There was a Dutch lady, a Belgian lady and an English lady, all of a certain age. Their car moved swiftly along the narrow coastal road handling the bends with confidence. The scent of thyme arrived on the warm air through the open windows. Far below the iridescent sea shimmered turquoise caressing the shore, mutating into a deeper blue which saturated the pelagic expanse.
The heat was soporific, but their driver was alert and disinclined to silence: what music would they like? Demis Roussos suggested one of them, half joking. “Siri,” the driver doted on his voice activated stereo, “play Demis Roussos,” and the unmistakeable soaring high tenor gave them My Friend the Wind.
In a trice all three women were singing along, and, as far as the constraints of their seatbelts permitted, dancing in time to the music.
Siri, unfortunately, did not know any other songs by Demis Roussos but the women were happy with this one on repeat. Every day on the afternoon excursions following their Greek lessons, they put in the same request until their teacher forbade more than one rendition per day. Reader, they sulked.
What was the attraction? Well, it was the music of their youth, and particularly of their early summer holidays in the Mediterranean.
Born in Alexandria in 1946, Demis Russos had returned to Greece with his parents ten years later when they lost their property following the Suez crisis. In 1967, along with Loukas Sideras and Silver Koulouris, he joined Vangelis to form Aphrodite’s Child, a progressive rock and psychedelic pop band. When the military junta came to power in Greece, rock and “foreign” music were discouraged, and the band moved to Paris. Touring Europe they achieved cult status particularly with their final album, 666, which came out in 1972.
But by then they had disbanded and both Vangelis and Roussos had embarked on solo careers. In 1971 Roussos enjoyed his first big solo success in the Netherlands and Belgium with We Shall Dance. His popularity spread rapidly throughout Europe: Forever and Ever was a hit in Germany, Norway and Austria in 1973, and in 1975-6 he entered the British charts. He knew why:
The reason for my big success in England was that the Brits. had started wanting to go on holidays to Greece and Spain. My music came out on time. It was romantic Mediterranean music addressed to those people.
Ouch, were we being patronised? Almost certainly. For this music, unlike Roussos’ early output with Aphrodite’s Child, was undeniably kitsch: a sentimental, middle of the road, commercial sound, calculatingly tailored to the western European market.
And we knew it. In 1977 Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party appeared to massive acclaim, first at the Hampstead theatre and then as the BBC’s Play for Today on television. It satirised a society infested with materialism and sexism. But its most scathing strictures were reserved for the meretricious taste endemic in 70s suburbia, whether it was in clothes, furniture, art, food, or music.
Dennis Potter hated the play, finding it cruel and snobbish:
A prolonged jeer, twitching with genuine hatred about the dreadful suburban tastes of the dreadful lower middle classes.
Leigh denied contempt, defending his play as a tragicomedy, a lamentation over the insecurities and vulnerabilitie of his characters, rather than a sneer.
Whatever the truth the play has proved enduringly popular, and everyone remembers Beverley showing off Stephen Pearson’s Wings of Love, while forcing “little cheesy pineapple ones on cocktail sticks” onto her guests. But above all Demis Roussos’ Forever and Ever is forever and ever associated with a tipsy Beverley attempting to seduce a squirming Tony.*
Roussos ceased to be so successful in Britain as his association with package holiday pop began to miscarry. Not that he needed the British market: he continued to tour and release new material in Europe, Latin-America, the Middle East and Japan. Throughout the 1980s and 90s he remained popular in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
And in Greece? Memory tells me that his romantic Mediterranean sound was enjoyed there too in the seventies, even while Greeks were quick to point out that this was not real Greek music, and to draw attention to the authentically Greek sounds of entechno, laiko, and rebetiko, lauding Theodorakis, Zabetas and Bithikotsis.
As for the ladies in the car, they espouse Noel Coward’s dictum:
Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
Moreover, they know that context is all and those songs carry them back to when they were younger, fitter, and could dance all night without even “a little cheesy pineapple one on a cocktail stick” to sustain them.
Demis Roussos died in Athens in 2015 and is buried in the First Cemetery.
*Mention the song to any British person who remembers the seventies and they will recall Abigail’s Party. Mention the play and they will start singing Forever and Ever. Ironically, it was not Demis Roussos but Jose Feliciano whose music featured in the original stage version. The BBC substituted an artist recorded on a British label to avoid breach copyright if they sold the televised version to the US. But since then, no one has ever performed the play without the assistance of Demis Roussos.