The Undying Mystery of Nick Drake
A new tribute album and biography speak volumes about an elusive tortured genius
And now we rise
And we are everywhere
And now we rise
From the ground
— Nick Drake, “From the Morning”
It’s hard to find a more potent example of a musical artist dying before his time than Nick Drake. In 1969, at age 20, the British singer-songwriter was signed by London’s prestigious Island Records. He created three folk-jazz-blues albums of exquisite beauty and integrity, backed (on two of them) by stellar sidemen. Commercially, the records tanked — together they sold fewer than 15,000 copies upon release. Nick Drake was an unknown legend in his time.
The seriously bummed-out artist retreated to his parents’ home in Tanworth-in-Arden, England, where, in 1974, Drake died of an overdose of antidepressant pills. Suicide or accident? The jury’s still out.
Nick was 26. (Just his luck, he didn’t even make the 27 Club.)
Fast-forward half a century: Nick Drake has legions of global fans, and albums in his slim catalog have sold in the millions. His final Pink Moon LP became his biggest posthumous hit thanks to a 1999 Volkswagen commercial featuring its title song.
Further releases have repackaged Nick’s original work with rare outtakes. In the internet era, his tunes have gone viral; several appear in soundtracks. He was the subject of a BBC documentary narrated by Brad Pitt. Artists from R.E.M. to Television, Elton John to Kate Bush, Radiohead to Beck have cited him as a key influence; The Cure took their name from a line (“a troubled cure for a troubled mind”) in his first published song. Yet the man behind the music remains an enigma.
Several books have attempted to trace Nick’s mysterious voyage — most recently Nick Drake: The Life, a handsome 560-page tome brought out by John Murray Press in London (slated for release in the US by Hachette Books in November). In this volume, we finally see input from two of Nick’s stalwart champions: his sister, Gabrielle Drake, and producer Joe Boyd.
Morton Jack doesn’t dwell on critical commentary about Nick’s work; he focuses on the life behind that work. This biography brings us as close as we’ll ever get to understanding that life.
Under Cover
In 1992, with the first remake of a Nick Drake song by a major artist, Lucinda Williams rendered “Which Will” as a tender ode to unrequited love. Meanwhile, she turned many listeners (including this one) onto Nick’s songwriting charms. Numerous artists have covered his music, but never have we had such a trove of tributes as The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs of Nick Drake.
“I didn’t want to trouble artists who’d done great versions of Nick’s songs before,” explains Cally Callamon, who spearheaded the album as head of Bryter Music, the Nick Drake Estate, to Uncut Magazine. “I wanted plunging contrasts, to show the elasticity of Nick’s songs.” Indeed, these folks stretch these songs in myriad directions.
For Nick-heads, the new renditions reveal that we’re not just enthralled by his acoustic guitar mastery (his most underrated asset) or his soothingly understated vocals, or the cozy folk-jazz arrangements, but by the songs themselves — the lilting melodies, intricate chord structures, woefully searching, imagistic lyrics — that live on within him and without him. Part of the fun of listening to the new set is figuring out which tune is up next by the intro chords. Nick’s songs unfold like magic boxes.
Be prepared for stylistic shifts; they’re well thought-out. Fontaines D.C. kicks off the album with a Link Wray-meets-Zeppelin maelstrom on “Cello Song”; Mike Lindsay and Guy Garvey blanket the wistful “Saturday Sun” in a smoky harmony haze, complete with a jazz freak-out. Let’s Eat Grandma adds luminous keyboard layers to “From the Morning,” Nick’s most hopeful self-pep-talk; David Gray renders “Place to Be” as a sexagenarian’s ode to wisdom (though Nick wrote it in his early 20s).
Ben Harper adds bar-band swing to Nick’s debut tune, “Time Has Told Me”; Emeli Sandé injects a funky shuffle into “One of These Things First,” a Shakespearean-sonnet rumination of purpose. Karine Polwart and Kris Deever dance a jazz duet on “Northern Sky,” Nick’s tenderest love song; Craig Armstrong and Self Esteem put eerie echoes and orchestration onto “Black Eyed Dog,” his chilling koan to depression.
Nadia Green adds Bossanova bounce to Nick’s sarcastic reverie “Poor Boy”; Liz Phair pumps grungy pop into “Free Ride” (not the Edgar Winter Group). John Grant turns “Day is Done” into an anthem on aging and mortality; The Wandering Hearts bring it home with a harmonious rendition of “Voices” … a title that’s emblematic of what Nick was hearing all along.
Fruit Tree
Tellingly, no one in this set takes on “Fruit Tree,” Nick’s early read on the vagaries of fame, with its prescient lines: “Safe in your place deep in the earth / That’s when they’ll know what you were really worth.”
The title was utilized on Fruit Tree, the box set Island Records first issued in 1979 — at the behest of label head Chris Blackwell, a true believer in Nick’s work — which rescued Nick’s albums from the deleted bin, brought them to the US, and helped spark his Phoenix-like revival.
The Life in Print
“This is not an Authorized Biography,” announces Gabrielle Drake in her forward to Richard Morton Jack’s new tome, Nick Drake: The Life. “But it is true that this is the only biography of my brother that has been written with my blessing.”
Gabrielle Drake, a successful screen actress, was perhaps her younger brother’s best friend. In the years since Nick’s death — and after the passing of their parents, Rodney in 1988 and Molly in 1993 — Gabrielle has been the fiercest guardian of his legacy.
While the first book-length deep dive — Patrick Humphries’ Nick Drake: The Biography (1998) — was wonderfully written and researched, it lacked the cooperation of Gabrielle, which cut off contact with other key people. “This did,” Humphries noted, “make my task a less straightforward one, but by that time, I had gone too far to turn back.”
In 2014, Gabrielle brought out her own coffee-table volume, Nick Drake: Remembered for a While, sharing unseen photos, letters, artifacts, and her own foreword. She worked on the project with author Richard Morton Jack; the two of them saw the need for a deeper bio.
Magnanimously, Humphries handed over his research notes to Morton Jack. Gabrielle’s participation opened doors to Nick’s personal papers and effects and key characters in his inner circle. Foremost among them is Joe Boyd, the legendary producer who discovered Nick Drake, mentored and championed him, and sometimes sparred with him over artistic decisions.
“This is the book we’ve been waiting for,” says Joe Boyd, “the one Nick’s legacy deserves and so badly needs.”
In the book’s detailed but brisk narrative, Gabrielle sheds light on Nick’s childhood, by and large a happy one. Born in 1948 in Rangoon, Burma, Nicholas Rodney Drake moved with his tight-knit family back to England in 1951. His father Rodney, an engineer, provided stability and sage advice; his mother Molly gifted him poetic and musical genes and endless empathy.
He was a precocious child, bright and handsome, with the politeness and demeanor expected of upper-middle-class British offspring. Nick was, however, always a loner. Adjectives by friends range from “gangly and quiet” to “sweet and shy, but suave” to “self-contained yet amiable.” Later, friends used a catchall euphemism: cool. As pal Jeremy Mason put it, Nick “was always cool — which more or less means he didn’t say a lot.”
In his late teens at Marlborough College, Nick excelled in the 100-yard dash, played saxophone and piano in school bands, and scored well enough on an IQ test (116) to indicate he could go to university — which in his family circles meant Cambridge. But his studies were not up to his potential, advisors noted, and he fell short in his first A-level exams. He took a gap year to circle back to the exams — it included a term studying (in French) at Université de Marseilles in Aix-en-Provence, France.
It was the trip of a lifetime. By then, he’d acquired a new best friend: his guitar. It was a Levin LS-18, which Nick bought with a cash gift from his grandmother. He mastered it on his own. In France, he busked with it for francs on street corners and for grins to his pals, playing old folk and blues tunes and originals he was starting to churn out.
Nick was still a mystery man, but one with a magic gift. In the book, friends wax on about his big, broad hands, trance-like concentration, and dazzling mastery of the six-stringer.
Around this time, Nick and his friends discovered cannabis. (No more 100-yard dash.) “I don’t remember Nick smoking more than anyone else,” said Sophia Ryde, who befriended Nick in 1967 and stayed close thereafter.
On a trip to Morocco in search of adventure and hashish, Nick and his friends encountered the Rolling Stones (that is, Mick, Keith, and Brian) at a hotel in Marrakesh. At his buddies’ prompting, Nick emerged with a guitar to play for the Stones, who were duly impressed. “You must come and see us when you’re back in London,” Mick told him. (Alas, it never happened.)
By the time Drake was accepted to study English at the Fitzwilliam branch of Cambridge University, his heart wasn’t in it. He spent most of his first year holed up in his room playing guitar, hobnobbing at pubs with music pals, or playing hooky on weekends to slip off to London, where sister Gabrielle — starting her acting career and living with artist Louis de Wet — had a flat with a guest bedroom for Nick.
In London, friends helped arrange his first live gig before a larger audience (about 500) at the Roundhouse. Nick performed awkwardly, in his trance mode, but beautifully enough for Ashley Hutchings, bassist for Fairport Convention (also on the bill), to notice his guitar work and his presence. “He looked like a star,” Hutchings said. “He seemed to be seven feet tall.”
Hutchings recommended Nick to Joe Boyd, Fairport’s manager. It was the rec of a lifetime.
At age 25, Joe Boyd had made his mark on the British folk-rock scene, working for the likes of Pink Floyd, The Incredible String Band, John and Beverly Martyn, Pentangle, and Fairport Convention. After a stint with Elektra Records, Boyd started his own management company — Witchseason Productions (named after Donovan’s “Season of the Witch”) — with an ear to developing his growing stable with lots of artistic freedom.
Having heard about Nick, Boyd asked him for a demo tape, duly supplied, which he listened to. And then he played it again. And played it a third time to confirm his view.
“I thought Nick was obviously a genius,” Joe Boyd said.
“I wanted to make a world-class record with him, with the best possible musicians supporting him,” Boyd added. “It was Nick’s melodies that really impressed me.”
Boyd’s go-to sound engineer was John Wood of Sound Techniques studio in Chelsea. Wood was known for setting up microphones and recording musicians live—“he was a great believer in creative spill between mikes,” Boyd said. Boyd and Wood brought in studio pros, including Fairport Convention’s lead guitarist Richard Thompson, Pentangle’s double-bassist Danny Thompson, and pianist Paul Harris.
Wood noted Drake’s studio professionalism: “His performances were always a hundred percent, so the success of a take never depended on him.” They did have some false starts: After strings by an outside arranger were rejected as too overbearing, Nick insisted that a college buddy, Robert Kirby, be given a shot. Kirby and Drake formed a symbiotic alliance, blending in string parts inspired by George Martin’s work with the Beatles. Similarly, Drake rejected a conga player’s work, leading Boyd to recruit Ghanaian percussionist Rocky Dzidzornu, fresh from sessions for the Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet.
The recordings were created live in the studio, with Nick sitting on a stool surrounded by backing musicians, over several sessions in 1969. (Nick commuted to Chelsea from Cambridge, where he was juggling his studies with music — in favor of the latter.)
Star on the Rise?
Meanwhile, Boyd joined forces with Chris Blackwell, head of Island Records, London’s hippest label. Island released Nick’s debut album, Five Leaves Left (named after a note toward the end of a pack of rolling papers) in July of 1969 — and it quickly got lost in the shuffle.
At Island and elsewhere, the singer-songwriter genre competed with an influx of Jamaican ska and reggae artists, blues travelers, and rock stalwarts. Drake’s folk-jazz debut sank. “Five Leaves Left was hard to grasp right away,” Boyd reflected, “so I didn’t expect it to be a hit — but nor did I expect it to vanish.”
Nick remained creative, writing new songs and gaining confidence on stage. He played a live gig at the 2,500-seat Royal Festival Hall, sandwiched between his pals John and Beverly Martyn and the headliner, Fairport Convention, who played an emotional set after losing their drummer, Martin Lamble, in a car accident. It was a rousing night for all and a triumph for Nick.
With one year left, he decided to drop out of college and pursue music full-time. His dad made a last appeal for him to finish his degree. “I wrote him a long letter about the safety of staying in Cambridge,” Rodney recalled. “He said that the safety of it was the one thing he didn’t want.”
“I’m a poor boy, I’m a rover / Count your coins and toss them over my shoulder.” — Nick Drake, “Poor Boy”
Nick told his parents he needed no more financial support; he cast his lot with his muse and hopes of being the next James Taylor. Boyd and Wood concurred. They well knew that even JT, with the backing of the Beatles’ Apple Records on his debut, didn’t break out until his second album Sweet Baby James was released by Warner Bros. With Nick’s new songs, the trio set forth on a follow-up album — Bryter Layter — that would pull out the stops.
Searching for a catchy sound, Boyd brought in more voices, including bassist Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention, drummer Mike Kowalski of the Beach Boys, and session flutist Lyn Dobson. Robert Kirby again arranged strings, as well as brass. On “Poor Boy,” they added R&B backup singers Pat Arnold and Doris Troy. Boyd met John Cale — through German singer Nico, his former bandmate in the Velvet Underground — and Cale added celeste, viola, and keyboards.
Nick was involved in all the decisions … but found the growing cast a bit overwhelming. He did put his foot down about three dreamy instrumentals, which open and close side one and finish side two. Boyd thought they were superfluous; Drake insisted they remain.
After meticulous remixing, Wood deemed Bryter Layter as “the only album I’ve ever recorded where I wouldn’t want to change a thing.”
But following production and marketing delays, plus a long postal strike in Britain, the album’s release was pushed back nearly a year to March 1971. One delay was the cover, designed and shot by Nigel Waymouth, featuring Nigel’s own big blue shoes as a prop — Nick would never wear such garb; he usually dressed like a Romantic poet in black and white.
Meanwhile, Boyd signed Drake up for live gigs at dinner clubs and concert halls. Nick always performed well before small, attentive audiences, but his disconnect widened as they turned larger (and rowdier). He played alone, lost in his own world, trying to sing and pick over the din of beer-soaked patrons who had come to see other acts. Nick offered no repartee between songs—instead, he would re-tune his guitar for the next number. He was never a bad stage performer or a great one.
In the late summer of 1970, Nick decided live gigs weren’t worth the trouble. He finished his obligations but occasionally didn’t show up. Once, during “Fruit Tree,” he stopped the song and walked off stage. Another set at Les Cousins was also unfinished; it would be his last.
This did not bode well for success, as performing live remained the main source of income and exposure for British musicians (the latter-day Beatles being the exception that proves the rule).
Around this time, in Boyd’s words, “Nick’s mental state started going downhill.” It seems his artistic disappointment, acute depression, and fondness for weed fueled each other, and he became increasingly erratic.
He would retreat in bed for days … yet he loved to travel. He would show up to see friends unannounced, seeking company more than conversation, vanishing by early morning. “He’d just appear at the door,” says musician-pal Beverly Martyn, who, with her husband John, lived in the seaside town of Hastings. “Sometimes he’d stay, sometimes he’d go, sometimes he’d be silent, sometimes he’d talk. That was what we expected of him, and he knew we wouldn’t reprimand him for being the way he was.”
When Bryter Layter finally appeared in early 1971, Nick sat for a rare interview with Jerry Gilbert of the music weekly Sounds. Nick was almost catatonic but did supply a few quotes. “I’m not altogether clear about this album,” he said. “I haven’t got to terms with the whole presentation.”
Drake had already informed Joe Boyd that he wanted his next record to be solo — just his voice and guitar. Boyd disagreed, but noted, “I wasn’t going to argue with him about it because I knew that Nick wasn’t somebody you really argued with.”
Boyd himself had found that Witchseason was more of an artistic success than a commercial one. When Warner Bros. pitched him an offer to take a job producing albums and film soundtracks, Boyd jumped at it and moved to Los Angeles. He sold Witchseason to Island owner Chris Blackwell. It was a good omen for most of the artists — they remained in sympathetic hands — but a bad one for Nick, who was bereft without his mentor, Joe.
Both Boyd and Drake were baffled that Bryter Layter met the same fate as Nick’s debut album — a quick tank. It didn’t help that Island seemed lax in promoting it, Nick had given up live performing, and the singer-songwriter soundscape had exploded all around them.
Nick still had his travels — he visited the south of Spain that summer, staying at a villa owned by Chris Blackwell — and his art. He poured himself into a new set of songs and, a few weeks later, called up engineer John Wood to book a recording session.
Over two nights in October 1971, with only Wood present, Nick recorded and self-produced Pink Moon with voice, guitar, and a bit of piano on the title track. The brief song cycle is impeccably performed, by turns gorgeous and haunting, intimate and mysterious, with every note seemingly placed just so. While most of it is downcast, the album ends on a sunny note with “From the Morning,” Nick’s hymn to renewal, the last song released in his lifetime.
Drake sheepishly delivered the master tapes to Island Records. With no new photos in the offing, the label commissioned a surreal painting for the cover by Michael Trevithick. A promo read: “Pink Moon — Nick Drake’s latest album. The first we heard of it was when it was finished.”
After this, Nick became even more erratic. He returned to his parent’s place but couldn’t stay long. He retreated to his room for days; he drove the two hours to London, then returned without stopping in the city. He started acting out with what his father called “smash-ups”: crushing the back window of his car and destroying his electric guitar against a keyboard. He lashed out at his parents, mentor Joe Boyd, and guitar buddy John Martyn … with uncharacteristic anger.
His ever-patient parents sought help. Nick was deeply depressed, yes, but what else was amiss? They consulted doctors and shrinks; more than one suggested Nick suffered from schizophrenia — a broad-brush term in the 1970s. Dr. Gerald Dickens cited it as “a meaningless word covering a whole host of psychic maladies.” Given Nick’s life-long remoteness, it’s not hard to imagine he was on what we now call the spectrum; call it a schizoid spectrum?
At any rate, Nick was resistant to any kind of psychiatric help, including therapy and pills. Yet his depression led to weeks in hospital; after much consternation, he consented to an ECT treatment to shock him out of his funk. It seemed to help … for a couple of weeks. Then he returned to his moody vacillations.
Nick still sought solace in traveling and dropping in on friends. In March ’74, he showed up at Sophia Ryde’s house and, with no forewarning, asked her to marry him. She was taken aback: They had known each other for six years and spent untold hours together, but they’d never been an item. (She later called herself Nick’s “best (girl) friend.”)
“I was so surprised that all I could say was ‘I’ll think about it,’ which in hindsight was stupid and insensitive,” Sophia reflected not long before her death. “I should have just said ‘No’ straight away.” They talked of meeting again … but she ended up backing out.
After encouragement from Joe Boyd, Nick sought to record more songs, with thoughts for an album. He trekked to Wood’s studio in early July ’74 to lay down what are called his “Final Four” recordings — a fifth track, “Tow the Line,” was rediscovered two decades later. Drake thought the demos were rough and unfinished … but they were a start. The searching “Voices” expressed Nick’s dismay at his confusion; the bluesy “Black-Eyed Dog” laid his mental anguish bare.
Nick continued to vacillate between moods, but his family noted that there was a bright patch in his final weeks. A gregarious older childhood pal, Guy Norton, showed up, traveled with Nick to Paris, and offered him a place in London, where Guy lived with his wife Noel. Nick seemed charged by the trip … but, upon returning to his parents’ house, acted despondent again. Guy did spend the Sunday afternoon with Nick before his death.
It happened early Monday, November 25, 1974. The one clear thing about Nick’s overdose is that it was self-administered. No autopsy was done, but later, at an inquest, a coroner ruled the death a suicide based on an empty pill bottle of Tryptizol, a prescribed anti-depressant. But questions about timing of doses, the possible cocktail effect of two other prescribed drugs — and Nick’s own impulsiveness — raise doubts about his intent that morning. He was found sprawled on his bed by the Drakes’ beloved housekeeper.
There was no sign of foul play nor a suicide note. A few weeks later, Molly Drake did find an un-mailed, sealed letter from Nick to Sophia Ryde. “Dear Sophia, I’m really sorry to have taken up so much of your time,” it read, “thinking there might be something in it. But I was wrong.”
Sophia attended Nick’s memorial, a somber gathering of about 50 friends and family, several of whom remarked that they’d never met one another.
Afterward, Molly sent the sealed letter to Sophia, who responded with gratitude. “The more I think, the more I accept what has happened as being the best for him in many ways,” Sophia wrote. “Nick really was a very special person.”
Shortly before her own death in 1993 at age 77, Molly Drake expressed a sense of closure about her son: “It’s wonderful to know that Nick is not really dead because with people listening to his music, he lives on.”
