Nicky Hopkins
Steve Miller Band - Baby’s House
After two
more US tours, Jeff Beck disbanded his band just before they were to play at
the Woodstock festival, something he regrets now. By this time, Hopkins had
already moved to Mill Valley, California, and started playing with local acts.
He performed on two albums by the Steve Miller Band: June 1969’s Brave New World, on the track Kow Kow,
and November 1969’s Your Saving Grace,
on the tracks Baby’s House, co-written by Miller and Hopkins, and Feel So Glad.
Another famous guest on Brave New World was Paul McCartney, using the alias
Paul Ramon to play bass and drums on My Dark Hour.
|
Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers (live)
Hopkins
also played on the seminal Jefferson Airplane album Volunteers, recorded in April 1969, adding piano to We Can Be
Together, Hey Frederick, Wooden Ships, A Song For All Seasons and the title
track. With the Airplane, he also managed to play at Woodstock after all. The
stand out track from this performance was probably Volunteers, which provided
Woodstock with another officious anthem. The Volunteers album was released in November.
|
Quicksilver Messenger Service - Edward (The Mad Shirt Grinder)
Nicky
Hopkins played some of his best music as a member of San Francisco psychedelic
rockers Quicksilver Messenger Service, where he initially replaced founding
guitarist Gary Duncan and added a honky-tonk edge to the acid blues jams. With
guitarist John Cipollina, bassist David Freiberg and drummer Greg Elmore, he
recorded the Shady Grove album
between July and September 1969. Hopkins shone especially on the album’s title
track, an electric psychedelic version of the popular folk song, and on Edward
(The Mad Shirt Grinder), essentially a duel between Hopkins and Cipollina.
|
Hopkins later rerecorded a shortened version of the song with George Harrison on lead guitar for his solo album The Tin Man Was A Dreamer.
Quicksilver Messenger Service - Spindrifter
In May and
June 1970, Quicksilver Messenger Service cut enough material to release two
albums, Just For Love in August and What About Me in December. They saw the
return of original member Dino Valenti, who wrote most of the songs, and of
Gary Duncan. Just For Love provided
the band with their biggest hit in Fresh Air, which reached number 49. Hopkins
wrote Spindrifter and recorded it with the band just before he left them to
resume his session activities.
|
The Who - The Song Is Over
John Lennon - Jealous Guy
Nicky
played, sometimes uncredited, on John Lennon’s second album Imagine, recorded in February and June
1971. These cuts include the album’s title song, Crippled Inside, Jealous Guy, How
Do You Sleep? and Oh Yoko, mostly with Klaus Voorman and Jim Keltner as rhythm
section. There is a very poignant scene in the Imagine documentary in which John Lennon demonstrates to Nicky the
piano notes for Imagine and asks him to double-up on his piano playing to give
it a fuller sound. Nicky also added piano to the Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
single and on the Walls And Bridges
album.
|
George Harrison - Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
May 1973
saw the release of Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth), George Harrison’s
second number one hit, featuring Nicky Hopkins on piano, Spooky Tooth’s Gary
Wright on organ and Voorman and Keltner as a rhythm section. The same small
group of musicians would also play on the rest of Harrison’s Living In The Material World album.
|
Nicky Hopkins - Speed On
In late
1972 and early 1973, between sessions for Living
In The Material World and the Stones’ Goats
Head Soup, Nicky Hopkins recorded his second solo album, The Tin Man Was A Dreamer. Featuring ten
tracks, half of them co-written by singer Jerry Williams, better known as Swamp
Dogg, it has George Harrison, Mick Taylor, Chris Spedding and Chris Rea on
guitar, Klaus Voorman on bass, Bobby Keys on saxophone and Ray Cooper and
Prairie Prince on drums and percussion. Three singles, all of them featuring
George Harrison, were released: Speed On, with Taylor and a horn section,
Banana Ann and Waiting For The Band.
|
Ringo Starr - Photograph
For the
recording of Ringo Starr’s Ringo
album, between March and July 1973, Hopkins joined the all-star cast that
played on the album, including Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Garth
Hudson from The Band, Marc Bolan, Steve Cropper, Stephen Stills, Bobby Keys,
Billy Preston, Jack Nitzsche, Klaus Voorman, Jim Keltner plus Starr’s three former
Beatles colleagues. Nicky plays piano on the number one hits Photograph, written
by Ringo and George Harrison, and You’re Sixteen, a Johnny Burnette cover, as
well as on the album tracks Step Lightly and You And Me (Babe). Ringo was released in November 1973.
|
Joe Cocker - You Are So Beautiful
You Are So
Beautiful was written by session keyboard player Billy Preston and Beach Boy
Dennis Wilson at a party and first released on Preston’s album The Kids &
Me. It was then rearranged by producer (and Stones associate) Jim Price, who
had Joe Cocker record it and release it in August 1974. As Peter Frampton once
said: “Every time I hear Joe Cocker’s You Are So Beautiful I want to cry before
Joe’s even come in. People try to emulate that piano piece, but there’s only one
person could have played that - Nicky Hopkins.”
|
The Who & Tina Turner - Acid Queen
The Who - See Me Feel Me / Listening To You
The Who - See Me Feel Me / Listening To You
Nicky’s
last big session work was for the movie soundtrack of The Who’s Tommy, released in March 1975. He was
one of the session players appearing on the album, performing alongside some of
his best friends on tracks such as Amazing Journey (with Pete Townshend, Phil
Chen and Tony Newman), Acid Queen (with Tina Turner, Ronnie Wood, John
Entwistle and Kenney Jones), We’re Not Gonna Take It (sung by Roger Daltrey)
and the epic closing song See Me Feel Me / Listening To You (with Chris Stanton
on organ and The Who). That same year, Pete Townshend made use of his services
again for The Who By Numbers, with
Nicky appearing on Slip Kid, Imagine A Man, Success Story, They Are All In Love
and In A Hand Or A Face.
|
Up to his
death, on September 6, 1994, Hopkins played on albums by artists such as Tim Hardin
(Unforgiven), Scientology founder L.
Ron Hubbard, Paul McCartney (Flowers In
The Dirt), the Jayhawks (Hollywood
Town Hall) and Joe Walsh (A Future To
This Life).