“I live within the concept of time. We all live within it, within its restrictions. It’s an important thing: it’s the only thing we’ve all got while we’re still alive. So we have to make the most of it,” Dave Greenslade told this scribe last year, and now one of the most brilliant British keyboard players has left our mortal coil. He might be forever associated with COLOSSEUM and GREENSLADE, but there was much to the veteran’s oeuvre, even though Dave never let neither conceptual thinking nor creative successes get in the way of his personality, and Greenslade remained soft-spoken and good-humored to the very end.
Dave was the main driver behind such classics as "The Valentyne Suite" by the first of the aforementioned ensembles, one he helped form, and “Pilgrim’s Progress” by the second, one he led and lent his name to. Yet Greenslade’s cinematic vision also resulted in his composing music for screen, including the soundtrack to the “Curriculee Curricula” where Chris Farlowe and Sonja Kristina starred, and, on the “From The Discworld” books that Sir Terry Pratchett asked him to illustrate musically. Still, for all such achievements, Dave was a wonderful human being, fondly remembered by everyone who’s ever been in touch with him. Greenslade retired in 2021 and was replaced in COLOSSEUM by Nick Steed, but continued to record and has been working on a second album in collaboration with Dave Thomas of BLONDE ON BLONDE – a project which, apparently, didn’t come to fruition. Now, Dave Greenslade followed Dick Heckstall-Smith and Jon Hiseman to the great gig in the sky. Farewell, my friend.
