There may be a lack of agreement about how to spell his name -- credits appear just as often as Tim Hinkley and Tim Hinckley -- but there's a unified consensus that much of the British rock scene of the '70s and '80s would have been lost without him. Specifically, quite a few leaders would have turned around and found nobody on piano. "Hinckley Had a Vision" was a fairly popular bad-taste bumper sticker referring to another fellow with this surname who attempted to assassinate president Ronald Reagan; but in the British musician's case, the vision was to create a style of blues-based keyboard playing that could be adopted to suit the demands of a variety of groups, from mellow to hyper-drive. Tim Hinckley appears to have had great success in this effort, and by the mid-'70s was one of the most in-demand studio keyboard players on the British scene.

He can be found as a guest on a great number of records, playing in countless bands, some of which barely survived a debut album effort. But the groups he was in that enjoyed some longevity are among the best in a certain style of hard-hitting, entertaining British rock. These include Humble Pie, Thin Lizzy, and several combos fronted by guitar madman Alvin Lee and Bad Company, among others. He also was a member of lesser-known groups who have enjoyed a cult following over the years, such as the long-running Dr. Feelgood rhythm & blues band and Vinegar Joe, a 12-piece combo that was one of singer Robert Palmer's earliest gigs. Some of Hinckley's associations have drawn nothing but disgust from critics, on the other hand, including records with Whitesnake, the post-Deep Purple project of vocalist David Coverdale.

The keyboardist began to show up on sessions as early as 1964, when he recorded with an outfit called the Bo Runners, just as obscure a band as later session assignments such as Snafu and Boxer. The fine singer and songwriter Al Stewart enlisted Hinckley for his 1970 recordings after hearing him play in the group Jody Grind, which cut a pair of interesting albums in the late '60s.

By the mid-'70s, Hinckley's plate appeared to be as full as a deluxe Irish breakfast -- he was working with Lee, Humble Pie, Alexis Korner, and others. This was followed by several years and a stack of albums with Thin Lizzy, and appearances throughout the '80s and early '90s on rock of a progressively heavier nature. While the keyboardist's credits on albums are limited to sideman appearances, Hinckley did front a soul octet called Heart and Soul between from 1985 through 1987, mostly performing in England with occasional jumps into the European continent.

Despite the impression a listener might get from a Whitesnake album, Hinckley is a versatile musician who has also appeared on bass and guitar, including backing up Tim Buckley on bass during some of that artist's first British appearances. As a songwriting collaborator, Hinckley's most famous association is with Roger Chapman, with whom he wrote material for the In My Own Time album. Captain Goatcabin's Balancing Stallions has to be the most bizarre song title Hinckley ever came up with, featured on a collection of Steve Marriott and Humble Pie outtakes entitled The Scrubber Sessions. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi