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| photo: Facebook |
George Vardas was born in Greece and arrived in South Africa as a child in 1965, growing up in Pretoria. He played guitar in bands like Lastique, Backtrax, Syndicate and Graffiti before starting TRS (The Recording Studio) with Chris Ghelakis in downtown Johannesburg in the late 80s. The company evolved into a label, CSR (Creative Sound Recordings), and would eventually become Electromode. The following is a telephone interview done on January 15 2025 ahead of the release of J.E. Movement's Ma Dea Luv (AFS057) on Afrosynth Records. It has been edited for clarity
[How did you get started in music and then production?]
I grew up in Pretoria. I was part of the pop scene, delving into progressive jazz. I was actually a guitarist, playing in a lot of great bands, I played in Lastique, Backtrax, Syndicate at Plum Crazy. I played in some amazing bands. But probably the most amazing band I played in was a band called GRAFFITI. I don’t know if you remember a band called RABBITT … when Trevor Rabin decided to go and join Yes in America, and Duncan Faure left to go and join the Bay City Rollers, the drummer from that band, Neil Cloud, decided to come and play in a band called Graffiti that was put together by Cedric Samson, a very good friend of that whole band. I was playing in a band at the time, and they asked me to join as well, so I played with Neil Cloud briefly. So I came from that background, from playing in clubs and doing pop music.
And then my friendship with CHRIS [GHELAKIS] goes back to like 1965, when I came from Greece. So I was always friends with Chris. Chris and me were always buddies.
Slowly this cover band scene started dying out. I was playing with Chris, I played in a couple of bands. Post-Graffiti I joined a couple of other bands – RAGDOLLS, BACKTRAX, LASTIQUE, to name a few. And then I landed up playing with Chris. Even though I was very good friends with him, we didn’t play together until about 1983/4 – I joined SYNDICATE, his guitarist went to America and I joined. And that is where the idea to start a recording studio started. Because I could see that the club scene – the residency, where you could get a club job working for like 3 months working non-stop — started dying out. The discos were taking over. People just wanted to go and dance.
I bought a little four-track, I remember, the Fostex four-track, from TOMS music shop, I just started recording. I went to Chris and I said, ‘Listen, I’ve got all these guys coming and asking me to do demos – at my house – it’s causing a problem with my girlfriend. I want to find some premises, I want to start a recording studio, but I know nothing about leases.’ And I didn’t have money – I mean, I used to play in a band with him earning R750 a month. And the lease was R1000 a month – which is peanuts [now] but back in the day [it was a lot]. So that’s where it started. He [Chris] was a little bit more business-savvy, and he said, ‘Look, we’ll get involved together. I’lI come into the studio with you.’
We started recording all these white bands, because I hadn’t got into the undercover kwaito scene which was starting to take off then. I hadn’t even touched that stuff. But because of my background, of the jazzy thing, I’d heard a lot of RnB from the States. I used to listen to Frankie Valli, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Commodores, all those bands. So I was very familiar with that kind of style… And what happened is: when the studio started, eventually we started getting a couple of these guys that were into like reggae and people who wanted to do RnB and stuff. They wanted to come in, and I started getting into that. And then I saw that there’s a very big market for the black stuff that was happening. Because we’re in Africa. There was not a market really for the white music. The white music was for clubs, for playing in clubs to the white crowds, at the time. Because it was apartheid, you understand, there were no blacks in the clubs at that time, it was 1983/84, before elections [in 1994]. But I’d worked [with black artists before] … In Lastique we had RONNIE JOYCE, who passed away [in 2013]. He was a friend with JONATHAN BUTLER, who I knew very well, by the way, from Cape Town.
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| Chris Ghelakis (RIP) |
So we got involved in that whole thing, and we started getting all these bands coming in. That’s how we started delving into the black stuff. And we had a lot of success. Because at the time there was no internet… You couldn’t really have quick access to the hits that were happening overseas. But we were friends with a couple of people that used to live in London and in America and so on, and they used to tell us what was happening [there], and we started doing some cover versions. I remember one of our biggest things was BLACK BOX. We did it legally, we got licensing for publishing, songwriting, etc. It used to take a long time [because it was before the internet] … We used to get info from overseas about what covers are happening. And we started doing it – legally – and distributing legally, paying licensing fees to the publishers – and we started releasing these covers, and it took off.
But we quickly realised that there’s a very big difference between having a hit when you’re doing a cover of someone’s song — because you don’t own that product, you don’t own the copyright; all you own is the master — so we wanted to start doing original stuff. We realised if we wanted to have any kind of lasting success, we needed to have original artists that we can promote and have hits with. And that’s how we got involved with doing all these bands. And even though we didn’t sign them up, we got involved with record companies, like Transistor Music and — I can’t remember if EMI or any of the big companies gave us work initially, but there were all these small independents. There was a guy by the name of PHIL HOLLIS, who used to work with PAT SHANGE and he found CHICCO, he found YVONNE CHAKA CHAKA, he signed all these artists. And I actually got to meet all of them. I was very good friends with Chicco.
I started the studio with Chris, I think round about 1987. We were in Plein Street in town [downtown Johannesburg], on the 9th floor, that’s where we started.
The only really big hit that we had, that I can brag about was SIDNEY MOGOPODI – ‘Mama’s Baby’. That was the first thing that put us on the map. Because that was really a massive success. I remember the phone ringing off the hook. We used to sell like 10-20,000 units a week – I’m not bragging, I’m being serious. I think it was mid-price, I don’t think it was full price, but the volume was like huge, so the money just came rolling in. I mean Sidney became rich overnight. He bought cars, houses...
[How did J.E. Movement come about?]
We had this little studio up on the 9th floor in Plein Street, and we used to work with all these bands that were given to us, to do productions, by DAVE PENHALE from Transistor, and a couple of other companies which I can’t remember. And J.E. MOVEMENT were one of those bands that came through the doors. And I got given them…
J.E. Movement was a band that was a concept of a guy by the name of Dave Penhale. He kind of put this whole thing together. In fact I’m not 100% sure but I’m 99% sure that he was instrumental in putting the whole thing together. Myself and Chris Ghelakis were just starting out a recording studio. That was the time when that whole thing kind of took shape. J.E. Movement were given to us, and I produced them. I worked with them, and I became very good friends with JAMES NYINGWA. I was very very good friends with him.
Once I met James, and saw how talented he is, we gave him a job at the studio, as a songwriter/producer. Because I realized quickly that even though I’m into that whole kind of music, we need input from a guy that’s hands on, that’s grown up in a township, that understands the culture and what people actually want. So I hooked up with him, like immediately. I was very technical-savvy, and he was like a really talented songwriter. And we became really close, we became friends. And then once we had one or two albums, nothing really took off massive…
James was the catalyst, and he wrote most of the stuff, but I was a better player than him, so a Iot of the stuff that you’re hearing was actually played by me. A lot of the keys and a lot of the basslines. But he used to tell me what he wants.
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| photo: www.muzines.co.uk |
Do you know what automation is, in music software? Automation is basically if you want to change something in real time, while it’s playing back, either the filter or the volume or something. Automation was a very new thing at the time. And we were working on a thing called the ROLAND MC-500. It was like a little box, a very basic, pre-computer sort of dedicated sequencer. We were on that, and we discovered that you can do some very primitive basic automation. And while we were playing, I was like playing with the filter on something, I was adjusting the filter, so it was making the thing go from dull to bright. I mean today it’s a joke, it’s elementary, but at that time it was a revelation. And James freaked out. His eyes lit up and he was freaking out! We were like jumping around in the studio, and like ‘hey, we’re going to do it!’. You know when you’re young and you’ve got all these dreams about success and what you can do …
That MC-500 was James’s favourite thing. He wanted to like sleep with it, basically.. That’s how much he was in love with the MC-500. What it did was it allowed people to not be technically proficient but make it sound like they’re the best musicians in the world, because it puts everything in time, it puts everything in tune. We’re talking about sequencing now.
The other guy’s name was ELLIOT [FAKU]. It was James and Elliot – J.E. Movement … Can I tell you what Elliot’s role in the band was? He was the muse. He was like the feedback monitor. He used to sit [and listen]...
This is how it worked: we’d go into the studio, and I’m like the engineer, but I’m also a musician… I used to basically play everything. James also used to play some basslines, but I used to play a lot of the keys. I don’t know if I’ve been credited on all the records, but we weren’t into that – that whole money thing wasn’t important at the time. What was important was having fun and creating music. It wasn’t ‘hey, I wrote this’ or ‘hey, I wrote that’. There was none of that shit.
[Was there a political impulse in collaboration?]
Not at all. I’m colourblind. I judge people on merit and on who they are as individuals. I’ve always been like that, and I’ll stay like that. I didn’t even think about that, now that you mention it.
You have to judge people people on merit and individuality, on how they behave. You cannot judge on anything else. Someone could come from outer space, you have to judge them on how they behave. That is what the world should be, but it doesn’t work like that.
[What happened to James?]
This is actually what happened. We were finishing a recording in the studio, I can’t remember the exact date and time, but it was around about 4 or 5 o’clock, and it was my late girlfriend – she passed away – it was my girlfriend’s birthday, and I invited him to come and celebrate with us at my flat. I was living in Hillbrow at the time. Chris was there, a whole lot of people were there.
On his way he stopped at a shop to buy some cooldrink, and there was a robbery in progress, and the robber mistook him for either police or undercover [agents], and they stabbed him in his neck. It’s terrible, I’ll never forget it … They took him to Hillbrow Hospital. I was at my apartment and we got a phone call that ‘there’s a guy by the name of James at Hillbrow Hospital, and he’s asking for Chris and George’. We went to the hospital, and we were allowed to see him. He actually passed away in Chris’s arms. Chris was actually holding him, we were both crying. he was holding him, and James was saying, ‘please can you help me’ — and we couldn’t do anything.
The guys tried to stop the bleeding, but he’d just lost too much blood … The doctors did their best to save him. But the problem was the stab I think it was in his jugular, it was in one of his main arteries or veins in his neck … and it was a very deep wound, and the blood, they just couldn’t stop it. They tried to stop it, but he’d already lost too much. They tried to do a transfusion but it was already too late.
Listen, I was very close to James. He was an amazing guy, super-talented guy. Myself and Chris were in tears. I was really friendly with James. He was a buddy, like a close buddy. I was very close with them.
It was one of the first projects that launched the studio that I’m currently working in.
Another thing is Chris actually passed away last year [2023], so we’re getting old…
© 2025 Afrosynth
Ma Dea Luv (AFS057) will be out in mid-2025 on Afrosynth Records. Pre-order it here.