A hero of the piano, Nicky Hopkins played on over 250 albums during his career. Helping to craft classic songs by the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Kinks, the Who, Jeff Beck Group, Steve Miller Band, and Jefferson Airplane, Hopkins was one of the most in-demand session musicians in rock & roll for more than three decades. Hopkins’ playing transcended genre: From the locomotive boogie-woogie and blues of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis to the virtuosic expressiveness of Rachmaninoff, Hopkins was known for finding the “magical spaces between the guitars that would wind up filling out the song.”

Hopkins was only 16 in 1960, when he left the London Academy of Music to begin performing professionally with Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. Hopkins’ formal training made him an asset as a session musician to legendary producers like Shel Talmy (Who, Kinks), Andrew Loog Oldham (Rolling Stones), and George Martin (Beatles).

After providing keyboards on early Kinks and Who albums, Hopkins’ big break came in 1967 when he began working with the Rolling Stones on Their Satanic Majesties Request, a relationship that continued through 1981’s Tattoo You.  Having declined an offer to join Led Zeppelin (then, the New Yardbirds), Hopkins did join several other bands, including the Jeff Beck Group (1968-1969), Quicksilver Messenger Service (1969-1970), and Jerry Garcia Band (1975). Most notably, Hopkins played with Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock in 1969 and on the Rolling Stones’ legendary 1972 North American tour.

Although chronic health issues led to Hopkins’ early death at age 50 in 1994, his career discography was expansive. From collaborations with everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Zappa, Hopkins’ influence on the music of the 1960s London scene and the West Coast American scene of the 1970s is unmistakable.  Hopkins’ piano shaped the sound of the era and still reverberates today on essential songs like the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers,” Jeff Beck’s “Beck’s Bolero,” and Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful.”