Back Door

In an era when imposing bass virtuosos dominated the landscape, Back Door emerged as the most formidable. The jazz-rock trio came together in 1971 with Colin Hodgkinson on bass and vocals, Ron Aspery on keyboards and sax, and Tony Hicks on drums; Adrian Tilbrook later assumed the drum chair.

The ensemble’s defining trait lay in Hodgkinson’s command of the bass. While earlier players such as Chris Squire, John Entwistle, and Jack Bruce had tested the instrument’s capacity for lead lines, they remained constrained by ensembles that assigned primary melodic roles to guitar or keyboards. Hodgkinson removed those instruments completely, elevating the bass to sole lead status and strumming chords across its strings exactly as one would on a six-string guitar.

Bands that followed, among them Ruins and Sadhappy, accepted the same gauntlet, yet many of Back Door’s accomplishments have stayed unmatched.

The group released four albums on Warner from 1973 through 1976 and toured alongside Emerson, Lake & Palmer; drummer Carl Palmer produced their final album, Activate (1976), before the trio disbanded in 1977.

Hodgkinson went on to perform with Jan Hammer, Alexis Korner, and the Spencer Davis Group, and he served as bassist on the U.K. edition of Whitesnake’s commercially dominant Slide It In. After relocating to Germany he recorded for the Inakustik label with both the Electric Blues Duo and the Spencer Davis Group.