![]() ![]() ![]() We used the rhythm from the Johnny Mathis disco version but made a very different arrangement. We recorded in Madrid – the rhythm section first, then the brass, the violins, guitars and so on. I later found out the studio speakers had just arrived and were full of packaging paperīegin the Beguine was on a list of potential songs for the fourth album we did together. It was the start of a long working relationship, and we sold millions of records. But then a few months later, when I wrote a song called Sono un Pirata, Sono un Signore (“I am a pirate, I am a good man”), I wanted Julio to sing it. Years later, I’d started producing artists when Julio’s manager came up to me at a festival in Chile and suggested we meet. The day before the ceremony in London, this guy came up to me and said, “I’ll tell you two things: you are going to win Eurovision and you are going to hear about me.” That was Julio Iglesias. I met Julio when my songwriting partner Manuel de la Calva and I wrote the song that won the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest – La, La, La by Massiel. None of this would have happened if that radio programmer hadn’t picked the song for Piccadilly. When I was a child and singing in the house, my father had once said to me: “Do you want to be like Frank Sinatra?” So after Begin the Beguine was an international smash and Sinatra invited me to sing at his all-star party, I thought about my father. It went to No 1 in the UK and changed my life completely. Piccadilly Radio in Manchester played it, then the other stations followed. ![]() Listen to Begin the Beguine (Volver a empezar)īegin the Beguine was my first hit in the UK. I’m Spanish, but these things are universal. Everything in life is about personal experiences – your feelings, your brain and your chromosomes. I think the song was originally about a dance, but I wrote about a lost love, someone you want to go back to. My producer did an incredible new arrangement and I changed the lyrics completely. I’d heard it on the radio many times and one day suggested covering it. It became my passion, and I became the biggest selling artist ever in Spain.īegin the Beguine is a Cole Porter standard, one of the most beautiful songs from the 1940s and 50s. I learned to play and became a singer: a bad singer! Now? I’m not so bad. I started making little simple harmonies, then simple songs. ![]() My hands didn’t have much strength so I was given a guitar to help me regain movement in them. It took me two years to learn to walk again. However, when I was 19, I was in a car accident, almost died and was left completely paralysed. I wasn’t a very good goalkeeper but I played for the reserves of a great team – the 1960-61 Real Madrid “Galácticos” that included Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskás. ![]()
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