Urban Legends - Julio Iglesias: A Singer By Accident
Perhaps it takes a bad thing to happen to someone for them to find their calling in life. At age 20, a goalkeeper for the junior Real Madrid soccer team got into a serious car crash. While it brought an abrupt end to an athletic career, it spawned a musical career spanning the last four decades defined by excellence. His oasis during his 1963 recovery came in the form of guitar lessons and writing poetry. From the hospital bed, that patient would go on to sell over a ¼ billion albums worldwide.
On September 23, 1943, Julio Iglesias was the first of two boys born to parents Jose and Maria. Prior to the accident, Iglesias split time between soccer and studying Law at Complutence University in Madrid. It would take him many months to fully recover from nearly being paralyzed. Upon doing so, he finished his studies and ventured across the English Channel to learn the language. It was there where he met Gwendolyne Bollore, the inspiration behind one of his earliest hits, "Gwendolyne." Iglesias, now a music writer, approached a record company about having one of their artists sing translated versions of his songs. After listening to one of Julio's singles aided only by a guitar for instrumentals, the manager suggested he be the singer.
Reluctantly accepting this, Iglesias entered a music contest that was quite popular in the U.K. called the Benidorm Music Festival. He won the contest with the song, "La Vida Sigue Igual" - which preceded the first movie (1971) he was in by the same name. By then he was 25 and had signed with a Spanish branch of Columbia Records (Columbia Discos). 1971 was paramount in Iglesias's life. Besides the movie, he married Isabel Preysler Arrastria who bore his first child, Maria Isabel. The marriage produced two more kids (Julio Jr. and Enrique). During this time, he became something of a musical polyglot. Iglesias recorded songs and/or complete albums in Japanese, Portuguese, German, Italian, and French. Such work garnered international acclaim, which in 1983 led to him receiving the Diamond Record Award from the Guinness Book of World Records for selling the most records in the most languages. Aside from the ones already mentioned, these included English and Tagalog (a Filipino dialect).
Two years later, he received his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1988, he received a Grammy Award for "Best Latin Pop Performance" for the album, Un Solo Hombre (1987). The 90's consisted of continued success as Iglesias became the first foreigner to receive the Golden Record Award (1995) in Chinese history. He sired 5 more children (3 boys, 2 girls) with his second wife Miranda Rijnsburger. He also welcomed two additional siblings from his father's second marriage.
His latest album, Romantic Classics, is a compilation of songs from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Lets be honest, some of you might be alive today because of one of those songs.
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