The Pop Corporation

Frank Farian’s impact on pop music is so enormous, it’s hard to fully comprehend it’s scope. And yet, Farian is not a household name despite being responsible for over 850 million record sales.

Born in post-war Germany, Farian had a go at his own pop career, covering ‘Mr Pitiful’ and landing a hit with a German version of Dickey Lee’s ‘Rocky’. However, where he made his greatest waves was in the forming of Boney M in 1975.

Along with Marcia Barrett, Maizie Williams, Liz Mitchell and Bobby Farrell, Boney M rode the disco wave and sold records by the shedload. From ‘Daddy Cool’, ‘Rasputin’, ‘The Rivers of Babylon’, ‘Mary’s Boy Child’, ‘Ma Baker’, ‘Sunny’, and more, Boney M were one of the titans of ’70s pop. Initially, it was just Farian performing all the vocal duties, with the release of ‘Baby Do You Wanna Bump’, but instead of putting it out under his own name, he came up with Boney M, the pseudonym coming from an Australian TV show called ‘Boney’, named after Napoleon Bonaparte.

Slowly, the song became a club hit, and Farian realised that he’d need some cool people to perform, which saw him turning to model-singer Maize Williams, two singers in the form of Marcia Barrett and Liz Mitchell, and dancer Bobby Farrell. Infamously, Bobby Farrell would mime Farian’s vocal takes for the whole of Boney M’s career.

With such a strange set-up, it wasn’t surprising that Boney M could take some interesting turns on their LPs, covering UK Freakbeat band The Creation, with their take on ‘Painter Man’, The Smoke’s ‘My Friend Jack’ as well as covering Neil Young’s ‘Heart of Gold’.

And while everyone knew that Farrell didn’t sing on the records, it became public knowledge that Maizie Williams also didn’t appear on recordings. Such was the love for Boney M, with their flamboyant outfits and Farrell’s erratic dance moves, no-one really cared and their successes would be evergreen, with ‘Daddy Cool’ being adored by generation after generation. Interestingly, the same love was not shared for another of Farian’s groups, Milli Vanilli, who caused a scandal with the release of ‘Girl You Know It’s True’, met with huge backlash that eluded Boney M.

With Farian effectively anonymously singing on million selling Boney M hits, as well as being the voice for Milli Vanilli, he wasn’t just your average pop svengali – he was a performer, hiding behind the curtain. With 360 deals and an insistence on transparency in pop music, it’s not likely we’ll see the likes of Frank Farian again.

And while we can be hip about who is the ‘biggest’ German artist of all time, by saying Kraftwerk or whoever, Frank Farian is German’s true pop behemoth, outselling his fellow countrymen hands down, finding hits outside of Germany and making enduring pop that’s recognised worldwide.

To underline this, Boney M found huge success in India, and in the ’70s, the Soviet Union’s politburo allowed Farian’s group the opportunity to perform behind the Iron Curtain. They would play 10 shows there, under the proviso that they would not perform ‘Rasputin’.

Farian died peacefully at home in Miami.