Juan Gabriel

While Juan Gabriel was never married, he was in a longtime relationship with Laura Salas, whom he described as "the best friend I ever had". She was the mother of four of his six children: Iván, Joan, Hans and Jean.

He died from a heart attack on August 28, 2016 in Santa Monica, California, following which his body was cremated and his ashes were laid to rest at his house in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

Juan Gabriel was born as Alberto Aguilera Valadez on January 7, 1950, in Parácuaro, Michoacán. He was the youngest of ten children of farmers Gabriel Aguilera Rodríguez and Victoria Valadez Rojas.

While he was still a child, his father was interned into a psychiatric hospital, following which his mother moved to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and put him in the El Tribunal boarding school. During his eight-year stay there, he became very close to teacher Juan Contreras and escaped from the boarding school to live with him for a year when he was 13.

The following year he returned to live with his mother, and was taken into the local Methodist Church by sisters Leonor and Beatriz Berúmen. He began singing in the choir and helping them in cleaning the church.

In 1965, Alberto Aguilera Valadez took the stage name Adán Luna for a performance on the Notivisa television show 'Noches Rancheras'. The next year, he began performing live as a singer at the Noa-Noa bar.

While he also performed at other local bars occasionally, he primarily worked there for the next three years, during which he wrote the song 'El Noa Noa'. He once traveled to Mexico City to look for recording opportunities, but was rejected.

He moved back to Juárez to perform at bars, but returned the following year and earned work as a backing vocalist at RCA Víctor. However, he resigned in 1970 due to insufficient payment, and once again returned to Juárez.

Encouraged by people close to him, he took a third attempt the next year, but had to sleep in bus and train stations due to lack of money. He was even imprisoned for a year and a half after being wrongly accused of robbery.

He continued to write songs, which caught the attention of prison warden Andrés Puentes Vargas, who introduced him to Mexican singer and actress La Prieta Linda. He was eventually released due to lack of evidence.

In 1971, Alberto Aguilera Valadez signed a recording contract with RCA Víctor with the help of La Prieta Linda. He took up the stage name Juan Gabriel in honor of his school teacher Juan Contreras and his late father, Gabriel Aguilera.

The same year, he released his first studio album, ‘El Alma Joven...’, which contained his debut single and his first hit, ‘No Tengo Dinero’. The album was successful and was certified as gold by the Asociación Mexicana de Productores de Fonogramas y Videogramas (AMPROFON).

In 1972, he performed the songs ‘Será Mañana’ and ‘Uno, Dos y Tres (Y Me Dás un Beso)’ at the OTI Festival. While the songs were not qualified to represent Mexico, they received critical acclaim and was later included in his second album ‘El Alma Joven II’ (1972).

He released his third album, ‘El Alma Joven III’, in 1973, and the following year collaborated with the group Vargas de Tecalitlán for the release of his first mariachi album. The album was titled ‘Juan Gabriel con el Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán’ and featured songs like ‘Se Me Olvidó Otra Vez’ and ‘Lágrimas y Lluvia’.

(He made his acting debut in the 1975 Mexican film ‘Nobleza ranchera’ which also starred Sara García and Verónica Castro. After a few more roles in the following years, he took a break from acting, and in 2016 executive-produced and acted in the Mexican biographical series ‘Hasta que te conocí’ based on his life.