Taking the rap for crazy hoax

The music industry is often more obsessed with stars having a sellable persona than trusting fans to know the difference between their real character and the music they create.

Rock’n’roll rebel (Sir) Mick Jagger admires Maggie Thatcher and is from a Tory-leaning family. Clean-cut boy band members do — shock, horror — occasionally take advantage of groupies. The now obligatory X Factor sob stories may, just possibly, be encouraged by the show to create a false emotional connection with would-be fans.

And out-of-control Californian rappers Silibil’n’Brains, a duo Sony Records tipped to take over the world in the mid-2000s before they came crashing down to earth in spectacular circumstances?

Well ... they were two Scottish kids from Dundee who had never set foot on American soil.

The four-years-in-the-making tale of the would-be chart-toppers — real names Billy Boyd and Gavin Bain — is detailed in Jeanie Finlay’s The Great Hip Hop Hoax.

Shown for the first time on Irish screens during the Irish Film Institute’s ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ documentary festival last weekend, the =film underlines how ingrained the image before substance side to the industry has become — and the devastating impact it can have on those involved.

Back in the early 2000s Eminem was taking the charts by storm. All music labels wanted to do was find an identical act to cash in on the star’s market.

At the time, students Boyd and Bain were gaining a cult Scottish following. But when their shot at the big time came at an open audition for London-based Polydor Records they were laughed out of the room and described as “just a rapping version of the Proclaimers”.

Crushed by the putdown, the duo decided to keep up their spirits by jokingly phoning one label with Californian accents.

They were immediately asked for demo tapes and, suddenly, a light bulb went on in their heads.

Over the next four years the pair underwent a complete personality change, convincing everyone they had grown up just outside San Francisco.

They swore friends and family to secrecy, perfecting Californian accents, wearing ‘skater boi’ clothes, hoodwinking music execs, and somehow managing to convince people to believe the lie.

A move to London and a major record deal with Sony UK followed, as did crashing the Brit Awards’ backstage party, drink-fuelled binges with Daniel Bedingfield (one of the few people to see through the lie) and an MTV appearance.

It couldn’t last and, as the strain of living a double life finally began to show, Gavin Bain returned to his long-suffering fiancée in Scotland.

The record deal collapsed as no music had been released and Sony was in meltdown.

Fast forward half a decade and Bain is working on an offshore oil rig while Boyd — who hit rock bottom while trying to keep the dream alive — has only recently revealed who he really is.

The sad reality is the Scottish duo had the ability — and, as their credits performance suggests, arguably still do — to have made it big without hiding behind a facade. But the industry’s obsession with image over substance means they were never given the chance.

* More information on the recently reformed duo’s independently released album can be found at www.silibilnbrains.com.