Does anybody under forty even know who Nicky Hopkins is/was?
But for those who do...
When was the last time you saw Shel Talmy on film?
And the man with the most gravitas is...Bill Wyman?
Oh, Mick and Keith are here too, and they wax rhapsodic, but they were all there...
Actually, it was at the Marquee Club where the Stones first encountered Nicky. Who dedicated followers of liner notes will be very familiar with (and Dave Davies is in this flick too!)
Nicky Hopkins was the ultimate session man. Billy Preston gets all the credit for being the fifth Beatle, and I don't want to take anything away from the man whose career went 'round in circles, but the A#1 session man of the classic rock era was Nicky Hopkins.
Who is not in this film much, but when he is... He's completely different from your image of the man. He's soft-spoken, anything but dark and far from intimidating. He comes across as nothing so much as...A MUSICIAN!
And they recite the history, some known, some unknown, but the essence of the film is the legendary heads talking about the work Nicky did. And when the piano player reproduces Nicky's licks...a smile comes to your face. And when there is talk of and ultimately the playing of the intro to "Monkey Man"...I got shivers, and a grin formed on my face. That iconic riff. That had nothing to do with the Glimmer Twins, that was pure Nicky.
And I bought "The Tin Man Was a Dreamer," Nicky's one and only solo album, which had a great version of "Edward," which was listed as "Edward (The Mad Shirt Grinder)" in its original incarnation at the end of the Quicksilver album "Shady Grove."
And I didn't know that Nicky was so close to John Cippolina. And there's a great delineation of the cross-pollinated San Francisco scene of the day, with Cippolina's sister and Jorma and Jack, but I could never quite fathom how Nicky went from sideman to band member.
The money. The work. You don't get royalties as a sideman.
Or as Steve Lukather has told me a number of times... An older studio cat told him that although he was the top gunslinger today, fashion always changes, he needed to find his own thing, and then Luke and his Valley buddies formed Toto.
Nicky moves back to England and is happy, but has to relocate back to L.A. to work. And I always wondered how he ended up in Nashville, but it turns out the '94 Northridge earthquake was the last straw.
This is not a Hollywood biopic, like they made for Queen and Elton John. This is a documentary...documenting the story, an important story, so it won't be forgotten.
I mean the licks live on...
But in these days of synthesizers and hard drives, never mind AI, people seem to forget that there are real people behind the music, and all this stuff cut back then was the beneficiary of some studio breakthroughs, but was ultimately handmade.
And I'd recommend you watch "The Session Man," but so far there's no distribution.
This ain't music. Which can cost almost nothing to make and nothing to distribute. Sure, you can make a movie on your iPhone, but if you want talking heads, never mind music rights, you're going to spend a few bucks. And it's always hard to find those bucks.
And some of these films are so low budget as to be questionable uses of your time, but the Hopkins film is something better. Sure, it's hagiography, but you know each and every one of the talking heads, from Chris Kimsey to Greg Phillinganes, another session man, and it's a treat to see and hear the musings of P.P. Arnold, who had little presence in the U.S. market and who many people might think has passed.
"The Session Man" is a link in your education. It fills holes in your mental history of rock and roll. Which revolutionized society, impacted a an entire generation, music was the coolest medium, it drove the culture and Nicky was there, not on the periphery, but audible on some of your favorite records.
But Amazon and Netflix, et al, have cut back on buying this stuff. Amazon won't even let you distribute it pay-per-view. Yes, Amazon used to take everything, not anymore. So you can make it, but...
As I always say, distribution is king. If you can't see it, it doesn't matter how good it is.
If your eyes light up when you hear the name "Nicky Hopkins" you'll want to see this movie. It is not a revelation, but you're taken inside the gold mine, you get a fuller understanding of who the man was.
But for now, "The Session Man" plays festivals... Used to be music docs were rare, you even paid to see them in a theatre, now there's a plethora, seemingly every act of yore has one.
Many of those acts are forgettable.
But not Nicky Hopkins.
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