We’re often in The Nags Head towards the end of the week where they have live music and one staple of the scene is a man called Dave, a proud Birmingham City FC fan who performs solo on stage banging out tunes on his Hammond organ. In his repertoire is just about every hit you’d ever want to hear….. but just not on a Hammond organ. But in fairness he gives it his all trying to replicate the atmosphere of classic stage performances. Hard to imagine when Dave is bald, hugely overweight and doesn’t have his own teeth but in fairness you’ve not heard anything til you’ve seen a bald brummie banging out Purple Haze on a Hammond organ trying to replicate Jimmy Hendrix playing the song with his teeth by taking out his own dentures and smashing them on the keyboard. We’ve not seen him perform for years likely to be because in a bid to replicate the famed musician setting light to is guitar on stage he took his Hendrix tribute act to the extreme by pouring lighter fuel on the organ and setting it alight to succeed only in razing the pub to the ground. A Purple Haze in every sense. Dave is not the subject of The Session Man.
The Session Man is the late Nicky Hopkins, a truly unsung hero of so many songs that the documentary features a whole host of musicians singing his praises that includes Mick Jagger & Keith Richards (having played on over a dozen of their albums), Pete Townshend, Nils Lofgren and perhaps most bizarrely Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap). Hugely regarded by all yet equally unknown except by musician’s and musos so it’s appropriate that whispering Bob Harris narrates with his customary reassuring insight.
An immensely talented keyboard player he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music but at night he would be performing on stage with Screaming Lord Sutch’s band. But his phenomenal ability to channel blues and rock n roll soon saw his talent spotted by influential bands of the day who were as much in awe of him as fans were of the bands. To that end he began working as a session musician with The Kinks and The Who who even asked him to join the name as did a fledgling Led Zeppelin.
But he was not without his demons. Having suffered from Crohn’s disease which at the time was not really understood by medics and had a significant part of his intestines removed and by the 1970s he succumbed to drink and drugs partly due to the debauchery of touring with certain bands but also as a way of coping with the pain of his illness. That he allegedly got kicked out of Joe Cocker’s band for his drinking is a measure of how badly the lifestyle and his pain was consuming him but he did clean up his act later in life. Nonetheless at only 50 years of age he died from complications related to an operation for his illness.
In all he played on over 250 albums that includes The Beatles ‘Revolution’, Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ album, The Who’s ‘The Ox’, The Rolling Stones ‘Monkey Man and even appeared at Woodstock with Jefferson Airplane. So The Session Man is a worthy tribute to one of the great musicians little known outside the music industry.
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Here’s The Session Man trailer…..
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