German producer Frank Farian, creator of Boney M in the 1970s and responsible for the scandal surrounding the duo Milli Vanilli, popular in the 1980s, died at the age of 82 at his home in Miami, according to media reports following a statement from the Allendorf Media agency, which is sent to the family. With more than 800 million records sold, Farian is considered the most internationally successful German producer.

Franz Reuther, as he was actually called, was born in the town of Kirn an der Nahe, in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate (west) on June 18, 1941 and He founded his first rock band – Frankie Farian & die Schatten – in 1961.. In the late sixties she signed her first record deal as a solo artist and achieved her first number one hit in 1976 with “Rocky”.

The most successful period in his career began when in the mid-70s founded the disco music group Boney Mwhich went on to sell more than 150 million records, including more than 60 million singles with songs like “Rasputin”, “Rivers of Babylon”, “Daddy Cool” and “Ma Baker”.

In the late 1980s, he celebrated another major success as a producer, with the duo Milli Vanilli, and hits such as “Girl You Know It’s True” and “I’m Gonna Miss You”, although it later emerged that the two members of the training, Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, they were not the ones who sang and they limited themselves to ‘playback’ and dancing.

Last December the film “Girl You Know It’s True”, by Simon Verhoeven, was released in cinemas, based on the scandal surrounding Milli Vanilli and in which the German actor Matthias Schweighöfer plays Farian. During his long career, Farian worked with various artists and groups such as Stevie Wonder, Meat Loaf, Terence Trent d’Arby, La Bouche, No Mercy and Far Corporation, among others.