Vangelis: Synthesizer Genius
Vangelis died last week. He was 79.
Vangelis (real name Evángelos Papathanassíou) was one of my musical heroes. You know his work. His most famous, commercially successful composition was the main theme to the 1981 movie “Chariots of Fire,” the score that won him an Oscar. If you remember the opening credits scene of the runners running barefoot along the beach in what looks like their underwear, you know the music.
Vangelis composed albums and movie scores (including the original “Blade Runner” soundtrack) that were each a revelation, as we hear how awesome and beautiful and powerful and cool a synthesizer could be in the hands of a master. He continued to compose and produce records right through 2021.
Around 1976, I discovered and became enthralled (to this day) with the sound of synthesizers, including the Moog and Mellotron. I dreamed of being in a rock band, surrounded by keyboards like my musical/keyboard heroes who I discovered over the course of the next decade or so. I had posters of them plastering the walls of my bedroom, subscribed to “Keyboard Magazine” and was sure that I would someday meet and jam with these legends. (Spoiler alert: Never happened.) In college, I created and hosted a weekly radio show called “Synthetic Sounds” that featured synthesizer composers and performers and which to this day is one of my happiest and proudest memories of being on the radio. Also, I happen to own one of the synthesizers that Vangelis used to compose and perform “Chariots of Fire”: the Yamaha CS-80. He created an Academy award-winning soundtrack with his. I can play a techno version of “Three Blind Mice” on mine.
I had known about Vangelis for a few years before “Chariots” was released. I bought his 1975 “Heaven and Hell” album because Jon Anderson, the lead singer of one of my favorite bands (Yes) sang on a cut. This Vangelis album also features a piece that anyone who watched the original Carl Sagan “Cosmos” series will recognize. Vangelis’s “Movement 3” from “Heaven and Hell” was the main theme from that excellent series. He also wrote a piece called “Hymne” which was included on a film soundtrack (“Opéra Sauvage”) but went on to great fame as the backing music to a Gallo wine commercial of the mid-1980s.
If you are at all interested in hearing Vangelis’s music, click on any of the links in this article, or seek out the albums “Albedo 0.39” from 1976, and really one of my favorite albums of all time, “El Greco” from 1998. It is inspired by my favorite painter (El Greco) and the opening cut is so beautiful and evocative that one is transported back to the narrow streets of Toledo, Spain, circa 1580.
One of Vangelis’s most haunting pieces was used in the 1982 film “The Year of Living Dangerously,” which has an original score by the great Maurice Jarre. Director Peter Weir used this piece that Vangelis originally wrote for the soundtrack of the aforementioned “Opéra Sauvage.” It is the music for a romantic/action scene with Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson. It is called “L’Enfant” and is as memorable as any movie theme ever written. You might recognize it.
Vangelis is not my only keyboard hero. He shares a place on my musical mantle with Keith Emerson (deceased), Rick Wakeman, Jean-Michel Jarre (son of Maurice), Richard Wright (deceased), the members of the German synth ensemble Tangerine Dream, along with Tony Banks, Lyle Mays (deceased) Joe Zawinul (deceased), Brian Eno and Larry Fast, among many others.
My music heroes seem like they are dropping like flies these days and I am guessing the pace will only pick up. Many of these artists are in their seventies and eighties, so, you know… more to come.
But, we will always have their great recordings.
Rest in peace, Vangelis. Thank you for your music.