Behind the Music: Fabio Rojas (part 1)

A few years ago, a college student from the Dominican Republic took the music scene by storm. His chart-topping first album went triple platinum, and it looked like Fabio Rojas was on his way to fame and fortune. But the temptations of his new found status proved to be too much for Fabio. His is a sordid tale of deceipt and excess that tragically turned around what might have been one of the biggest sucesses in music history. Next on Behind the Music: the Fabio Rojas story.

Fabio had a pleasant childhood in the Dominican Reoublic. He grew up listening to the soft country rock and roll of Kenny Rogers. [Insert home movies of a chubby four-year-old Fabio in a vest, cowboy hat, and chaps, playing a plastic guitar.] During High School, Fabio's interest in music waned, and he discovered the other passion of his life. He discovered something that could fullfill all the fantasies that music could not. Fabio discovered computers.

Jaded by his failure to sign a record contract by the time he was sixteen, Fabio abandoned music in favor of a more promising career in computers. "Everyone knows that you'll never be successful in showbusiness unless you get discovered by your 16th birthday," says Fab. "I mean, yeah, some people obtain some form of success if they start later. But these are people like Michael Bolton. Talented guy, but you can't help but feel sorry for him. And there's no hope for him either. He's so straight laced, he'll never die of an O.D. He'll be stuck on the 'life support' of greatest hits CDs for years. If I ever get to be that way, just pull the plug." With that attitude, Fabio went the way of so many before him. He hocked his guitar, then had his mother pay for a plane ticket to Boston, Massachusetts, where he struggled through a college carrer on a full-boat scholarship.

Fabio couldn't keep music out of his life forever, though. It was in his blood. After a couple of years at Northeastern University, Fabio started singing again. Then, he decided to record a demo tape. "I didn't want to spend the cash to get some time in a recording studio, so I just went into my bathroom to record a demo tape," Fab recalls. Says former roommate Mark Guertin, "I had to take a goddam shit, and he was in there wailing away for hours! And then I brought a couple of hotties back to the room, and he stole them away from me by singing some sappy love songs! Jesus! College isn't about sappy love songs! It's about gettin' it on!"

His dream rekindled, Fabio remained undaunted by his roommate's criticism. Late in his sophomore year, Fabio brought his demo tape to some record executives, and things started to take off. They immediately signed him to a 5-album contract. Fabio cut his first album in a week. It was distributed two months later, and it went gold after a week on the shelves. "It was unlike anything I'd ever seen," says Vic Firestein, Vice President of new artist promotions at Sony Music. "Normally we get a new face in, and we dump a couple of grand their way and send them around the country in a van. They do the club circuit for a couple of years; we send a few singles to smaller radio stations. Fab was insane, though. Only two weeks after his CD was released we were getting calls from major promotion companies asking to book him at some pretty big venues. We had to pull him back from the club tour when riots started breaking out at some places because there weren't enough tickets to go around. When the NFL approached us and asked for Fab at the superbowl we knew we had something special."

Next, Fabio's career peaks, bringing with it all the fruits and thorns of stardom. Then tragedy strikes, and Fabio is cast into a dark pit of despair, when Behind the Music continues.

part 2