1. Intervew with
Vangelis
Vangelis: Keyboard Interview
"Vangelis Papathanassiou" by Bob Doerschuk,
Keyboard Magazine August, 1982
Background
Winning the academy award for Best Soundtrack marks a milestone in the career of Evangelos Papathanassiou, known for years to his fans and now to the world by the name of Vangelis (pronounced, incidentally, with a hard ‘g’, as in agree). But more than th
at, it has a special meaning for the world in general. Not only does it take the synthesizer one step further as a principal compositional and orchestral tool in movie scoring, the Oscar also signifies its undisputed arrival in the community of instrumen
ts.
The ascendancy of Vangelis, a self-taught artist whose melodic and colorative gifts soar unencumbered by his inability to read music, demonstrates that synthesizers, like pianos, violins, and every other accepted Western instrument, can cater to any and a
ll compositional schools. Wendy Carlos takes center stage in adapting them to the precise demands of Baroque performance, and Kraftwerk pioneers their application to a blend of neo-Futurism and rock, but Vangelis is the great Romantic, the inheritor of mi
d-nineteenth-century approaches to lush mixtures of sound and the sweeping thematic line. He is, compositionally, the electronic Tchaikovsky.
It is another reflection of the times that Vangelis has done what he has done without the benefit of a formal musical education. The great composers of the past generally could not have written full scores without having had some basic grounding in the co
mplexities of transferring their inner music onto paper effectively enough to bring the sounds out into the open. But in his London studio, surrounded by banks of keyboards, percussion instruments, and recording apparatus, Vangelis is able to let his ima
gination run directly onto tape, improvising the basic melodic track first, then augmenting, altering, and enhancing as his mood dictates. Some traditionalists in the musical world complain that the impact of technology has been to drain music of its life
forces; they fear that the process of filtering their expression through electronics will somehow move it further from the fingertip immediacy to which acoustic musicians are accustomed. This may be true in the work of certain artists, but to the genera
l public Vangelis is surely the first clear and undeniable exception to this idea. This burly bearded Greek expatriate is no white-smocked technician; he is as emotional in his conversation as in his art, at times verging on the mystical in his expostula
tions on the relationship between his music and his equipment. He, perhaps more than any other synthesist, has demonstrated that technology can be brought to the service of romantic expression.
Though he seldom performs live these days, preferring to spin complex synthesized webs in the shelter of his studio, Vangelis has been through the pop star experience. At one point, he was even invited to replace Rick Wakeman in Yes, a post many multikey
boardists would have killed for. Yet Vangelis turned it down, since the pressures of fame, and the compromises it would have demanded on his work, were unacceptable to him.
For similar reasons he is somewhat uncomfortable with his Academy Award. Proud as he is of Chariots of Fire, Vangelis does not see it as his high-water mark. Music to him is not a flood, a contest to pile one wave higher that the next against some meas
ure of public acceptance. In Vangelis’s eyes, it is more of a river, a steady stream of inspiration, twisting here, falling there—perhaps to accommodate dramatic action in a film, for example—but always flowing outward, from the heart. If the Oscar seems
to represent a standard for him to beat in his future work, Vangelis may well at times wonder whether he would have been better off without it.
Vangelis was born in Volos, Greece, and raised in Athens, 200 miles to the south. He began experimenting with music with music at the age of four, composing his first piece (for piano) and exploring other, more unusual sound sources by playing with radio
interference and stuffing the family piano with nails and kitchen pans. Attempts to subject him to piano lessons proved fruitless; an indifferent student, Vangelis preferred developing his own ideas to playing those dreamed up by someone else in some dis
tant time and place.
Rock attracted him at an early age. At 18 he acquired his first Hammond organ, and soon formed a group with some student friends. Called Formynx, it quickly became one of the top bands of the early ’60s in Greece.
However, partly because of limited opportunities for musical progress in his homeland, and partly because of the ominous political atmosphere stirred up by the 1968 Greek military coup, Vangelis packed up and moved to Paris at 25.
There he formed another band, Aphrodite’s Child, which also featured the popular singer Demis Roussos. Their theatrical style of progressive rock fit in perfectly with European tastes at that time, and with their major hit record, “Rain and Tears,” they b
ecame one of the top bands on the continent. Vangelis enjoyed him success at first, but soon found his interest shifting away from the rock arena. He began working with French television and film directors on his first soundtracks, including the music f
or Frederic Roussif’s Apocalypse Des Animaux and Opera Sauvage.
By the time of his move to London in the mid-’70s, Vangelis was already well on his way toward his goal of building a self-contained music studio, or "laboratory," as he calls it. Today it sits in London, tucked away near Marble Arch behind an unobtrusiv
e side-street door. Inside, up some stairs, it unfolds into two enormous rooms. The ceilings tower overhead, dark and indistinct, but a wonderland of keyboards and equipment spreads out brightly below. A simple walk-around tour offers a taste of the Va
ngelis arsenal: a Minimoog, Yamaha CS-40M synthesizer, Roland CSQ-600 digital sequencer, Yamaha CP-80 electric grand, Roland Compuphonic synthesizer, modified vintage Fender Rhodes electric piano, Roland VP-330 electric piano, Roland CR-5000 Compu-rhythm
, Yamaha CS-80 synthesizer, E-mu Emulator, Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 and Prophet-10, Simmons SDSV drum machine, Linn LM-1 drum computer, Roland JP-4, nine-foot Steinway grand piano, Yamaha GS-2, 24-track Quad-8 Pacifica mixing console, and an RSF one-
octave Blackbox synthesizer. And, on an elevated platform overlooking the whole array, three timpani, a trap drum set, and rows of gongs, chimes, and exotic bells.
Of course, the laboratory is never quite finished. New additions come along, old instruments are stored. But despite the changes, Vangelis is comfortable here. He visits with friends amidst this maze of hardware, playfully punctuates his conversation w
ith rim shots on a nearby snare drum, and ambles from one keyboard to the next, trying out new sounds, musing over new ideas, and storing them on tape. This is a home of sorts for Vangelis. It was here that he put together his popular solo albums, like :
Heaven and Hell, Albedo 0.39, Spiral, China, See You Later, as well as his duo albums with singer Jon Anderson of Yes (Short Stories in 1979 and The Friends of Mr. Cairo in 1981), his 1978 project with Greek actress Irene Papas who sang traditional Greek
tunes to his less traditional accompaniment in ODES, and his other film or television assignments, like the ethereal theme to the Carl Sagan PBS series COSMOS, the Costa-Gravas movie Missing, and his most recent effort, the Ridley Scott adventure film Bl
ade Runner.
And it was here that KEYBOARD met Vangelis. The bustle of the city seemed far away as we settled done in the stillness to discuss his music and the machines that make it.
Discography
More information in English
Interview 2 Part1. July 1990 issue of Sound On Sound, Vangelis by Richard Buskin, July 1990 in English
Interview 3 Part2. Keyboard Magazine, December ’92
The Navigations of Vangelis by Christian Jacob
in English
Interview 4 Vangelis Speaks in English
More information His Biography in English
More information His Biography in Turkish
Vangelis and Neuronium in English
Pictures of Vangelis You will find Vangelis himself and also album covers
Another
Internet Pages about Vangelis
Going on means going far.
Going far means returning.
(TAO TE CHING)