But It Was Blues: What Would Nicky Hopkins Do? (Part 3)

 

In February-March 1965, Jimmy Page was producing a session for a singer named Andy Anderson. Jeff Beck was on guitar, Carlo Little was on drums, and engineering the session was a young upstart named Glyn Johns. On keyboards? Well, that was the problem. The piano player didn’t show up for the gig. So, Carlo Little rang his former bandmate, who’d recently returned home after 19 months convalescing at King Edward’s Hospital, where he underwent 14 operations, and was ultimately diagnosed — and possibly misdiagnosed — with Crohn’s disease. After nearly two years displaced from society, I’m guessing Nicky Hopkins didn’t need a ton of convincing to come down to the studio. It was just a matter of strength. Did he have the wherewithal to work a three hour session? Judging by the amount of ass he kicks on “LA Breakdown,” I think the answer was a resounding yes.

Immediate All Stars – LA Breakdown
Recorded February-March 1965
Released on Blues Anytime Vol. 3 – An Anthology Of British Blues, 1968
Discogs

Nicky Hopkins – piano
Jimmy Page – guitar, producer
Jon Mark – guitar
Cliff Barton – bass
Carlo Little – drums

When I undertook this project, discovering a song like “LA Breakdown” was exactly what I had in mind. I had no idea these sessions existed and Hopkins makes my big toe shoot up in my boot! It’s a blues/boogie woogie clinic. Jimmy Page’s guitar playing is fine, but he is totally upstaged by Hopkins, who’s higher in the mix for a reason. Frankly, it wouldn’t shock me if Nicky’s ivory flagrante caught Page a little flatfooted.

On a purely artistic level, Nicky Hopkins owns this song. However, it’s Page who is listed as songwriter on the five instrumental tracks ultimately released from this session — which you can see in the video’s screen grab. Jimmy Page knows he didn’t “write” any songs. They were head arrangements created on the spot. Friends and peers fucking around in the studio. But, because Page was under contract to Immediate Records, anything he recorded belonged to them. If these jams could be edited into tracks, those tracks would need songwriters, and Page was savvy enough to know that songwriters get royalty checks. These songs didn’t make anyone money, but for Hopkins it was a valuable lesson. Capitalism + prohibitive contract law + gangsterism = music industry economics.

Immediate All Stars – Piano Shuffle
Recorded February-March 1965
Released on Blues Anytime Vol. 3 – An Anthology Of British Blues, 1968
Discogs

Nicky Hopkins – piano
Jeff Beck – guitar
Jon Mark – guitar
Cliff Barton – bass
Carlo Little – drums
Jimmy Page – producer

Jimmy Page’s predatory business acumen aside, I can’t deny that I like his production here. He mostly stays out of the way and lets the musicians showcase their thing without bells, whistles, or whistling horror effects. The one negative section is here on “Piano Shuffle,” when Hopkins’ piano drops out from about :44-1:00. If that’s anyone’s fault it’s probably Johns, who was engineer. But, sometimes mics drop out or cables go dead. Who knows. Nicky comes back in at 1:00, just in time to hand the reins to Jeff Beck, who tears ass on a great solo. When Nicky comes back in hot at 1:51, right on Beck’s heels as he’s soloing out, it’s a thing of beauty. Again, a very strong, percussive sound that throws back to OGs like Albert Ammons or James P. Johnson.

Though these tracks wouldn’t see the light of day for 3 years, the fallout from this session was fairly, if you’ll pardon the pun, immediate. Nicky told writer Charlie Gillett in 1981 that because of this session, “He got an incredible amount of work, especially from Glyn, who introduced me to Shel Talmy. The next thing I did was about a month later and it was (The Who’s) ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.'”

 

APRIL 1965: THE WHO

I knew of Nicky from ‘Country Line Special,’ which I had once persuaded Roger to learn. We actually played that tune. Nicky fit in beautifully. It’s hard to explain how strange I found it to see someone write down chord names as I played them. I can do it myself now, but at the time I’d never seen anyone do it. As a result, Nicky learned tunes in minutes, without prepared chord charts or rehearsal. What he then did was immediately spontaneous. He didn’t look the part, but he played the blues. Maybe a bit too quickly, but it was blues.”
–Pete Townshend

If The Beatles congenially partnered with rock ‘n’ roll, The Who beat it up and held it for ransom. Here’s Keith Altham, former publicist for the band, explaining what it was like hearing The Who for the first time in 1964-65. “I arrived late and heard what sounded like someone sawing through an aluminium dustbin with a chainsaw (Pete Townshend) to the accompaniment of a drummer (Keith Moon) who was obviously in time with another group on another planet and the most deafening bass guitar (John Entwistle) in the world. The vocalist (Roger Daltry) was virtually inaudible amidst the cacophony.” That doesn’t sound like a guy describing ’50s-style rock ‘n’ roll group or even the rawest blues band. Whatever that insanity was, it was new. Given that the band was unusually constructed in having 3 lead instrumentalists, The Who essentially invented the power trio in a rock context.

The Who – Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
Recorded April 13–14, 1965
Single released May 21, 1965
Amazon

“Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” is the first proper Who song. It starts out like another Beach Boys homage, but then the bridge comes in and slowly builds into an experimental mushroom cloud that is clearly pointing toward “The Ox,” which we’ll get to momentarily. At :40, everything drops out, except Moonie, who plays a clipped riff. Hopkins comes in right after with a different clipped riff, a hypnotic melodic cluster that is reminiscent of Floyd Cramer or even (maybe especially?) Ray Charles. If you were a 20 year old blues and boogie woogie piano prodigy living in mid-’60s London, Ray had to be a given, right? It would be weird if any piano player, let alone Nicky Hopkins, was not a Ray Charles fan.

Dawson specifically cites “What I’d Say” as a source of inspiration (especially in purchasing an electric piano) and Long John Baldry, who sang with The R&B All-Stars when Nicky was in the band, said, “Cyril (Davies) was fairly loose in allowing people to spread their wings. As long as the material fell loosely into the blues format, he was quite happy. I did quite a few Ray Charles numbers, such as ‘Leave My Woman Alone’ and the old Hank Snow song, ‘I’m Movin’ On,’ so it didn’t all have to be Chicago and Muddy Waters.”

I like how Dawson describes the collaboration between Nicky Hopkins and The Who:

(Nicky’s) subtle comping fattens up Townshend’s chords, while his bluesy Johnnie Johnson/Floyd Cramer style riffing in the upper register provides a miraculous middle ground between Keith Moon’s thrashing drums, the stop-start sparseness of the slashing guitar accents, and John Entwistle’s rumbling bass. When present, the piano is generally placed lower in the mix than the electric guitar, but by jumping from mid-range to the higher registers and occasionally moving from riffs to solid chords, Nicky helps build the intensity of several tracks in a dramatic fashion.
–Julian Dawson, And on Piano …Nicky Hopkins: The Extraordinary Life of Rock’s Greatest Session Man, p. 75

To wit …

The Who – The Ox
Recorded October 12-13, 1965
Released on My Generation, December 3, 1965 (UK), April 25, 1966 (US)
Amazon

If I had to pick the first Martian rock song, that moment where something new, primal, expansive, and heavy was happening that was not just different from Elvis and Chuck Berry and the vocabulary of ’50s music, but beyond even “She Loves You” and “Satisfaction” — both released earlier that summer — I’d go with “The Ox.” Found on The Who’s first album, My Generation (1965), it’s loosely based on The Surfaris 1963 single, “Waikiki Run.” When I say “loosely based,” I mean that “The Ox” is a surf song filtered through the arrangement of “What I’d Say” (again the song rears its influence) and then shot up into outer fucking space. This is the gateway to Roger The Engineer, Axis: Bold As Love, White Light/White Heat, Kick Out The Jams, and a thousand other records. I actually discussed this track a decade ago in The Bo Diddley Legacy – Part 2 of 2, seeing The Who as descendants of Bo’s rhythm-centric guitar attack.

According to Nicky, “‘(The Ox)’ was just a one-off. There were 5 minutes left at the end of one session and Shel just said, ‘OK boys, play!’ I wish we’d had time to redo it, actually. I had no idea they were going to break and didn’t know if I was supposed to keep playing or what.” The song was named after their bassist, but even he admitted that the song “really epitomized Keith.” Moon’s frenetic drumming is remarkable, but Hopkins’ piano trills are vital to the sonic assault. Again, this feels like mutant (in a great way) Floyd Cramer. He has a brilliantly percussive 4-bar solo from 1:30-1:49 and carries the song virtually alone from 1:55-2:01. “The Ox” simply isn’t “The Ox” without his piano and unlike the Page session, Hopkins is rewarded for his efforts. He’s listed as co-songwriter, along with Entwistle, Moon, and Townshend.

The Who – A Legal Matter
Recorded October 12-13, 1965
Released on My Generation, December 3, 1965 (UK), April 25, 1966 (US)
Amazon

My Generation has a few other tracks where the piano figures prominently: “A Legal Matter,” “La-La Lies,” and “It’s Not True,” e.g. “A Legal Matter” stands out not only because Townshend sings, but relative to this discussion, I feel like the piano holds things together a smidge more than the others. Again, the familiar, high Hopkins trills float in the air, totally in sync with (and critical to) the arrangement. Not essential Who, but “Legal Matter” is a fun song.

Ironically, it was legal matters that kept Nicky out of The Who loop for the better part of 6 years, when the band essentially broke up with Talmy and Hopkins was a casualty of that severed relationship. They hooked up again when Hopkins joined them for the Who’s Next sessions.

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1965: THE KINKS

(Nicky) was very friendly and very quiet. I think that’s why he worked so well with other musicians because he blended in and you always knew he’d get it right in a couple takes.”
–Ray Davies

In October, Hopkins sat in on his first recording session with The Kinks. They were there to cut tracks for The Kink Kontroversy, their third LP. “I’ll Remember” is the one exception. That track was actually held back until the follow-up LP, Face To Face (released October 1966). I mostly agree with Dawson, who says, “Talmy again used Nicky’s piano mostly to boost the rhythm section, but mixed it even lower than on My Generation.” I think the piano is a little buried, but he jumps out on a few occasions. For the record, my favorite song on Kontroversy is “You Can’t Win,” which features Hopkins, but his part isn’t quite as integral as they are on the songs selected below.

Kinks – Gotta Get The First Plane Home
Recorded October 25-26, November 3-4, 1965
Released on The Kink Kontroversy, November 26, 1965 (UK), March 30, 1966 (US)
Amazon

“Gotta Get The First Plane Home” is the third track on The Kink Kontroversy, but the first featuring Hopkins. He comes in at :26 with those distinctive trills and is easily the best thing about a pretty good song. Love Dave’s guitar playing normally, but this riff kinda kills the momentum for me. I do like that Nicky is on fire, session drummer Clem Cattini‘s tom-heavy drums are a nice rhythmic touch, and Ray Davies’ harmonica is surprisingly effective. You can tell the song kinda wants to be “Ticket To Ride,” but it doesn’t have a melodic hook to hang on nor does it divebomb into apocalypse like The Who.

Ray was such a brilliantly evocative songwriter, a guy who could take on the dying vestige of the British Empire (which is to say, the idea of the British Empire, what it means versus what it’s supposed to mean) and have that long arc of history embodied in a plain simple man in a plain simple working class position. However, “Gotta Get The First Plane Home” is more of a sketch than a portrait. Some of the parts are better than the sum of the parts. I think in 1965-66, Ray Davies was a better song writer than album writer. The Kink Kontroversy and Face To Face are good LPs, but they both have dead spots.

Taken individually, the best singles and album tracks from this period can stand with the best Kinks material of ANY period (“A Well Respected Man,” “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion,” “Where Have All The Good Times Gone,” “Sunny Afternoon,” and “Dead End Street,” e.g.). However, Ray knew his songwriting focus wasn’t laser-sharp. He later admitted as much, saying in the liner notes to Castle’s 1998 reissue of The Kink Kontroversy, “I was world weary. I really did feel that the good times had gone. We’d had the hit singles and then we’d been sucked into the mad schedule of touring and recording. People were saying that I’d lost my touch as a writer, that we didn’t sound the same anymore.”

 

Cattini’s presence is noteworthy for another reason. It timestamps the end of the period when Shel Talmy had enough power to tell Ray Davies who and/or what was gonna appear on a Kinks song. From here on out, Ray would assert complete control over the band. If you see it from Hopkins’ perspective, though, Cattini represented the future. Were he healthy enough to tour, there’s a pretty good chance Nicky Hopkins would’ve become a Kink. However, because his health made Kinkdom a non-starter, Hopkins took the Cattini session man approach. In fact, he ended up playing hundreds of sessions with the drummer over the course of the decade.

Nicky gets two solos on The Kink Kontroversy and I couldn’t decide which one to feature because they’re almost the same length and begin at almost the same point in each song. However, the two solos are quite different because the two songs represent opposite sides of Ray’s songwriting personality.

Kinks – I’m On An Island
Recorded October 25-26, November 3-4, 1965
Released on , November 26, 1965 (UK), March 30, 1966 (US)
Amazon

https://youtu.be/kCEmR7JRoHk

“I’m On An Island” is about as far from gutbucket R&B as you can get. If anything, it points toward the music hall steampunk of 1968’s Village Green Preservation Society, albeit with a pseudo-calpyso flair. Hopkins has a 4-bar solo from 1:16-1:31 and if his playing on the other songs echoed musicians like Floyd Cramer and Ray Charles, his delicate adornments on “I”m On An Island” betray his classical training.

Kinks – It’s Too Late (starts at solo)
Recorded October 25-26, November 3-4, 1965
Released on The Kink Kontroversy, November 26, 1965 (UK), March 30, 1966 (US)
Amazon

When Kinks obsessives discuss the band, it doesn’t take long for us to get to their classic 1967-72 run beginning with “Waterloo Sunset” and ending with Muswell Hillbillies — though I might extend the run to include 1972’s half-studio/half-live Everybody’s In Show-Biz. Because of the sustained greatness of that run, it’s easy to forget they were raw R&B enthusiasts at their outset and “It’s Too Late” (like “Milk Cow Blues”) was a product of that origin story. This would be The Kinks’ last foray into 12-bar blues until “Last Of The Steam-Powered Trains” from Village Green. It’s another of Kontroversy’s good, not great tracks, and again Nicky is probably the best thing about it, with a hammering 4-bar solo from 1:14-1:31. In my opinion, “It’s Too Late” could’ve used a killer guitar solo, like the Beck/Page yin to Hopkins’ yang from the Immediate sessions.

Kinks – Sittin’ On My Sofa
B-side to “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion”
Recorded December 29-30, 1965
Single released February 25, 1966 (UK), April 27, 1966 (US)
Amazon

My favorite 1965 collaboration between Nicky Hopkins and The Kinks is this obscure gem. “Sittin’ On My Sofa” was the B-side to “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion” and to my ears is better than half of TKK at least. Pete Quaife’s swooping bassline directly anticipates Paul McCartney’s adventurous bass workouts of 1966 (“Paperback Writer,” “Rain,” “Taxman”), so as he sweeps the low end, the drums a beat behind, and the guitars and vocals carrying the mid-range, Hopkins is all alone up top in Ira Louvin territory. The Kinks don’t have a ton of underrated songs, but “Sittin’ On My Sofa” is one of them. The song was originally credited solely to Ray, but at some point it became a rare Ray/Dave co-write.

As 1965 turned into 1966, Nicky Hopkins’ career was in full flight. He was a first call session player, he had a couple rock bands on his resume that other musicians would kill for, all that was missing was a solo album. Did he have it in him?

NEXT TIME

The Revolutionary Piano of Nicky Hopkins (WWNHD: Part 4)

PREVIOUSLY ON HILL STREET BLUES

Diamond Tiaras: What Would Nicky Hopkins Do? (Part 2)
WWNHD: What Would Nicky Hopkins Do? (Part 1)