25th November will mark 50 years since the death of Nick Drake.
His passing barely registered at the time, but his long journey to cult status means this anniversary will attract greater attention.
He was born into the end days of the British Empire in what was then Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) in 1948.
As the Empire dissolved, the family relocated to the idyllic rural English village of Tanworth-In-Arden in the early ’50s.
Music was a big part of his home life.
His mother Molly wrote poetry and sang, though it was long after her own death that any of her work was published.
The lineage through to Nick is apparent with the same polar opposites of romanticism and darkness featuring in her work.
Having bought his first guitar in 1965, by early 1968 he was appearing down the bill at an event at the London Roundhouse. One account says he performed for ten minutes at 2AM.
But that was enough for Ashley Hutchings of folk rock band Fairport Convention to be so taken with him he recommended him to manager / producer Joe Boyd who in turn got him signed to Island Records.
He’s classed as a folk artist. But within that demarcation, his three studio albums all demonstrate a distinct change from each other.
1969’s Five Leaves Left introduced his fingerpicking guitar playing and gentle vocals. Many of the songs are augmented by strings with arrangements influenced by George Martin’s for The Beatles.
The following year, Bryter Later dropped the strings in favour of a more expansive band sound that incorporated jazz elements.
It was Joe Boyd’s attempt to make something more commercial and those surrounding Nick felt it would be the album to open him up to a bigger audience. Nick’s confidence was shattered by its failure, and its said that it was from this point that his mental health problems really took hold.
The final album Pink Moon from 1972 was a reaction against that.
Recorded in two evenings, it was a stark offering, stripped back to just Nick’s guitar and voice.
Regardless of the progression, the outcome was the same, making virtually no impact on the public. One account says the first two albums sold 5,000 copies each in his lifetime. Another that total sales of all three albums amounted to 4,000 in that time. Whichever is more accurate, it illustrates a failure to find much of a following.
Contemporary reviews didn’t always offer much encouragement either. The Melody Maker review of Five Leaves Left was three sentences offering no indication of what it sounds like, concluding enigmatically that it ‘is interesting.’
Whereas the NME provided a more in depth analysis but disagreed with Melody Maker’s summation saying ‘there is not nearly enough variety on this debut LP to make it interesting’.
Bryter Later was described by Record Mirror as ‘one of the prettiest and most impressive albums I’ve ever heard’ but elsewhere he was dismissed as ‘an uncomfortable mix of folk and cocktail jazz’.
This failure to connect lay in part with Nick’s character.
He only ever played around two dozen live shows.
The general consensus is that his performances were marked by an overwhelming discomfiture on his part:
Barely acknowledging the audience, spending minutes between songs retuning his guitar.
When he did play, there are accounts of him singing away from the mic, getting lost within songs and either starting over or moving onto another song entirely. This wasn’t helped by being sent out to play in folk clubs where the audience was expecting something more traditional and weren’t shy in airing their views.
His friend John Martyn (who wrote Solid Air about him) described him as the most withdrawn man he’d ever met and cripplingly nervous before a show to the point of being distraught.
His final live performance came in June 1970. Beset by nerves, on this occasion he simply walked offstage part way through “Fruit Tree.”
With touring no longer an option to promote his records he gave his only interview to Sounds in March 1971. This didn’t go any better, his shyness and introversion such that he never made eye contact with the journalist and said little other than his dislike of performing live.
This inability to engage with an audience has led to there being no known film of Nick other than childhood home movies. He exists in his recorded work only.
He was similarly uncommunicative with his label.
The recording of Pink Moon came as a surprise to Island, who first found out about it when Nick hand delivered the recordings.
Faced with the problem of how to promote an artist unwilling or unable to promote himself the press release adopted an unusual tactic declaring;
‘His first two albums haven’t sold a shit, but if we carry on releasing them, maybe one day, someone in authority will stop to listen to them properly and agree with us, and maybe a lot more people will get to hear Nick Drake’s incredible songs and guitar playing. And maybe they’ll buy a lot of records and fulfill our faith in Nick’s promise.’
A couple of months after Pink Moon, Nick suffered a breakdown and was hospitalised.
Lack of sales meant he struggled financially and with his health issues he moved back to the family home and away from music.
Early in 1974 he returned to the studio for the last time to record five songs. There was a hope it marked a turning point that would see him re-find his passion. But there was no redemption.
One of those songs, “Black Eyed Dog” is the bleakest he recorded. Sung in a tremulous higher pitch with a lyric:
“I’m growing old and I wanna go home, I’m growing old and I don’t wanna know.”
There’s still a beauty to it – but it’s an uneasy listen.
Another, “Hanging On A Star” was a comment on how he felt let down by those who lauded him. Having been told that he was destined for great things, Nick held onto what he saw as the injustice.
“Why leave me hanging on a star? When you deem me so high” was recognised by Joe Boyd as a reference to a conversation they’d had months before where Nick expressed anger that the lack of recognition was in marked contrast to the plaudits from Boyd.
That last session didn’t provide the fillip that friends and family hoped for.
His death that November was officially recorded as suicide from an overdose of anti-depressants though his family maintained it was accidental rather than a deliberate act.
Although he reached few people in his lifetime, they were devoted. Fans started arriving from across the world at the family home to pay their respects. It appears his parents were happy to receive these visitors and handed out tapes with copies of Nick’s home recordings as a thank you for seeking them out.
My discovery came from a compilation my dad bought Back On The Road. Described as ’32 tracks of the very best of progressive underground.’
It featured an impressive array of the critically and commercially acclaimed of the late 60s / early 70s; Jimi Hendrix, Free, Cream, Black Sabbath, Canned Heat, Velvet Underground and Jefferson Airplane. The two tracks that really caught my attention were the obscurities.\
There was Nirvana. That’s the English psychedelic duo, with the glorious “Rainbow Chaser.”
Then there was the gorgeous introspection of Nick Drake’s “Northern Sky.”
That was in 1988, when there was nothing out there to tell me anything about him. He was conspicuous by his absence from my copies of the British Book Of Hit Singles and Albums. The gatefold cover of Back On The Road had a couple of brief sentences on each act, so I knew Nick had died young. But that was it.
Fast forward to the early ’90s. Now in my mid teens, I was trawling record fairs and second-hand vinyl stores looking out for acts I knew by reputation alone or from one or two songs.
The lack of sales meant Nick Drake albums didn’t often show up and if they did they were priced higher than my modest budget.
When I spotted the reasonably priced compilation, Time Of No Reply, the memory of “Northern Sky” meant I snapped it up.
It wasn’t the obvious starting point. The compilation collected early demos, alternate takes from Five Leaves Left and songs from the final recording session.
It also provided valuable detail about Nick:
The back cover essay positioned him as a mystery never to be solved, a man of many facets with lyrics that can never be decoded given his death.
There was romanticism and tragedy bound together. As a shy introverted teen I was hooked. The story of Nick Drake appealed to me during the phase of confected teenage angst I was cultivating. The fact that no one in my group of friends had heard of him gave an added sense that he belonged just to me.
I did once attempt to educate my schoolmates by playing Time Of No Reply on the Sixth Form common room stereo. It’s possible the tape got as far as the second song. But it definitely didn’t get any further.
On the one hand there was disappointment that music so precious to me was so quickly dismissed.
On the other hand, it fed into the self absorbed teen narrative that no one understood me and let me feel smug that I was the only one mature enough to get him.
Back in 1985, Dream Academy’s “Life In A Northern Town” was dedicated to the memory of Nick Drake. The likes of Peter Buck, Robert Smith, Lucinda Williams and Robyn Hitchcock had talked up his music but not to the extent that many people noticed.
The moment I saw his music begin to take hold was in 1993. Paul Weller’s Wild Wood album returned him to prominence and in turn he acknowledged the influence of Nick on its pastoral feel.
What really picked up the pace was a 1999 VW ad in the US using the song “Pink Moon.”
He sold more albums in the next year than he had in total to that point. Something which speaks to the uneasy bedfellows of artistic integrity and commerciality.
Stripping Pink Moon of the context of how it was created, removing the association with the troubled singer will be unseemly to some. It’s questionable whether he would have approved of his music being used in that way… but then there are those accounts of his anger at the commercial failure of his albums. There is also the belief of those that his music deserves to find a bigger audience.
And the ad succeeded in that.
There’s a temptation to read his career as an inevitable descent towards his death. From the first album, Fruit Tree can be read as a foretelling;
That belies the lightness that also features on Five Leaves Left and Bryter Later. While his insecurity is on show and melancholy is never far away there is also a vivid poetry in his lyrics that follow a romantic lineage.
The opening verse of “Northern Sky” presents imagery as beautiful as the music;
The image of the tortured genius often overshadows his talent as a player and songwriter.
As a non-musician, I can’t speak to his virtuosity. But I’ve found plenty of references to how inventive and technically accomplished he was in his time signatures, tuning and technique. I can’t pretend to understand it but this link deconstructs his combination of fingerpicking, drones, de-tuning, cluster chords and melodic phrasing.
His music won’t be for everyone. But it’s been with me for most of my life.
There’s an interview with his mother from 1979 in which she says that he told her he had wanted to communicate with his generation, to make them happier. And that he regarded himself as a failure.
She was unable to convince him otherwise.
It might have come far too late to save him.
But he got there in the end.
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Nick’s collected works won’t detain you more than a couple of hours but if you want to dig deeper there’s a collection of his mother Molly Drake’s home recordings available on streaming – The Tides Maginifence. It includes Poor Mum written as a response to Nick’s Poor Boy.
Or for a more polished studio take there is contemporary English Folk act; The Unthanks. They recorded Diversions Volume 4: The Songs And Poems Of Molly Drake. The Unthanks are well worth checking out in their own right, they’ve a wealth of traditional folk songs, new material and interpretations of others work.
One more related link from the article – to the original Nirvana with Rainbow Chaser. A bit more trippy and in touch with the idea of Nirvana than Kurt and Co.
https://youtu.be/dcf19K5QFqQ?feature=shared
Nick Drake is one of those names I see referenced every so often but never enough to make me go find his music. It doesn’t help that I confuse him with Nick Cave, though I’m sure the two are nothing alike. I do remember liking the “Pink Moon” commercial but, again, not enough to look up who did it. Thanks for this profile and playlist!
Ha! Yes, the two Nicks are rather far apart. Though maybe in The Boatman’s Call, Mr. Cave got just a little bit closer to Mr. Drake.
I can’t say for sure, but I think you’d really like Nick Drake. For me, it’s the perfect soundtrack for autumn. So now’s the perfect time to try it out!
I understand the Nick blindspot. I’ve had it with other similarly named acts. As Phylum says, they’re very far apart. Though they have both dealt with the darker side of life, just in very different ways.
I can admittedly be a grumpy grandpa when it comes to commercialism in our culture, but I do have to thank Volkswagon for that ad using “Pink Moon.” I’m not even sure I saw it myself, but I remember people talking about it and wondering who the artist was.
And I’m sure that the Nick Drake compilation I bought a little later when working at Tower Records (titled Way to Blue) was made to cash in on the interest that the ad had generated. So thanks Volkswagon. I’ve been in love with his work ever since.
His three proper albums are all, in their own individual ways, simply perfect listening experiences. As you say, there’s always at least a trace of melancholy, but plenty of grace and romanticism as well.
I must say I’ve never truly gotten into the songs compiled on Time Of No Reply. Part of it must be the rough production (itself a testament to the magic of Joe Boyd’s work in the official albums, especially on Nick’s vocals), but I’ve gotten into demos for plenty of other artists. So why not Nick Drake? I think it might be because his official works are so damn perfect, that the rough cuts are hard for me to process.
Like seeing the tossed baking experiments of a star patissier whose finished products are beyond compare. It’s interesting to get more into the process, and yet it feels like he wouldn’t want us to hear this unfinished stuff.
Anyway, great tribute to a man who thankfully has more of an audience these days. I guess the culture industry ain’t all bad…
If it’s the same Way To Blue compilation as here, it came out in 1994. Though I doubt many people would have noticed it at the time. I imagine it got more of a push on the back of the ad.
I hadn’t listened to Time Of No Reply in a long time til I wrote this. It’s a mixed bag for me. I’d put the title track up there with the best of his official recordings, really don’t see why it was omitted from Five Leaves Left. The songs from his final session feel like a continuation from Pink Moon though lyrically it feels like stating the obvious that they come from someone in a difficult place. The rest I can easily miss out. Still, there was enough in it for me as a way into him when I was a teenager.
This is my first acquaintance with Nick Drake. Currently listening to Five Leaves Left and I’m liking it a lot. It’s right in my wheelhouse.
That makes me happy to hear. If even one person discovers Nick then my work here is done.
It’s tricky to pick out a personal favourite from the three albums. It’s not Bryter Later, not that it’s a bad album just that it’s a little uneven against the other two. It’s an impossible choice between Five Leaves Left and Pink Moon.
I was going to say ‘happy listening’ but that’s maybe not quite the right sentiment with Nick Drake.
No lie – the VW commercial was my introduction to Nick Drake, and I was one of those Americans who went out and bought Pink Moon.
Drake might have had the exactly opposite personality of mine, but something about his music resonated with me. I think VW used his song perfectly as well…IMO it’s one of the 10 best commercials I’ve ever seen.
There’s an idea for an article…
Looking forward to reading that soon!
I don’t think we had the VW ad here. I should get round to watching it based on your commendation.
Its a great thing about music, the artist doesn’t need to reflect our own personalities to resonate.
Hey JJ, did you ever see A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake? It’s a pretty straightforward documentary film about his life. I saw it when it came out in 2002, already a big Nick Drake fan myself. Even through a full length documentary, the mystery is never entirely pierced. Definitely worth seeking out if you’re a fan.
It passed me by when it came out and I’ve never gotten round to seeing it. Definitely need to seek it out. Thanks for reminding me!
I don’t remember when I started learning who Nick Drake was, but it was waaaay after the VW ad. I think I read about his 3 albums and descent into depression. With that description and knowing he was folk-adjacent, it scared me into thinking that Nick would be a collection of minor-key guitar strummed laments.
And then one day my music service played “Bryter Layter”. If a perfect AI could write a song with the prompt, “Compose a song that Link would like”, it could hardly do better than Bryter Layter. Major key, minimalistic strings, a flute!, and just a beautiful chord progression, and no silly lyrics. Sounds like it could have soundtracked a Sesame Street short from the early 1970s. I was in love. I listened to that song a lot that year (2020 I think).
Yet, while I do know and appreciate “Pink Moon”, I am still am hesitant to invest time into his 3 albums thinking they will be boring downers. But Phylum commented, “…there’s always at least a trace of melancholy, but plenty of grace and romanticism as well.”
I actually love some melancholy songs, and that sentence gives me hope that I can find a few gems in Nick’s albums. Thanks for the inspiration, folks. I have some homework now.
I love some melancholy so he’s right up my street.
I think you’re more likely to find those gems in the Five Leaves Left and Bryter Later albums. They have more brightness in them amongst the downbeat songs. Pink Moon is beautiful but the melancholy takes over.