The “King of London Bouzouki” no longer lives here

Rena Vlachopoulou and the path to absolute glory

Haris Galanos wrote more than forty years of successful music. Twenty-five of them, at the legendary Elysee on Oxford Street, or at the temple of Greek entertainment in London. There, with his eyes closed, his own potpourri and his characteristic movements, a kind of individual choreography that left an era, the legendary Galanos. “Lure point guards, croissants, and blue blood into a mytogogy steeped in capsule and alcohol!”. But how did your journey to rainy London begin and how did you find your “name” on the famous Elysee track? As he had revealed in an interview “The Rena Vlachopoulou, with whom we met through mutual friends. So I was working on an island and one day the phone rang and he said: “Where are you? What are you doing; Do you want to go to London with a friend of mine who has a piano bar where all shipments are collected? Go ahead and do your shopping, visit London too! ”. It sounded good to me and I immediately said “yes”. I had just ridden at 30 and didn’t even know where London was … “.

When Harry gets to London he begins rehearsals and a few days later begins to do, as he himself said, his “cosmopolitan” program. The stores were there then “Talk to me, talk to me, I never kissed you” And the singers sang a song with the lights off Harris, says Pario with the lights off for half an hour (!) And immediately afterwards mocks the capsule, making the show popular. He does not like bosses who argue with him saying: “What are you doing?” You’re good? You will close our store! “. You are wrong. Harry’s star has been lit forever, his name becomes something of a gossip that three months later leads him to the track of the Elysee. They offer him incredible money for the season, he sings seven nights a week, it is not known if it is Monday or Saturday, morning or afternoon. The fun does not stop, as well as his path to absolute success, along with the worship of his “believers” …

“Break whatever you want, as long as you pay for it …”

At first, Harry doesn’t like the Elysee in his mid-fifties. One day two students enter the store wanting to hear about poverty: or Vassilis Karakoulakis by Giannis konteli. Young people are excited, the rumor that “in the Elysium there is a clown who does the “come and see”, closes the first track boards. Michalis Goulandris, Nikos Tsakos, Stathis Porphyratos, Polemis and Fafalioi attract young and old to repeated parties that write history. It wasn’t that Harry was performing the songs like no one else, it was that he was doing things that no one else had dared to do. As he said: “A song is not to learn the outside words and say them because you have a good voice. A song is to relax and have a good time, to be fat and make you dance on the table, without being ashamed. I always made fat people dance. I made them stick their bellies out and express themselves, bring out the shine on their faces. And the boys used to tell me “Oh Galane, you are God”. I also replied from the microphone: “Break what you want, as long as you pay for it” “. This “Break what you want, as long as you pay for it”, becomes the motto of the store. Every night, people go crazy in a “lamp” store with repeated musical breaks that fill the audience, singing along to the phrase “Thank you, you’re crazy.” They all seemed like a group. Over the years, they all grew into one company. Girls in overalls and boys in tuxedos, shipowners in jeans and princes in zeibeks, until dawn on catwalks and tables …

“Prince, oh my God!” and other stories

The stories of the Elysee nights are endless, as are the memories. One of them concerns Prince Paul’s bachelor party. The host had closed the whole store and outside the street was chaos. Frogmen, Navy, Air Force, each prince had forty of his own people. As Harry once confessed: “That night, the biggest joke was that one of the company had created a secret code for the guests to say it at the entrance and enter. What Greek word does the whole planet know? Then whoever came to the door said: “Prince δε t @ @ m @ lak @ s”, and entered. There were 45 guys in the store, all princes, unshaven in jeans, me and a singer… What happened that night? And what did not happen γαν They threw the girl to the ceiling, they screamed, they broke the tent, there was no chair left! An incredible night, one of the most dreamy nights of my life … ».

Harry always mentioned it as a dream night and in which a young guest, in the fun of the chakir, demolished the track of the Elysee with… a compressor. The store opened the next day with a new track and new adventures that were not always exhausted on the inside since Harry, in addition to being a singer-entertainer, was also a confessor to his patron-friends. As I had mentioned for many of them: “I was terribly impressed that even though the children were partying every night until morning, they agreed to their obligations at the University. Many of them would go home if they had drunk. Once a well-known young man came back to me. He said he was probably absent. So I slapped him and said: “I do it because I love you and that because if your father knew he would do the same.”

When 25 years of utter success in London ended, Harry returned to Greece, to the Elysee in Athens, on the site of the former Wild Rose at the University. Times had changed, but not Harry’s “students and friends” who worshiped him like a god.. As one of them characteristically wrote on social media, after the departure of Harry Galanos: “The houses are as low as deserted barracks.” My cousins ​​studied with Grace in the 80s, I in the 90s, my wife in the early 2000s. “I have studied for generations and generations,” he said of his “children.” A common trait in all generations, his inexhaustible positive mood and the energy that he released every night when he sang. With love for what he did, always trying to make everyone great company … and he succeeded! Although hundreds of students passed by his first, second or third table, he knew each one by name and always had something to say about everyone. Of course his stories are endless, and he kept telling them and laughing. It came to Athens a few years ago, when some friends opened a shop in the old Wild Rose, and they were looking for a “name” to break them !! On the spot I called him on his cell phone late at night via Balthazar at 12pm … so IDs … and he got excited! ..and the next day he was here. It came and stayed … forever! … Our friend up there always adorns women with “Bond Street pearls” riding “in a beautiful chariot with two horses” … We will miss you Hari … ».