O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : A Bilingual Letdown for Julio Iglesias

It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy who clears $22 million a year, has his own jet to count it on, and who reputedly has thousands of instances of inspiration to draw from when he sings “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.”

But Julio Iglesias’ tour-ending show Saturday night at the Pacific Amphitheatre had to be a bit of a letdown for him. Here the guy works for years to build up his American audience, even recording his last two albums exclusively in English, and he ends up performing to thousands fewer folks than in previous shows at the same venue.

And while there were certainly pockets of adoration in the crowd, the general reaction couldn’t be called passionate by any means. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t even get a majority of the audience to sing along with him.

Though not in the same league with Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra--at age 75, Sinatra can still sing rings around Iglesias--the 47-year-old does have a winning style with romantic ballads. Saturday’s set was evenly divided between his early Spanish-language hits, such as “Hey,” and his English efforts of the last half-decade.

There was a time when Iglesias’ attempts at singing in English were awkward and dry, but it was clear Saturday that he’s long past that. Rather than worry about the diction, “I just let it come from here,” he said, tapping his chest, where one might charitably presume he meant his heart rather than his wallet. Hence, while the intelligibility and phrasing of the lyrics was often alien--at times it took a verse just to realize what language he was singing in--the songs flowed much more naturally.

His plaintive tenor voice may not get inside a lyric the way some singers can, but he tickles their exteriors well, with a perceptive use of melisma and dynamics. Something which has consistently hampered Iglesias’ shows for years, though, is the harsh digital reverb used in his sound mix, which leaves a trebly halo around every word he sings. While such effects can enhance a weak singer’s voice, Iglesias clearly doesn’t need it, and the artificial sound detracts from the warmth of his performance.

His whole band was sounding pretty high-tech this time out. He’s touring with a small outfit of two synths, guitar, bass, drums, percussion and three female backup singers. And, no kidding, much of the time the group sounded like nothing so much as the “Avalon”-era Roxy Music. They created those same shimmering, cloud-like plateaus of sound, and it was scary to note how much Iglesias and Roxy’s Brian Ferry have in common in their styles.

Saturday’s show featured a Brazilian medley, including “Girl From Ipanema” and “Brazil,” the vowel-happy disco track “ae, ao”, and “Hey,” which was the emotional high point of his Spanish material. English-language songs included “Too Many Women,” Albert Hammond’s “When I Need You,” Jacques Brel’s “If You Go Away” and the Nat Cole classic “Mona Lisa.”

He sang “Mona Lisa” with a rapid vibrato more reminiscent of Johnny Mathis than Cole, which only seemed to chop up the melodic line. On Don Maclean’s “Vincent,” however, Iglesias sang the tale of Van Gogh’s isolation and vision with a sensitivity and passion that would surprise those who have written him off as a bilingual sign in the middle of the road.

Even with some aggressive coaxing, Iglesias could only coax a wan sing-along on Elvis’s “I Can’t Help Falling in Love” (which he reprised when concluding his encore). After trying again to get the audience to sing during his encore, Iglesias declared, “This is the only place in the U.S. where people don’t sing.” He attributed that to there being so many different nationalities here (a Tower of Babel effect?)

Perhaps. But it may also be that some of his fire has waned. Nowhere was that more suggested than on his schmaltzed-up version of the Gipsy Kings’ “Bamboleo.” Though it was by far Iglesias’ longest, loosest number of the evening, it still sounded as if it had been taken straight out of the freezer. Why should listeners be content with Iglesias’ fabrications, however graceful, when this Saturday at Irvine Meadows they’ll be able to see the Gipsy Kings themselves do the song with real fire, real tradition, real innovation, and very real--via Kings’ Nicolas Reyes frighteningly soulful vocals--passion?