"Yes, they asked me to sing and I don't see why I shouldn't have sung." Later in his life, the singer denied those quotes.Greek pop singer Demis Roussos has been making his brand of sentimental pop since the '60s with the melancholy Aphrodite's Child. They were so nice to me I cannot tell you," Reuters quoted Roussos as saying at the time. Roussos' 39th birthday fell on the day of the hijacking, and speaking to Reuters after the ordeal ended, Roussos said that the hijackers treated him "quite well," adding that they had given him both a birthday cake and a guitar. Roussos was allowed off the plane after four days, however, along with his American companion of the time, Pamela Smith, as well as a Greek-American teenager, Arthur Targotsidis. Navy diver onboard the plane was killed by the terrorists, and most of the 153 passengers were held on the plane for 17 days. One of his oddest moments in the spotlight came in June 1985, when he was one of the passengers of TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome, which was hijacked by Hezbollah-backed terrorists and diverted to Beirut. In 2013, he received a French Legion of Honor medal for his life's work. In 1975, as he proudly noted to London's Guardian newspaper in a 1999 interview, he had no fewer than five albums in the British Top 10 simultaneously, including the No. Over the course of his career, he sold some 60 million albums. His first big break was as a member of the prog-rock group Aphrodite's Child, founded in 1967, in which his bandmates included keyboardist Vangelis Papathanassiou - later known around the world simply as Vangelis, creator of themes for films like Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner. The Roussos clan wound up in Athens, and soon Demis found his place as a singer, first in the band The Idols. During this period, many Greek Alexandrians, including the Roussos family, saw their businesses nationalized by Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime and lost all their assets. But like many in that community, the family fled Egypt in the wake of a series of intense political shifts and the Suez Crisis.
His father was an engineer of Greek descent his mother, Nelly Mazloum, was a famous actress and dancer of Italian heritage. Roussos was born Artemios Roussos on Jin Alexandria, Egypt, then home to a large and thriving Greek community. His death was first announced on Twitter this morning by a close friend, French-Greek entertainer Nikos Aliagas, and was later confirmed to the French newspaper Le Figaro by his daughter, Emily Roussos, who made a documentary about her father's life in 2010. He died Sunday at age 68 in Athens after suffering from cancer of the stomach, pancreas and liver. Roussos died in Athens Sunday at age 68.ĭemis Roussos went from an early start as a prog-rock pioneer to wearing a kitsch crown. International pop star Demis Roussos hams it up for the camera at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1975.
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