right, and because of the life that I lived, now I could actually write a text, put a melody to it, and then put a groove to it. And suddenly you had a song, you had a story with a beginning, middle, and end, so naturally, and I used to write poetry as a young kid. So I was always a storyteller as part of my makeup, and then music, when a musician picks up a guitar and he starts playing, I can freestyle like right there. I can write you a song on the spot, depending on what I felt today or what I saw yesterday. It just part of how I can express myself. It's my medium so there is no will, you know, It was like, yeah, this is exactly what I want to do. I have found what I wanted to do in my life. When you discovered what you want to do in life, don't waiver. That's it. It brings you happiness and joy and strength and purpose. You feel like if on purpose.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:25] Do you feel like Rob had a different set of values when it came to purpose and things like that? Because it's clear that, I mean eventually, his addictions, he passed away from his addictions, but you had been focused on rebuilding and focused on the music. Do you think he was maybe more attached to a life of celebrity, or the past perhaps than you were at rebuilding and music and the future?
Fab Morvan: [00:57:54] Rob, would lust himself on the way, and like I said, my thing was to become, becoming a singer songwriter was my dream. So I did wear that in my mind, that's what I wanted to do, and Rob on the way got lost. I did everything I could to just help them out. But if you can bring a horse to water.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:19] Right, right, yeah, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make them drink is the expression you’re looking for there, yeah.
Fab Morvan: [00:58:24] Yeah, exactly. You can’t force buddy to do what they don't want to do with, they don't want to do it themselves. And you're the only person that can do it for yourself. When it comes to drug addiction.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:33] When you heard about that, were you surprised or did you see that coming as well at that time?
Fab Morvan: [00:58:40] You know, I knew possibly, if he kept doing what he was doing because there's only a few options. I was devastated of course. It was a sad moment and I wish you could have stop it. But there was nothing I could do. The news came out and it was dramatic. Camaro brought me the news that day. It was terrible. Everything that I hoped would not happen, happened unfortunately. That’s life. We're not in control as much as we think we are in this life, we're not. So you do your homework, you do what you need to do, that can change and everything will come together at some point.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:40] When you look at what happened to you and Rob with the, with Farian and the industry and the lip syncing, and you look at artists now who are using auto tunes at the point where they won't even perform, some of these guys won't even perform on stage because they sound totally different than they do on the record. Do you ever look at that and go, damn, we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the right place at the wrong time?
Fab Morvan: [01:00:03] No, I just let people do what they do. They do what they do, I look at what they do, and it's like that's what it is. I'm not going to point a finger at anybody. Everybody does. Everybody does what they do for a reason. Most important is when I do what I do, I want it to be correct.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:23] I would imagine at some point maybe you saw, what was it, Meek Mill who was trolling Drake and he put Drake space over a picture of, was it a picture of you or was it Rob?
Fab Morvan: [01:00:35] And I tell you it was my jacket and it was my hair. So yeah, it was me partly.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:40] Yeah, you’re in the blue, right?
Fab Morvan: [01:00:42] It was like oh damn. They didn't take Rob, they took me. This made sense. I'm still alive, so.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:47] It would have been a little harsh on I think to.
Fab Morvan: [01:00:50] Yeah, pinning it on Rob.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:52] And so in the implication was Drake is faking it. He had it goes right for his tracks. But when you see something like that, at some point you must be thinking, okay, this is a part of my legacy that will never go away. So how have you incorporated that into who you are now? Because it's something that you just can't put away.
Fab Morvan: [01:01:14] You just have to do what you do. Forget about what is going on outside. It's about what you do and how you handle yourself. In the end, I want people to know me for being a great entertainer, a great singer, songwriter, entertainer, survivor, storyteller. That's what I want people to know and for.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:35] Perfect.
Fab Morvan: [01:01:36 That's it.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:38] Fab, thanks so much.
Fab Morvan: [01:01:39] A pleasure man.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:40] I loved it. And one sort of, probably not off the record question. It's raining outside. How many times a week or a day do people make some sort of Blame It On The Rain joke that you have to pretend is funny.
Fab Morvan: [01:01:54] You know, Blame It On The Rain is great song. And I feel honored every time they did make that joke because it stays in there, we are part of this soundtrack. The soundtrack of their lives. That's what happens when you make music and that music enters their subconscious, and it's cool. I can wait to write my own song, and have it stay in their subconscious as well. And have them make jokes, be like, yeah, cool. This time is mine. But around wherever I am, whether I'm in Asia, within Europe, with them in America, they know the songs, they'll sing it in the airport. Security you starts singing Girl You Know It's True, it’s too funny, man. So I put a lot of smiles on people's faces and a music kept me alive. It sure did. So I love what I do. I'm going to keep going and I'll say one thing before I go is like, I'm that car that you want to buy. Eventually, you'll see it around more and more and more and more. So it's been an incredible journey and lots of hard work, more hard work is coming ahead, but I'm coming for your ears and you'll see me.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:19] Thanks Fab.
Fab Morvan: [01:03:20] A pleasure.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:22] Jason, thanks for setting this up, man. This was a really good show, and I was, I was surprised it actually happened and I was a little bit like, what am I walking into when I got there.
Jason DeFillippo: [01:03:31] It took me so long to convince you to do this interview. And I'm like, wait until you meet them, you'll understand. And you're just like, what are you talking about? I'm like, just wait until you meet him, you'll understand. And I think you finally got it, right?
Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:44] I did. He's just such a good dude. And being a good person is not a, you shouldn't have to get an award for tha, right? But the thing is, he of all people could be a miserable, depressed, bitter, just horrible, horrible situation. But he's the nicest, most giving, outgoing, friendly, loving dude. And it's a little shocking, and I hate to make this comparison, Jason, but he reminds me in a few ways of these guys that go to prison for something they didn't do and then come out and they're just like, “Yeah, it's okay.” And I'm just like, “What are you talking about? I want to kill people who put you behind bars.” And they're like, no, no, this is what happened. We can work to change this. And I'm just like, what? The emotional discipline that he has. The fact that he's going after it still, he doesn't seem to have any real bitterness towards it. He's upset at the situation how it turned out, I guess you could say, maybe not even upset. He just totally accepted it. It's really incredible.
Jason DeFillippo: [01:04:55] He's grateful to still have fans, and that's what gets him up every day. If you watch his videos on his Twitter account, he's always grateful. It's incredible. And he just always has a smile and like you said at the intro, he was sick as a dog and just wanted to talk to you and came in and powered through like a professional. But as somebody who just loves to tell a story and get it out there, he's a lovely guy.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:18] Yeah. Lovely is a good word for it.
Jason DeFillippo: [01:05:20] And I'm glad to call him a friend.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:22] Lovely is a good word for it. To put this in perspective, he was so sick that he goes, “Hey, can, can you turn the lights down a little? It hurts.” And I'm like, ‘Oh, we've all been there, you know?” Yeah, like when you have a migraine that's so bad that the lights hurt, but then you show up and do a show. I don't think I would do that.
Jason DeFillippo: [01:05:41] I know you wouldn't.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:42] I'd be like, well, I'm going to bed.
Jason DeFillippo: [01:05:44] Reschedule.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:45] Yeah, boot it. I'm like, I stubbed my toe on the side of my bed. Cancel, clear my day.
Jason DeFillippo: [01:05:52] Clear my schedule, Jen, get in here.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:55] Exactly, exactly. Yeah, Jen get it here and give me sympathy and then wipe my calendar, exactly.
[01:06:01] Well, great big thank you to you, Jason for setting this up and a great big thank you to Fab. He is just a great dude. We're linked up to his Instagram and some of his current work in the show notes and if you enjoyed this one, don't forget to thank him on Twitter. That'll be linked up as well. Jordanharbinger.com/podcast is where you can always find those. Tweet at me your number one takeaway here from Fab. I'm @jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. And don't forget if you want to learn how to apply everything you just heard here on the show, make sure you go grab the worksheets. Those were in the show notes, jordanharbinger.com/podcast.
[01:06:31] Hey, we have an Alexa Skill just in case you don't know. If you've got an Amazon Echo, echo dot or something thereabouts, we've got a daily briefing which has clips from the show. So if you want to refresh your memory, even if you listened to all the shows on some cool takeaways. Or if you just want to get a little sneak peek of what you might get from specific episodes, these things are updated every single day. You can go to jordanharbinger.com/alexa, and it will install. If you go there from your computer, it'll ask you to log in as an Amazon, it'll install it for you, or you can use your phone and use the app to navigate around the store. Just search for Jordan Harbinger, it should be the only result. This is really cool. This is made by our super fan Doug Podgorny, and it's funny, his email shows up as DJ Podgornyon my Gmail, and I was like, what a dumb DJ name. Turned out to be his real name. So sorry, Doug. I was not my finest moment, but I thought what a weird, maybe he's foreign. Maybe that word means something. And like Macedonian, I don't know, but thanks for making that Alexa Skill for us. Jordanharbinger.com/alexa.
[01:07:40] This episode was produced and edited by Jason DeFillippo. Edited over and over by Jason DeFillippo. This one was-
Jason DeFillippo: [01:07:47] I guess it was.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:07:49] you're still enjoying this one. Show notes by Robert Fogarty. Booking back office and last minute miracles by Jen Harbinger. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger, would love the iTunes review. If you use Apple Podcast or iTunes to listen to the show and even if you don't be great to go in there and write us something because I'll tell you. People on our team, we see those. They help, they stay there forever. They're really helpful because on the old show, we had so many, and on the new show we're trying to climb back up that mountain.
[01:08:17] We've got some instructions for you in case it seems cryptic, which it is. Thanks Apple. Jordanharbinger.com/subscribe, choose a unique nickname, otherwise it won't submit. But these are very helpful for us and they really mean a lot to us and we do share them with the whole team. So go ahead and throw that up there. We're going to have a contest for those soon. Don't wait for that. You're going to get a bonus if you do it now before the contest. That's all I'll say for that.
[01:08:40] Share the show with those you love and even those who don't. A lot more like this in the pipeline. We're excited to bring it to you. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.
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