Greek singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos buried in a state funeral

Greek singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos, performs at the Athens Concert Hall on Sept. 1, 2020. (InTime News via AP)

ATHENS, Greece — Popular Greek singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos was buried Saturday at Athens’ First Cemetrey in a state-sponsored funeral, four days after his death at age 80.

Savvopoulos had died of a heart attack after battling cancer since 2020.

Thousands came to pay their respects to a well-beloved, if sometimes controversial, artist as he lay in state at a chapel of the Athens Metropolitan Cathedral Saturday morning. Hundreds made the nearly 2-kilometre (1.2-mile) walk behind the hearse to the cemetrey.

The presence of a Greek navy band playing mournful music was indicative of the change in Savvopoulos’s status, from someone lionized by anarchist-leaning leftists in the 1960s and 1970s and dismissed by the establishment as a long-haired freak, to a figure embraced by the same establishment and cultural mainstream.

Savvopoulos never changed his musical style — a blend of rock, folk-rock, jazz and Greek popular music — to conform to mainstream tastes. Always a political animal, he didn’t shy away from criticizing the left and its illusions, especially on his 1989 album “The Haircut,” whose sleeve showed him beardless with long locks. A few of his songs drew the enmity of some of his longtime admirers. The beard grew back but his politics remained moderate.

Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the first of many who eulogized Savvopoulos during the funeral service, used the lyrics of the 1972 song “Messenger Angel” to portray the artist as a speaker of uncomfortable truths that many did not want to hear. “If he had no pleasant news to tell/better tell us none,” he quoted the song’s ending.

Others who joined in eulogizing Savvopoulos were former President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, fellow musicians, artists and literary figures, some from his hometown of Thessaloniki, and one of his two grandsons.

Demetris Nellas, The Associated Press