Stevens said that West Side Story particularly affected him and gave him a "different view of life". He occasionally escaped his family responsibilities by going to the rooftop above their home and listening to the tunes of the musicals drifting from around the corner on Denmark Street, then the centre of the British music industry. He persuaded his father to pay £8 (equivalent to £200 in 2020 ) for his first guitar, and he began playing it and writing songs. At 15, inspired by the popularity of the Beatles, he became interested in the guitar. Georgiou developed an interest in piano at a young age, eventually using the family baby grand piano to work out the chords, since no one else there played well enough to teach him. Īlthough his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother was a Baptist, Georgiou was sent to St Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School, Macklin Street, which was closer to his father's business on Drury Lane. Stevens has a half-brother, George Georgiou, born in Greece, presumably from his father's first marriage in Greece, where he served in the Macedonian Mule Corps. His parents divorced when he was about eight years old, but continued to maintain the family restaurant and live above it. All family members worked in the restaurant. The family lived above the Moulin Rouge, a restaurant his parents operated on the north end of Shaftesbury Avenue, a short walk from Piccadilly Circus in the Soho theatre district of London. Steven Demetre Georgiou, born on 21 July 1948 in the Marylebone area of London, was the youngest child of a Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou (1900–1978), and a Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman (1915–1989).