Looking back on it all now, it's nothing short of remarkable that Milli Vanilli could have survived so much adversity to maintain their place in the hearts of a worldwide following. Through scandal, through ruin, and ultimately through tragedy, the duo has demonstrated a deep connection with their audience that speaks directly to the profound relationship between performers and fans.

Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus were two homeless kids who met on the streets of Munich in the late 1980s. They decided to join forces as a dance act and became a sensation throughout the city's club scene. But when record producer Frank Farian signed them with a promise to do their first single and instead contractually forced them into creating a lip-synching act for some prerecorded dance tunes, what seemed like the culmination of a dream became the start of an international nightmare.

The cause of Milli Vanilli's downfall was unprecedented: Rob and Fabrice were too good at what they did, too charismatic to avoid unexpected fame and the media scrutiny that comes with it. Trying to make the best of a surreal situation, they threw themselves into their performances. They should have been forgettable, but they were terrific showmen that often serenaded their fans onstage -- truly, directly singing to anyone within earshot. Still, nobody -- not Frank Farian, and certainly not Rob and Fabrice -- could have expected their effort to pay off as spectacularly as it did.

Starting in 1988, Farian released singles like "Girl You Know It's True" and "Blame It On the Rain," then sent Milli Vanilli out to tour. The tours sold out all over the world, and the group sold some 30 million singles and 14 million albums. None of them knew how long success would last -- but they all knew it was on the line when Milli Vanilli won a 1990 Grammy Award as the odds-on favorite for Best New Artist.

Rob and Fabrice knew it was a matter of time before they were found out, and threatened to announce the truth to the public themselves if Frank Farian did not allow them the opportunity to bolster their careers against the inevitable backlash by singing on their next album. Instead, Farian decided to cut his losses and held a press conference to put his own spin on the group's creation -- and destruction. So Rob and Fabrice were publicly vilified, while Farian and Arista -- Milli Vanilli's label, which falsely claimed ignorance of the whole matter -- got off scot free.

For a while, Rob and Fabrice were pariahs to everyone except their fans, who understood that the sincerity behind their performances could never have been faked. Rob offered to return his Grammy -- a gesture the Grammy Committee leapt upon. (No one ever asked them to return their three American Music Awards, though.) Unfortunately, their 1993 comeback album, "Rob and Fab," was doomed to failure by a lack of distribution.

Fabrice decided to turn away from a simple pop star career, and to focus on creating more adventurous and personal music.

But for Rob, things were far more tragic: Depression led him to drug abuse, to several resulting arrests, and to a failed suicide attempt. Bailed out of jail by none other than Frank Farian, Rob returned to Germany to work on a new Farian project. Soon after, on April 5, 1998, Rob Pilatus died of an accidental combination of drugs and alcohol. He was 33.

"Milli Vanilli was not a disgrace," Fabrice said shortly after Rob's death. "The only disgrace is how Rob died -- all alone, internally destroyed from the rapid rise then sudden fall." Still, Rob remains loved and remembered by his millions of fans -- and by Fabrice, who added: "I'm feeling tremendous pain and sorrow upon hearing the news of my friend and brother Rob. He will always be a part of me. We grew up struggling, then succeeding. The only thing we wanted was a chance to sing and perform."