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Unfortunately, they were turned back at Dover due to visa problems. The trio decided that they needed to get closer to the centre of the international music industry and set off for London. Among his fellow performers were the keyboards player Evangelos Papathanassiou (aka Vangelis) and the drummer Loukas Sideras, with whom he formed Aphrodite’s Child in 1967.
YOUTUBE DEMIS ROUSSOS SONGS SERIES
There Demis took up the bass guitar and as a teenager sang and played in a series of pop groups including the Idols and We Five. Increasing xenophobia in Egypt led his family to emigrate to Athens in 1961. Demis’s vocal abilities were recognised at an early age and he became a soloist with the choir of the Greek Orthodox church in Alexandria. His father, a civil engineer with a construction company, was of Greek extraction and his mother was of Egyptian and Italian origin.
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He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to George Roussos and Nelly Mazloum. It was romantic Mediterranean music addressed to all those people.” Roussos said: “The reason for my big success in England was that the Brits started wanting to go on holidays to Greece and Spain.
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It was followed by Happy to Be On an Island in the Sun, a specially written number by David Lewis shrewdly aimed at the British fondness for Mediterranean holidays, and a top 10 hit in 1975, as was the accompanying album. The album reached No 2 in the UK charts in 1974. One of Roussos’s most enduring signature songs – and one beloved by Beverly – was the title track of his 1973 album Forever and Ever. Yet despite his huge success, his portly stature and tousled beard attracted criticism and mirth – in Mike Leigh’s 1977 play Abigail’s Party, for instance, the hapless hostess Beverly, played by Alison Steadman, is revealed to be one of his most ardent fans. The kaftan-clad, middle-of-the-road crooner was reported to have sold more than 60m records in his long career. Few pop artists of the past 50 years achieved such global recognition as Demis Roussos, who has died aged 68.