Shindig! Issue #157 – Aphrodite’s Child

Lead review from THEN section

“Don’t let them immanentize the eschaton.” Coined by philosopher Eric Voegelin and popularised by conservative commentator William F Buckley Jr, by the late ’60s and early ’70s the phrase was commonly seen on the badges and bumper stickers of right-wing youth groups like Young Americans For Freedom, who genuinely believed that the love generation, Yippies, new left and other countercultural revolutionaries were trying to bring about the end of the world by attempting to establish Heaven on Earth in defiance of the divine order; in other words that any utopian activity to change the system and make things better was trying to second-guess God’s will, and so must be resisted.

 Recorded in 1970-71 but not released till ’72, the third and final album by Greek band Aphrodite’s Child is a sprawling concept album based on the Biblical apocalypse. The book and lyrics, written by film director Costa Ferris, supposedly concern a circus show based on said apocalypse that’s gradually overtaken by the real thing happening outside. But with opener ‘The System’ quoting Abbie Hoffman’s ‘Fuck The System’, ‘Do It’ referencing fellow Yippie Jerry Rubin, and a song called ‘Altamont’, 666 is also a satire on the idea of Counterculture As Millenarian Cult. And while Ferris and composer Vangelis Papathanassiou are broadly on the side of love, peace and changing the world, they also have a few criticisms of how that’s been implemented up to that point.

666 was recorded by a band that was falling apart, with Vangelis, singer/bassist Demis Roussos and drummer Loukas Sideras barely speaking to each other, the latter two wondering why they couldn’t stick with the light pop-psych of their earlier hits rather than this impenetrable, experimental folly. But the double album has become Aphrodite’s Child’s defining statement: it’s release delayed by a nervous record company and at first selling poorly, it became a cult curiosity and is now gradually being accepted as a member in good standing of the Classic Rock Canon, every bit the equal of Tommy, SF Sorrow or even Sgt Pepper, a claim this deluxe edition goes some way towards justifying.

 The box set features remastered editions of both the original ’72 mix and the notably different mix used on the first Greek release in ’74, which adds five minutes to the original running time. Many songs feature extended outros rather than cross-fades, in particular the Abbey Road-esque ‘Hic et Nunc’ (‘Here And Now’) which benefits from a whole extra two minutes and an altered arrangement. There’s also a Blu-ray featuring a 96KHZ/24-bit Atmos remix, a 5.1 up mix and stereo mix (all overseen by Vangelis before his 2022 death), and a half-hour Vangelis interview and performance from ’72 French TV show Discorama.

Apart from more ambitious songwriting, the great advantage 666 has over Aphrodite’s Child’s previous albums is the return of guitarist Anargyros ‘Silver’ Koulouris from national service. The whole second half of stand-out track ‘The Four Horsemen’ is rightly given over to his stunning ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ influenced soloing (and you get an extra 17 seconds on the Greek version). Check out his tight jazz-rock riffing on ‘The Battle Of The Locusts’ too. But the whole group plays incredibly, blending hard-rock with jazz, traditional Greek folk, 20th century classical music and progressive Mediterranean kosmische. Actress Irene Papas (The Guns Of Navarone, Zorba The Greek) makes a memorable cameo on ‘∞’, outdoing Jane Birkin’s ‘Je t’Aime’ performance and anticipating Diamanda Galas as she evokes The Beast’s attempts to give birth to itself.   

Experimental, adventurous and groundbreaking? Undoubtedly. Inaccessible and overreaching? Never.

666 is a classic album whose time has finally come.             

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