A meeting of musical minds

If you don’t look at the CD cover, you’ll think the mellow, suave voice crooning from out of your player belongs to a Filipino balladeer. He sings the romantic Crazy in flawless Tagalog, with nary a foreign accent, and with the fervor of a Pinoy wooing his ladylove.

Surprise, surprise! The singer is no Filipino, although his heart belongs to the Philippines. He is Julio Iglesias, and he took time out from his busy schedule to record the Tagalog version of Crazy in his sprawling villa in Marbella, Spain.

Ryan Cayabyab flew all the way to Marbella for the recording of Crazy (which he produces together with another Tagalog track, All of You, where Julio handpicked Lea Salonga as his singing partner). Ryan also translated All of You and Crazy to Tagalog.

These tracks are part of the SonyBMG album Romantic Classics, featuring 11 best-loved songs from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

Up close and personal with Julio, Ryan saw a perfectionist. Julio would ask Mr. C, as Ryan is fondly called in music circles, a barrage of questions – especially about how Tagalog words are pronounced.

"Julio carefully took down notes," recalls the multi-awarded songwriter. He had to wrestle with the pronunciation of the Filipino ng in ngunit, but Julio did not give up. He carreid a phonetic sheet guides which he painstakingly studied, word for word, and repeated over and over.

As if that’s not enough, the Spanish balladeer would ask Ryan to show him the way by urging him to sing some lines from the Tagalog song.

So close were they at work, the two artists can actually smell each other’s breath in the recording studio.

Julio would tell Ryan it’s the expression that matters; that one has to feel the song right down to his bones. And so, the casually dressed Julio would act as if he’s dressed in a tuxedo and presenting a single red rose to his inamorata. He’d stretch out an arm and make his voice quiver with passion and longing. The term for it in Filipino is hagod. The technique hooks listeners, seduces them with promises of romance never-ending. It has become so trademark Julio Iglesias you expect it in every track of Romantic Classics, among them the oh-so-familiar Everybody’s Talking, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?, Waiting for a Girl Like You and others.

Another thing you can expect from the suave balladeer is a love for things Pinoy.

"I have a soft spot for the Philippines," he told Ryan. After all, his ex-wife, Isabel Preysler, is a Filipino, so his son, Enrique has Filipino blood flowing in his veins.

And he is conscious about how his Pinoy friends see him. So conscious, he confided to Ryan during a recording break, "I don’t want my friends in Manila to know this is how I look" (he was casually dressed for the marathon sessions at the basement of his villa).

His friends in Manila will certainly be happy to find out Señor Julio owns a well-appointed villa that looks as if it came out straight from the pages of Architectural Digest. The mountaintop estate has a large oval-shaped pool that keeps the Iglesiases fit and trim. The children study under the best tutors in the villa’s spacious basement.

During their Marbella stay, Ryan and company stayed in a separate villa in the estate. Julio’s hospitality rivaled that of the Filipinos’. Aside from staying in a five-suite villa with a pool overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Ryan’s group took Julio’s golf cart to ferry them from their quarters to the balladeer’s residence – some seven to 10-minutes away by foot.

Too bad Julio can’t stay long in his 15th-century style estate in Spain. His schedule is booked solid until next year.

Still, Julio wants an Asian swing and even a guesting in a New York talk show one of these days.

For all we know, he may just drop by to say hello to his beloved Pinoys, whose sentiments he shares – with every lingering quiver of his to-die-for voice.