Nick Drake

Nicholas Rodney Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter known for his acoustic guitar-based songs. He did not find a wide audience during his lifetime, but his work gradually achieved wider notice and recognition. MacDonald, Ian
Exiled from Heaven
. ''Mojo Magazine'', January 2000. Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20 years old and a student at the University of Cambridge. He released his debut album, ''Five Leaves Left'', in 1969. He recorded two more albums—''Bryter Layter'' (1971) and ''Pink Moon'' (1972). Neither sold more than 5,000 copies on initial release. His reluctance to perform live, or be interviewed, contributed to his lack of commercial success. There is no known video footage of the adult Drake; he was only ever captured in still photographs and in home footage from his childhood.

Drake experienced depression, particularly during the latter part of his life, a fact often reflected in his lyrics. On completion of his third album, 1972's ''Pink Moon'', he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. On 25 November 1974, Drake died from an overdose of a prescribed antidepressant; he was 26 years old. Whether his death was an accident or suicide has not been resolved.

Drake's music remained available through the mid-1970s, but the 1979 release of the retrospective album ''Fruit Tree'' allowed his back catalogue to be reassessed. By the mid-1980s, Drake was being credited as an influence by such artists as Robert Smith of The Cure and Peter Buck of R.E.M. In 1985, The Dream Academy reached the UK and US charts with "Life in a Northern Town", a song written for and dedicated to Drake. By the early 1990s, he had come to represent a certain type of "doomed romantic" musician in the UK music press and was frequently cited as an influence by artists including Kate Bush, Paul Weller, Aimee Mann, Beck, Robyn Hitchcock and The Black Crowes. Drake's first biography appeared in 1997, followed in 1998 by the documentary film ''A Stranger Among Us''.

1948–1966: Early life

Drake's father, Rodney Shuttleworth Drake (1908–1988), moved to Rangoon, Burma, in the early 1930s as an engineer with the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation. In 1934, Rodney met Molly Lloyd (1916–1993), the daughter of a senior member of the Indian Civil Service. Rodney proposed in 1936, though they had to wait a year until she turned 21 before her family allowed them to marry. Nick was born in Burma on 19 June 1948. In 1950, the family returned to England to live in Warwickshire at their home, Far Leys, in Tanworth-in-Arden, south of Birmingham. Rodney worked from 1952 as the chairman and managing director of Wolseley Engineering.

Nick's older sister, Gabrielle, became a successful screen actress. Both parents wrote music. Recordings of Molly's songs, which have come to light since her death, are similar in tone and outlook to the later work of her son;Berkvens, Jeroen, ''A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake'' (video documentary). Roxie Releasing, 2000. they shared a similar fragile vocal delivery, and Gabrielle and biographer Trevor Dann noted a parallel foreboding and fatalism in their music. Encouraged by his mother, Drake learned to play piano at an early age and began to compose songs which he recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder that she kept in the family drawing-room.

In 1957, Drake was sent to Eagle House School, a preparatory boarding school near Sandhurst, Berkshire. Five years later, he went to Marlborough College, a public school in Wiltshire which had also been attended by his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He developed an interest in sport, becoming an accomplished 100- and 200-yard sprinter, representing the school's Open Team in 1966. He played rugby for the C1 House team and was appointed a House Captain in his last two terms. School friends recall Drake as having been confident, often aloof, and "quietly authoritative". His father remembered: "In one of his reports he headmastersaid that none of us seemed to know him very well. All the way through with Nick, people didn't know him very much."

Drake played piano in the school orchestra, and learned clarinet and saxophone. He formed a band, the Perfumed Gardeners, with four schoolmates in 1964 or 1965. With Drake on piano and occasional alto sax and vocals, the group performed Pye International R&B covers and jazz standards, as well as Yardbirds and Manfred Mann songs. Chris de Burgh asked to join the band, but was rejected as his taste was "too poppy".

Drake's attention to his studies deteriorated and, although he had accelerated a year in Eagle House, at Marlborough he neglected his studies in favour of music. In 1963 he attained seven GCE O-Levels, fewer than his teachers had been expecting, failing "Physics with Chemistry". In 1965, Drake paid £13 () for his first acoustic guitar, a Levin, and was soon experimenting with open tuning and finger-picking techniques.McGrath, T.J. "Darkness Can Give You the Brightest Light", ''Dirty Linen'', Issue 42, October/November 1992.

In 1966 Drake enrolled at a tutorial college in Five Ways, Birmingham, where he won a scholarship to study at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He delayed attendance to spend six months at the University of Aix-Marseille, France, beginning in February 1967, where he began to practise guitar in earnest. To earn money, he would busk with friends in the town centre. Drake began to smoke cannabis, and he travelled with friends to Morocco; according to travelling companion Richard Charkin, "that was where you got the best pot". He most likely began using LSD while in Aix, and lyrics written during this period—in particular for "Clothes of Sand"—suggest an interest in hallucinogens.

1967–1969: Cambridge

Drake returned to England in 1967 and moved into his sister's flat in Hampstead, London. That October, he enrolled at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, to study English literature. His tutors found him bright but unenthusiastic and unwilling to apply himself. His biographer, Trevor Dann, notes that he had difficulty connecting with staff and fellow students, and that matriculation photographs from this time portray a sullen young man. Cambridge placed emphasis on its rugby and cricket teams, but Drake had lost interest in sport, preferring to stay in his college room smoking cannabis and playing music. According to fellow student Brian Wells, "They were the rugger buggers and we were the cool people smoking dope."Dann (2006), p. 25

In September 1967, Drake met Robert Kirby, a music student who went on to write many of the string and woodwind arrangements for Drake's first two albums. By this time, Drake had discovered the British and American folk music scenes, and was influenced by performers such as Bob Dylan, Donovan, Van Morrison, Josh White and Phil Ochs (he later cited Randy Newman and the Beach Boys as influences). He began performing in local clubs and coffee houses around London, and in December 1967, while playing at a five day event at the Roundhouse in Camden Town, made an impression on Ashley Hutchings, bass player with Fairport Convention. Nick Drake—Chronology"
Retrieved 11 November 2006. Hutchings recalls being impressed by Drake's guitar skill, but even more so by his image: "He looked like a star. He looked wonderful, he seemed to be 7 ft all"

Hutchings introduced Drake to the 25-year-old American producer Joe Boyd, owner of the production and management company Witchseason Productions, which at the time was licensed to Island Records.Paphides, Peter
"Stranger to the world"
Guardian.co.uk, 25 April 2004; retrieved 1 February 2007. Boyd, who had discovered Fairport Convention and introduced John Martyn and the Incredible String Band to a mainstream audience, was a respected figure in the UK folk scene. He and Drake formed an immediate bond, and Boyd acted as a mentor to Drake throughout his career. Impressed by a four-track demo recorded in Drake's college room in early 1968, Boyd offered Drake a management, publishing, and production contract. Boyd recalled listening to a reel-to-reel home recording Drake had made: "Halfway through the first song, I felt this was pretty special. And I called him up, and he came back in, and we talked, and I just said, 'I'd like to make a record.' He stammered, "Oh, well, yeah. Okay." Nick was a man of few words." According to Drake's friend Paul Wheeler, Drake had already decided not to complete his third year at Cambridge and was excited about the contract.

Career

''Five Leaves Left'' (1969)

Drake recorded his debut album ''Five Leaves Left'' later in 1968, with Boyd as producer. He had to skip lectures to travel by train to the sessions in Sound Techniques studio, London. Inspired by John Simon's production of Leonard Cohen's 1967 album ''Songs of Leonard Cohen'', Boyd was keen to record Drake's voice in a similar close and intimate style, "with no shiny pop reverb".Boyd (2006), p. 192. He sought to include a string arrangement similar to Simon's, "without overwhelming ... or sounding cheesy". To provide backing, Boyd enlisted contacts from the London folk rock scene, including Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson and Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson (no relation).

Initial recordings did not go well: the sessions were irregular and rushed, taking place during studio downtime borrowed from Fairport Convention's production of their ''Unhalfbricking'' album. Tension arose as to the direction of the album: Boyd was an advocate of George Martin's approach of using the studio as an instrument, while Drake preferred a more organic sound. Dann observed that Drake appears "tight and anxious" on bootleg recordings from the sessions, and notes a number of Boyd's unsuccessful attempts at instrumentation. Both were unhappy with arranger Richard Anthony Hewson's contribution, which they felt was too mainstream for Drake's songs. Drake suggested his college friend Robert Kirby as a replacement. Though Boyd was sceptical about taking on an inexperienced amateur music student, he was impressed by Drake's uncharacteristic assertiveness and agreed to a trial. Kirby had previously presented Drake with some arrangements for his songs. While Kirby provided most arrangements for the album, its centrepiece "River Man", which echoed the tone of Frederick Delius, was orchestrated by the veteran composer Harry Robertson.

Post-production difficulties delayed the release by several months, and the album was poorly marketed and supported. In July, ''Melody Maker'' described ''Five Leaves Left'' as "poetic" and "interesting", though ''NME'' wrote in October that there was "not nearly enough variety to make it entertaining". It received little radio play outside shows by more progressive BBC DJs such as John Peel and Bob Harris. Drake was unhappy with the inlay sleeve, which printed songs in the wrong running order and reproduced verses omitted from the recorded versions. In an interview, his sister Gabrielle said: "He was very secretive. I knew he was making an album but I didn't know what stage of completion it was at until he walked into my room and said, 'There you are.' He threw it onto the bed and walked out!"

''Bryter Layter'' (1971)

Drake ended his studies at Cambridge nine months before graduation and in late 1969 moved to London. His father remembered, "writing him long letters, pointing out the disadvantages of going away from Cambridge ... a degree was a safety net, if you manage to get a degree, at least you have something to fall back on; his reply to that was that a safety net was the one thing he did not want." Drake spent his first few months in London drifting from place to place, occasionally staying at his sister's Kensington flat but usually sleeping on friends' sofas and floors. Eventually, in an attempt to bring some stability and a telephone into Drake's life, Boyd organised and paid for a ground floor bedsit in Belsize Park, Camden.

On 5 August 1969, Drake recorded five songs for the BBC
...