Nicky Hopkins documentary

[ColinB]

Interesting read about an upcoming documentary on the piano player Nicky Hopkins. I think I only ever saw him once when he joined Sky for one of their tours in the mid 80s. Like so many session musicians he often got a raw deal when it came to songwriting credits.

In an interview for the documentary, “Keith Richards almost admitted that Nicky was responsible for a lot of Stones’ songs,” Treen said. Even so, all those pieces were credited to Jagger/Richards. When Dawson pressed Richards about that point for his book, he said the guitarist shrugged and said: “Well, that’s the Stones for you.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/nov/06/nicky-hopkins-pianist-rolling-stones-who-beatles

[davidmjs]

Never knew he played with Sky.  Cripes.  A job's a job, I guess...

[Shane (Skirky)]

I saw that this morning. One might hope that if you'd played on Revolution you might have made more than £6.50 out of it.  

[ColinB]

I seem to remember from reading Herbie Flowers' obituaries that he was often just paid the standard rate for songs that went on to be mega-hits. Such is the life of the session musician.

With Nicky Hopkins, session work was his only option much of the time due to his health issues. I suppose there were similarities with Rick Wakeman who also studied classical music. I read that with Rick it got to the point where his tutor was aware of how much session work he was doing and told him he may as well abandon his studies as he was making a good enough living playing sessions.