The Session Man review – Mick Jagger joins look at amazing life of keyboards ace Nicky Hopkins

The pianist played with the Beatles, the Stones, the Who and more, but remains little known beyond insider circles. This loving doc asks why – but leaves some questions unanswered

This documentary is probably, as they say, one for the heads – for connoisseurs who appreciate a great musician who was never a star. But the flaw of this film, admirably detailed and celebratory though it is, lies for me in the fact that it never pauses to wonder why exactly he was never a star, and what that precisely means. Does star quality consist, in some mysterious way, in a lack of formal musicianship?

Nicky Hopkins was a superbly accomplished pianist…