Pilatus and Morvan Grooved on Excitement of Tour

“One of the weird psychological things about doing what we did is that after you perform 100 concerts, slowly but surely you begin to believe you really are the singer,” Robert Pilatus said. “It screws you up. You’re out on stage and you catch yourself thinking that it really is your own voice.”

Milli Vanilli’s first European tour started Sept. 5, 1989, and lasted 10 weeks. After winning three American Music Awards in January, 1990, and a Grammy in February, Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan took off on a promotional tour of New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

In March, they performed at the Soul Train Awards, the Arista Aids benefit and received a Juno Award in Toronto for international album of the year. Between April and August, Pilatus and Morvan lip-synced their way through more than 100 concert performances across the United States.

“We sang along every night at every concert but the audience was not allowed to hear our voices,” Morvan said. “We can sing, and after a while you forget that it’s not your voice. But we were afraid to tell anybody. When people find out you’re not really singing, your credibility is shot. You’re just a joke.”

Still, the duo wanted to tour. They thrived on the excitement of “live” performance, Pilatus said, and the admiration of fans. The lip-sync ploy may have caused the duo to experience psychological difficulties, but Pilatus and Morvan make no bones about indulging in the jobs’ perks.

“We loved being on stage,” Morvan said. “We loved being in front of an audience.”

“All our lives, we dreamed about Hollywood, about Sunset Boulevard and the beach,” Pilatus said. “When we became stars, it’s not like we cried every night or something. We have to be honest. We were pressurized with fear, but we were still players. We had lots of good times with the girls and the money and the champagne and all.”