Julio Iglesias speaks to his audiences
Judith Salkin • Desert Post Weekly • June 24, 2010
If you think Julio Iglesias sounds sexy on the radio, try talking to him on the phone.
That smooth Spanish accent and voice are enough to make you melt, no matter how you feel about his music.
Iglesias, 66, returns to the Coachella Valley Saturday for a concert at The Show at Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa in Rancho Mirage.
The singer kicked off his “Starry Night” tour in January in Uruguay and has included stops in Australia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, Hawaii and the Middle East before his stop in the desert.
He's squeezing in his desert concert before heading out to concerts in the rest of the United States and Canada. He finishes the tour in Europe.
“How is Palm Springs today?” Iglesias asks. “I have been coming there for 35 years, and I am always very happy when I am in the desert.”
Iglesias' early plans didn't include becoming a singer. He was studying law at Cambridge and playing goalie for the soccer team Real Madrid until a car wreck changed his life.
It was during his long recovery that Iglesias turned to music, learning to play guitar to regain strength in his hands.
Music “is in my blood,” he says. “It is who I am. You cannot change who you are.”
His career started in 1968 when he won the Festival de Benidorm song competition with “La Vida Sigue Igual.” Two years later, he won the Barcelona Song Festival with “Gwendolyne,” which also was Spain's entry in the Eurovision song festival.
There aren't a lot of singers who can claim Iglesias' international reputation. There are probably fewer still that sing in as many languages, including Japanese, Philippine Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesian and Mandarin Chinese.
It's translating his music into other languages that has challenged him over the past 40 years, Iglesias says.
“I am passionate about everything I do — when I fall in love, when I sing,” he says.
Translating that passion is what Iglesias strives for.
“The hardest part is that the phrases are not exact,” he says. “Like in America, the emphasis is on the end of the phrases. It was much harder for me to learn to sing this way.”
His duets with Willie Nelson (“To All the Girls I've Loved Before”), Diana Ross (“All of You”) and Stevie Wonder (“My Love”) helped him adapt to American music.
“It happened very naturally for me in the duets,” he says. “I was very lucky that Willie wanted to work with me. He was quite special. And Diana and Stevie, I learned the phrasing from (listening to) the sound of their voices.”
Even after more than four decades and hundreds of hits around the world, Iglesias is grateful for his voice and still being able to perform for his fans.
“I don't care what the size of the audience is,” he says.
“Forty or 50 thousand or 1,500. I don't take anything for granted, especially the people who come to see me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment