couldn't just play something that brilliant after hearing it for the first time. He really was annoyingly, incredibly talented". Hopkins was added to the Rolling Stones touring line-up for the 1971 Good-Bye Britain Tour, as well as the 1972 North American tour and the 1973 Pacific tour. Audio recordings of those tours reveal the band reaching an incredible live peak, with Hopkins dazzling piano work meshing perfectly with the twin guitars of Taylor and Richards. He contemplated forming his own band with multi-instrumentalist Pete Sears and drummer Prairie Prince around this time but decided against it after the Stones tour. Hopkins failed to make the Rolling Stones' 1973 European tour due to ill health and, aside from a guest appearance in 1978, did not play again with the Stones live on stage. With the Kinks Hopkins was invited in 1965 by producer Shel Talmy to record with the Kinks. He recorded four studio albums: The Kink Kontroversy (1965), Face to Face (1966), Something Else by The Kinks (1967) and The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968). The relationship between Hopkins and the Kinks deteriorated after the release of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, however Hopkins maintained that "about seventy percent" of the keyboard work on the album was his and was incensed when Ray Davies apparently credited himself for most of the keyboard playing. He was also angered that he wasn’t paid for his session work with the group. Despite Hopkins's grudge against him, Davies spoke positively of his contributions in a New York Times interview in 1995, a few months after Hopkins' death: Nicky, unlike lesser musicians, didn't try to show off; he would only play when necessary. But he had the ability to turn an ordinary track into a gem – slotting in the right chord at the right time or dropping a set of triplets around the back beat, just enough to make you want to dance. On a ballad, he could sense which notes to wrap around the song without being obtrusive. He managed to give "Days," for instance, a mysterious religious quality without being sentimental or pious. Nicky and I were hardly bosom buddies. We socialized only on coffee breaks and in between takes. In many ways, I was still in awe of the man who in 1963 had played with the Cyril Davies All Stars on the classic British