|
Abraham Quintanilla tried to
remember his daughter as she'd looked the last time he saw her, just the day
before. Selena Quintanilla-Perez was a full-grown woman of 23, a budding
superstar who dreamed of raising a big family with her guitarist/husband
once her music career settled down. She had a smile that could torch up the
night, and a figure that turned heads wherever she went. But the only image
that would come into focus in Abraham's mind was that of an 8-year-old girl,
standing nervously behind the microphone at the family restaurant in Lake
Jackson. Even back then, Abraham had been convinced that Selena was destined
to become a star. A former musician himself, he recognized the rare power
and precise pitch in her voice.
He had staked everything on her talent. From the band's early years
travelling the South Texas back roads in an old, beat-up van with a foldout
bed in the back, to playing for 60,000 rodeo fans in the Astrodome, Selena
had become the biggest star in Tejano music. She was a household name in
Mexico and much of Latin America and was on the verge of an unprecedented
breakthrough to the English-speaking pop audience. Now, through a tragic
turn of events, the dream Abraham had shared with his wife, Marcela, and
their three children had been shattered. That morning, Selena had failed to
show up at Q Productions studio. It wasn't unusual for her to be late.
Perpetual tardiness was part of her charm.
But on this particular Friday morning, it was surprising that Selena hadn't
at least called. She had a 10 a.m. appointment with her older brother, A.B.,
and sister, Suzette, to cut the vocal tracks for a demo tape of a new song
A.B. had written. Selena also was midway through the recording of her first
crossover album, with lyrics in English. The album was coming together
slowly because of her hectic schedule. Eleven a.m. came and went, but there
was still no word from Selena. A.B. phoned Christopher Perez, her husband,
who said she'd left the house that morning at 9, while he was still in bed.
Chris didn't know where she'd gone, but he guessed that it had something to
do with Yolanda Saldivar, the former president of Selena's fan club. Abraham
and A.B. went to lunch. They returned to the office just as the phone rang.
Abraham's sister-in-law screamed that Selena had been in an accident. Her
father raced to the hospital emergency room at Memorial Medical Center.
At the hospital, Abraham learned there had been no accident. Selena had been
shot in the back and was listed as dead on arrival, a doctor said, but
they'd managed to get her heart started again briefly and had given her a
blood transfusion. Abraham, who'd followed his father into the Jehovah's
Witnesses faith some years earlier, immediately reacted to the transfusion.
"No! She doesn't want that," he yelled. Only then did the horrible finality
of the doctor's words begin to sink in. Selena was dead. To children growing
up in barrios such as La Molina, the working-class Corpus Christi
neighborhood where the Quintanillas lived, Selena was la reina del pueblo, a
successful entertainer who'd never lost touch with her roots. But to
Abraham, she was still his little girl. The one who had bounced up and down
on his bed where he lay playing his old guitar and singing the Mexican
standards and pop songs he loved.
The beautiful little girl was gone.
The Quintanilla family was not alone in its grief. As word of Selena's
violent death on March 31 spread north and south out of Corpus Christi, fans
reacted first with disbelief, then with a massive, public display of
adoration. Signs appeared in cars declaring "We love you, Selena!" or "Con
tanto amor!" Churches hastily organized prayer vigils. Tejano radio stations
played Selena's music around the clock. Record stores sold out of her
albums. On the weekend following her death, thousands of mourners from
Texas, Mexico and points farther made the pilgrimage to Corpus Christi to
pay their last respects. That Sunday, they filed into the Corpus Christi
Convention Center, where Selena's body lay in a black coffin surrounded by
white roses. After a rumor circulated that the casket was empty, the family
agreed to open it to confirm that the horrible news was true. The Days Inn
motel where Selena was shot became a shrine to her memory, with messages
from fans scrawled on the walls of the room where the singer had met with
her accused killer, Saldivar, just before her death. Saldivar was suspected
of embezzling money from Selena's fan club. Selena had gone to the hotel
alone, at Saldivar's request, hoping to obtain documentation that the
accusations were untrue. Flowers and cards covered the fence surrounding the
house where Selena and Chris lived. Votive candles lined the driveway.
Outside the clothing boutiques Selena operated in Corpus and San Antonio,
hawkers sold souvenir T-shirts and ball caps bearing her image. Following
Selena's burial in a private ceremony on April 3, her Seaside Memorial Park
gravesite also became a shrine. Every evening, the cemetery had to cart away
truckloads of cards and flowers. Abraham expressed surprise and gratitude at
the outpouring that followed his daughter's death. He speculated that
Selena's appeal went deeper than the music. "I knew that a lot of people
cared for Selena," he said. "I could see it in their faces everywhere we
played. But I'm really surprised by the magnitude of this thing. I think
people are tired of the wickedness of this system. She was a good person, a
clean person with morals. They could see that. And there's not too much of
that left in this world." The week after Selena was killed, People magazine
put her on the cover in Texas and other Southwestern states. When the issue
instantly sold out at newsstands, the magazine decided to do a commemorative
issue in Selena's honor -- only the third such tribute in the publication's
history.
Yet, even as Selena's Spanish albums topped
the Latin charts and entered the mainstream pop charts in the weeks after
her death, many were still wondering how the Texas singer could have gained
such a large and devoted following. While shock jock Howard Stern joked
about the tragedy, others simply asked, "Who's Selena?" Selena was Tejano
music's brightest hope for the future. Had she lived, she might well have
been the first international superstar to come out of the Tejano market. A
vivacious entertainer who could sing any style of music, her potential was
unlimited. Even after her death, Selena could become the first Tejano artist
to break through to the mainstream pop market. In July, EMI Records will
release an album including five English tracks, plus remixed and re-recorded
versions of her biggest Spanish hits. "We're going to do our best to give
her that English hit she wanted so badly," says EMI vice president Nancy
Brennan. The third child of Abraham and Marcela Quintanilla, Selena was born
on April 16, 1971, at the Community Hospital of Brazosport. The family lived
in nearby Lake Jackson, where Abraham was employed by Dow Chemical Co. as a
shipping clerk.
To Abraham, it seemed as if Selena was born happy. "She was just full of
life," he says. "She was always joking and clowning around." To their
neighbors in Lake Jackson, 55 miles south of Houston, the Quintanillas
looked like a loving, patriarchal family. "They were a very close-knit
family," says Carmen Read, who lived with her husband, Ed, and their two
sons around the corner from the Quintanillas' house on Caladium Street. "I
probably fussed at every other kid in the neighborhood, but I don't think I
ever fussed at those kids. They were so well-behaved." A.B. (short for
Abraham Quintanilla III) was eight years older than Selena; Suzette was four
years older. But if either ever resented their little sister tagging along,
it didn't show. "They were so close," says A.B.'s childhood friend David
Read. "I never recalled them arguing or not getting along when they were out
playing. They never had a complaint about anything." Carmen took special
notice of the Quintanillas because they were one of the few Hispanic
families in Lake Jackson at the time. They reminded her of her own
childhood: She grew up in one of the only Mexican-American families in
Silsbee, in East Texas.
I always felt that (Abraham) was maybe a little too hard on the kids," she
says. "He was a typical hard-working, strict Mexican father. He definitely
was the head of the household. I was raised in that same kind of household.
Maybe that's why I always paid more attention to them. But I think those
that lived here knew that they weren't a common, everyday family." Abraham
acknowledges that he was a strict father. He didn't allow his children to
sleep over at other kids' houses, and he didn't believe in casual dating. If
he was too hard on his kids, he says, it's because he remembered his own
wild childhood in Corpus Christi. "All these years, I knew where my kids
were 24 hours a day," he says. "Maybe I overdid it, I don't know. I just
didn't want them to go through what I went through. I was a street kid. My
parents couldn't control me when I was young." Early on, Selena began to
exhibit an irrepressible personality all her own. Nina McGlashan, Selena's
first-grade teacher at O.M. Roberts Elementary School, remembers her as a
delightful child.
"She had a very bubbly, positive-type of personality," says the former Nina
Smith. "She was eager to please and eager to learn. The type of little kid
that you would like to have in a class. I remember, too, that she had a
little shyness about her." All three Quintanilla children showed an early
interest in music, their father says. They came by it naturally. In the
1950s and '60s, prior to moving to Lake Jackson, Abraham led a band in
Corpus Christi called Los Dinos. The name was taken from the Italian slang
word for los muchachos, the boys. Los Dinos played a mix of early rock 'n'
roll and traditional Mexican music, with three-part harmony vocals and a
horn section. But in those days, opportunities were limited in what was
known as Tex-Mex or Chicano music. Abraham eventually gave up on the music
business and took a job at Dow to support his growing family. Selena was 6
when Abraham noticed that she had a remarkable voice. He was teaching A.B. a
few chords on the guitar when Selena burst into song. "I always wanted to go
back into the music business, but I felt like I was already getting too old,
and my kids were growing up," Abraham says. "When I found out Selena could
sing, that's when the wheels started turning in my mind. I saw the chance to
get back in the music world through my kids."
While many parents have entertained similar fantasies, Abraham was convinced
that he had a special talent to work with. "I felt that Selena
had it since she was a little girl," he says. "She had that extra thing that
makes an artist. Of course, nobody believed me at that time." With his
wife's support, Abraham converted his garage into a music studio. A friend
gave him an old Sears Silvertone bass, and he bought a set of drums. A.B.
picked up the bass, and Suzette was assigned to the drums. "They knew zero
about music," Abraham says. "I just placed the instruments in their hands
and said, 'All right, let's go.' "At first, they were too young," he says.
"They had a short attention span. They would want to go play with the other
kids. Then they started getting into the music. They started creating. You
know how it is." The little family band rehearsed almost every day after
school. "We did all the normal kid things together," says David Read. "But
they always knew when it was time to go practice. I used to go in there and
watch sometimes. Selena always seemed to be having a great time."
It wasn't long before Abraham left Dow to open a Mexican food restaurant,
Papagayo, in Lake Jackson. He made sure it had a stage and a dance floor.
Selena and the band performed on weekends and developed a local following.
"It was so unusual," says Ed Read. "You wouldn't expect to see a kid get up
and sing in a restaurant like that. Her voice was a little higher, but she
was on key and she always had a lot of enthusiasm." Abraham keeps a tape of
9-year-old Selena singing a Spanish version of Rick James' funk classic
"Super Freak." While her voice is a bit squeaky, the phrasing is on the
money. "I can see her in my mind," Abraham says. "She was an awesome dancer
as a little girl. She had a lot of what black people would call soul. And
she could sing any kind of music." Nineteen-year-old Rena Dearman answered
an ad Abraham put in the Brazosport Facts for a lead guitarist and a
keyboardist. Her boyfriend (later husband) Rodney Pyeatt played guitar; she
played keyboards.
Dearman says she was impressed the first time she heard Selena sing. "I
didn't expect to hear what I heard," she says. "Of course, her intonation
was going to be higher. But it's what she did with the notes. This girl had
some vibrato on her. She could make it work. Her release from the notes, it
wasn't like your everyday little girl singing. She sounded more like a young
woman." Abraham pushed the band hard to improve, Dearman says. Every day
they weren't playing at the restaurant, they were in the garage practising.
The repertoire was mostly Top 40 hits sung in English and the occasional pop
oldie with Spanish lyrics that Abraham had translated. Then he started
writing his own songs in Spanish for the band. Dearman came to feel like a
member of the family, and she looked up to Abraham. He had a temper, but he
was fair. "I respected what he was trying to accomplish. When he would be
the way he is, I didn't take it the wrong way. He was taking care of
business. The man had a goal. He knew what he was doing. And he was a good
daddy. He loved those kids."
As it turned out, Abraham was better at managing a band than he was at
running a restaurant. "I was inexperienced in the restaurant business," he
says. "One day I decided that's what I wanted to do. The following week I'm
already leasing the place. I had a big overhead. All the money I had saved
went into the initial cost of opening." And when the oil business dried up
in the early '80s, the restaurant went broke. Abraham had to borrow money
from his brother Hector to move his family back to his hometown of Corpus.
The band became the household's sole means of support. It might have seemed
like a desperate situation. But Abraham says he didn't see it that way. "I
always knew that Selena was gonna go. I never had any doubt." The band
traveled all over the state, from Lake Jackson to Laredo to El Paso, playing
little clubs, wedding dances and quinceaneras. There were seven people in
the old van. Abraham was the manager and sound engineer, and Marcela served
as light technician. Selena enrolled in junior high school in Corpus. But
the band's schedule often forced her to miss Friday and Monday classes.
After a few months, she dropped out and continued her education through
correspondence courses. She earned a GED at 17.
Not everyone approved of the family's unusual lifestyle. Abraham says his
father and brother told him, "You're going to ruin your kids. They'll be
surrounded by drinking and drugs. It's going to have an effect on them." But
Selena did not seem at all upset about missing out on a normal adolescence,
Dearman says. "The only thing I knew is that she loved what she was doing.
She was having fun. I don't think she'd have been as happy doing something
else if she wasn't singing. When she was onstage, she was into doing her
thing. If the people responded, so much the better."
While Selena was the star of the show, she remained unaffected by the
attention she received onstage. "She never got haughty with us. She never
changed," Dearman says. "She was as fun-loving back then as she would be
later." Dearman's most vivid memories from the early years of the band are
the long conversations she shared with the family members in the back of the
van. While Pyeatt and Abraham sometimes engaged in intense religious
discussions -- Pyeatt was a Baptist, Abraham a Jehovah's Witness -- the kids
talked about more personal things.
"I know how they got to be the way they are," Dearman says. "It's because of
their parents. Selena grew up to be a good girl. They were taught work
ethics, compassion and how not to snub people. They believed that if you
treat people good, it'll come back to you in the end." Dearman left Selena's
band when Pyeatt decided to form his own country band. She really didn't
want to quit, but she felt she had to follow her husband. The pair divorced
several years later. "I was willing to back up Selena for as long as it
took," she says. "I had so much confidence in Abraham. He was going to make
the world see what he saw in Selena. I know A.B. felt the same way. They
knew they had something special there." But for all his pride and
conviction, Abraham admits he had an eye-opening experience when he booked
the band to open for Mazz at the fairgrounds in Angleton. It was 1983. Mazz
was the hottest thing in the Tejano market at the time.
"When we got to the hall, their road crew had already set up," Abraham says.
"When I saw all their equipment, I freaked out. When I was playing, this
kind of equipment didn't exist, like crossovers and equalizers. On one side,
they had a stack of about 30 speakers and 30 more speakers on the other
side. "I told my son A.B, `You know what? I think we're at the wrong place.
I think this is a rock 'n' roll dance or something.' "We started walking
out, and the promoter came in. I said, `Is this the place where we're gonna
play tonight?' He said, `Yes.' I said, `Whose equipment is that?' He said, `Mazz.'
"That night, after Selena opened up the show for them, they came on. It
totally scared me. That kick-drum was so powerful it shook my shirt, and I
had never seen smoke and lights like that.
"On the second set, I didn't want my kids to go back on. I was embarrassed.
We had a little rinky-dink sound system. I found out that night that things
had changed from the last time I'd been in the music business."
Selena made her commercial recording debut with Los Dinos when she was 12.
Her first full album, "Mis Primeras Grabaciones," was released in 1984 on
Corpus Christi's Freddie label, one of the oldest and most established
independent Tex-Mex outfits. Rick Longoria, who engineered the session for
label owner and producer Freddie Martinez, recalls that Selena cut the
vocals in just a few takes. "She was very professional," Longoria says.
"She'd be sitting there while the session was going on, doing little girl
things. It was kind of hard to believe that she was the vocalist. "But when
she started to sing, it was no problem. I've done sessions with people twice
her age where we'd be there doing things over and over because they couldn't
get it right." A single from the album, Ya Se Va, generated some airplay,
but the album didn't sell well. Selena y Los Dinos promptly left Freddie for
the Cara label, then moved on to the Manny label. "Right from the start, we
thought she had some good talent," says Longoria, who now handles marketing
and promotion for Freddie. "But she still needed to develop. We thought it
would take about three or four years before she came into her own, and
that's exactly what happened.
While Selena emerged as a recording artist, A.B. developed as a songwriter
and producer. He was motivated by the need to provide Selena with strong,
original material. "We had no songs. We were constantly looking for
material," Abraham says. "A.B. would approach Luis Silva, who was a strong
writer in the market, and he would ignore us. A.B. got upset. I said, 'Son,
you need to go in that room there and just break your head until you write
something good.' "That was the beginning." One of A.B.'s first efforts,
"Dame un Beso," was a moderate hit. A.B., who was already the band's
arranger and producer, soon took over as Selena's chief songwriter. Band
member Ricky Vela also wrote, sometimes in collaboration with A.B. Although
Selena could sing in any style, the band's versatile approach was dictated
as much by necessity as by choice.
"In certain areas of Texas, the Valley, for example, accordion music is very
strong," says Abraham. "When we would go to the Valley, we would do more
accordion-type songs, using the keyboard. "In parts of West Texas, they want
the cumbias, so we would give them more cumbias. And in Houston and Dallas,
the young people want more pop music, so that's what we'd do." Daniel
Bustamente, producer of Houston's Festival Chicano, remembers Selena's first
appearance at Miller Outdoor Theater, when she was just 15. "She was
nervous," he says. "She was playing second to Ram (Herrera) or Little Joe.
The music was still not as full, but she always impressed everybody with
that voice. The way she was able to do different things with her voice was
like an opera singer, in a sense." By 1988, Selena was popular enough in the
Texas market that she was voted female vocalist of the year at the Tejano
Music Awards in San Antonio. She would go on to win the award for seven
consecutive years. Selena's albums for the Manny label were selling in the
range of 20,000-25,000 copies, a respectable figure for a regional Tejano
artist. She also was gradually building a reputation beyond the Texas
borders.
But the Quintanillas were hardly getting rich. Johnny Canales, the Corpus
Christi-based radio and television personality, recalls a trip he took to
Idaho on the Los Dinos bus. "They were living on beanies and wienies,"
Canales says. "She lived through those hard times. That's why, for her, the
good times were nothing. She never changed." On the front of the band's bus,
above the windshield where touring acts customarily put their names, was the
pointed disclaimer "Nobody You Know." It's still there. The turning point in
Selena's career came in 1989. Jose Behar, the former head of Sony's Latin
music division, had just launched the EMI Latin label. He'd come to the
Tejano Music Awards looking for new acts to sign. Selena was his first
discovery. "I was with a friend of mine, Mario Ruiz, who's now the president
of EMI Mexico," Behar says. "We were standing at the back of the auditorium
when we saw her. Mario and I looked at each other like, `Wow. This is
special.'
"But I turned to him and I said, `It's interesting. Women don't sell in the
Tejano market.' And they really hadn't. Yet I said to myself, `This is the
crossover act I'm looking for.' "So I went backstage to meet her and she
said, `Y'all from EMI? Yeah, right.' And she kept talking to some other
people. I said, `Excuse me, I'm really from EMI.' And she said, `Yeah,
right' again. I think she thought I was some jerky fan or something, I don't
know. "I ended up talking to her dad. The real reason I signed Selena, and
her family knows this, was not to sell a lot of records in the Latin Tejano
market. The God's honest truth is I never thought she'd sell a half-million
units in Spanish. It just wasn't on the agenda. "The reason I signed her is
because I thought I had the next Gloria Estefan." Selena's first couple of
albums for EMI sold only marginally better than her Manny releases. Her
breakthrough hit was "Buenos Amigos," a 1991 duet with Alvaro Torres. Thanks
in part to a sophisticated video that featured Selena and Torres crooning in
front of a string orchestra, the ballad went to No. 1 on the Billboard Latin
tracks chart and introduced Selena to audiences on the East and West coasts.
She followed this with a guest appearance on "Dondequiera Que Estés" by the
Barrio Boyzz, Latin music's answer to New Kids on the Block and Boyz II Men.
Selena was seen in the video singing and dancing in hip-hop formation with
the Boyzz against an urban backdrop. Clearly, there was more to this Tejana
than accordions and cowboy hats. These videos opened the door for Selena to
enter the international Latin market with her own hits, "La Carcacha" and
"Como la Flor." While Tejano artists Mazz and La Mafia had toured in Mexico,
Selena was the first to truly conquer the huge audience south of the border.
"For the first time, we exposed Mexicans to what Tejano music was," says
Behar. "And once you go into Mexico, that tidal wave is felt in California."
Canales, whose Corpus Christi TV program is syndicated internationally,
agrees that Mexico was the key. "As soon as she hit Mexico, we knew she was
gone," he says. "For a Tejano artist to cross into that market is hard. She
took it over like it was nothing."
Selena's success in Mexico and other Latin American countries was aided by
A.B.'s ability to craft a tropical, international sound. Where Tejano
music's deepest roots are in the bouncy norteño/conjunto polka rhythms
popular in Northern Mexico and Texas, Selena y Los Dinos invited listeners
to "Baila Esta Cumbia." An Afro-Caribbean cousin to salsa and merengue,
cumbia originated in Colombia. As it migrated north through Central America
and Mexico, the music adapted to each region. In Colombia, it's often played
in a big-band style, like salsa. In Texas, accordion-based conjuntos play
stripped-down cumbias along with the polkas and two-steps. A.B.'s approach
with Selena was more ambitious. On "Techno Cumbia," from the 1994 album "Amor
Prohibido," he added elements of funk, reggae and salsa into a high-tech
dance mix. "I've studied it, and I found a way to do it," A.B. said in an
interview three weeks before Selena's death. "The cumbia can get airplay in
Puerto Rico, New York, Miami, Mexico, anywhere."
It is A.B.'s contention that Tejano music's core market has not grown all
that much in the last 10 years. What has changed is the ability of certain
Tejano artists to appeal to the wider Latin pop audience. "They call us
Tejano, and yes, we are from Texas. But a lot of the music we're playing is
from Mexico and South America," he said. Selena y Los Dinos' music is "a
mixture of tropical, reggae, cumbia, all these things. It's got pop
influences to it, too." A.B., who produced Selena's Spanish albums, was also
co-producing three tracks on her English debut. While he acknowledged the
record label's reasons for bringing in outside producers, he felt he had an
advantage over other songwriters and producers working with his sister.
"I've been with Selena since she was 6 years old," he said. "I've backed her
every night on bass. I've seen the reaction, and felt the vibe. It's a piece
of cake."
"Amor Prohibido" spawned four No. 1 Latin singles, including the title
track, "No Me Queda Más," "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom" and "Fotos y Recuerdos." The
last tune is an inspired Spanish cover of Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders'
'80s rock classic, "Back on the Chain Gang." The album knocked Gloria
Estefan's "Mi Tierra" out of the top spot on the Latin chart and has sold
more than 800,000 copies worldwide. It is destined to pass 1 million this
year. Yet A.B. says he accomplished only half of what he set out to do on "Amor
Prohibido." His vision of a Pan-American, tropical-pop blend incorporating
all his influences remains unfulfilled. Selena's success south of the border
was not without complications. Although she sang in Spanish, she grew up
speaking English. In the early days of the band, Abraham had to teach her
the Spanish lyrics phonetically. She was unable to do interviews with the
Mexican media without an interpreter. "My first language is Spanish, hers is
English," says Manolo Gonzalez, the Cuban-born vice president in charge of
EMI's San Antonio office. "When she talked to me, she talked to me in
English, never in Spanish.
"But you see, Selena was a smart girl. She had the intuition to know what
people wanted to see and hear. In the last four years, she made it a point
to learn (Spanish). When we went to Mexico in the last month of 1994, I
couldn't believe how well she could handle the press." Selena's longtime
fans had watched her mature into a stunning young woman. She often performed
in skin-tight pants and low-cut bustiers that led some to label her "the
Mexican Madonna." But despite the comparisons, Selena wouldn't compromise
her morals to further her career. She could be sexy onstage, but she was
never vulgar. She once turned down a role in a Mexican soap opera because
there was a scene that called for a steamy kiss. "I wouldn't be comfortable
with that; she wouldn't be comfortable with that," Abraham said at the time.
"Selena has an appeal with young kids, 5 to 10 years old, as well as older
folks, you know."
Jose Behar says the record label never told Selena what to sing or how to
look, although he did dictate that she appear on her album covers alone,
rather than with the band. "The only thing she and Madonna had in common was
bustiers," Behar says. "Selena never stooped to those levels. Great artists
don't have to do that." He compares Selena to a cross between Whitney
Houston and Janet Jackson in terms of her image and vocal range. Canales
goes a step further. "I'd say she's like those people, but better," he says.
"Those people never sang Tejano. She could do what they do, but it would be
hard for them to do what she does." Still, it took the better part of four
years before Behar finally was able to convince EMI's pop division that he
had a potential crossover superstar on his roster. It seemed that no sooner
would he have the right executive persuaded than that person would leave the
company and he'd have to start all over again. "All he ever talked about was
Selena," remembers Nancy Brennan, EMI's vice president of artist and
repertoire. "He was like a broken record, `Selena, Selena . . . ' "
Brennan's first exposure to Selena was at the Billboard Latin Music
convention in Las Vegas two years ago. Brennan was there to see Jon Secada,
an EMI artist who was enjoying huge success in the English and Spanish
markets simultaneously. Selena happened to be opening the show. Brennan was
suitably impressed. Selena was signed by EMI's SBK subsidiary in December
1993. But it was another year before she could begin work on her debut album
in English. First there was the touchy matter of selecting the right
material and producers. Then "Amor Prohibido," somewhat unexpectedly, became
a huge hit in the Latin market. Between touring with the band, filming
commercials and movie roles, and overseeing the opening of her new
custom-clothing boutiques, Selena was in constant demand. Hispanic Business
magazine listed her as one of the most successful Latin entertainers in the
world, with annual earnings estimated at $5 million. She made her movie
debut this year, playing a mariachi singer in the Marlon Brando/Johnny Depp
feature "Don Juan DeMarco."
"This is the first time I have ever made a debut album by an artist who was
too busy to record for me," Brennan groused good-naturedly in early March.
"How can you tell someone, `No, I don't want you to play the Astrodome for
60,000 people; I want you to work on your record?' Everyone wants her." But
Brennan had little doubt that when it did come out, the album would make
Selena an international superstar. "I think Selena can do anything she wants
to do," she said. "She can have a successful career in two languages. She's
got the pipes. She's got the heart. She's got the look. "If I had to put my
own money on the line, I would bet on this one. I would say multi-platinum
is to be expected, and the sky's the limit." Back in 1988, A.B. had invited
a 17-year-old San Antonio guitarist named Christopher Perez to join Los
Dinos. Chris played with the band for a couple of years, then quit for a
year to pursue his love for rock 'n' roll. Abraham says it was only after
Chris returned to the band that he noticed the lead guitarist and the singer
seemed to have something brewing between them. Throughout her teen-age
years, Selena's career left her with little or no time for socializing.
There had been one boy, a few years earlier, who pursued an interest in her.
But Abraham hadn't allowed the two to be alone together. Initially, he was
opposed to Selena getting involved with anyone, much less a member of the
band.
"Like I said, I was a very possessive father," Abraham says. "I thought she
was too young, that her career was beginning to blossom, and that she had a
great future ahead of her. I didn't want anything to distract her from
this." But after he got to know Chris better, Abraham came to accept the
relationship wholeheartedly. "I saw how he was, his personality, his whole
being," he says. "I care for him like a son now." Chris and Selena were
married on April 2, 1992. The groom was 22, the bride not quite 21. They
shared a house on a corner lot in La Molina, a working-class neighborhood on
the agricultural outskirts of Corpus Christi. Abraham and Marcela lived next
door, and A.B. lived next to them with his wife and two kids. Among the
three houses, there were nine dogs, five of which belonged to Selena. She
loved animals. While Selena felt at home in La Molina, she and Chris were
planning to move soon to more spacious quarters. The couple had purchased
land farther outside of town on which they intended to build a house and
eventually to start a family. Selena already had picked out the furniture.
About five years ago, shortly before Selena's career went into overdrive,
Abraham began receiving calls from a San Antonio woman named Yolanda
Saldivar. The woman said she wanted to start a Selena fan club. She told
Abraham she would apply for a non-profit charter and donate some of the
money to charitable causes. At first, Abraham ignored her. Eventually, he
gave in to her persistence. "My interest was in publicity for Selena," he
says. Saldivar, who worked as a registered nurse with tuberculosis patients
at the San Antonio State Chest Hospital, became Selena's No. 1 fan. Although
she was in her 30s, she screamed like a teen-ager at Selena's concerts. She
turned her home in San Antonio into a virtual museum of Selena memorabilia,
complete with a wall-size photograph. Saldivar was allowed on the band bus
whenever Selena played San Antonio. But Selena had little other contact with
her until about nine months ago, Abraham says. That's when Saldivar was
hired, at Selena's suggestion, to manage the Selena Etc. boutiques in Corpus
and San Antonio. The boutiques may have been Selena's way of asserting her
independence from the family. She loved to shop for clothes, and she
designed the sexy outfits she wore onstage. Now she wanted to prove that she
could be a successful businesswoman. Although Saldivar had no previous
experience at running a business, Abraham went along with Selena's choice.
"Yolanda had been president of the fan club for four years," he says. "I
took for granted everything had been going smoothly." What the family didn't
know was that Saldivar had been accused by a San Antonio doctor of stealing
more than $9,000 in 1984 when she worked as his bookkeeper. The Aetna
insurance company paid off the doctor and then settled out of court with
Saldivar. Nor did they know that Saldivar had failed to pay off her college
loan, and had left a job as a nurse's aide under questionable circumstances
in the early '80s. Selena misread Saldivar's obsession for friendship. When
Saldivar gave Selena a ring made of the miniature Faberge eggs Selena loved,
Abraham told his daughter he was wary of Saldivar's motives. He wondered
about the nature of her attraction. Selena replied, "Oh, Dad, come on.
Everyone's weird to you," he remembers. Even after boutique employees
complained of Saldivar's incompetent and devious management, Selena was
reluctant to believe that her biggest fan had anything but her best interest
at heart.
"Selena had the same personality as my
wife," Abraham says. "If I see one discrepancy, then I'm on the alert. But
she could see 20 discrepancies and then, when they finally get ready to take
action, they say, `Well, maybe they needed the money more than I did.'"
In March, Abraham had accused Saldivar of embezzling money from the fan club
and boutiques. The family had found four checks, including one for $3,000,
she'd written to herself on the fan club account. "If you've ever seen a
cornered animal, you know how she reacted," he says. Abraham had no way of
knowing that a few days after their confrontation, Saldivar purchased a
38-caliber revolver in San Antonio. "I know Selena had made the decision to
let her go," says Manolo Gonzalez. "But because of her nature, she wanted to
let her down easy. She wanted to let her go in a way that they could still
be friends. "I guess Selena saw in her a dedicated person, someone she could
trust. Selena was very trusting."
In late March, Selena sent Saldivar to Monterrey, Mexico, where she was
planning to open a new boutique. Saldivar was told that when she returned
she should provide bank statements and other documents that could establish
her innocence. Coming across the border, Saldivar called Selena to say that
her car had been stolen and she'd been abducted and raped. She sounded
hysterical on the phone. Selena felt she was stalling. But the singer still
held out hope that her father was mistaken about Saldivar. And she insisted
that Saldivar see a doctor when she got back to Corpus. On Thursday night,
March 30, Saldivar called Selena from the Days Inn on Navigation, not far
from the Q Productions office and studio. But when Chris and Selena arrived
at the motel, Saldivar failed to provide the documents Selena was hoping
for. Nor would she go to the hospital. At about midnight, Saldivar called
again to say she was bleeding internally as a result of the rape. She asked
that Selena return to the motel alone, but Chris persuaded his wife to deal
with it in the morning. Selena left early on Friday to meet Saldivar at the
Days Inn. They went to the hospital, where Saldivar retracted her claim of
rape. There are no witnesses to exactly what happened when they returned to
the hotel. Presumably, Selena told Saldivar she was fired. A maid cleaning a
hotel room upstairs told the police she heard them yelling. Then she heard
the gunshot. She looked out the window and saw two women running by the
pool. One was screaming for help and clutching her chest. The other woman
had a gun in her right hand. The maid says she saw her aim and fire. Selena
made it to the hotel lobby, where the clerk locked the door and called an
ambulance. She was bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound in her back. A
witness asked who shot her. "Yolanda," she said. In Selena's hand was the
friendship ring Saldivar had given her. She never got the chance to give it
back.
"The Bible says that revenge belongs to Jehovah," Abraham says. "It's in
God's hands now." As he speaks, Abraham is surrounded by a dozen tourists
and well wishers who have come to see the Corpus Christi studio where Selena
sang. Like pilgrims on a mission, they make the rounds from the Days Inn to
the boutique to the grave to Selena's house. They sign their names on the
wall and leave flowers at the grave. Many are wearing Selena T-shirts and
caps bought from bootleggers seeking to capitalize on the tragedy. The
parade of fans, which began even before Saldivar surrendered to police after
a nine-hour stand-off outside the Days Inn, has been going on for two weeks.
Abraham, the family patriarch and spokesman, is clearly exhausted and
emotionally drained. He asks the sightseers not to take his picture. But he
cannot bring himself to turn them away. "I know that if they came from that
far off to pay their respects, then they loved Selena, too," he says. "They
are broken-hearted, as I am. One lady told me it was just like her daughter
had died. I was very touched. That's how close people felt to Selena." The
next night, on what would have been Selena's 24th birthday, 3,000 people
gather at Johnny Canales' Johnnyland park for an Easter Mass in memory of
the gran muchacha del barrio Molina. The stage is decorated with huge
bouquets of white roses. On one side of the altar is a choir, on the other a
mariachi band.
"Is it a coincidence that we celebrate Selena's birthday on the same day we
celebrate the victory of Jesus over death?" Monsignor Michael Heras of Our
Lady of Perpetual Health Catholic Church asks in his sermon. "I don't think
so. Death was defied forever. That's what this day is about. Forever! "The
last words of Christ were, `Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do.' That is our quote, for it is the only way to make meaning out of
senselessness." The most touching moment of the service comes when a group
of children sets free 24 doves, one for each year of Selena's life, to
celebrate her "return to the angels." Although adults empathize with the
pain suffered by Selena's family, it was the young people who had the most
difficulty accepting her death. They identified with her -- especially young
girls -- and idolized her as a role model.
In Houston, Jefferson Davis High School student Christina Galvan delivered a
speech at a campus tribute to Selena a few weeks after her death. "Now we
know how our parents felt when Ritchie Valens died," she wrote. "Selena is
our Ritchie Valens. She's our John Lennon. She's our Elvis. We'll always
miss Selena. There will never be another queen of Tejano music." Selena
would have been amazed by the overwhelming outpouring of emotion that
followed her death. Part of the reaction was a result of the dramatic and
tragic manner in which she was killed. But Selena also touched something
positive in people, something that's increasingly hard to find in the pop
music world. She was vivacious and charming, yes, but she also believed in
treating everyone equally. She often spent hours meeting fans and signing
autographs before and after her shows. Abraham tells a story of four women,
each in their 70s, who drove down from Dallas after the shooting. "They told
me they had never seen Selena perform or known her personally, but they had
seen her on television and had fallen in love with her. They said they could
see she was a humble person."
Carmen Read, the Quintanillas' former neighbor in Lake Jackson, remembers
the time Selena and Suzette stopped by to chat about two years ago. "She
never commented on herself; her focus was on us. It made me feel like we
were the celebrities." Until her family attended Selena's rodeo concert at
the Astrodome in February, Read says, they really had no idea how successful
she'd become. "We just looked at the 60,000 people. I thought, `My goodness,
this is our little Selena?' We all sat there with a lump in our throats."
Jose Behar is convinced that Selena died without fully appreciating how big
she was. "She would sit in my office and I'd say, `Selena, you're a star.
You should sing or be a presenter on the Grammy's.' She'd say, `Jose, what
are you talking about? I'm not a star.' She wasn't just fishing for
compliments. That's how she was. Most artists would be going, `How much do I
get paid and where do I sign?' "She was a humble, good-hearted person. It
wasn't a facade. It wasn't an act. She was humble 24 hours a day. She knew
where she came from. She never forgot that. Fame never came between her and
her fans."
Behar said he's come to realize that Selena's religious background played a
part in her attitude. Jehovah's Witnesses don't make a big deal out of
holidays or birthdays, and they don't believe in any form of idolatry.
Selena loved to sing and entertain; the star part didn't mean much to her.
Manolo Gonzalez thinks it was Selena's sense of common decency that led to
her death. "She went to fire (Saldivar) personally," he says. "Nobody does
that in this business. I mean, this is an artist generating several million
dollars a year, and she would go to the mall by herself. Her dad kept
telling her to be careful. She said, `Dad, people aren't that bad.' "
Saldivar has been charged with murder. Her trial is set to begin Oct. 9.
Abraham says that he wishes he'd fired Saldivar sooner. But he adds that no
one ever imagined she'd be capable of violence. He blames himself for
putting Selena in a position where she could become a victim by pushing her
into a musical career in the first place. "I think, `What if I hadn't done
that? What if we hadn't left the spiritual things aside?' She would have
been a dedicated servant of God." The tragedy has brought the family closer
together and led them to rededicate themselves to their religious beliefs,
Abraham says.
"We take life for granted, you know. In our daily hustle to make a living,
we forget our spiritual needs. I have no doubt that we'll see Selena again,
when she comes with the resurrection." Meanwhile, he's still got a career to
manage. It is a sad irony that Selena's death has focused more national
media attention on Tejano music than it's ever received. "From this
horrible, tragic death, there will be some who come to know and hear of this
music called Tejano," says Rudy Trevino, the producer of the Tejano Music
Awards. "Selena, of course, was the single most important Tejano artist,
even before her death. She opened more doors than anyone." Behar expects the
explosion of awareness that followed Selena's death to have long-term
implications in the music business. Stores that have never carried Latin
music before are now stocking Selena's albums. Other Tejano artists may
follow. "Selena will be a superstar," Behar says. "The last chapter of this
story has not been written yet." While Selena was proud of her Hispanic
culture and heritage, she was elated at the possibility of appealing to a
wider audience by singing in English. She had completed five tracks for her
new album at the time of her death.
The album signaled a new sound for Selena. She was being packaged as a pop
diva, comparable to Janet Jackson or Mariah Carey, but with a Latin touch.
"I Could Fall in Love" is projected as the first single from the new album,
due in July. The posthumous release also will include A.B.'s remixes of "Bidi
Bidi Bom Bom," "Como La Flor," "Techno Cumbia" and "Amor Prohibido," as well
as two previously unreleased tracks featuring Selena singing with a Mexican
mariachi band. EMI is negotiating for the rights to a duet Selena recorded
with David Byrne that was left off the soundtrack to "Don Juan DeMarco."
"That was her biggest dream, of crossing over," Abraham says. "Because she
was born here. She was an American." But for him, Selena the superstar will
never be more real than the image of the nervous little girl making her
debut at his restaurant in Lake Jackson. He treasures his memories. "Every
time I would see her, the first thing she would do is come hug and kiss me,"
he says, his eyes misting over. "I go home and I take the videos and tapes.
Sometimes she makes me laugh. The others, my kids and wife and Chris, it's
too painful for them. They see the videos and start crying. To me, it's
soothing. "It's like she's on vacation. She's still alive; she's just not
here." |
|