Rain and tears are the same
But in the sun you’ve got to play the game
The Greek electronic composer Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, better known as Vangelis, is one of the defining sounds of the early 1980s, after his scores for 1981’s Chariots of Fire and – that nexus year again – 1982’s science fiction masterpiece Blade Runner. He of course continued to have a strong career through the 1990s and 2000s and is still (as far as I know) active today.
But let’s set the time circuits fourteen years earlier and look at a song from 1968. Aphrodite’s Child was Vangelis’s first band (as keyboard player, with three other Greek musiciabns) and Rain and Tears was the band’s first hit single. Based on Pachelbel’s Canon, it was covered by bands in many countries including New Zealand. I have memories of hearing a version of it in the 1970s-80s, but I don’t recall whether it was the Vangelis original. But it sticks in the mind.
Was that famous Blade Runner line a deliberate injoke, a reference to the soundtrack composer? I would love to know for sure, but it seems more than a coincidence to me.
There’s nothing special about the lyrics, but I love the formal beauty of the canon structure and the pure, wavering tones of the keyboard. What IS it that Vangelis is playing? Something electronic, I think, but I can’t trace what it might have been. The 60s were the dawn of synthesis; even Pink Floyd from 1968 can sound surprisingly like the late 70s or early 80s.
Rain and tears are the same
But in the sun you’ve got to play the game
When you cry in winter time
You can pretend it’s nothing but the rain
How many times I’ve seen
Tears running from your blue eyes
Rain and tears are the same
But in the sun you’ve got to play the game
Give me an answer love
I need an answer love
Rain and tears in the sun
But in your heart you feel the rainbow waves
Rain or tears both are shown
For in my heart there’ll never be a sun
Rain and tears are the same
But in the sun you’ve got to play the game