Their most successful collaboration was "Race to the End" (also sung in Spanish as "Tu Libertad"), a vocal adaptation of the musical theme from the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire (scored by Vangelis).
In 1970, the two released the film score album Sex Power (the album has also been credited to Aphrodite's Child), and later recorded the 1977 album Magic together.
Īfter Aphrodite's Child disbanded, Roussos continued to record sporadically with his former bandmate Vangelis. Roussos's operatic vocal style helped propel the band to international success, notably on their final album 666, based on passages from the Book of Revelation, which became a progressive rock cult classic. The song was only a minor hit in Britain but was successful in many other countries. Composed by Vangelis and the French lyricist Boris Bergman, the song featured Roussos's unusual high tenor. The song appeared on the album End of the World in October. Their first recording sessions were delayed by the general strike of May 1968 but later the same year the song " Rain and Tears" was issued across Europe. They retreated to Paris where they decided to stay, signing a record deal there with Philips Records. They set off for London to break into the international music scene but were turned back at Dover due to visa problems. Roussos came to a wider audience in 1967 when he joined progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child, with Vangelis and Sideras, initially as a singer but later also playing bass guitar, achieving commercial success in France and other parts of Europe from 1968 to 1972. After this, he joined the Athens-based band We Five, another cover band which had limited success in Greece. Musical career Īfter settling in Greece, Roussos participated in a series of musical groups beginning with the Idols when he was 17, where he met Evángelos Papathanassíou (later known as Vangelis) and Loukas Sideras, his future bandmates in Aphrodite's Child. His parents lost their possessions during the Suez Crisis and consequently decided to move to Greece. His formative years in the ancient port city's cosmopolitan atmosphere were influenced by jazz, but also traditional Arab and Greek Orthodox music.
As a child, he studied music and joined the Greek Church Byzantine choir in Alexandria. His father George (Yorgos) Roussos was a classical guitarist and an engineer and his mother Olga participated with her husband in an amateur theatrical Greek group in Alexandria (there were three such groups in the Greek community) her family originally came from Greece. Roussos was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, in a Greek family.
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