(Photo by Stranglers French forum) Again bad news from the music world. This time we learned that The Stranglers’ keyboard player Dave Greenfield has died at the age of 71 and this after contracting the coronavirus. Greenfield died on Sunday evening, May 3. The musician contracted the virus in a hospital where he was treated for heart problems.

Greenfield has left a legendary legacy that includes the music for for instance the classic “Golden Brown”.

Greenfield, the Ray Manzarek of The Stranglers

The sound of the UK-born musician has frequently (and correctly) been compared to that of Ray Manzarek of the Doors, most of you will without any doubt remember the distinctive sound on the early The Stranglers recordings including the use of Hohner Cembalet (model N), Hammond L-100 electric organ, a Minimoog synthesizer, and later an Oberheim FVS-4 polyphonic synthesizer. On the albums “The Raven”, “Gospel According to the Meninblack” and “Aural Sculpture”, Greenfield used a Korg VC-10 vocoder.

Little known is that he frequently contributed harmony backing vocals to the band’s songs, and sang the lead vocals on a few of their early tracks including “Dead Ringer”, “Peasant in the Big Shitty”, “Do You Wanna?”, “Genetix” and “Four Horsemen”.

Apart from The Strangles he also produced a single in 1981, namely “Back to France” by the band Boys in Darkness. Greenfield and fellow-Strangler Jean-Jacques Burnel also released a joint album in 1983, “Fire and Water” which was used as the OST for the film, “Ecoutez vos murs” (directed by Vincent Coudanne).