" ... a chord progression, a top musician. He's not paid to think, just play."

OK, I'm going to rattle off some songs I really like: The Kinks' Days, Girl from Mill Valley from the loner's Beck-Ola, Slip Kid from Who By Numbers, the Rolling Stones' She's a Rainbow, Donovan's Atlantis from the outstanding Barabjagal LP, Jefferson Airplane's We Can Be Together from Volunteers (hell, throw in the title track, too. Gotta love Paul Kantner using one riff for two songs on the same album), the Jayhawks' Waiting for the Sun from Hollywood Town Hall, John Lennon's Jealous Guy ... OK, besides the fact that I like all of them, what the heck do these songs have in common? Mr. Nicky Hopkins on piano, that's what. Legendary session musician, Hopkins was born on this day in 1944 and died far too early (plagued with poor health since childhood) at the age of 50. Ray Davies—who wrote in The New York Times in '95 that Hopkins "had the ability to turn an ordinary track into a gem"—was thinking of Nicky Hopkins and his vocation when he composed this song (with harpsichord and piano courtesy of ... well, you guess.).