Early musical careerĪfter settling in Greece, Roussos participated in a series of musical groups beginning with The Idols when he was 17, where he met Evangelos Papathanassiou (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. Roussos was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, in a Greek family where his father George (Yorgos Roussos) was a classical guitarist and an engineer and his mother Olga was a singer her family originally came from Greece.
