When he fell victim to censorship by the junta

THE Kostas Bigalis he sat down on Tuesday (23/04) on the couch of ERT’s “Studio 4” and revealed what we didn’t know about him until today.

The well-known singer talked about his fictional beginning and his first steps in singing, when at the age of 17 he participated in a Music Festival, as a member of the band “Live”, an amateur band he had made with friends from the neighborhood where he lived.

“We were so amateurs that if they told us to play one more song we didn’t know! We only knew this song that we took part in the Competition, the Pop Festival ’73”, recalled Kostas Bigalis, who revealed that he was a victim of censorship by the junta.

“We played this song, recorded it and the song ‘I’d like to shout’. The person in charge comes there and tells me we have to change the verse, because there is also a committee… He said to me ‘what would you like to shout? Is someone holding you and they won’t let you go?’ The song was social and in the end I made it ‘I’d like to shout how much I love you’, I made it romantic”, said Kostas Bigalis.

With his father being the one who signed his first professional contract, as he himself was still a minor, Kostas Bigalis then revealed that he was introduced to the public and the song as Alexis and not as Kostas and that Terence Quick was behind it.

“Terence Quick is taking over as producer at the company. We made two songs, we’re recording them, but before the album comes out he says ‘Kostas Bigalis doesn’t work for me’. At that time, single words were in fashion, Dakis, Paschalis, etc. And he says to me ‘I want to call you Alexis, do you mind?’ I then wanted to make a record with the thousand and if Tryfona called me, I would say yes. So that 45-year-old, my name is Alexis Bigalis, came out. That ended after that,” the singer said.

He described his next professional steps, including his collaboration with Anthony Hopkins in a four-episode religious miniseries directed by Robert Day.

“They were the actions of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Foreign production of Universal. They found me from the drama school. I had also said a joke, I made Simon of Cyrene. They were obliged to take Greek actors, because the series was being filmed in Greece”, he said among other things.

In another part of his interview, he referred to the mystery that had been built around his face, also due to the album “Big Alice” which was a pun on his last name.

“Back then, it was common, because other guys were making English-language albums, everyone wanted to put their picture. He had ‘pinned’ me upside down and I had told the company that I don’t want a photo! They were trying to convince me but in the end mine passed. And that’s how the specific cover came about”, said Kostas Bigalis.