Who has played piano on the most Rolling Stones songs?
In May 1962, blues fanatic Brian Jones set about putting together the band we all know today as The Rolling Stones. Within a month, he’d recruited the group’s future core songwriters, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But before the pretenders to his spot as band leader arrived, a 23-year-old jazz pianist answered Jones’ call for auditions.
Ian Stewart would become a mainstay of the Stones’ lineup until his premature death in 1985, playing the piano on some of their best-loved songs, from late ‘60s single ‘Honky Tonk Women’ to classic Sticky Fingers album track ‘Dead Flowers’. Despite being hidden from public view by Andrew Loog-Oldham due to his ungainly appearance and thick Scottish accent, for the other Stones, Stewart was an indispensable part of what they did.
Surely, then, as the band’s go-to pianist for over 20 years, Stewart appears on more Stones records than any other pianist. But not so. Even in their ‘60s heyday, he had a rival for his place. Royal Academy of Music graduate and Screaming Lord Sutch keys man Nicky Hopkins actually played on more of the band’s studio recordings than Stewart did. After beginning his collaboration with them in 1967, Hopkins played arguably the most iconic piano part on any Rolling Stones song for 1968’s ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, as well as appearing on keys for ‘No Expectations’, ‘Gimme Shelter’, ‘Angie’ and numerous other classics.
Aside from Hopkins, famous Neil Young pianist Jack Nietzsche contributed to recordings on most of the Stones’ early albums. Even multi-instrumentalist Jones had a go playing the piano for the 1967 single ‘Ruby Tuesday’. Yet neither of these part-time keyboard players nor Stewart or Hopkins, is responsible for the most piano parts in the entire catalogue of Rolling Stones records.
Late to the party
The holder of this crown goes to the man who’s been the key to almost all Stones keyboard parts since he debuted with the group in 1983, featuring on their album Undercover. American Chuck Leavell, previously part of Allman Brothers Band fame, has contributed to 22 separate original studio releases and 23 different live albums by the Rolling Stones. This body of work encompasses over 100 unique songs and six studio albums. No other Stones pianist can come close to these numbers.
Leavell, who’s also referred to unofficially as the band’s musical director, primarily sees his role as “a culmination of all those people and personalities” who’d played the piano on Stones songs before him. In an interview with Jas Obrecht in 1994, he showed a great deal of deference to Stewart, Hopkins, Nietzsche and others.
He reserved the most reverence for Stewart, observing that Jagger, Richards and the other band members “looked to Stu for a lot of things”. Pleasing Stewart was apparently an important measure of a new song’s quality for the Jagger/Richards partnership. “When it moved him, they knew it was good,” Leavell remarked.
He accepted his own place in a band that had grown up together in the two decades before he became part of their studio and touring set-up. His job, he said, is “to feed on all that”. But every once in a while, he does “like to throw in a little Chuck Leavell.”
