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Nick Drake: The Life

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On the morning of the 25th November, he was found, lifeless, on his bed. At the coroner’s inquest, a pathologist stated that he had found evidence in Drake’s body of “a serious overdose”. The verdict was suicide. Although Rodney and Molly Drake adored their son – and his music, in a strikingly modern, generation-gap-traversing way – and although they did everything they could to save him, something about the family dynamic feels stifling. When he was sectioned at a psychiatric institution not far from his home, his duty officer found him to be “muddled” as to his relationship with his parents, with “some guilt complex about leaving Cambridge” – which he had done, against his father’s wishes, upon the release of his first album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969 – and Molly and Rodney were advised not to visit so often. This is not an authorised biography,’ begins the book’s foreword, penned by his only sibling, Gabrielle Drake, the long-time custodian of her brother’s legacy. ‘But it is true that this is the only biography of my brother than has been written with my blessing.’ But living alone in a barely furnished Hampstead bedsit – “like a cell, overlooking a neglected garden,” according to one visitor – he started slowly going to pieces, looking progressively more shabby, neglecting to wash his hair or clean his fingernails, passing his days playing the guitar, smoking joints, occasionally forraying out in search of a curry when he became hungry.

Boyd had left Britain to take a job in America. Bereft of his guidance, Drake arranged with the engineer John Wood to record what would be his third and final album, the starkly beautiful Pink Moon, over just two sessions between 11pm and 2am. They were the only slots Wood could find, but Wood thought he would anyway get the best out of Drake when nobody else was there. “He wasn’t in good shape. He didn’t look healthy.” Like its predecessors, the album vanished leaving barely a trace. If contemporaries such as John Martyn and Sandy Denny possessed personalities robust enough to contend with the rough-and-tumble of the pub and club circuit – the trains and taxis, the meeting new people, the B&Bs, the gritting-it-out over the din of students sinking pints of bitter – Drake was destroyed by their indifference, trying to perform gossamer songs in rooms where no one was listening. In short, he was the embodiment of the grievous angel caricature, unworldly and unsuited to the harsh realities of the music business. I was appalled by Pink Moon,” remembers Drake’s university friend Paul Wheeler. “I found it incredibly upsetting. I thought the songs were frightening. To this day I cannot ever imagine listening to it for pleasure. It’s like opening some terrible Pandora’s box.” Fortunately, one of those which accepted the offer was the Koutoubia Palace, Tangier’s most exclusive nightspot, which is done up in the style of a Moorish palace. I couldn’t help feeling a little out of place, but all the same I played for about quarter of an hour. The reception was extraordinarily good and we all got stood rounds of drinks, which was rather pleasant.” Pink Moon was the product of a period of intense, secretive songwriting, during which the singer’s behaviour became more erratic and his mental health deteriorated, much to the anguish of family and friends. It was a mark of the regard in which he was held by associates that the album was recorded with little warning, late at night, exactly as Drake prescribed by engineer/producer John Wood with no external input (the previous two LPs featured arrangements).Drake’s third and final album Pink Moon is a bleak, minimal affair, seemingly wrenched from the depths of mental illness. As shown by the reactions of his family and contemporaries, it’s a reflection of his brilliance and the uncomfortably intimate nature of the material I hope you can perhaps appreciate that the idea of having my music as a ‘vacation hobby’ for another year-and-a-half is not a particularly happy one. It seems that Cambridge can really only delay me from doing what at the moment I most need to do.” Let’s Eat Grandma (Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth) transform From the Morning. Photograph: Lorne Thomson/Redferns Is this what keeps subsequent generations enthralled? Quite possibly, but only because this enigmatic nature is so deeply intertwined with the music itself. The last third of the book is difficult to read – through no fault of the author’s, but because Drake’s final months are chronicled almost day by painful day. There is no ending other than that foretold.

Ultimately, Drake would retreat to his parents’ home, where he would be briefly hospitalised for depression and feelings of being unable to “cope”, and begin taking antidepressants, but not before he had had one last try at making a record that represented what he thought he was capable of. Bryter Layter had flopped, despite Boyd’s attempts to surround Drake with great musicians, resulting in enduring songs such as One of These Things First and Northern Sky, the latter wreathed in celeste, piano and organ played by The Velvet Underground’s John Cale. He was so congenitally mellow that hanging out with the Rolling Stones seemed normal to him Julian Lloyd Raby Dorelli has a theory regarding why people are increasingly drawn to Drake’s music. “I see my daughters talking about mental health a lot, and there’s a lot of discussion around that on social media,” he says. “I think he taps into that and does it in a way that’s strangely uplifting … it gives you a bit of relief to know that somebody else is going through the same thing.” It comes through in his lyrics, and it comes through in the music,” says Dorelli. “Even with the guitar, you can never quite work out what he’s doing. It becomes a story itself – one that you can’t get enough of.”

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But I doubt this very much and I would regard as far more likely reasons your reticence (which you must overcome), your difficulty in communicating (which you must overcome), and your reluctance to plunge in and have a go (which you conceal from yourself by self-persuasion that more solo practising and solo listening are required before the move is made) … If I am right in what I say, and the real trouble is that you have not yet overcome your weaknesses (and God knows we all have them), then you may well find that you have thrown over Cambridge simply to continue indefinitely on the outskirts of what you are looking for.

Girls adored him. He was tall, good-looking, diffident, quietly well spoken, with none of the faux-Americanisms or affected glottal-stops of most musicians of the day. His shyness and gentleness – “it was impossible to imagine him being angry or unpleasant”, says one friend – were captivating. Yet despite his achingly romantic songs, it seems Drake never had an intimate relationship with anyone. “I would almost describe him as asexual,” one friend remembers. “I think he had a romanticised, even poetic view of women rather than a carnal one.” His greatest infatuation was with Francoise Hardy; there was a suggestion she might record one of his songs. They met in Paris, and it came to nothing but later, but as his mental condition worsened, he travelled to France trying, and failing to, see her. This book is faultless in its detail, drawing on previously unseen family correspondence and the co-operation of Drake’s sister, the actress, Gabrielle, as well as the recollections of a compendious list of friends, musicians and fans, carefully taking the reader through the gestation and completion of virtually every song Drake recorded, and a few he didn’t. The Drake completist could ask for nothing more. And surely, nothing more of his brilliant and ultimately tragic life now needs to be said. Luxuriate in the body of his timeless work, and let him rest in peace. Drake is now ensconced in myth as a doomed poet whose life ended at 26 through an overdose of antidepressants. Previous biographies and documentaries have given thorough accounts of his life and work, including one in 2014 by his sister, Gabrielle Drake, the actor. The work of their mother, Molly Drake, has been folded into the story. Her son had grown up to the sound of Molly composing songs at the piano; there are resonances in their bodies of work. While Drake’s career as a musician was characterised by diffidence, his youth wasn’t entirely devoid of high jinks. A road trip with some friends to north Africa, for example, saw a memorable encounter with some of his musical heroes

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The label didn’t care if he didn’t tour, and on the album’s release in 1972 they issued a satirical press release saying that his records “haven’t sold a shit” but they believed in him, even if no one else did. Like so many of the most difficult people Drake also believed in himself – the problem was, he hated himself too. He told his father at 24 that he had finished his life’s work – and that people would understand it one day. You believe that the problem of turning yourself from an amateur into a professional can be solved merely by transferring yourself from Cambridge to somewhere where you are surrounded by, and under the influence of, professionals in your chosen field. From what you say I take it that you must believe that it was the prospect of returning to Cambridge for eight-week periods during the year that prevented you, in the long summer vac, from getting into the swim, so to speak, and of starting to acquire the professionalism which you are rightly seeking. Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops

Experience the definitivebiographyof one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the twentieth century with this eye-opening book featuring a foreword by Gabrielle Drake and over 75 photos, many rare or previously unseen.

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