Boney M founder Frank Farian dies at 82: Hitmaker behind Rasputin and Daddy Cool died peacefully in his Miami apartment two years after a pig heart valve was inserted

Well-known German music producer Frank Farian has died at the age of 82, his representatives have announced.

Farian is best known for his success after founding Boney M in the 1970s, where he was responsible for hits such as Daddy Cool, Rasputin and Brown Girl in the Ring.

Farian, born in the town of Kirin in rural southwestern Germany, where he was born Frank Reuther, died at his home in Miami.

During his career, Farian was also involved in one of the biggest scandals in pop music history when his protégés, boy band Milli Vanilli, were discovered to have been lip-syncing during their Grammy award-winning run.

In 2022, Farian revealed in an interview with Image that he had a 'pig heart valve' inserted into his chest because his own valve shrank with age. As a result of the surgery, Farian said he was prescribed a similar drug to Viagra.

'This is a similar active substance to Viagra and has a nice side effect. But honestly, I'm not thinking about sex at all right now. Today I enjoy a good meal and I am happy to be alive,” he said.

During his career, Farian also collaborated with music legends such as Meat Loaf and Stevie Wonder

The procedure involves surgically replacing a defective human valve with a tissue valve, such as from a pig or cow. The new valve usually lasts up to 15 years.

During his career, Farian also collaborated with music legends such as Meat Loaf and Stevie Wonder.

“The success was a big surprise,” Farian once told the German news agency DPA.

'I always thought I wouldn't make it. It didn't seem like it at first,” he once told the German news agency.

But his success was not always without scandal. In 1988, Farian founded the German R&B group Milli Vanilli by selecting Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus as the lip-syncing frontmen.

Singer John Davis was brought in as the voice behind the band, but he was not told his vocals would be used for lip syncing, the singer said.

Farian had him come to the studio late at night to keep him separated from other artists, he said.

The veneer first began to crack when the duo met an MTV executive who began to suspect that their English language skills would not have been good enough to record the song as it was done.

Farian founded the scandal hit Milli Vanilli, which caused a stir after frontmen Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus were found to be lip-syncing to another singer's vocals

The duo was forced to hand in their Grammy Award due to the scandal, but Farian remained unapologetic about his cheating

The lie began to fully unravel in 1989 when the group's backing track jammed during a live MTV performance in Connecticut, causing Pilate to flee the stage in embarrassment.

From then on, suspicions only increased, while the duo also began to exert more pressure to gain more artistic control.

Finally, in 1990, Fabian announced that he had fired both men and revealed the extent of the deception.

Morvan and Pilatus were forced to surrender their Grammy award for Best New Artist amid intense backlash and the threat of several lawsuits.

But Farian remained unapologetic about the scandal.

“It was great new music, people were happy, so what's the problem?” he said during an interview with the WashingtonPost.

In 2008, Farian separated from his common-law wife and mother of his children, former swimsuit model Chinya Onyewenjo.

In a interview from 2012, Farian, then 70, confirmed that he broke up with Onyewenjo and was now dating her best friend, a woman named Angie, who was 28 years old at the time.

'She was too old and too bitchy for me! Now she's with her ugly lawyer, who looks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. And I have my new princess. After this wife swap I can only say: sometimes the world is so beautiful.'

Angie was an aspiring singer in her own right who went by the name Princess Guyana.

Last August, Farian sold a waterfront lot in Miami Beach worth $13.6 million, after purchasing it in 2001 for just $1.4 million.

He is estimated to have sold 800 million records worldwide and was one of the most successful pop producers of the 20th century.