The haunting intro on the Rolling Stones‘ “Monkey Man,” the galloping keyboard solo on the Beatles‘ “Revolution,” the piano that anchors the Who‘s “The Song Is Over,” and countless other indelible classic-rock moments were all the work of one man: session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins. A classically trained player from Middlesex, England, who somehow also played like he had been raised in churches in the American South, Hopkins performed on nearly every Stones album from 1967 to 1981, was a founding member of the Jeff Beck Group, and played on solo albums by all four Beatles, among many other accomplishments. All of that and more is captured in a new documentary, The Session Man, which is set for digital release Nov. 5 on Amazon Prime and other platforms.
For director Mike Treen, a longtime TV producer, the film was a pure labor of love. “For all my years in the business, this is the one that I’m really proudest of,” he says. But getting funding for a film about a behind-the-scenes player, however prominent, wasn’t easy. “The hard bit for us is the distributors, the platforms,” he says. “They want films about Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger. So when you mention Nicky Hopkins, they go, ‘Well, he’s not a name.’ And you go, ‘But that is the point!’ So that’s why it’s taken us five years.”
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It was easier to get the rock stars Hopkins helped out in the studio to participate: The film features interviews with Richards, Jagger, Pete Townshend, Peter Frampton, Bill Wyman, and Dave Davies, among others. As they help explain, Hopkins’ life was in part defined by a battle with Crohn’s disease that nearly killed him as a young man, and made touring difficult. So he settled in the recording studio for a decades-long run.
Hopkins did make an attempt at solo stardom, encouraged by his ambitious first wife, but it was never a natural fit. On 1973’s The Tin Man Was a Dreamer, he sang for the first time, and got musical assistance from George Harrison and Mick Taylor. “I think he was honest enough with himself to know that that’s not what he was,” says Treen. “But he let people persuade him and said, OK, I’ll give it a go.”
