Home > Contemporary Musicians > Iglesias, Julio

Singer

Dubbed the "Spanish Frank Sinatra," Julio Iglesias became one of the most popular singers in the world during the 1980s. His suave, romantic image and music inspired and allured audiences all over the world. By the mid-1980s, he became the first artist to receive the Diamond Disc Award from The Guinness Book of World Records, and one reviewer estimated that a Julio Iglesias song was playing somewhere in the world every 30 seconds. "My goal is to make people dream," Iglesias told Gerald Clarke in Time magazine. "When they see me onstage, their fantasy of me and the reality meet. I seduce them. But I must seduce myself first."

"Julio is a true artist," former Tonight Show host Johnny Carson told Bob Thomas in Billboard. "He has a stage presence that is just incredible, and I have rarely seen anyone whose command of an audience is so total."

Julio Iglesias was born in Madrid, Spain, to Dr. Julio Iglesias Puga and Maria del Rosario de la Cueva Perignat. His father worked as a prominent gynecologist who supported his family in upper-class fashion. The younger Julio and his brother Carlos went to a Roman Catholic school called Colegio de los Sagrados Corazónes (Sacred Heart School). While growing up, Iglesias and his family spent the summers in either Galicia, where his father was raised, or Peñiscolaon the Mediterranean coast.

Iglesias discovered a love for music later in life. Throughout school, he played soccer and landed a spot on the junior reserve squad for the prestigious Read Madrid Club de Fútbol. Beyond the dream of playing professional soccer, Iglesias embarked on the study of law, with plans to enter the Spanish diplomatic service. However, his plans came to a screeching halt in the summer of 1963, when a truck forced his car off the road just outside of Madrid. He went through 14 hours of surgery and came out paralyzed from the chest down.

Iglesias described the ordeal to Cindy Adams in Ladies Home Journal, "I thought I was going to die, and my family just wouldn't tell me. There I was, a young man of 20, cut down, with no hope for my future. My father took time out from his career for a year to dedicate his whole life to me. He built a hospital room in our house, complete with the machinery I needed for physical therapy."

Tragedy Inspired Talent

For the nextyear, Iglesias struggled to return to mobility. He worked out for hours at a time every day. To help ease his suffering, a nurse gave him a guitar. He learned to play and revealed his musical talent. Once he had regained the use of his limbs, his parents sent him to Cambridge, England to improve his English skills. During his stay, he wrote his first song—"La Vida Sigue Igual" ("Life Goes on as Usual").

On July 18, 1968, Iglesias participated in the Benidorm Song Festival in Costa Dorado, Spain. He performed the song "La Vida Sigue Igual" and won first prize. Despite the recognition, he decided to fulfill his promise to his father and finished his studies in law. For the next year and a half, he put his music career on hold.

In 1970, Iglesias performed the song "Guendoline" at the Eurovision Festival Song Contest in Holland. Although he did not win, by the end of the year the song became a major hit in Europe. Iglesias also traveled to Chile to sing in the Viña del Mar Festival and performed in Guatemala. His notoriety led to roles in a few Spanish-language films, including La Vida Sigue Igual and Todos Los Dias un Dia, but his performances didn't gain much recognition. "They're the worst films you can ever see," Iglesias recalled to Steve Dougherty in People magazine. "I was the most ridiculous actor."

Iglesias married his first wife, Isabel Preisier (changed to Preysler) on January 20, 1971. Though married for only eight years, the couple had three children: Chabeli, born in 1971 ; Julio Jose, born in 1973; and Enrique, born in 1975.

Iglesias continued to compete in singing contests and festivals, and finally won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1972. By this time, he had released two albums, Como el Alamo al Camino and Julio Iglesias, on the Alhambra record label. The records had reached Japan, Europe, Latin America, and the Arab countries. Over the next few years, Iglesias continued to release several LPs on Alhambra, including Soy, A Mexico, El Amor, America, A Mis 33 Años, and Emociónes.

He moved on to sign a record contract with CBS Records International in 1978. His next album, Hoy ("Today"), soared to the top of the album charts in 60 different countries, but he had yet to gain any recognition in the United States. In 1981 he released De Niña a Mujer, on which the title track had been inspired by his daughter. In the same year, he released El Disco de Oro and published his autobiography Entre el Cielo y el Infierno ("Between Heaven and Hell").

Created English Seduction

By the end of 1981, Iglesias had decided to start conquering English-speaking countries as well. He became the first Hispanic singer to have a No. 1 hit on the United Kingdom charts with a cover of the Cole Porter classic "Begin the Beguine." Unfortunately, his family was hit with another tragedy after he became successful.

In December of 1981, his father was kidnapped right outside of his clinic in Madrid. The kidnappers, representatives of a Basque terrorist organization, asked Julio Iglesias for the equivalent of two million dollars to release his father. He immediately arranged for the payment, but the police captured the suspects before the exchange was made. From then on, Iglesias, his father, and his children constantly had bodyguard protection.

After the release of his 1982 album, Momentos, Iglesias decided to plan his attack on the United States. In preparation, he traveled there and absorbed everything he could about the culture. He listened to the radio and watched talk shows to see how celebrities responded in interviews. He wanted to gain all the information he could to get himself ready.

"The United States is the biggest market of all, and the biggest challenge," Iglesias explained to Bob Thomas in Billboard. "I want to succeed where others have failed. I know that many foreign-language artists have tried to crack the American market in the past 20 years, and none has been able to do it. I want to try. " The more he learned about the country and its people, the more he realized that he already had the talent and the tools he needed to succeed. "Little by little," he told Cindy Adams in Ladies Home Journal, "I began to discover what America is, and I realized that it is a mixture of everybody I was already singing for: Irish, Italian, Jewish, French."

Iglesias began performing in the United States before he released his first all-English album. He even played for the president at the White House during the Christmas holidays. Also, in 1983 he accepted the world's first Diamond Disc Award from The Guinness Book of World Records. The award marked his accomplishment as the world's best-selling recording artist, with over 100 million units sold internationally.

The following year, he released his first American-made LP, 1100 Bel Air Place. It included appearances from saxophonist Stan Getz and the Pointer Sisters. On several of the songs, Iglesias sang with American artists such as Willie Nelson, Diana Ross, and the Beach Boys. This album sold over a million copies within its first five days in the stores. It included the hit duet with Willie Nelson, "To All the Girls I've Loved Before," and the album ended up selling more than four million copies in the United States.

His tour for the record included some stops that became gigantic events, with up to 190 people traveling with him just to put it together. In the summer of 1984, he played for ten days at the Universal Amphitheatre during the Los Angeles-hosted Olympic Games. By the end of the 1980s, Julio Iglesias had made his mark in the United States. In 1990 he released Starry Night, which included the hit singles "Mona Lisa" and "Can't Help Falling in Love."

He returned with another successful duet in 1994 on his Columbia Records release Crazy, his sixty-ninth record. He teamed up with noted singer Dolly Parton for the single "When You Tell Me That You Love Me." On the same album, he also recorded covers of American songs, including Santana's "Oye Como Va" and Sting's "Fragile."

Family Entertainment and Fine Wines

During the mid-1990s, his children began their own careers in entertainment. His daughter, Chabeli, hosted her own talk show on the United States Spanish-language television station Univision, starting in 1993. Julio Iglesias agreed to be one of her first guests. In 1996, Enrique Iglesias released his self-titled debut album, which sold almost three million copies and topped the charts. However, Julio Iglesias didn't find out about his son's music career until after the album had arrived in stores. "He [Julio] was always into his work," Chabeli Iglesias told CynthiaSanz in People. "When he had time, he was with us, but family was never his strong point."

By 1997 his recording schedule had slowed down a bit. He had sold more than 200 million albums worldwide and performed on every continent but Antarctica. He formed a business venture with a Spanish businessman and marketing consultant named Jorge Roura to promote wine. They organized a group of wines in 1997 with a "Julio Iglesias Wine Selection" label on the bottle to identify his own favorites. Iglesias started the business in an effort to expose Americans to a variety of outstanding wines, one of his own beloved interests.

Despite his decreasing recording pace, Iglesias continued to tour the world and claimed he was far from finished with music. "When my legs quit, I will quit touring, not before," he told Edna Gunderson in TV Guide. "I will do albums until the record company says, 'No more.' I'm not tired, and I feel younger than ever. I don't understand any other way of life."

—Sonya Shelton