The
short story of one of APHRODITE’S CHILD starts in 1968, when the
Greek/Egyptian bassist and vocalist named Artemios Ventouris Roussos
(Demis Roussos) and the powerful drummer Lucas Sideras were supposed to
meet the multi instrumentalist Evengelio Odyssey Papathanassiou
(VANGELIS) who had left his first group FORMINXS, but the first two
were not admitted to England because they had no working permits but
custom officers discovered photos and tapes in their luggage so they
assumed the musicians intended to stay.A few months later the three musicians join in Paris with Anargyros Koulouris (Silver Koulouris) a very competent guitar player and they decide to form a new band which was supposed to mix traditional Greek music with Western Pop and Psychedelia, but they ended doing much more than was expected.
Due to their financial situation they had to sign a terrible contract with a record company. Soon after the birth of the band, Silver Kouloris has to leave the group because he was called for his Military Service and only joins again for the recording of their last album 666, during these years Demis Roussos has to play guitar and bass.
Their first two releases "End of the World" (which includes two hit singles, "Rain and Tears" and "I Want To Live", the last one reached N° 1 in most Europe) and "It's Five O'Clock" showed a commercial oriented band with a very peculiar sound, but it’s not until 1970, when they start to record the brilliant and adventurous "666" that they get a place in progressive Rock history even when the relation inside the band was at the lowest point, mostly because VANGELIS wanted to do more serious music than Lucas Sideras and Roussos.
The paradox is that this masterpiece which combines Progressive Rock, British Psychedelia, Greek typical music with a touch of pop was only released in 1972 (after the band had already split) due to several reasons like the controversial concept ("The Book of Revelations"), the confession made by the band that "666" was conceived under the influence of Sahlep (some people believed this word was referred to some kind of pagan divinity when in fact it’s a common alcoholic beverage from Turkey) and the track "Infinity" sung by the great actress Irene Papas which is really a five minutes orgasm.
After APHRODITE’S CHILD disbanded, the members took different paths, like Roussos who became a well known pop singer and VANGELIS who is still a respected Progressive/New Age artist, but none of their later works will have the importance of "666", an Icon of Progressive Rock and one of the first conceptual albums in history.
Iván Melgar Morey - PERU