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Interview
ricky struts his stuff For exclusive, behind-thescenes footage of Ricky Martin’s photo shoot for The Weekly, download the free viewa app, then select The Australian Women’s Weekly channel and hold your smartphone or tablet over this page to watch the video. See page 22 for viewa instructions.
styling by judith cook. Grooming by liz kelsh. ricky wears armani collezioni jacket from arida and american vintage t-shirt. THESE IMAGES HAVE BEEN RETOUCHED. VIEWA CONTENT AVAILABLE FROM MARCH 25, 2013 TO MAY 28, 2013.
Ricky Martin
“I knew something was wrong” Last time Ricky Martin was in Australia, he was suffering a crisis that would eventually change his life. Now happy and contented, he hopes to change the lives of others, as he reveals to Caroline Overington. PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BREW-BEVAN
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HERE are some people, most of them young, who believe that fame will make them happy. No lessons from history will convince them otherwise. The Latin American superstar, Ricky Martin – in Australia this year to take Keith Urban’s role as a coach on the popular talent show, The Voice – was for a time one of those people. “It didn’t matter what I had to go through – leaving home at the age of 12, not seeing family or friends – as long as at the end of the day I could be on stage,” Ricky tells The Weekly. For almost two decades, everything was fine. Ricky essentially lived on stage, often playing to adoring audiences of tens of thousands, and he was happy.
Then, in 2000 – which, by chance, was when Ricky was last in Australia – the bubble burst. “I was here on stage and I was like ‘Yeah!’,” he says, “but no ... I wasn’t feeling it.” Worse, he wasn’t feeling much of anything and for an artist capable on a good day of lifting the stadium roof, that was alarming. “I knew something was wrong,” he says. “I was due in South America – a large concert in Buenos Aires – and I cancelled. I went home.” That was 13 years ago. Ricky was then just 28 – still so young in the scheme of things – and there is a risk in telling this story that he will come across as petulant. So he was rich and famous, and had glorious good looks – but it wasn’t enough? That’s a First World problem.
Yet, hear him out. Ricky, now 41, has worked hard this past decade, not on stage, but off, not for himself, but for others, particularly poor girls at risk of being sold into the sex trade in Calcutta, India, in Thailand and after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. He has found, in the process, a measure of peace. The Ricky Martin who came to Australia in the year 2000 was an international superstar, true, but he was also a confused and often lonely, somewhat uncertain person. The Ricky Martin we’re about to see on The Voice – his hand outstretched, his smile genuine as he welcomes talented young Australians into his team – is very much different. He’s a humbler person, a happier person, one might even say he’s complete. ➤ april 2013 AWW.com.au
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The doting dad shares a quiet moment with his four-year-old twins, Valentino (left) and Matteo.
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photography pablo alfaro.
“IF YOU THINK THAT, BECAUSE I AM A SINGLE FATHER, MY BOYS ARE NOT SURROUNDED BY WONDERFUL WOMEN, DON’T WORRY – THEY ARE.”
IT STARTED with a spoon. From the age of six, Ricky Martin would take the wooden spoon from the kitchen drawer and use it like a microphone. His parents had separated when he was two years old, but they retained amicable relations and young Ricky (or “Kiki” as he was known to family) spent a lot of time with his grandparents. He was a talented boy, appearing in TV commercials in Puerto Rico from the age of nine, first for soft drink, then for toothpaste. People would see him on the street and say, “Look, there’s that kid from the toothpaste commercial”, and he liked the feeling. These activities weren’t necessarily “culturally condoned” in his homeland, Puerto Rico, where many felt that “real men didn’t sing and dance”. Ricky – for the record, his real name is Enrique Martin Morales – was, nevertheless, determined from a young age to be chosen to join the famous Puerto Rican boy band, Menudo (unlike the English boy bands, such as New Kids On The Block, the Spanishspeaking Menudo changed its line-up regularly. The boys would retire before they turned 18 and new recruits would fill the vacancy.) Ricky’s father took him to an audition when he was 11. He was too short, so he tried again nine months later – and was still too short. Finally, in 1983, he was accepted. Less than 24 hours later, Ricky was in Orlando, Florida, learning 18 new dance routines in 10 days. By the following week, he was playing to 200,000 people in Sao Paulo. “I loved it,” he says of the strange childhood that followed, living with a band of boys who became like brothers, staying in hotels, travelling constantly, having girls scream his name. He was not yet rich – in fact, he was earning $400 a month (his parents were sensible, putting the rest into a trust) – but in the Spanish-speaking world, he was certainly famous. Then it ended. Ricky left Menudo as scheduled in 1989 and returned to Puerto Rico. He finished high school and, in December of the year he turned 18, he accessed the bank account that had been frozen for years. Just 13 days later, he’d moved to New York City.
For the first time since he was a boy, he lived “as a normal person”, but not for long. By the age of 19, Ricky had signed a record deal and, by 1991, he had released his first solo album, the Spanishlanguage Ricky Martin. He spent time in Mexico to pursue a life in the theatre and his songs galloped up the charts in almost every country he toured. He was linked to many beautiful women, at least one of whom broke his heart. In 1998, the international soccer federation, FIFA, asked Ricky to create a song for the World Cup. He released the exuberant Cup Of Life or La Copa De La Vida (you’ll perhaps remember the chorus: “Here we go! Ale, ale, ale! We’ll go all night! Ale, ale, ale!”). Ricky performed the song at the Cup final to an audience of incalculable millions. He also performed it at the 41st Grammy Awards, but, despite being an extraordinarily big star in Latin America, and now in Europe, he wanted to conquer the most lucrative market of them all – the US – in English. That happened in 1999. Rick’s first predominantly English-language album featured the hip-swivelling Livin’ La Vida Loca (it translates, roughly, as “living a wild and crazy life”), which went to No. 1 in 20 countries. It was against this background – No. 1 around the world, World Cup sensation – that Ricky set upon his triumphant world tour, which he then abruptly ended in Australia. “The decision to step aside was a chain of episodes. I was really tired,” he tells The Weekly. He had been so busy for so long, there had been no time to think, “What do I actually want?” Back home, he moped around the house. In his autobiography, Me, published in 2010, he describes having “little humour or patience … now, when I look back, that was the beginning”. Ricky had previously been to India. Now he returned, ostensibly to see a friend’s orphanage, but mainly to try to get himself out of the rut. “I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll sing for them [the orphan children] and it will be fun’,” he tells The Weekly. “Because I was still in la-la land, I was thinking, ‘Let’s go into the streets and rescue girls! Cool!’ ” ➤ april 2013 AWW.com.au
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unusual, although hardly unique these days, but, he says, “How many children grow up without a mother? Or with a mother who does not love them? If you think that because I’m a single father my boys are not surrounded by wonderful women, don’t worry – they are!” His own mother is a constant female presence in the boys’ lives (she took care of them while Ricky was in Australia in February, filming The Voice blind auditions). When they are old enough, he will explain that every family is unique: there are families that have a father, a mother and a baby; there are families that have one mother and five babies; there are families with two people and no babies. Besides his mum, Ricky now has a
photography peter brew-bevan. ricky wears marcs t-shirt and lagerfeld jeans from arida.
He addresses the problem of child The reality was not so cool. When trafficking in more general ways through Ricky and his friend got out of their The Ricky Martin Foundation’s People car in a poor Calcutta neighbourhood For Children project. He also understands that night, they found children living that the problem is large and that there under plastic, barefoot, unregistered, are many fronts on which to fight it, so unschooled and in poor health. his foundation is not precious about “My friend started talking to some working with others. boys, but the boys tend to survive more In 2004, he worked closely with easily on the streets and they were saying, Habitat to rebuild houses in Thailand ‘No’, and sending us to the girls [because after being told that many children had the girls] don’t survive. What I did not been orphaned by the tsunami and were understand was they could be forced at risk of ending up in the hands of into prostitution,” he says. “I come traffickers. The foundation did similar from Latin America, where we had work in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. many problems and that was not one Ricky visited Thailand after the tsunami that I had confronted.” in 2004. While he was there, he was They went in the direction the boys introduced to a little baby, called Baby had sent them and found three little Wave by staff, who had been found on a girls huddled under a sheet of plastic. mattress in the Phang Nga region. He was It’s not clear how old they were “because appalled to hear that infants so young they were born on the street, their births were at risk of trafficking. Ricky wanted never registered”, but they were to adopt Baby Wave, but single fathers probably four, six and eight. are not allowed to adopt in Thailand. “We went to their mother and their It was not to be, but Ricky still wanted mother was, ‘Yes, please take them’, and a family. In 2007, when he was 36 years we took them to the hotel for them to old and still single, he asked a US agency bathe in order for us to take them to to help him find an egg donor and a my friend’s orphanage, an hour and second woman to carry a child for him. a half from Calcutta,” Ricky says. That the arrangement resulted in twins “But from that moment – finding was an unexpected bonus: the brothers, them on the street to taking them to Matteo (“gift of God”) and Valentino the orphanage – a thousand things (“the valiant one”) were born in August happened; not being allowed to go 2008. “I wanted to stand on the rooftop into the hotel because they were the and scream the great news to the world,” Untouchables [caste], the doctor not Ricky says of the day he became a father. wanting to treat them … it was like The first few weeks, he says, were a one punch in the eye after another.” blur – “feeding, bathing, changing” – Ricky’s focus changed that night, from but also just standing, his own success to the well-being of others, “i wanted to staring at them in sheer wonder as they slept. particularly girls at risk of scream the Ricky chose to have exploitation in Third World great news.” a “closed” agreement, countries. He learned about where all parties are the sex trade in Cambodia, anonymous and have little to do with where men pay $300 to have sex with children – “They should be buried alive,” each other after the children were born. Ricky says. He has seen secret recordings In his book, he writes, “If my sons want to know about the egg donor when they of “grotesque men, licking their lips, five are older, I will be able to show them little girls holding hands, trembling”, as they wait to be sold to the highest bidder. photographs. They have a right to know who she is, she’s part of their genetic Ricky began sponsoring the three girls heritage. But she asked that we not he found living under plastic on that have any contact.” sad night in Calcutta, telling The Weekly, Ricky understands that his family – “Now they are young and beautiful created by him on his own – is a little girls, one about to go to the college.”
partner and co-parent in the form of Puerto Rican financier Carlos Gonzalez Abella. They met shortly after Ricky’s surrogate became pregnant and Ricky had to tell him: you take me, you get all three. ✽✽✽✽✽
BY HIS own account, Ricky was what used to be known as “a late bloomer”. Back when he was in Menudo, he and his teenage band mates would rib each other about who was still a virgin. “When the day arrived [for Ricky to first have sex], she was nice, but my decision was a lot more to do with pressure I felt from my friends … that a man is never supposed to say no if he’s given the opportunity to have sex,”
Ricky wrote in his book. “She was a pretty girl and I liked her … but I remember that I was left with a ‘That’s it?’ kind of feeling … obviously, it wasn’t the girl’s fault [but] I found the scenario uncomfortable and even a bit funny.” As a young man, Ricky had relationships with many beautiful women and, for those of us not so genetically blessed, it’s comforting to hear that it was often he who got his heart broken. One woman he described in his book as being “one of the most beautiful I’d ever met … I would have sculpted a throne for her”. They broke up and he was for some years “the typical alpha male, a total ladies’
man – it didn’t matter if she was single, married, widowed or divorced”. One woman was “like poison … the physical passion I felt for her drove me insane ... the fact that she was married was a cause of constant pain, but I think it was also what attracted me … she was a dangerous, forbidden woman and she broke my heart.” There were passionate love affairs with men, too, including one “for whom I almost gave it all up ... it was like a meeting of souls”. Ricky wanted to run away, saying, “I didn’t care about my career or what would happen if I told the whole world I was gay ... but he didn’t feel the same way”, and it ended. Ricky kept his relationships with ➤ april 2013 AWW.com.au
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didn’t speak up, they might grow up men private, he says, “because for many “having to cover their eyes to the truth, years I was told and taught that my or having to lie for me. And I never emotions were evil, that if you feel the wanted them to have to lie for me. way I was feeling, that makes you a bad “It’s about dignity, self-respect, person. It was not until I realised that’s self-esteem, to be able to look myself not true … there was no reason to be in the mirror, to tell myself, ‘You’ve fearful … it was just information that done nothing wrong’,” he says. I was given and I turned into fear.” He came out first on his personal Still, coming out can be a gradual website and, later, in Me, and he was process. Rumours about Ricky had humbled to find that the fear “was begun to swirl once he made it big in all in my head”. the US, but, he writes, the problem was “not that there were rumours about my ✽✽✽✽✽ sexuality … the real problem was that WHEN KEITH Urban quit The Voice I didn’t know how I felt about the subject. to take up a role on American Idol, In my mind, it was still not a fact.” many were disappointed and wondered When Barbara Walters who would replace him. asked Ricky about his He had a special role to “it’s about sexuality in a TV interview play on the show: if Joel dignity, in 2000, “my vision went was the monkey, self-respect.” Madden blurry and my heart began bouncing up and down on to race”. This gentle soul said something his big spinning chair, Keith was the kind about it being a “private matter”, but he and humble one, quietly praising even was actually terrified. those who did not make it through. “I felt if I spoke about my sexuality, The producers needed somebody like people would reject me,” he says, but that and they seem to have found it in once the children were born, he felt he Ricky Martin. The Weekly sat in on the couldn’t cover up any more. He was secret recording of the blind auditions. living with Carlos and he realised, if he There was some extraordinary talent,
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some heartwrenching stories – and Ricky, in the fourth of the four spinning chairs, was indeed the gentle one. He is returning to Australia for about eight weeks for the live shows after Easter (a special souvenir compilation of his greatest hits will be released) and “yes, my kids are obviously coming [back]. My partner will be here and my support system is very solid, and I know my kids will be fine”. The first time Ricky was in Australia, he missed his children so much he brought them back with him in March. They will have to take some more time out of their New York school, but given that Ricky’s children can read and write, can speak English, Spanish and French, and can locate Australia on Google Maps on their iPad – and they are only four – that’s probably not a problem. “Every father thinks their children are special,” Ricky says, “but it gives me goose bumps how special they are!” He returns to Australia in a good place, professionally and personally. “It was here that it happened, that I woke up to what I needed to do,” he says. “It was life-changing and I am happy to be back.” n
photography pablo alfaro.
Ricky and his partner and co-parent, Carlos Gonzalez Abella. They met shortly after Ricky’s surrogate became pregnant.