The Jordan Harbinger Show - 46: Fab Morvan | How to Persevere in the Wake of Scandal

Episode Date: May 24, 2018

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... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You don't know how hard it is and how tough you need to be when it comes and it hits you. You know, I mean, you find yourself alone and yeah, you're going to cry. You're going to have those things, you know. I mean, I try not to cry, but the pain, you know, you feel this pain of just, you know, you don't know what to do at this point. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo.

On this episode, we'll be talking with Fab Morven. Now, this guy, blast from the past, but also such a positive soul. I just 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 Millie Vanilli, essentially, these guys, they were a huge hit act. and it turned out that they had been lip-syncing 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.

It's taken him years and years and years. But good thing for him. He doesn't age, right? Jason, have you noticed? Oh, yeah. He just froze in time. He's good-looking dude. It's amazing.

Must work out a lot. Must eat a lot of greens. I met Fab in the early 2000s, 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, you know. But not drinking, not doing drugs like he did when he was a kid. that helps a lot. Yeah, I love that one of his primary answers was to stop 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 still just knocked 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 Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. All right. Here's Fab. First of all, the last thing that I watched today was Arsenio Hall. What year was that? I think 93, yeah. Yeah. It was 1990.

Yeah. Yeah, Robin Fab. And I look at the clothes and 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? Yeah, we had some, you know, you always run into, you know, we're into music.

Music is connected to fashion. Sure. So you always get connected with designers and, you know, can make custom things because the goal is to be different from the rest, from the norms. You want to have your own identity. So, and this show was promoted for about a month. It was a big thing. Yeah. It was Robin Fab's first single coming out.

We can get it on. And we killed them. Anybody can go check it out? 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 like a great. Arsenio's stage setup was bombed. They don't have that anymore.

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. Yeah. For both audiences, it was an amazing experience, always. Because now you see live musical acts on maybe Saturday Night Live, but you can just tell it's a small stage. It's very restricted. Yeah, and you had like the full setup.

Bro, you saw us move from like the back to the middle, to the front to approaching the audience that were sitting in the front. Yeah, it was fun, man. It was just we came alive that night. And it was a fun show. We were able to show what we were capable of doing. doing and I'll never forget that day. I want to get to that as well and come full circle, but let's start from the begin.

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. You know what? I was downtown one time. I was last year and then his black man passed by on the bike. He said, man, you look good. So it's all good. And I said, I thought about it, you know, American idioms like that.

And I was like, that makes total sense. And it's true, you know. Everything is good. When you feel good and look good, you're making things happen. And I'm doing things. Yeah. By step, the turtle will always finish the race. I love the tortoise and the hair analogy, especially.

I'm always bringing that up when people go, oh, man, you lost this thing or this isn't happening. Zoom out far enough on the timeline. And you will be, you'll be fine, right? That's right. 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. Well, first of all, I stopped doing drugs at 25.

All right. I mean, that was like number one. First thing. And then eventually you have to sleep normal hours if you can. You're not doing that right now. No. But then you got to eat also properly. And, you know, educate yourself, read upon whatever you want to, you know, you can

study on fooding and sport and what fits you. your body type, but love what you do. When you love what you do, it just shows. And I love what I do. 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 want to, I definitely want to get to that. I know that you met the other, the other, would you say the other half of Millie Vanilli? I don't know if you say that. Oh, my brother. Your brother, yeah, Rob. My brother, Rob, Pilates.

Yeah. 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 slash soul group. Okay. What are you? You're hanging out at a club and you see another guy. Hey, man, you're a pretty good dancer. We should win some Grammys.

What happened was we came to Munich, his turf, his territory. Not many black people around. No. 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 you can't beat him, join him.

Join forces. And when we joined forces, it's just, uh, it felt great. You know, I felt like a unit. It felt like a meant to be thing. We both loved music. He spoke fair English. I spoke a little bit of English as well. But a little bit of vocabulary that we had, we were able to communicate and realize that music was everything for us. So when that was established, I said, well, let's hang together. Let's let the world know that we are looking for producers.

We want to go into pop music. So you didn't even really have the ability to talk to one another. in that in depth initially because of the language there? Not in depth. But you know, you know, when, I don't know, I don't know if you've always spoke English. No, I speak other languages. I speak other languages. Yeah.

Okay. So it's more like you will always find a way to communicate what you're thinking. And eventually we both spoke better English. And then we had, 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 person out, not feeling it.

You know, 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 first I didn't speak German, but I studied German in school. And then by staying in Germany a little longer, then I started to learn how to speak German. So sometimes we switched in German, people were like, what's going on on the air, straight up, you know, and then go back to English. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just oh, ignore the German. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And this is before the days of instant translation, transcription, podcast, YouTube. Yeah. So, all right. So you form 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 where now we see, okay, someone like these pop groups where you, I don't know, what they call it, almost like music in a camp, right? It's like, this is designed, this is a boy band, they fit this cutout. We've got the bad guy, we've got the alt guy, we've got the handsome guy traditional, we got the tough guy.

This is before all that stuff. It is. Yeah, it's true. But if you think about it, we go way back. You know, we've do a group, you know, but it was more based on a certain vocal type, baritone, falsetto, was based like that. But then later in time,

they created the personality because it attracted the girls. So they got more, 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 men's clothes. We thought it was dope. Man, you like it? I like it.

It looked good. That was it. It was no really thought process. The dancing, same thing. I was a dancer when it was younger. I did all the choreographies. And I just, we just did it. It had energy.

And since we've been. We were performing for years together. We knew what touched people, you know, and then we always were performing in clubs. We went from small clubs and then ended up on big stages. Big stages felt really supernatural for us. And I just felt great. We had a, on our stage, we had put extra stairs at the end.

And we were doing those Olympian poses at the beginning of the show, you know, In your women's clothes that you picked up off. No, that that was different. Okay. That was like, I think it was just a pair of tights we had on that point, you know, all worked out, sweaty. It was like, yeah, that would be a good time to just take the shirt off at this time. You know, it was just, we love performing.

We love show. We love entertaining people. We understood, you know, peaks in valley in a show, climax and touching. reaching, entertaining, and make sure that they never forget that you came through. It's a shame, of course,

to hear how connected you guys were and all the music and lyrics and everything that you guys created. And then Farian, it's kind of behind your back making his own agenda. And you guys were, what, like 19 or something? Yeah, we just, he created this trap

and we had no idea about the industry. You know, so we just fell into that man's trap And the first time we came into the studio, to the studio was just platinum records everywhere. Like, you know, so you get really inspired. Like, wow, this is, 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, you know, so we started getting a little bit of advanced money.

Every time we came to the studio, nothing truly happened. We always were waiting and waiting and waiting. What I've learned later was that he had a whole full team. He had four studios before SSLs and needs in each room with teams working. Once he found his front men's, the front guys, he was like, okay, I got my plan together. Part of my plan is together. So I'm going to send them back. I get my teams to work.

We keep waiting and waiting and waiting until the day. Hey, I got a song for you. Great. Let's go. He plays an instrumental. We'd be rocking in there. You know, huge. Like, it looks so American to us.

I think it was about 80 channels lighting up. Oh, my gosh. On the mixer. So 80 different instruments and things playing at once. How old are you at this point? Like 19 years old? I think it was 20. 20 or 21.

So you're not even old enough to have a drink here in States at this point. That's right. And we just flabagged. In all of this. this beat that we hear, boom. And we see ourselves already around the world, like, yo, so when we're going to do this, we're ready? Yeah.

And then he takes us to a room next door where he had a vinyl printer, Norman vinyl printer. Like a record printer? Yeah. I've never seen that, but it makes sense that it exists. Yeah, because back in the days, what he would do, he would create the music,

and it would go to this black club and test it, just like DJ's doing right now. they do the produce music, go to 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. You know, give it to the DJ, get like, you know, statistics, you know, and just go back.

So he texts us to that room where he was doing that cutting. And he 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 is switched to that very dark and gray gloomy vibe. 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 my dude looks at me and says

they wants us to lip sync and I'm like, I'm trying to understand And that means kind of, you know, he's lip sync. We didn't know the word lip sync. Yeah. So he said it in English, but I don't know how he said, but I got it. Like, you know, we're not going to sing. And then I'm like, we're not doing this.

But you'd already sign the contract at this point. We signed a total, like, well, you know, we signed the contract not knowing that it was, we signed a couple pages, but we didn't know that it was. Six inches thick, yeah. It was thick, bro. And there was no manager. There was no attorney. We just signed because we wanted to get signed and get a little bit of advance money so we could work on that hair.

Yeah. Get some new clothes. Rob was working at Wendy's, right? When you guys signed? He said something like that. No, I don't think he was working on. No? Okay.

Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we were very, you know, we were struggling artists. He was a handsomest burger flipper Wendy's ever had. That's what we're saying. This is this guy flipping burger.

It's like, no, no. Put him at the register. He sells a lot of burgers. Put him at the register. The girls keep coming back and buying fries. And then what happened was they came back to us. And very simple. They broke it down for us and said,

listen, if you don't want to go forward, it's fine. Just pay us back. Oh, yeah, sure. Hold on. Let me sign you a $25,000 check. No, it was not that much. But for us, it was too much to just pay back and work. Like, how we don't do this?

So we just agree to just, you know, dumb us. We had no idea. Yeah, we just, we pay you back by, so when we thought we were getting out of it, we were getting deeper into it. Sure.

So we said, okay, we do that one single, that one thing, and then we're out. Oh, yeah. You know, just to pull you in a little more. Sure. This was, he was experienced of doing this kind of thing.

I mean, he's a producer in Hollywood. Listen, he's done it before. And he sold a hundred, 120, 130 million records with that other act. It was called, acts called Boniame. Bonny M, yeah. That's one of the few acts that went Diamond in the history of music. What is Diamond again?

Is that a million or is it 10 million? I don't know, but it's 10 million, but it was... Yeah, but it was like eight diamonds, right, instead of just one. It's crazy. One of the few in the music industry who was able to accomplish that. Unbelievable. 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, you know, 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, we would be seduced by this life, this lifestyle, this rock, pop, pop rock lifestyle. Sure. And I would imagine getting a taste of that would change anyone. Totally. People are going to ask me this. So I'm going to throw it out there.

How did you come up with the name Millie, Vanilli? Because I think, of course, everyone says, oh, which one are you interviewing? Is it Millie or Vanilly? It's like, well, I don't know if they name. You didn't accept that as your name. It's just the name of the group, right? The name, we came up with Vanilli. And then the person that was waking up the producer came up.

Our name was Millie. Really? Yeah. So then, and we were thinking about Scriti Politi, which was an English band. Screty Belidi. Screeley. Yes, Scree Blidi was an English band. Very cool band, ladies.

And we thought, yeah, that sounds cool. And we 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, it says, not at all. Doesn't sound Turkish. Yeah. Oh, okay then.

It just sounded cool. And it felt like you represented both person. But for us, it was just the name of the group. And I think that happens oftentimes. Sure. Who's pink? Who's Floyd? Oh, yeah. I never thought about that.

Yeah. Yeah. I've heard interviews and, yeah, they went through that. So, well, but it sounded nice to the ear and colorful. And we were very colorful. Yeah, well, definitely. And it's an. Especially, yeah, there's a lot.

There are a lot of colors involved. In fact, my childhood, one of the memories that sticks is always you guys in the, the red and the blue, I don't know what they were, giant jackets. Yeah, like go down to about mid thigh. Paratites doing the, like, kick the leg up. Doug Martin's. Yeah. Oh, yeah, Doc Martin's. Heavy shoes.

Yeah, I saw that and I was thinking how, you guys are dancing like crazy and just like almost like flipping around. and you're wearing these shoes that each weigh 10 pounds. Well, we were fit, bro. Yeah. You know, we were fit. And I was a soccer player. And I was a gymnast and I was also a dancer. And it's just, we just love to be physical and to combine it with the dancing and chest bump.

Super high. Oh, yeah, the chest bump. That's like the slow motion in the video. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. We did like in a, we took parts of those things. We did our choreographed ourselves. And on the stairs, we'd go up there, and it would run full force.

And then like, pow. Explosion. Explosion. And it was about, you know, performing is about emotions and taking the people who got the music. Get them into the feeling, you know, get them deeper into the feeling. And we love taking them on that ride because it was fun for us. It made us feel alive because we knew once the show was over, it was very sad always because we were faced with the reality. You know, it's like the mirror comes up and you're like, ah, damn, you know, I'm living a dream, but it's not truly all the way.

It's like halfway. Because you knew the whole time you had that in the back of your mind that it wasn't. that is just when I was on stage, I had John Davis's voice and Rob at Brett Howell's voice. So instead of being two on stage, we were four. And I was always aware of that, always. You know, so the fact that we were not truly singing live, I think we compensated and brought more into it. And so make sure that there was no, you know, that it wouldn't look off. Sure.

Sure. So you focused even more on the physicality of the act. Yeah. Because you knew that it wasn't your vocals. And you guys. It was a weird thing to deal with. You know, it's like, sure. It's like you're fighting with yourself.

You want it. But now it's not. It's not. It's not going to happen. Mm-hmm. They did it like that. You cannot. And of course, when the second single came, we were ready.

to go for number two, but of course not. And then we were hit with reality again. Like, of course, yeah. If they did the first, we can't do the second. Of course, because you just can't switch the vote. You can't change horses midstream. You already have the brand out there. And by that time, you're hooked.

Yeah. You know, you press number five or six, depending on where hotel, what 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 recoupable. Yeah. Everything appears to be free. So then you can go from the hotel to the limousine and then you go to the club. You don't have to pay for nothing. You get bottle service.

And you're the king at this point, you know, whatever you point, whatever you want, you get. And everybody says yes. You're surrounded by yes, yes, yes. You're the greatest. So it's hard after a while not to believe your own press. Yeah. You know, you're so young. No one is there to pull you back down to earth. The family is not around. We're in America now.

Parents are in Europe. So you're on your own. You're the boss. You have about 70, 75 to 80 people working for you. Oh. Wow. You've got to pay the bills. What did your parents think at this point?

I mean, they must have just been, did they know? They didn't know that you didn't do it. They didn't know the amplitude of, 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. Did they know that you were struggling with the idea that you didn't do the vocals? Or was that a secret that nobody. Later, that came later.

So nobody knew except for you and Rob. My dad, my mom doesn't speak English. My dad kind of speaks English a little bit. So he was like, didn't see nothing. I told my brother, like, such a brother's voice. Yeah. You know, and I was like, forget about him. Oh, man.

To that. Because they would have, they would have, you know, if it's your kid singing. Of course. Yeah. And I was not trying to go there. Yeah. Like, let's not talk about that at Christmas. I would know.

I was so old in Nile, for sure. I mean, I knew at some point that the train would, uh, would stop. I was aware of that. You saw it coming. And what's really just crazy to me is that you guys could both, you guys could sing and dance. Why bother with the lip syncing thing, right?

I've seen you saying. It was a control thing. Yeah. Frank Firing 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. you can. So when we realized that that's what he was doing, we'd try to get away from him. And it wasn't easy. Yeah. You know, at first, so we were able to get our own tour. You know, we did the MTV tour. Then we did our own tour, 107 cities in eight months. And that was so much fun.

We were in control. And he felt that we were gaining control. And he didn't like that at all. Yeah, I bet. So he was trying to pull us back with everything. thing possible. Yeah. You know?

Get back to Europe. Get back to Europe. And we got a second album to make. And we were like, oh, hold up. Yeah, we want to do the vocals now. Yeah. But he said, it was that. That's not going to work.

And we knew it was not going to work. So it was like, well, you know what? We're just going to play with him. That's what we're going to do. We're going to piss him off. And we pissed him off so much that he flew to New York and told the world, you know. They didn't sing on the record. It just seems like...

But he created it all. You know, he was... He was... He wanted 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. And I think he caught whiff of it. So he just said, you know what?

I'm going to tear it up right now. Yeah, I'm going to light it all on fire and watch it all burned down. Oh, yes. I'm not going to let those two. And he actually told us early on, don't have with me. I don't know where. He said, don't screw with me. I don't know where.

I don't know where. Everything was cool. I think we just finished drinking champagne and signed a contract. All nice. And he comes out with that. And I understood that in German. It was very simple. He spoke to you guys in German.

That is so random. Yeah. He never spoke English with me. He always spoke German. Huh. So at first I was like, you know, but I was getting better with it eventually,

so I would follow everything he says. But out of nowhere, he said that. And it was like, after that, we're like, and we said nothing. We didn't even respond.

Yeah, because you're just like, oh, maybe he's joking and it's just awkward, right? And Rob was like, yeah, this dude is crazy.

I was like, yeah, you know, don't believe everything you see. You know, everything is nice. But remember that. We said, remember that because that's going to come back.

Because he said, don't F with me because I can't take it all away or something like that. So he's really just like a diabolical control freak? Oh, yeah. 100%. Wow. I saw some outburst. We did see some things. We 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, this, yeah, it was just ego-a-lominiac. Yeah, and you guys are money machines at the peak. I mean, I think, I looked this up, it was something like 500 million sales. And I'm guessing, I don't know. I'm guessing you don't see royalties from any of your singles or CDs.

I don't know because, you know, there was a lawsuit. And fortunately, you know, because Rob ran into a snag, then Rob signed some papers. And suddenly the lawsuit that we were working on and about to had won, well, everything changed. Because now, you know, Rob signed something and then it affected everything. So it was pretty bad. It was a bad scene. Like the dude didn't have enough money, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. He would have 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? First, there's impact. Impact comes in.

Boom. And you kind of lost. You know, first, first it's relief, is happiness because now everyone knows it's off your back because the monkey was on your back and he was getting heavier and heavy 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, you're

People believed one thing, and it wasn't. So now they're going to come, just like Toronto's. They're going to come after you. And they're going to have fun because it was an easy. We were easy targets. And I saw from the get go. And earlier before the news really came out, there was some living color sketches. Yeah.

On television. And it was hurtful. I saw it. I was like sitting in London. In the suite, having a good time, grand all the time, round table, food everywhere. And I see that on television. It was mute. Everybody shut the hell up.

Let's just, let's check this out. And then boom. Then he was, everybody was quiet. It was like, oops. Okay. So I could see us going down that mountain. I could see the trunk. Yeah.

Trunk being, you know. Slowly. Chopped down, right? Chop down, slowly but surely, yeah. 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 it kind of like rubbed in your face, right? Pop culture references of the type that are unflattery.

In the media and comedians and, I mean, you know, it was perfect to have some fun with. They didn't sing on the record. You know, so they had a good time with it, you know. And then they went hard. They went super hard. And sometimes they crossed the line. And it affected Rob. I knew that it would be ugly.

So I had gotten ready for it. You know, like I use that analogy every time. When you're in a fight, you get hit on the chin. You're stiff. You're ready. It was too chilled. So when he hit his chin, bam. Took him on the floor.

K-O. T-K-O. Why do you think that it affected Rob more than it affected you at the time? Well, I knew that the train would stop at some point. So I was trying to stop doing the hardcore drugs as well. I was trying to limit it so I could get my 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.

It was actually going harder because the pain of losing it all. You know, because we did that, we did this to ourselves. We pushed him and we knew it would happen. And we knew that it would be consequences to that. Action equal reaction always. But it took balls to say, you know what? Let's walk away. But let him push us off the boat.

When he pushes off the boat, then I guess that's it. And I will take it from there. You know, but is it said and done when it comes? and the wolves, dogs, the piranhas, sharks. Yeah. I have to you. And they just want a piece of you. They just want to use you.

So I want to abuse you verbally. It's tough because you're a human being with emotions. And you don't know how hard it is and how tough you need to be when it comes and it hits you. You know, I mean, you find yourself alone. And yeah, you're going to cry. going to have those those things you know i mean i try not to cry but the pain you know you feel this pain of just you know you don't know you don't know what to do at this point and you don't know who to turn to because everybody left right yeah the people that um that were your friends that you

used to take out to hang arounds you know nobody calls you anymore and it's like oh all right so you learn hard lessons like friendship you know you know you're not you know you're know, those people were just using you. And we were just, to you, your being guys that were going with the flow, having a good time, trusting everybody, naive, didn't know. And that's when we started to learn, you know, our lessons, life lessons. A lot of hard lessons all at once as well. Yeah, everything came out one is like it poured on us.

And I feel very lucky and blessed that I took it a day at a time. I also went to, yeah, then I 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 I went like, hey, say, listen, if you focus on your health, make sure you stay healthy and that face looks the same. Yeah. People are going to be like, okay, you know, do this. If you do this, you can, of course, you're going to have to do the work. You're going to have to do your homework. 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 at it. You know, 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 him going. Let's go, bro. this go. But I was already working myself making sure that there is an afterlife and I have to

move nearly because that was my dream. And I was never going to stop. I'm pretty, how you say that, resilient. Yeah, resilient. I am. I will never ever stop. I want to go back a little bit because you started, before everything came down, you started winning awards. I mean, you won three AMAs. Sure. And were you guys still like 20, 21? I was at, I think it was more like 23. 23, okay.

Yeah. But he was older than me. It was two years older. Okay. He was my big brother. Right. Right. So you, there's this picture of you guys holding these awards.

Oh, yeah. Were you conscious of this at the time? Like, these are explosives? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. For me, they were like, you know, these cartoon bombs. Yeah. With a mesh.

Shh. Yeah, the fuse is lit. Exactly. 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 he's coming.

They didn't know exactly when. And the aftermath of it. Like, how would I take this? So you started planning for this early. In my head, yeah. And you, 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. Well, it was a reach out. That's what it was. It was a desperate reach out. But also try to inspire anybody.

You can make anything happen if you believe in yourself. You know, you try to give it a positive. been in the end, you know, because we couldn't, we couldn't come out and be like, yo, by the way. Yeah. You know, we're going to let Frank Fryen handle that, you know. Yeah. If that's what he was going to do, we were not sure again, you know, we were trying to transition, you know. 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. Yeah, we were not sure. Yeah, it was like, but, you know, he's, he's, you know, he's, ego was so strong and it was so ready to just tear us down like he told us. You know, so his ego was, like I said, it was all about Mr. Frank Farron. 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. After the Grammy, oh, man, it was a lot of, uh,

There's a lot of drinking. A lot of drinking. A lot of, a lot of medicating. You know, that's what it was. Get out of this moment. You know, when you get, when you get this, any artist 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 it was, yeah, it was getting too, too hot, you know. and the bone

The fuse is getting closer The fuse was burning brighter and brighter and getting to the explosive part 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 on like Geraldo Rivera's cheesy little show and said that's something

There were, there was some. Yeah. Yeah, but that was Frank's doing. So he planted all that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was doing that. Just to what?

Torture you guys? Yeah. He was just like, let me get those out the picture. You know, he was the one doing that. Yeah, go figure. You know, but, hey, things happen the way they're going to happen in life. You know, and I, if I didn't go through these, those ups and downs, I would never be the person I am today.

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 overnight? You don't feel nothing. You're numb. You know, with time, you're starting to feel. You're starting to give a name to what you're feeling. That comes with like reading self-help books and going to rehab and having talking to the psychiatrist. And then you started to figure it out.

You know, that's the only way I was able to work it out. Meditate. Educate yourself. You know, 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 were made of. You know, you can't really judge a human being on the way up where the machine is there for you. Everything is done for you.

I think you can judge a man when they're down. What is he going to do? do next. You know? And I'm still going and I'm building and all in time. So what was the direct aftermath for you guys personally? I mean, I know you must have hit some sort of, you had to give your Grammy back. It's the only time that's ever happened. Well, that's also a misconception. You know, we... Or you elected to give the Grammy back, right? Well, what happened was we're doing an interview for the Los Angeles Times. And we told the journalists, hey, you know, we're going to give you back. And then, you know, we're going to give you back.

And then he did an interview with the Grammys and he told them that. And then they jumped a gun and said, oh, yeah, we want it back. But the reality is come get it, you know, come to my house. Yeah. But we thought it was a right thing to do to give it back. That's all. You know, any decent human being would say, hey, you know what? Let me get it back to you guys.

We worked hard, though. Yeah. We work our asses off, you know. But yeah, we're going to give it back. And so we did. What was the aftermath in the days and months, of course, you guys had some depression? Yeah, definitely depression. Yeah.

I mean, you know, it's... But were you going out? Were you living in on the life? No, no, no. 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 know, go out.

earlier, I'll go out later, you attract less attention. Did you guys live together at this time? At this time, yeah. And eventually we decided, you know, it's time to, you know, live separately and get your own rhythm and start to work on yourself. Because we're always together depending on each other, you know, codependency, that whole thing. Yeah. You know, so Rob had to really get on his feet. I had less of a problem.

for me, was this a social thing? His drug addiction turned into a problem. The drugs for you were a social thing. Yeah. But for him, it was an addiction. Yeah. And so you, it doesn't surprise me then that you decided to live apart because you were growing, you were trying to grow away from that and it seems like he really doubled down on.

He doubled down. It's like a slice stone. It's a family affair. It's a family affair. It's a story of two guys that grow together. And they go to separate ways. That's what happens. And that's what happened to us, you know, grew up together.

But we grew apart, unfortunately, you know. 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 himself into alcoholism and drug addiction. Because of the fact that he is missing something, you know, when there's a void, you can do anything. you can try to fill it up with anything. He won't work like that. Do you think it hit Rob harder because he was adopted and he didn't have his strong reports? That's what I'm saying.

I'm not a psychiatrist, but yeah. In fact that there was that love missing being held as a kid is something that I believe necessary, you know, 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. that emptiness and always try to fill it up with the wrong things, with the wrong friends, substance views and so on and so on. What advice would you have for somebody who's going through a really humiliating hard time,

something very, maybe something uniquely embarrassing, you know, where they feel like everyone around them, views them differently? I say, F everybody. Regroup. Find yourself. work on your weaknesses and your strength. Find the balance between the two. Work on whatever it is that you want to become.

Work it. There is no substitute discipline, hardcore, born in it, dreaming about it, live in it. And it's not just like 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. I'm a 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-sinking. I could do whatever I want. Now I'm on stage every weekends. And yeah, you guys come to check it out. You know, I merge both. I can move. After all those years,

I'm feeling great. So I say to, to anyone out there that goes to any struggle like that, find yourself and work on what it is you want to become. And that will give you strength. 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 a little more. Suddenly it'll be like a sprinter. I'm like, baneal. Shoulders up. You know, suddenly you can feel your power. You feel your strength.

You can feel yourself. You can feel that there's 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. Hooah till the end. That's 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 light? So live your life to the fullest. You look back, no regrets.

So if you, because to some people that might sound like a very long string of maybe bumper stickers or something, then they're going, but how do I apply this? So it's very, like I said, discipline. So whatever, if, 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 to 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, you know, discipline. 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? Then you just woke up and said, hey, Rob's not got it together. Or was this something where you said, look, I feel good only when I'm rebuilding? No, the here is very simple. Music has given me from the age of, you know, from the age of life, I can't remember. It gave me happiness, true happiness.

When I listen to music, whether it was earthwind and fire, whether it was James Brown or the Beatles or Jackson Five, it gave me joy. So whatever it was going on in my life at the time, I would turn on the radio, I put up my cassette in, Grandmaster Flash or whatever. Certainly, everything would disappear. my surroundings with change and I feel like, okay, I can deal with whatever happened to me an hour earlier. It just gave me clarity. That's what happened. 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 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 out a song write. 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 the 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's just part of how I can express myself.

It's my medium. So there is no, will you? No, it was like, yo, this is exactly what I was. want to do. I've found what I wanted to do in my life. When you discovered what you want to do in life, don't worry. That's it. It brings you happiness and joy and strength and purpose. You feel like you found purpose. 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 in music and the future? Robert lost himself on the way, you know, and like I said, my thing was to become a single song writer was my dream. So I didn't weather in my mind. You know, that's what I wanted to do and rub on the way got lost. I did everything I could to just help them out. But you know, you can't bring a horse to water. Right, right. Yeah, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Make them drink. You're looking for there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can force anybody to do what they don't want to do if they don't want to do it themselves and you're the only person that can do it for yourself when it comes to dragitation. When you heard about that, were you surprised,

or did you see that coming as well at that time? You know, I knew possibly if he kept doing what it was doing, because, you know, there's only a few options. I was devastated, of course. Yeah. It was a sad moment. And I wish I could have stopped it, you know, but there was nothing I could do. The news came out and it was dramatic.

Camaro brought me the news that day. It's terrible. You know, and everything that I hoped would not happen, happened, unfortunately. You know, that's life, you know. 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't change.

And everything will come together at some point. When you look at what happened to you and Rob with the with Farian in the industry and the lip syncing and you look at artists now who are using auto tune to 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? No, I don't. I just let people do what they do. They do what they do. I look at what they do. I look at what. they do and it's like that's what it is you know i'm not going to point the 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 i would imagine at some point maybe you saw was it meek mill who who was trolling drake and he put drake's face over a picture of was it a picture of you or was it rob i actually it was my jacket

and it was my hair so it yeah it was me partly. Yeah, in the blue, right. And it was like, oh, damn. You know, they didn't take, probably took me. It's made sense. I'm still alive.

Yeah, it would have been a little harsh on, I think, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so they, and the implication was, Drake is faking it. He had a ghost writer for his tracks.

But when, when you see something like that, at some point, you just must be thinking, okay, this is a part of my legacy that will never go away. So how, How have you incorporated that into who you are now?

Because it's something that you just can't put away. You just have to do what you do. You know, forget about whatever 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 me for. Perfect.

That's it. Fab, thanks so much. A pleasure, man. 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? You know, Blame it on the Rain is great song. Yeah.

And I feel honored every time they make that joke because, you know, it stays in their, you know, we are part of their 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 to stay in their subconscious as well. Yeah. And have them make jokes, you know, be like, yeah. Cool. This time, it's mine.

But I, you know, around wherever I am, whether I'm in Asia, whether I'm in Europe, with them in America, they know the songs. They'll sing it in the airport. Security, you start singing, it starts singer. I know it's true. It's too funny, man. So I put a lot of smiles on people's faces and 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. It's like, you know, 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 thanks fab my pleasure 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 it took me so long to convince you to do this interview and I'm like wait till you meet him you'll understand

totally and you're just like what are you talking about I'm like just wait till you meet them you'll understand. And I think you finally got it, right? 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 that, right? But the thing is, he of all people could be a miserable,

depressed, bitter thing, you know, 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 bar. And they're like, no, no, it's just this is what happened.

We can work to change this. And I'm just like, what? You know, the emotional discipline that he has, the fact that he's going after. 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's just totally accepted it. It's really incredible.

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 in 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 his story and get it out there. He's just, he's a lovely guy. Yeah, lovely is a good word for it.

And, you know, I'm glad to call him a friend. Lovely is a good word for it. To put this in perspective, he was so sick that he goes, hey, 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. Yeah.

But then you show up and do a show. I don't think I would do that. I know you wouldn't. I'd be like, I'm going to bed. Preschedule. Yeah, boot it. I'm like I stubbed my toe on the side of my bed.

Cancel. Clear my day. Clear my schedule. Jen, get in here. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, Jen, get in here. Give me sympathy and then wipe my calendar.

Exactly. 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 the, 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. Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast is where you can always find those. Tweet at me your number one takeaway here from Fab. I'm at Jordan Harbinger 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 are in the show notes. Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Hey, we have an Alexa skill, just in case you don't know. If you've got an Amazon Echo, 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 listen 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 Jordan Harbinger.com slash Alexa, and it will install. If you go

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