Looking back on his early work, Roussos declared Fire And Ice to be the album he felt closest to. This underrated collection provided a link between the groundbreaking approach of Aphrodite’s Child and the mainstream pop style which turned Roussos into a world-famous solo star.
The track was lifted from Roussos’s debut album, Fire And Ice (also known as On The Greek Side Of My Mind), released in 1971. While Vangelis went on to pursue a career as a composer of film soundtracks, including his Academy Award-winning score for Chariots Of Fire (1981), Roussos struck out in a very different direction with the release in 1971 of his first single, ‘We Shall Dance’, a summer hit in countries across mainland Europe. It was released in 1972, way ahead of its time musically, but two years after the band itself had actually split up.
The band’s third album 666, “a musical adaptation of the Book Of Revelation” was a double-disc, prog-rock epic incorporating everything from free-form jazz and musique concrète to Middle Eastern and Raga influences. The song became a million-selling hit across Europe and reached No.29 in the UK, providing a springboard for the band’s first album End Of The World (1968) and the follow-up, recorded in London, It’s Five O’Clock (1969). Having relocated to Paris, France, Aphrodite’s Child released their first single in 1968, a rocked-up arrangement of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon In D Major’ entitled ‘Rain And Tears’. He began his career in popular music after his family moved to Athens, Greece, wherein 1967 he formed the progressive rock group Aphrodite’s Child in which he sang and played bass together with keyboard player Vangelis Papathanassiou and drummer Loukas Sideras. Always known as Demis, he studied music theory from a young age, learned to play guitar and trumpet, and became a featured singer in the choir of the local Greek Byzantine Church. Born on 15 June 1946 in Alexandria, Egypt, Artemios Ventouris-Roussos was brought up a committed Christian in the heart of a Muslim community by his Greek-Egyptian parents.
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