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Juan Gabriel Dies At 66
Juan Gabriel, a superstar Mexican songwriter and singer who was an icon in the Latin music world, died Sunday at his home in California at age 66, his publicist said.
Juan Gabriel was Mexico’s leading singer-songwriter and top-selling artist. His ballads about love and heartbreak and bouncy mariachi tunes became hymns throughout Latin America and Spain and with Spanish speakers in the United States.
He brought many adoring fan and the
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said through his official Twitter account: “I regret the death ofJuan Gabriel, one of the great musical icons of our country. My condolences to his relatives and friends.”
Juan Gabriel broke ground in Mexico in 1990 by becoming the first commercial singer to present a show at Mexico City’s majestic Palace of Fine Arts, until then a forum reserved for classical musicians. The proceeds from the three sold- out concerts went to support the National Symphony Orchestra and became his most celebrated performances. His album Juan Gabriel live from the Palace of Fine Arts set record sales.
A six-time Grammy nominee, Juan Gabriel was inducted into the Billboard Latin Music Hall of Fame in 1996 and received countless industry awards, including ASCAP Songwriter of the Year in 1995, Latin Recording Academy’s Person of the Year 2009, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that same year.
The singer, who was born Jan. 7, 1950, wrote his first song at age 13 and went on to compose more than 1,500 songs.
“There are no rules when I compose songs,” he said, according to a biography published by Mexico’s Society of Music Authors and Composers. “There are times when I’m really happy and I write something really sad, and vice versa.”
Artists across Latin America and in the United States covered many of his songs, including Paul Anka and
The youngest of 10 children, he rose rags to riches. He was born in the western state of Michoacan. His father, Gabriel Aguilera, was a farmer and his mother, Victoria Valadez, a housewife. The family lost contact with his father after he was taken to a psychiatric hospital in Mexico City when Juan Gabriel was still a baby. Unable to support her children, his mother moved the family to the border city of Ciudad Juarez, where he grew up as she worked as a maid.
Juan Gabriel said his mother was one of the people he most loved in his life even though he spent most of his childhood away from her. Unable to care for him, she sent him to an orphanage.
He said he wrote “Eternal Love,” one of his greatest hits, thinking about his mother, who died in 1974.
“Even though I don’t have my mother’s love today, I have the love of millions,” he told the newspaper La Jornada in an interview in 2012. “Her love comes through all the mothers of Mexico.”
He went to school only until fifth grade after he escaped the orphanage, where he met music teacher and mentor Juan Contreras. He said his artistic name came from Contreras and his father.
He traveled to Mexico City as a teenager and slept on the streets and in train stations while trying to break into the music business.
During that time he was accused of robbery and sent to jail. “I was good writing songs, but I was innocent for many other things and when I ended up in jail I didn’t know how to defend myself,” he told La Jornada.
The prison director and his wife helped get Juan Gabriel freed.
He signed his first record contract in 1971 and had his first big hit with “No tengo dinero” (“I don’t have any money”), according to his biography by Mexico’s Society of Music Authors and Composers.
At the height of his fame, he had problems in Mexico and the United States for not paying taxes. He was also linked to the Cali drug cartel when Fernando Rodriguez, son of Colombian drug trafficker Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, wrote in his book “The Son of Chess Player” that Juan Gabriel sang at a party in Colombia for the cartel leaders. The singer denied the claim.