Yannis Spathas
Encyclopedia
Yannis Spathas is a Greek
rock
, blues
and folk
guitarist and composer who was best known for his lead guitar
work with the Greek rock
band Socrates Drank The Conium
in the early 1970s.
Born at Paxoi (Ionian Islands
) in 1950, Spathas made his first musical debuts playing accordion
, classical guitar
and drums with his uncles in his father's band during his childhood. At the age of 15, he began studying Jimi Hendrix
and blues-rock
, as well as folk anthems with clarinetist Tasos Chalkias. He continued to study Cretan
serenade
s, rebetiko
and traditional music from India
and the Balkan countries
before learning music theory
and counterpoint
under the guidance of Kostas Klavvas few years later.
His style is very similar to that of Jimi Hendrix
, Jimmy Page
, Duane Allman
, Eric Clapton
, and some of Tony Iommi
's bluesier music. Of these, Hendrix's influence was probably the greatest, evidenced mainly by the fact that Socrates Drank the Conium covered several of his songs at their early concerts in the clubs of Athens
, Greece
, where they were discovered.
As a session musician and arranger, Spathas has played and toured with other famous artists such as Giannis Markopoulos, Mikis Theodorakis
, Vangelis
, Dionysis Savvopoulos
, Manos Hadjidakis
, Alkinoos Ioannidis
, George Dalaras
, Haris Alexiou
, Eleni Vitali and Vassilis Lekkas on their major concerts in Greece, Europe, USA and Canada. His relationship with Lekkas yielded three albums, "Syntoma Oneira" (Brief Dreams, 1989), "Klassika Ikonografimena" (Illustrated Classics, 1991) and "Spinthiras" (Spikes, 2007), in conjunction with lyricists Evgenios Aranitsis (on the first two albums) and Lina Nikolakopoulou
.
, Jimmy Page
and Jimi Hendrix
), Spathas produced his blues-rock
/hard rock
sound with two sunburst Fender Stratocaster
s (a mid-1960s rosewood-neck and an early 1970s maple-neck with large headstock), a cherry sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard
, a black Les Paul Custom
and a Candy Apple Red Roland GR-505 guitar synthesizer controller
fitted with three active EMG
SA single-coil pickups, as well as a pedalboard that included a GR-700 guitar synthesizer bank, a GR-300 polyphonic synthesizer unit, a VG-88 guitar modeler and a PG-200 floor box. In addition to electric guitars and guitar synthesizers, Spathas also uses a variety of Ovation, Guild
, Larrivée
acoustic guitars and Marshall
amplifier
s.
's guitar virtuoso Ritchie Blackmore
. It is also highly reminiscent of the melodic
playing of Tony Iommi
, lead guitar of Black Sabbath
.
Despite his confessed love for Hendrix's music, his musical style, and moreover his touch while playing, reminds one of the great British guitarist Ollie Halsall
, during those years playing with Patto and then with John Hiseman's Tempest (where he substituted for Alan Holdsworth in the late 1973).
Spathas can be considered one of the most talented, original, unfortunately unknown, guitarists in Europe during the '70s, maybe the most "guitaristic" decade for rock & roll music.
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
guitarist and composer who was best known for his lead guitar
Lead guitar
Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
work with the Greek rock
Greek rock
Rock and roll, spread around the world in the 1950s and 60s, entering Greece in the middle of the 60s. Greek rock performers in the field include Jimi Quidd , and Pavlos Sidiropoulos, the most important representative of Greek folk-rock and rock.-1960s:Greek rock , originated in the early 1960s with...
band Socrates Drank The Conium
Socrates Drank the Conium
Socrates Drank the Conium is a Greek progressive/blues rock band that formed in 1969 and was active in the early 1970s. Their sound was reminiscent of other such bands of the approximate period like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Jeff Beck and some of the more progressive,...
in the early 1970s.
Born at Paxoi (Ionian Islands
Ionian Islands
The Ionian Islands are a group of islands in Greece. They are traditionally called the Heptanese, i.e...
) in 1950, Spathas made his first musical debuts playing accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
, classical guitar
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
and drums with his uncles in his father's band during his childhood. At the age of 15, he began studying Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
and blues-rock
Blues-rock
Blues rock is a hybrid musical genre combining bluesy improvisations over the 12-bar blues and extended boogie jams with rock and roll styles. The core of the blues rock sound is created by the electric guitar, piano, bass guitar and drum kit, with the electric guitar usually amplified through a...
, as well as folk anthems with clarinetist Tasos Chalkias. He continued to study Cretan
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
serenade
Serenade
In music, a serenade is a musical composition, and/or performance, in someone's honor. Serenades are typically calm, light music.The word Serenade is derived from the Italian word sereno, which means calm....
s, rebetiko
Rebetiko
Rebetiko, plural rebetika, , occasionally transliterated as Rembetiko, is a term used today to designate originally disparate kinds of urban Greek folk music which have come to be grouped together since the so-called rebetika revival, which started in the 1960s and developed further from the early...
and traditional music from India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and the Balkan countries
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
before learning music theory
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
and counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
under the guidance of Kostas Klavvas few years later.
His style is very similar to that of Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
, Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page
James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...
, Duane Allman
Duane Allman
Howard Duane Allman was an American guitarist, session musician and the primary co-founder of the southern rock group The Allman Brothers Band...
, Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
, and some of Tony Iommi
Tony Iommi
Anthony Frank "Tony" Iommi is an English guitarist and songwriter best known as the founding member of pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and its sole continual member through multiple personnel changes.Iommi is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential guitarists in...
's bluesier music. Of these, Hendrix's influence was probably the greatest, evidenced mainly by the fact that Socrates Drank the Conium covered several of his songs at their early concerts in the clubs of Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, where they were discovered.
As a session musician and arranger, Spathas has played and toured with other famous artists such as Giannis Markopoulos, Mikis Theodorakis
Mikis Theodorakis
Mikis Theodorakis is one of the most renowned Greek songwriters and composers. Internationally, he is probably best known for his songs and for his scores for the films Zorba the Greek , Z , and Serpico .Politically, he identified with the left until the late 1980s; in 1989, he ran as an...
, Vangelis
Vangelis
Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou is a Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock and orchestral music, under the artist name Vangelis...
, Dionysis Savvopoulos
Dionysis Savvopoulos
Dionysis Savvopoulos is a Greek music composer, lyricist and singer.He was born in Thessaloniki. In 1963 he moved to Athens, terminating his law studies in favour of his career in music...
, Manos Hadjidakis
Manos Hadjidakis
Manos Hatzidakis was a Greek composer and theorist of the Greek music. He was also one of the main prime movers of the "Éntekhno" song ....
, Alkinoos Ioannidis
Alkinoos Ioannidis
Alkinoos Ioannidis is a Greek-Cypriot composer, lyricist, singer and orchestrator.He was born in Nicosia on 19 September 1969. His artistic family, with a painter father and poet brother was a source of inspiration for him. He first wanted to study drums, but couldn't due to the lack of a drum...
, George Dalaras
George Dalaras
George Dalaras , also possibly spelled as Yorgos or Giorgos Dalaras, is a Greek singer. He is of international fame and has recently been selected as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. He was born in Nea Kokinia, Piraeus. His father was Loukas Daralas, a singer of rebetiko.-Early...
, Haris Alexiou
Haris Alexiou
Haris Alexiou is a Greek singer. She is considered one of the most popular singers in Greece and has been commercially successful since the 1970s. She has worked with important Greek songwriters and composers, has performed at top musical theatres all over the world and has received several awards...
, Eleni Vitali and Vassilis Lekkas on their major concerts in Greece, Europe, USA and Canada. His relationship with Lekkas yielded three albums, "Syntoma Oneira" (Brief Dreams, 1989), "Klassika Ikonografimena" (Illustrated Classics, 1991) and "Spinthiras" (Spikes, 2007), in conjunction with lyricists Evgenios Aranitsis (on the first two albums) and Lina Nikolakopoulou
Lina Nikolakopoulou
Evangelia Nikolakopoulou is widely recognised as one of the foremost lyricists in Greece. She was born in Methana at June 30, 1958 and she studied social and political sciences at the Panteion University in Athens. This is where she met the composer Stamatis Kraounakis, who is the man that she...
.
Guitars and style
Like several of his most prominent influences (Eric ClaptonEric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
, Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page
James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...
and Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
), Spathas produced his blues-rock
Blues-rock
Blues rock is a hybrid musical genre combining bluesy improvisations over the 12-bar blues and extended boogie jams with rock and roll styles. The core of the blues rock sound is created by the electric guitar, piano, bass guitar and drum kit, with the electric guitar usually amplified through a...
/hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
sound with two sunburst Fender Stratocaster
Fender Stratocaster
The Fender Stratocaster, often referred to as "Strat", is a model of electric guitar designed by Leo Fender, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares in 1954, and manufactured continuously by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation to the present. It is a double-cutaway guitar, with an extended top...
s (a mid-1960s rosewood-neck and an early 1970s maple-neck with large headstock), a cherry sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard
Gibson Les Paul
The Gibson Les Paul was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and the late jazz guitarist and electronics inventor Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson...
, a black Les Paul Custom
Gibson Les Paul Custom
The Gibson Les Paul Custom is a higher end variation of the Gibson Les Paul guitar. It was developed in 1954 after Gibson had introduced the Les Paul model in 1952.-Notable Les Paul Custom players:...
and a Candy Apple Red Roland GR-505 guitar synthesizer controller
Roland Corporation
is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on April 18, 1972, with ¥33 million in capital. In 2005 Roland's headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. Today it has factories in Japan,...
fitted with three active EMG
EMG, Inc.
EMG, Inc. is the current legal name of a company based in Santa Rosa, California which manufactures guitar pickups and EQ accessories. Founded in 1976, the company was originally called Dirtywork Studios. The name was changed to "Overlend" in 1978 and then to the current name in 1983...
SA single-coil pickups, as well as a pedalboard that included a GR-700 guitar synthesizer bank, a GR-300 polyphonic synthesizer unit, a VG-88 guitar modeler and a PG-200 floor box. In addition to electric guitars and guitar synthesizers, Spathas also uses a variety of Ovation, Guild
Guild Guitar Company
The Guild Guitar Company is a USA-based guitar manufacturer founded in 1952 by Alfred Dronge, a guitarist and music-store owner, and George Mann, a former executive with the Epiphone Guitar Company...
, Larrivée
Larrivée (guitar company)
Jean Larrivée Guitars Ltd. is a family-owned and -operated Canadian company that manufacturers acoustic guitars. Founded in 1967 by Jean Larrivée, the company was moved from Toronto, Ontario to Victoria, British Columbia in 1977, and to Vancouver in 1982...
acoustic guitars and Marshall
Marshall Amplification
Marshall Amplification is a British company, founded by drummer Jim Marshall, that designs and manufactures music amplifiers, brands personal headphones/earphones , and, after acquiring Natal Drums, drums and bongos. Marshall amplifiers, and specifically their guitar amplifiers, are among the most...
amplifier
Guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier is an electronic amplifier designed to make the signal of an electric or acoustic guitar louder so that it will produce sound through a loudspeaker...
s.
Technique
Spathas' way of playing was characterized by speed, fluency and cleanness, much like Deep PurpleDeep Purple
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members believe that their music cannot be categorised as belonging to any one genre...
's guitar virtuoso Ritchie Blackmore
Ritchie Blackmore
Richard Hugh "Ritchie" Blackmore is an English guitarist and songwriter, who was known as one of the first guitarists to fuse Classical music elements with rock. He fronted his own band Rainbow after leaving Deep Purple where he was unhappy because his favourite musical style wasn't adequately...
. It is also highly reminiscent of the melodic
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
playing of Tony Iommi
Tony Iommi
Anthony Frank "Tony" Iommi is an English guitarist and songwriter best known as the founding member of pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and its sole continual member through multiple personnel changes.Iommi is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential guitarists in...
, lead guitar of Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
.
Despite his confessed love for Hendrix's music, his musical style, and moreover his touch while playing, reminds one of the great British guitarist Ollie Halsall
Ollie Halsall
Peter John 'Ollie' Halsall was a left-handed guitarist and is best known for his role in The Rutles, the bands Patto, Timebox and Boxer, and for his contribution to the music of Kevin Ayers. He is also notable as one of the few players of the vibraphone in rock music...
, during those years playing with Patto and then with John Hiseman's Tempest (where he substituted for Alan Holdsworth in the late 1973).
Spathas can be considered one of the most talented, original, unfortunately unknown, guitarists in Europe during the '70s, maybe the most "guitaristic" decade for rock & roll music.
Sources
- http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/socrates_drank_the_conium