Nick Drake: The Life

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Do you think that fuelled his desire to make his own statement, his own career, outside of what was expected of him? When people are really ill they don’t know what they’re saying, they don’t hear what’s coming out of their own mouth. Drawing on the diary Rodney Drake kept when his son moved back to the family home at Far Leys in Warwickshire, Morton Jack bears witness to Drake’s alarming unravelling: all the psychiatric interventions, all the missed pills, all the false dawns. But then, of course, the whole cult surrounding his death contributed towards his mythology and status, and that process has never stopped.

Through the careful accretion of granular details a fully formed human being emerges from the myth .Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones were there, as well as a court including Anita Pallenberg, Cecil Beaton, Robert Fraser, Christopher Gibbs and Michael Cooper. He understood that putting musicians together could create magical results, and John Wood regards that as one of Joe’s greatest strengths as a producer: knowing who to bring onto which session to create the best result. Essential reading for anyone with even a passing interest in this troubled man of extraordinary talent. View image in fullscreen Drake’s Cambridge application picture; he eventually dropped out nine months before graduation. Especially because I’m writing a book on the Velvet Underground, it’s an interesting connection to me – when the 1970s start you have these areas of rock which seem separate, but there were these unusual collaborations.

RU: Some musicians of great quality – the Beatles or the Beach Boys – reach an audience immediately. They were so dark and sad, and telling about the state of his mind: doom, gloom and despair, with apocalyptic elements. And he knew that Things Behind The Sun belonged on that, not on Bryter Layter, with strings and drums and so on.Nick was sitting at the piano or with a guitar, making suggestions, and Robert was sitting over there, writing, and Robert would say: ‘Well, how about this instead of that? My last question, which is another hindsight question, is: had Nick experienced enough success, even if it was on a cult level or making number thirty, as you say, do you think that might have offset his growing psychological difficulties enough for him to produce more music? His friend] Julian [Raby] confirmed their presence on the penultimate night: “I was looking out of a tiny window over a narrow alley when I saw the Stones’ party passing, in sheepskins and bell-bottoms, like a medieval apparition. If Nick Drake was at a point where he could take his own life, I think one would have to say that may have been a situation which could have been turned around, just by chance.

I found it very interesting to read about the recording of his three albums, Five Lea It’s not an easy read, especially towards the end, but it puts into perspective not just the genius of the music but how it came to be, and sadly, the destructive nature of poor mental health. I also think it’s easy to look on Nick’s non-musical life with hindsight and say, ‘Well, people didn’t understand him, people didn’t realise this or should have done that’. Radio tip sheet from July 1977 confirms he was getting Heavy Airplay, and Moderate and Light Airplay, at regional radio stations across the US, in those years.It wasn’t a diary that he was writing of old – he started it in March 1972 because he recognised that Nick’s illness was severe and that it was, as he put it in one of his entries, ‘going to be a long job’ (which I used as one of the chapter titles). It was indeed a blunt statement, but Nick knew it was written out of love, recognised the truth in it and did not take it amiss. One of the few utterances that we actually have from Nick about his songwriting is that it was only when he went to France that he had the time and space to think about his own personal reaction to the world around him, and how he wanted to frame it.