Various stories have been circulated from time to time. Some people said that Thanasis was a regular patron in a shop on Patision Street, where Zambetas and every time he came in he would ask him through the microphone «where are you Thanassis?‘. Until one day he disappeared, leaving the musician wondering what happened to him. But Thanasis was not a real person. It wasn't even a face...
The lyrics were written by Babis Vassiliadis, the unknown - famous lyricist of the folk song, also known as «Tchantas» - a nickname given to him by Stratos Pagioumtzis, because he went around the nightclubs with a briefcase full of lyrics that he either sold very cheaply or gave away, with the dream of becoming famous. «Where Are You, Thanassis‘ was the last song he wrote in 1972, shortly before he died and as a last wish he ordered his wife to have Zambetas sing it.
Born in 1907 in the Renkioi of Troada in 1907, Vassiliadis came to Greece as refugee, carrying his few belongings, but also the musical tradition of Smyrna music in his luggage. It was the rebetiko, which flourished in underground cafes where the dudes used to hang out during the interwar period, as hemp flourished in the Greek land, from the 5th century BC as described by Herodotus - for industrial, medical and euphoric use - until the semi-prohibition of 1920 and the final prohibition of 1936.
Characteristic samples of the rebetiko song that enjoyed great popularity were the so-called «butchers». In them, the phenomenon of the use of Indian hemp and the negative results of its abuse, the tequettes of the time and the portals of the country's major ports are recorded. These are songs that were harshly censored by dictator Metaxas, with the result that their creators either throw them down the well of oblivion or modify their lyrics so that someone have to read behind the words to understand what they were describing.
One such banned cannabis song is «Where are you Thanasis‘, as strange as that sounds! «Chantas», in the midst of the harsh censorship of the junta - now - and looking back to his youthful years just before he passed away, remembers the dudes of his time to fumigate jargon to blocks and writes about them.
As stated in the book «Rebecca Songs» of Ilia Petropoulos, the potheads of the interwar period they call him «slang,» «mapa,» «reed,» or... "Thanassis. The same is stated in the book «Drug addiction» of Α. A. Sureti, where «Thanasis» or «Thanasis with the holey head» is the slang synonym for slang.
So if we hear «Where are you, Thanassis‘ again» from the characteristic voice of George Zambeta, it is not difficult to understand that the hero of Vassiliadis wants to scan all the districts one night and he doesn't want to go to the centre where the apartment buildings are, but to a secluded place, in one of the tequettes that operated outside the narrow boundaries of the cities, in complete secrecy.
In Thanasis' place - that is, the place of the slang - the hero will find Mantos and Themistocles, only men, where it was allowed to hang out in the tequettes and they will sit at one of the long tables that those shops had, in order to remember the... fine things of their youth. They might even hear some sweet pine trees because the geeks they used to hang on the wall a baglamadaki or a bouzouki to sometimes break the devotion of the teque, some «sacred trope» of cannabis.
And why has he lost his trail?; Because in the 1970s, the tequettes are now a distant memory of the middle-aged and older...
