Chris Tsangarides, a producer who has worked with hard rock and metal acts including Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Gary Moore and Thin Lizzy, has died. He was 61.

“It is with complete and utter sadness that I need to tell you all that our beloved father and my mums best friend Chris Tsangarides passed away peacefully last night after another brave battle with pneumonia as well as heart failure,” his daughter Anastasia wrote on her unverified Facebook page. “We really are appreciating your messages of love and kindness but we are struggling to reply to them. With all our love and thanks from us all. Jane, Theo, Louis, Paris, Samantha and Casey. We’re gonna miss you everyday of our lives xxxxxxxxx.”

Friends are posting condolence messages on his Facebook page, and Neil Murray, a bassist who has worked with Brian May and Peter Green, remembered him as “a lovely man and very talented. Sadly missed by all who knew him, I’m sure.”

Trained on trumpet and piano at the Royal Academy of Music, Tsangarides began working at London’s Morgan Studios in the mid-’70s, earning his first engineering credit on Judas Priest’s Sad Wings of Destiny in 1976. He continued to move through the ranks, elevating to the role of producer a few years later with Gary Moore’s Back on the Streets, which featured the U.K. hit “Parisienne Walkways.” Phil Lynott’s involvement as vocalist on that track led to him co-producing the last two studio albums Thin Lizzy released, Renegade and Thunder and Lightning.
Throughout the ’80s, he became an in-demand metal producer, working with Anvil, Anthem, Y&T, Helloween and King Diamond. He was one of three men to helm Black Sabbath’s The Eternal Idol, and also produced Judas Priest’s Painkiller and Bruce Dickinson’s solo bow, Tattooed Millionaire.

But he wasn’t restricted to heavy rock. He remixed Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again” in 1987 and produced Concrete Blonde’s Goth-influenced Bloodletting, which featured the Top 20 hit “Joey.”