The Greek star’s image was set in stone after his 1973 recording Forever and Ever was used in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, but his back catalogue is an often ignored journey from apocalyptic prog experimentation to joyous discoIn 1974, holidaying Britons returned from Corfu and, en masse, snapped up Music from the Greek Islands, a Music for Pleasure compilation of a nation’s greatest hits, the musical equivalent of the Parthenon in a snow globe. A year later they were presented with an actual living Greek pop star, Demis Roussos – a handsome man with a sad, distant look in his eyes and a full beard; returning to a financially and musically impoverished Britain, they sent his Happy to Be on an Island in the Sun to No 5 over the 1975 Christmas period.Sensing an opportunity to make a star of the man, his label, Philips, issued an EP emphatically titled The Roussos Phenomenon a few months later, and it sailed to No 1 in 1976 on the back of a TV special of the same name. Its lead track, a 1973 recording called Forever and Ever, was then used in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, and his image was set in stone. Roussos’s billowing outfit became meat and drink to impressionists who had exhausted their Frank Spencer repertoires. Whatever he had done before, or since, would be obliterated in Britain by Forever and Ever, and his image, career, his whole life were set to become a kitsch footnote in 1970s pop culture. Related: Demis Roussos, Greek singer of Forever and Ever, dies aged 69 Continue reading...
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