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A tribute to Demis Roussos who recently die because of Cancer. A little about this great artist,who really can not be forgotten. Artemios “Demis“ Ventouris-Roussos 15 June 1946 – 25 January 2015) was a Greek singer and performer who had international hit records as a solo performer in the 1970s after having been a member of Aphrodite's Child, a progressive rock group that also included Vangelis. Roussos sold over 60 million albums worldwide and became “an unlikely kaftan-wearing sex symbol Roussos was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, in a Greek amily where his father George (Yorgos Roussos) was a classical guitarist and an engineer and his mother Olga was a singer; her family originally came from Greece. As a child, he studied music and joined the Greek Byzantine Church choir in Alexandria. His formative years in the ancient port city's cosmopolitan atmosphere were influenced by jazz, but also traditional Arab and Greek Orthodox music. His parents lost their possessions during the Suez Crisis and consequently decided to move to Greece. After settling in Greece, Roussos participated in a series of musical groups beginning with The Idols when he was 17, where he met Evangelos Papathanassiou (later known as Vangelis) and Loukas Sideras, his future bandmates in Aphrodite's Child. After this he joined the Athens band, We Five, another cover band which had limited success in Greece. Roussos came to a wider audience in 1967 when he joined progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child, with Vangelis and Loukas Sideras, initially as a singer but later also playing bass guitar, achieving commercial success in France and other parts of Europe from 1968 to 1972. They set off for London to break into the international music scene but were turned back at Dover due to visa problems. They retreated to Paris where they decided to stay, signing a record deal there with Philips Records. Their first recording sessions were delayed by the general strike of May 1968 but later the same year the song “Rain and Tears“ was issued across Europe. the song appeared on the album End of the World in October. Composed by Vangelis and the French lyricist Boris Bergman, the song featured Roussos’s unusual high tenor, The song was only a minor hit in Britain but was successful in many other countries.[11] Roussos's operatic vocal style helped propel the band to international success, notably on their final album 666, based on religious texts from the Apocalypse of St John, which became a progressive rock cult classic After Aphrodite's Child disbanded, Roussos continued to record sporadically with his former bandmate Vangelis. In 1970 the two released the film score album Sex Power (the album has also been credited to Aphrodite's Child) and also recorded the 1977 album Magic together. Their most successful collaboration was “Race to the End“ (also sung in Spanish as “Tu Libertad“), a vocal adaptation of the musical theme from the Oscar winning film Chariots of Fire, while Roussos also guested on the soundtrack to Blade Runner (1982), with a song entitled “Tales of the Future“. Roussos also began a solo career with the song “We Shall Dance“ in 1971. Initially unsuccessful, he toured around Europe and became a leading artist. His solo career peaked in the mid 1970s with several hit albums,His single “Forever and Ever“ topped the charts in several countries in 1973. It was No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart in 1976.[6] Other hits by Roussos included; “My Friend the Wind“, “My Reason“, “Velvet Mornings“, “Goodbye My Love, Goodbye“, “Someday Somewhere“ and “Lovely Lady of Arcadia“. His first UK single to chart was in 1975: “Happy to Be on an Island in the Sun“ written by an Englishman David Lewis with the record reaching No. 5 on the charts, His popularity in the rest of Europe, but not the UK, came to fascinate BBC TV producer John King who made a documentary entitled “The Roussos Phenomenon“ in 1976. Philips Records released a four-song record of the same name, which was the first extended play to top the UK singles chart, He was equally successful across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Japan. In 1973, Roussos made one of his earliest television appearances on The Basil Brush Show and also appeared on Nana Mouskouri's TV show in the UK, In 1978 he had his only disco hit titled “L-O-V-E (Got A Hold Of Me)“ in 1978. In 1980, he had a hit with a cover of Air Supply's “Lost in Love“,sung as a duet with Florence Warner. Roussos died in the morning of 25 January 2015, while hospitalized at Ygeia Hospital in Athens, Greece. His death was confirmed a day later by a friend, the journalist Nikos Aliagas, who tweeted the news on 26 January 2015 in both Greek and French.
