Latin crooner Iglesias is 70 and loving his life
Latin crooner Julio Iglesias sets the record straight about the women he has loved and tells Jordan Levin why he continues to sing around the world
Julio Iglesias spends much of his time in the air these days, criss-crossing the globe in his private plane to sing in concerts from Singapore to Transylvania. But for the several months of the year he is at his home in Indian Creek, in Miami Beach - an exclusive island enclave - his circle is much smaller.
"I live a very secluded life," says the 70-year-old, buzzing along the island's single road in an electric golf cart. "I don't go to parties for the last 20 years. I don't go to the Grammys. I don't go anywhere. They invite me, I don't go. I don't have anything to say except when I am singing. I know the road to the microphone and from the microphone back. I put on my jacket, put conditioner in my hair. And I think I am the luckiest man in the world."
I don't go to parties for the last 20 years. I don't go to the Grammys. I don't go anywhere. And I think I am the luckiest man in the world
Iglesias' glory days were in the 1970s and '80s, when he broke concert ticket-sales records and sent legions of women swooning. But for millions of fans around the world today, he still embodies the Latin crooner, the suave seducer, the romantic fantasy. He was the man men wanted to be and women dreamed of being with. He has sung and recorded in more languages than any other artist, crossing over before crossover was a concept.
Iglesias' move from his native Spain to Miami in 1979 was instrumental to the US city becoming the capital of Latin music and entertainment. His latest album, 1, which reprises his many hits, has sold a respectable one million copies. Guinness World Records last year decreed that his 300 million sales of 80 albums made him the bestselling male Latin artist of all time.
The power of his image lingers even as he roams farther for concert bookings in smaller venues that, he says, often don't cover the cost of his private plane and entourage.
"I travel with 40 people from Finland to China," he says. "It costs me the same money that I make, because I don't put 25,000 people together anymore. But for me to sing gives me a feeling that … makes my blood run much stronger in my body. I look in the mirror every day. Without singing, I would not look in the mirror."
He is slim and tanned, though with a fine matrix of wrinkles not apparent in his soft-focus publicity photos. He buzzes past the mansion he shares with his wife, Miranda Rijnsburger, a former Dutch model 23 years his junior, and their five children: Miguel, 16; Rodrigo, 14; golden-haired twins Victoria and Cristina, 12; and Guillermo, six.