J Paul Johnson
The bluesy electric piano solo on The Beatles’ “Revolution.” The pounding chords and jazzy improvisations on The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” or the sprightly, charmingly wobbly riff that opens their “She’s a Rainbow.” The descending run on The Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon.” All played by the same “session man”: the slight, classically trained, infinitely inventive, and always-in-demand Nicky Hopkins, the subject of a new documentary—The Session Man—available this week on Prime Video and other streaming services. Hopkins never knew when he started playing on recording sessions for The Who, The Rolling Stones, and The Kinks that he was making music that would last for more than half a century.
And yet, he was doing just that, lending his talent and likability to many of the era’s greatest bands and songs. His Crohn’s disease largely kept him from joining tours, but demand for his talents didn’t wane in the 1970s. There he was again, all over the airwaves, practically unadorned on Joe Cocker’s ballad “You Are So Beautiful.” Those big chords on Ringo Starr’s “Photograph“? The high notes on John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy“? The tinkling melodies on George Harrison’s “Give Me Love“? All Nicky. (He’d join Paul for his 1989 Flowers in the Dirt for an ex-Beatle quadrifecta.) There’s the lovely, lilting arpeggios on The Who’s “They Are All in Love,” and so many more: Steve Miller’s “The Joker,” The Stones’ “Angie” and “Waiting on a Friend,” to name a few.
Nicky Hopkins was indeed “The Session Man.” He, in fact, is largely responsible for changing how the keyboard was used in rock-and-roll, making it more integral to its melodies and rhythms than ever before. His quiet demeanor and delicate constitution made him something of an odd fit with the hard-partying rockers of the 1960s and 1970s, but even a cursory listen to the playlist above makes clear both his talent and his impact. Having played on so, so many of the era’s greatest songs: can anything similar be said of anyone? His is an astounding accomplishment, a story well worth telling.
The documentary The Session Man, directed and co-produced by Mike Treen, tells Hopkins’ story largely with a nonstop parade of interviews and narration. The subjects make for an impressive list of rock royalty, including many of Hopkins’ collaborators: Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Peter Frampton, Dave Davies, Pete Townshend, Graham Parker, Joe Cocker, producers Glyn Johns and Shel Talmy, Benmont Tench, Hopkins’ widow Moira, and at least another 25 on-screen commenters. Some (sorry, Harry Shearer) seem less than essential. The interviews are of widely varying quality. Some were recorded in the studio, some on Zoom, out of necessity, obviously, given the limitations of budget and the pandemic, but some of the studio interviews suffer from shaky camerawork (I wondered if whoever was holding the stabbing, wobbling camera on Keith Richards had a case of nerves—I might!), odd lighting, fake backgrounds, and jump cuts.
That Treen and his collaborators secured rights to include many of the songs listed above is impressive. One won’t come away from The Session Man having heard them much, though, in full or in part, because the approach to editing seems to necessitate that someone is always talking over the music and that the music—Nicky Hopkins’ blissful, varied, delightful playing—is almost never fully heard in the film. There is, of course, the problem that as a session man and not a featured player or full-time band member, Hopkins was rarely on camera. There’s a little snippet of him tucked away in a cubicle as the Stones record “Sympathy for the Devil,” but nothing else from the 1960s. In the 1970s, there’s a few seconds of him onstage with Graham Parker (who first suggested the film) and Quicksilver Messenger Service. But sadly, there exists precious little footage, and really only even a few photographs, of Hopkins doing what he did so frequently and so, so well.
In Hopkins’ stead—he passed away in 1994, at age 50, from complications following intestinal surgery related to his Crohn’s disease—Treen enlists Chuck Leavell, Paddy Milner, and Morgan Fisher to recreate some of his signature phrasings. That’s a maneuver that works especially well, putting Hopkins’ musical contributions on full display. There’s also a fair amount of footage re-presented from a 1991 televised interview with Hopkins himself. Even when recording solo albums, Hopkins largely shunned the spotlight. That he did so makes him a fascinating subject but a challenging one for a documentary project like this.
The Session Man is one of those cases where the filmmakers’ ambitions and intentions are more than honorable and the subject’s a story worth telling. At the same time, the fact that Hopkins was almost never recorded on video and his significant contributions to rock music so complex and varied makes them a challenge to portray in a documentary. To feature some 40-odd interviewees talking about his talents for 90 minutes is one approach, but it invites the kind of visual and aural inconsistency that pocks this project as a filmic experience; further, it crowds out the music itself, leaving little room for its display. That’s something the best rock docs never do. Having played on all the above songs and some 250 or more albums, Nicky Hopkins was, without doubt, “The Session Man”; The Session Man, the film, tells so but struggles to let us see—and more importantly hear—that fact. Fortunately, we still have, some sixty years on, the music itself.
