First, I would like to say hello all my friends in Athens, Naxos, and Greece if you are reading this. The inspiration to learn music began when I started playing my father’s Martin acoustic guitar at the age of four. I played the Martin guitar to his friends at home on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. I listened to rock, R&B and Blues records, and the radio stations, especially Radio Luxemburg. Dad was a professional singer, actor, comedian, and guitarist. Some of his friends were guitarists too and they taught me to play simple chords E, D and A major before they taught me bar chords. There was also a piano, trumpet, pipes, and percussion in the house that I played. Music seemed so different from everything else. During spare time, I always played guitar.

Do you remember what was the first song that you heard and said, “Yes, that’s what I wanna do”?

I remember hearing many big hit sounds together; Elvis, The Shadows, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, and that made me want to play the guitar increasingly. I liked the heavy guitar chords at the beginning of the Elvis Presley record ‘Jail House Rock’ I thought it was the beginning of a new guitar sound. I played along in the same style of the records, until I could play them all perfectly. Then I begun composing and putting in my own guitar solo ideas, which lead me to write my own songs that I could play my solo guitar compositions in. I decided I wanted to release records too and after I did, things went great.

Ending up this question, how do you feel being a part of the most creative period of music?

I was blessed to be at the heart of “the music boom”. It was something good just waiting to happen after two world wars in succession, now most of the counties were growing peacefully together. Love, art, music, and equality were now fashionable. The world needed something new and they got it from the “boom” of rock music. We are in a very creative time now.

2. You‘ve wrote music for so many songs and albums. Which one is your favorite and why? Is there any strange story that you remember, behind your favorite one?

I like Rondo by The Nice. It was my first instrumental hit. I sometimes play it with my band. It was too much to see the beginnings of Rondo on my piano and guitar becoming something so incredible. I produced a solid arrangement at my piano and on guitar, which included particular classical references, Bach was my inspirer. The concept had instrument textures that I pre-planed. I chose the sounds of the instruments so they blended perfectly and arranged the whole piece to build into multiple climaxes with the guitar and organ increasing the energy time after time. I got Keith Emerson round and explained the concept; to make this jazz hit into a rock hit, keeping some of the jazz, inserting classical links and performing live sound effects on the instruments and rocking it. I was listening to my mum’s jazz records and picked out Dave Brubeck Blue Rondo A La Turk. I liked its catchy melody and a hook rhythm feel. I thought it might benefit from a new treatment and it would be good to convert into a rock song. I changed the time signature to 4/4 so it could have a rock beat base to work in and wrote a bass part that was simple, mainly on two notes, to hold the track together while the guitar and organ exploded all over the place. The organ and guitar explosion ideas came from watching action movies and listening to the music and special effects, they produced. I emulated this action movie music into rock music and with the use of my classical music training; I orchestrated the band’s parts. ‘Second Thoughts’ is also a favorite, the song developed from the title. I thought up this title specifically so it would be rather like a parody or sequel to ‘The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjak’ single, you know, then there is ‘Second Thoughts’ in the future. I wanted it to sound “today” and futuristic at the same time, so that it would still stand out well in the future, like ‘Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjak’ does. I went back to old lyrics I had written and rewrote them in a more modern style. I revisited 80’s lyrics and lists of poems I had written a long the way, added new melodies to these lyrics so they became new songs, I arranged and composed the keyboard, and guitar solos and structured the whole thing together with a blend of Sonata classical form, structuring the melodies around the lyrics. While I studied Sonata form, I decided to make modern changes to it so my form structure on the album was original. Part of the reason classical music remains so popular today is because of Sonata form.

3. You have worked and collaborated with huge personas -also musicians-, who do you want to separate from others, feeling too lucky to meet them?

I feel lucky to have met the late Jimi Hendrix, John Cale, Roger Waters, and PP Arnold; they are my main friends in the music business. Jimi was so inspiring. A completely new world opened up after I was on his UK tour. I met John Cale in New York when he was over in England we teamed up for a tour of Europe in France, Germany, Holland, and Belgium. I am still in touch with PP Arnold she is supporting my new thing and thinks it will take off, she was ten years on the road with Roger Waters, performing The Wall and everything else. I like Roger’s songs very much, his voice melodies inspire me. I feel lucky to have met Andy Tillison, Robbie Knight, Dan Bowles, Jordan Brown, and Dave Wagstaffe, the group.

4. Spending your entire career with huge collaborations, making sessions and projects, in which period have you felt more creative? And if you had a chance to spend more time to complete something uncompleted, when would you like to stop the trip of the time machine?

I think I am in my most creative period now. About completions, I had the chance to spend more time to complete something when I produced this album. I have looked back at some things I wrote before but did not complete and brought them back to life into the Second Thoughts album. I am completing the next album. I am doing that now, we begin mastering three new tracks or more next month. I am working on and completing the film sound tracks for a new action Sc-fi TV series too this may take a long time to complete, we are in completion of the shooting script for episode seven right now, I co-wrote the series with Malcolm Stone. I like changing the tempo of life, going on holiday, making time stand still, so two days seem like a week. The time machine is always running but I can put it to one side by writing new stuff in the eternal now. Before I finish a piece I make preparations by recording the main melodies into Logic so we can see what it is going to sound like before we try to improve and change it. I may change and edit these melodies around until they fit perfectly into the world of content. Just a thought you should make an album as one piece.

5. Tell us a few things about your performing with Pink Floyd in 1967, why this collaboration did not go further?

The day I stood in for Pink Floyd front man Syd Barret when he vanished in Liverpool. I lead The Pink Floyd’s performance in ‘Interstella Over Drive’ on the Jimi Hendrix tour when I was their guitarist maybe lead singer. They came to see me play after that at the ICA Exhibition Centre in
London where I was performing music for sound sculptures with The Nice. I knew why they were there, they wanted to see us and they needed a guitarist as they just ditched Syd. It wouldn’t have been very difficult for me to join but I had founded The Nice to stick together like The Rolling Stones and my head was into just that. They could see what was happening, The Nice were incredibly popular. I wish I had moved over to Pink Floyd. But I think the ‘Second Thoughts’ album sound is a worthy successor. I know how to play and write for Pink Floyd and that is still within my music and it’s a selling point to Second Thoughts advantage.