On this day in 1994, Nicky Hopkins died at fifty. You know his hands even if the name went past you. That tumbling, spilling piano at the front of the Stones' "She's a Rainbow" — that's a hired man who came in for the day, played it, took the flat session fee and was gone long before anyone thought about a mix.

He was born in 1944 and he was ill a great deal as a boy, which is part of why he ended up indoors at a keyboard rather than out on the road. The list of rooms he sat in is faintly ridiculous: the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, the Steve Miller Band, Rod Stewart, Harry Nilsson, Jerry Garcia. Ray Davies is said to have written "Session Man" with him in mind, which is either a compliment or a shrug, depending on the day you ask.

What I love about him is that he never plays over the singer. He waits, he answers, he puts a little staircase under a line and steps back off it. Thirty years of late nights taught me that the piano in the corner is usually the reason a record breathes. Somebody paid him for the afternoon. We got the rest of it for good.