The Stranglers to play Portsmouth Guildhall on final UK tour and pay tribute to keys player Dave Greenfield who died of Covid | Big Interview

Veterans of the punk era, the band’s keyboard player Dave Greenfield gave them a sound that helped set them apart from their early peers. Dave died in May 2020 after contracting Covid-19 while in hospital for treatment on a heart problem.

Pre-pandemic, the group had already begun recording Dark Matters, the album that eventually came out in September 2021. Their first album in nine years, it went to number four in the charts, their highest placing since 1983’s Feline.

Dave appears on eight of the 11 tracks, and bassist and band co-founder Jean-Jacques Burnel also penned a poignant tribute to his friend for inclusion, And If You Should See Dave…

‘It's a bittersweet time,’ says Baz, ‘But we've got a top five album, and we’ve just completed a successful low-key warm-up tour in France, which was our attempt to break the new keyboard player in. It was above and beyond anything we could have reasonably expected, so everything bodes well for the UK tour.

‘We carry on!’

The UK tour they are about to undertake was initially announced in early 2020, with dates due that autumn. It was already billed as their last full UK tour, but is now also, unsurprisingly labelled: ‘In memory of Dave.’

Baz joined the Men in Black, as they are known, in 2000, and JJ had played alongside Dave for 45 years.

‘We thought in the initial stages when we lost Dave that we wouldn't carry on.

‘There was quite a bit of discussion about it. Bizarrely after he passed away, ticket sales went up – figure that one out. What the hell's happened there? One of the key members of the band has died, and all of a sudden people are buying tickets! For what reason, do not know.

‘It was a very emotional and trying time. I just couldn't believe it and sometimes I still can't.

‘He was in pretty good health considering his age – he was 71, and considering the rock'n'roll lifestyle he'd led, as a touring musician from the ’70s... actually from the ’60s when he did the airbases in Germany in his teens.

‘He was okay, a little bit arthritic in his fingers, particularly in his left hand, which isn't so good for such a tremendous keyboard player, which took its toll from time to time. But other than that, he was fine.

‘It's just one of those horrible things.’

‘The phone call between us when we got the news is something I don't ever care to go through again.

‘His widow is being tremendously supportive and is very much behind what we're doing, “Dave would have wanted this”, is what she kept saying.

‘When you're faced with these things, you'll take the encouragement from wherever you can. When it's from the widow of the guy who's gone, that can only be a good thing.’

They eventually decided to regroup and finish the album

‘That was our initial thrust, to finish the album off. We've all got studios at home, and the base studio is a remote studio in the countryside in Somerset, so between us, under the strangest of conditions we finished the album.’

The Guide interviewed Baz five years ago and reminds him that he was talking up a new Stranglers album even back then, to which the affable Mackem gives a chuckle.

‘Well, you're always writing as a musician – you keep everything,’ he says.

‘There's at least two tracks on the album which are nine or 10 years old, demos-wise. We do write quite a lot of strong material and you do have to be discerning. Some songs might not be particularly right for a certain time, so I, as the official keeper of all of the demos and minidiscs that we've done over the years since I joined, I trawl through them all of the time because there are nuggets and snippets in there. Just because they didn't get used at the time doesn't mean to say it's not valid.’

When he first had the new album in hand, Baz decided to give it the ‘car stereo’ test.

‘I think we all know it was going to be pretty strong, but when I took the delivery of CDs and albums from the record company, I thought, right, I'm going to wait for a journey – I live in Yorkshire, I'm 100 miles away from my mum and my kids – and I thought, right, I'll go up and see the family one afternoon. I'll put this on and play it from start to finish, uninterrupted, in my car with no distractions.

‘When you're making a record you get sick to death of it – you hear it 50 times a day when you're recording it. Your ears start to melt and you can't be objective.

‘So I waited a couple of months, got in the car, put it on and drove. I have to say, I smiled from ear-to-ear, and I had a little lump in my throat on occasion and got a bit dewy-eyed.

‘When I got to the north-east I was a bit washed out because of the experience of it.

‘If you take away the sentiment and the emotion behind it, it still stands up as a really good set of songs.

‘All in all, I don't think we could have gone any better. And then it went top five, which is the first Stranglers album to do that in 38 years.

‘Job done.’

It was also the first album without founding drummer Jet Black on it. Ill health forced Jet to share live drumming duties from 2013 until he quit playing live in 2015, and he officially left the band in 2018. He, however, remains crucial to The Stranglers.

Baz recalls Jet's final gigs with them.

‘I vivdly remember at the O2 in Liverpool which is a sweatbox, and when he came off after his numbers, his face was scarlet and he had to be helped down the stairs.

‘We were so hot we were all struggling, but Jet just overheated – they whisked him off and he didn't do any more gigs after that. It was too much.

‘You can look after yourself, you can go on a great diet, you can exercise, you can do all of the things that are recommended but you cannot beat old age.

‘He was still sitting behind the drums at 75 bashing the living daylights out of them behind a mighty rock band like ours. He doesn't grumble, he knows how lucky he's been.’

And they still talk ‘reasonably often.’

‘Jet and his partner live in a really remote part of Wales' says Baz, ‘so the outside world to them is through the internet, so they keep abreast and tabs on everything through that.

‘He passed the mantle on to Jim (Macaulay, the current drummer) 10 years ago, and he's always been there, he's like our talisman, a totem.

‘We still ring him up for advice, and he's always got something to say. It's always lovely to speak to him.’

Looking ahead to the long-awaited tour, which stretches to 17 dates, including two nights at Brixton Academy, Baz says: ‘It always was mooted as the last full-blown British tour, because they take their toll.

‘In years gone by we've done as many as 30 dates on a British tour. I'm a whippersnapper – I'm still in my late 50s, so I'm alright Jack! But I get home and I feel it too.

‘It's by no stretch of the imagination going to be the last ever British gig, but as for large tours, no, they're done now.’

While the band have plenty of hits, including 23 top 40 singles, from Peaches to Golden Brown, No More Heroes, and many more, they still like to shake-up the setlist.

‘We call it the black jukebox, and it's a very big jukebox to draw from. We've always tried to play unexpected stuff. Every tour has had two or three things in it where fans have gone: “Wow, I didn't know they still played that”, or “I haven't heard that in years!”

‘Plus there's some brand new stuff which a lot of people will want to see live. We will cover all the bases.’

And now that Covid restrictions are being lifted, the shows should be closer to 'normal’ than those warm-up shows in France.

‘Everyone was sitting down and everyone was wearing a mask,' recalls Baz. ‘You walk out on stage and everyone's sat down with a mask on so you're thinking, how do we create a vibe here?’ he laughs, and adds: ‘Without getting too heavily into it, I'm very much a vaxxer, and the people who are anti-vaxxers are just selfish, and spoiling a lot of this, but we'll not get into that.

‘I think everyone has a public duty to do it.’

The Stranglers play Portsmouth Guildhall on Monday, February 14, supported by Ruts DC. Doors 7pm. Tickets £38.23. Go to portsmouthguildhall.org.uk.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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