his friend Steve Demetri asked him if he was willing to switch from guitar to bass. The reason for this was that his band Stallion needed a bass player. Kinch agreed to try this and actually stayed with the bass as his instrument. In 1974 he was poached by Andy Qunta (who later became successful with the band Icehouse, among others), Tony Qunta and Lol Cooksey, with whom he formed the band Factory. Kinch accepted the band's offer partly because it could offer him far more gigs than Stallion. In the following period, Factory played in all parts of the United Kingdom. At some point in 1977/78, Factory broke up. However, Andy and Tony Qunta subsequently continued to play with Kinch in the formation Head On, which attempted to implement more sophisticated music. In the emerging punk era, however, this was not very hip and Head On turned out to be a short-lived project. In 1980 Kinch got the opportunity to audition for and subsequently join the band of singer and actress Hazel O'Connor through Andy Qunta as well as saxophonist Wesley Magoogan, both of whom, like Kinch, were from his birthplace of Hastings. This engagement ended after several tours and television appearances, an album and several hit singles. After trying to realize different projects, in 1984 he was hired by Jim Capaldi for his band. However, Kinch completed only a few performances with the band, a planned three-month U.S. tour was canceled at short notice. Kinch however did work with Capaldi later again for his final album Poor Boy Blue. Then in 1985, again through Andy Qunta, Kinch got the chance to audition for the open position of bassist with Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Qunta, who had written the song Tribal Statistics for the 1982 Earth Band album Somewhere in Afrika, took over Manfred Mann's keyboards for this audition, apparently so that Mann could better concentrate on the auditioning bassists. But this also put Qunta in a position to give Kinch valuable hints and details about the songs being played. Kinch successfully survived the audition and joined the Earth Band as a permanent member in summer of 1985. At that time, part of the following album Criminal Tango had already been recorded. Kinch therefore shared the bass parts on this album with bassists Durban Betancourt-Laverde and John Giblin. The launch of the Criminal Tango tour on March 24, 1986