There is no person, a lover of cinema, a simple music lover, even a television viewer or a frequenter of great sport who has not known and loved Vangelis , perhaps even without his name being familiar to him.
The generation of the '60s danced and fell in love to the tune of " Rain and Tears " with the broken vocals of Demis Roussos or " It's Five o'clock "; those who grew up in the 80s have throbbed following the race to victory of " Moments of glory ", marked by the epic crescendo of music that has traveled the world even ending up in a commercial spot. Those who are moved by seeing the desperate loneliness of the " Blade Runner " replicant still have the heartbreaking melody that connotes it in their heads. And whoever has participated or seen on TV the World Cup in Korea / Japan will never forget the official theme of that unfortunate (for Totti's Italy) expedition.
Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassío , who died yesterday in hospital in Paris at the age of 79 after being hit by Covid , is the author of all this.
Born in Thessaly (in Agria) on 29 March 1943, the musician and composer in one of his very rare interviews attributed to his father his passion for music which led him to invent his first home concert at just 4 years old, using the radio , the pots, the glasses. Self-taught convinced, he said that his roots remained linked to traditional Greek music, but that jazz had its influence until, at the age of eighteen, he obtained his first Hammond organ as a gift.
Infected by the explosion of pop and rock, he gave birth to his first band, Formynx, in 1963, but success would literally rain on his head five years later, at the head of the progressive band Aphrodite's Child . They met outside Greece because Vangelis had self-exiled himself in '67 upset by the seizure of power by the Colonels and the subsequent dictatorship. With Demis Roussos and the other members of the band he stayed just three years, marked by an unparalleled success.
