She was the “true girlfriend” of Camilo Sesto and the “impossible love” of Julio Iglesias, she sang José Luis Perales on his birthday and became an unexpected ally by Freddy Mercury. The interview opens with the memories of Argentina’s Alejandra Capalbo, 40 years later.
Known as ‘Sipi’, this smiling woman, now devoted to real estate, is a bottomless pit of anecdotes of the years in which his father, Alfred Capalbo -who died in 2014-, was one of the most important artistic representatives of the South American country.
“Today’s representatives say: Your father was everyone’s father,” says Alejandra Capalbo.
Recently a fan of Camilo Sesto sent her images from a Spanish magazine from the late 70s – which she had never seen before – in which she can be seen walking around Buenos Aires with the singer, who called her his “real girlfriend”. “On this last trip I discovered that Sipi had stopped being the girl I had known to meet this lovely woman,” said Camilo Sesto.
“Maybe we’ll get married sooner than many think,” he added, convinced that although many loves had been “invented” for him, this was the “first time” he had fallen in love.
Today Alejandra, 61 years old, with four children and five grandchildren, relativizes that alleged love relationship and laughingly assures that “more things” have happened with Julio Iglesias than with Camilopassed away in 2019.
An impossible love
“I was Julio Iglesias’ impossible love,” says Sipi, who also keeps an image from an old diary in which she is seen talking to him: “Warm chats,” reads the caption.
“I adore him, I love him very much, I know so many things about Julio and what entertains me the most is his obsession with love for me. I married another, but Julio wanted to marry me“he says today.
And he compares it to Joan Manuel Serrat, with whom Alejandra Capalbo also had a close relationship. “They were completely different people. Serrat on a human level was wonderful for me, Julio was also divine,” she adds.
“J”oan Manuel never talked about being number one. Julio worked exclusively and managed to be number one in the US. He said he wouldn’t stop until he was. He was walking into a restaurant with Julio and from the door he started ‘ah, ah’ (he sings) so that everyone would turn and see that he was there,” he says.
“Joan Manuel, on the contrary. There he liked a woman at the table and she was with her husband…and she would not ‘take’ her away from her husband. Julio was going to “get it out”. And the women died toouh, watch out, and they went with him because they wanted to,” he says.
The relationship between Iglesias and the representative ended in 1989 because, according to his daughter, Julio violated a contract.
Freddie Mercury’s boyfriend
One of Alfredo Capalbo’s greatest successes was to make Queen’s first visit to Argentina. The negotiation was formalized during a trip to Los Angeles (USA), during which, coincidentally, someone offered to see the band’s representative.
The five recitals that the British held in Argentina in 1981 are considered a milestone for being the first of such a scale in the country. Those were times without mobile phones and Alejandra had to travel to New York to purchase special antennas because the group wanted to communicate from the stadium.
Another anecdote is the day the car carrying the group ran out of fuel on the highway. Or when Freddie saw her then boyfriend walking in Mar del Plata with another man.
“The fight broke out there. They go back to Buenos Aires after the show and the next day I had to take the boy, who didn’t speak English, with a translator to the airport, because Freddie kicked him out. My mission was to check that he was sending the suitcases, to be sure that he didn’t stay in Argentina,” he recalls.
Members of the Queen came to meet General Roberto Viola, who was about to take office as the new president of the dictatorship (1976-1983).
When asked about the link her father might have had with the regime, Alejandra says so he has “always” had a relationship “with all the presidents” of the country, democratic and otherwise. “At that time there was a dictatorship. But there was also a dictatorship when he brought Yes. And he lost his fortune because the military was against it,” he defends.
Sipi’s “normal” life was to be surrounded by artists. José Luis Perales sang on his sixteenth birthday and the Mexican Emmanuel went to his home in Madrid and offered him some heated noodles.
“Dad then said… ‘how are you going to tell him you’re going to give him last night’s leftover pasta?’ and I said ‘dad, what do I care?, she laughs.
Source: EFE/Rodrigo Garcia
WD extension
Source: Clarin
