In the very first scene of the Netflix hit series ‘Luis Miguel’, who owned the stage and the Latin music world throughout the 80s and 90s, Latin America's biggest pop star stands alone facing the mirror of his dressing room, as 60,000 girls scream in the stadium outside, defeaning, demanding his confident swagger and sweet, sweet voice. He is told that his father is dying in hospital in Madrid. Panick sets in.
I recognised immediately that suit and polka-dot tie, his yuppie-style slicked-back hair, recently cropped from the bouffaned-mullet of his teen pop years. It took me back 25 years. It’s not clear exactly which of the thousands of Luis Miguel concerts the opening scene refers to, but no doubt it was similar to one I attended in 1996 in Buenos Aires’ River Plate stadium.
As a young journalist on the Buenos Aires Herald I had been told to cover the concert. Dropped into the madness that was 60,000 girls singing so loudly they completely drowned out the voice of the tiny black-suited Mexican crooner on the distant stage, I felt exhilarated. When he broke into Carlos Gardel's El Dia que Me Quieras the place errupted into mass hysteria. And I too fell under spell of this charismatic and very, very sexy latino.
Fresh off the boat (I grew up in North London, despite being Born in Buenos Aires), I didn’t know too much about him. But I knew that everyone loved Luis Miguel; my then boyfriend, my boyfriend's parents, grandparents, his little sister. 'El Sol de Mexico' had transcended his era as teen pop idol and was able to perform a huge range of musical styles- pop, ballads, boleros, tangos, jazz, big band and mariachi - rivalling the best in Mexico’s lineage of bolero singers.
I had no idea how difficult this was to do, the technique and skill involved in singing those boleros, tangos and mariachis. Like most smug foreign journalists with little contextual knowledge, I didn’t take his art seriously, and was instead fixated on the reaction he produced in women and his changing hairstyle, particularly noting the recent cropping of the cheesy '80s mullet-plus-boufant (which in the Netflix series he constantly crunches to maintain it’s perkiness) in favour of his Wall Street styling and slicked-back crew cut.
Earlier that day, at the press conference in the Hyatt, faced with the muscly heart-throb, clad in a tight black t-shirt to show off his impressive torso, I had taken the microphone and, tongue-in-cheek, asked him if he had felt relieved at ridding himself of his mullet. A grin emanated from Luismi’s lips as he proceeded to mock my gringa accent. The whole press conference erupted in laughter and I went bright red, half-flattered, half-mortified. This little intimate tete-a-tete, which ended up on national evening news, was enough to totally hook me into the phenomenon that was Luis Miguel. He was arrogant, macho, powerful but witty and smart, so easily and swiftly taking me down a peg. There was something about Luismi…
I, like most people, had no idea about the trauma, pain and loneliness that lay behind the pop icon's powerful image. In the Netflix scene I refer to above, the news of his father’s impending death leaves Luis Miguel petrified. He has not spoken to his father, Luis Rey, for 4 years. With urgency he has to get to Spain, not to say goodbye, but to try and get from his father before he dies, the truth about his mother, who had disappeared when he was 15, a mystery unsolved to this day.
In the series, when Luis Miguel finally reaches his father’s deathbed and begs him to tell him the truth about what happened to his mother, Luis Rey turns away and dies without telling him. Many people believe he murdered his mother, Marcela Basteri, the Argentine-Italian beauty who had made the mistake of falling in love with him.
Now, 20 years later, having shed my youthful arrogance and learned more about music and the world, I confidently put the genius of Luis Miguel in the company of the world’s greatest singers, Billie Holiday, Marvin Gaye, Amy Whinehouse, Juan Gabriel, Ismael Rivera and others who all experienced tragedy in their lives. In all these artists who moved us, as well as astonishing technique and timing, there was a pain that pierced through the skin and penetrated.
I had assumed, because Luismi was blond that he was a Mexican rich kid. The real story - the story of an immigrant family trying to make ends meet in Mexico - is in fact very different. Luis Rey was a Spanish flamenco artist who had tried to make it in Mexico, and, on failing, sought to solve the precariousness of their life by training his son and making him a superstar. He was a strict and obsessive teacher, teaching him flamenco and boleros, but also forced him to watch reels and reels of Elvis and Frank Sinatra video footage.
By the age of 11 (in 1982), Micky (as Luis Miguel was known to family) released his first album, Un Sol, by the Mexican branch of EMI Records, which won him his first gold disc. Two years later, now dubbed ‘El Sol de Mexico’ he started touring Latin America, having scored a major hit with his single, "1+1=Dos Enamorados.” His career kept soaring, and by 15 he was a global star performing at Italy’s Sanremo Music Festival, and duetting with the likes of Sheena Easton.
In many ways, Luis Rey did a phenomenal job in producing a prodegé who could sing complex boleros (which most mature professional singers would struggle with) by the age 15. But the by now manager-father was insecure, abusive, manipulative, nascisistic, all of which got worse, as the wealth began coming in from Luis Miguel’s teenage fame, fuelling his alcohol and cocaine addiction. Insanely jealous of Luis Miguel’s mother, Marcela, Luis Rey worked to turn little Micky against her, forcing him to choose at the age of 15 between carrying on singing, which he loved, and becoming a superstar, or staying with his mum and never seeing him again.
Luis Miguel decided, not knowing what the consequences of this decision would be. As Luis Rey takes him all over the world to sing, hiding letters from Marcela, banning her from joining them on tour, his ever desperate mother begs Luis Rey to allow him to see her child. The last time Marcela was seen was at Luis Rey’s family home in Madrid where he lured her on the promise of seeing her son because he needed her to sign a paper giving him power of attorney over Luis Miguel, who was still a minor. He never brought the child and Marcela was never seen again.
And so back to 1996, when I first encountered this green-eyed, copper-haired Aztec babe. I recently dug out that article that I wrote, which ended up, of all places in The Sunday Telegraph and Scotland on Sunday. This is what I wrote:
“Luis Miguel is elusive. He never gives interviews. He is grumpy and capricious rather than affectedly charming, he is arrogant rather than vain. He goes out with high-profile MTV beauties and is unfaithful to them. He doesn't bother to present himself as eternally available.
Luismi knows a bit about music too. He produces his records, and knows where he wants to go with them. After growing out of his teen-market he made two albums of "boleros" (traditional Latin American love songs) which landed him like an atomic bomb into the fantasies of grown women. He made old and young scream alike.
And like the macho characters in his songs, Luismi assumes that the world will come to him, in his own language and his own style. Although he speaks perfect English he refuses to sing in English unless he considers it absolutely necessary (he even got Sheena Easton to do a duet with him in Spanish when he was 13 years old). Not even Madonna would earn an exception, Luismi says. 'I can't sing songs that I don't feel. If I did I'd be losing my personality.'
So, at his press conference, warning the peck-hugging, black T-shirted figure that British girls might not buy into his romantic verse so easily, I asked how he thought he might seduce them? For a moment I froze under a pair of emerald eyes. Had I been caught in the spell of Miguelism? Then he said, smirking without lifting his gaze, as if he had seen right through me, "If they are anything like you, I don't think it will be so difficult."
Can you believe I actually said that? Weirdly I have no recollection of asking this question, but it could be that I’ve blocked it out completely due to the totally embarrassing nature of it. Oh, to be 24 again. So audacious, so naïve.
However, the experience obviously left a lasting impression on me. Luismi and I and our little banter. No wonder I binge watched the series, which, by the way, and personal feelings aside, I highly recommend. And yes, 15 years later I can say, without the smug irony befitting of a young English journalist, that I still love Luis Miguel.
