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Nick Drake Home page | Discography | Lyrics | A-Z | Interviews | News | Links
Nick Drake Home page | Discography | Lyrics | A-Z | Interviews | News | Links
Nick Drake A-Z
An exploration into the world of the English singer & song-writer Nick Drake.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
D
Death
Nick Drake died November 25,1974 in his parents' home in Tanworth-in-Arden. He died in his sleep around 6 am in the morning. Cause of death: An overdose of a tricyclic antidepressant and insomniac called Tryptizol (Tryptasol?). Nick used this medicine as a sleeping pill. The coroner declared it a suicide, but if he deliberately meant to take his life, we will never know.
A known fact though, is that Nick brought to his mother Molly a copy of Albert Camus' Le Mythe de Sisyphe when he returned to England from France in 1974. This book deals with the subject of suicide, in its existentialistic meaning. It's the famous tale of Sisyphos who is being punished by having to push a boulder up a hill to its top, only to see it roll back down again, over and over again. Molly Drake saw the bringing of the book as a message, that Nick wanted to tell her something. But then again I must add that the book is basically an argument against taking one's life.
Earlier, when speaking of suicide, Nick has made the statement that suicide's too cowardly, but that he still didn't have the courage to do it. Suicide or not, it's clear that the title of his first record 'Five Leaves Left' in some sense bacame prophetic, being five years between the record and Nick's death.
In his NME "obituary", Nick Kent pleads the suicide verdict not valid. The arguments being firstly that no-one committs suicide by taking anti-depressants when there's aspirins and barbiturates on hand and secondly because there was no suicide note, "no grand flourish which so often tends to typify the self-imposed taking of one's life" (Kent, NME). Nick's sister Gabrielle, on the other hand, has another view of Nick's death:
"I personally prefer to think Nick committed suicide, in the sense that I'd rather he died because he wanted to end it than it to be the result of of a tragic mistake. That would seem to me to be terrible: for it to be a plea for help that nobody hears." (Kirk, Melody Maker)
Nick is buried in a churchyard in Tanworth-In-Arden:
"Inside the church next to the cemetery is a magnificent pipe organ. The organ is used to accompany the church choir as it practises hymns and devotionals. Above one of the organ stops is a brass plaque with Nick's name on it. His father and mother donated the necessary money to keep the church going strong. Once a year the church organist plans a special recital of Nick Drake's songs. The church is packed and the townspeople lift up their voices to pay tribute to a native son. They say you can hear the singing for miles around, and I know Nick would have liked that." (quote from McGrath)
Drake, Gabrielle
Nick's elder sister, born in Pakistan, nick-named (sorry!) Gaye by Nick. She's a fairly well-known actress in England. (When a friend of mine visited Tanworth-In-Arden and asked for information on Nick Drake, some people assumed he was referring to Gabrielle). Gabrielle has starred in many TV-series, including "The Brothers" and Gerry Anderson's "UFO" (1970). She also appears in one of the episodes (called "The Hidden Tiger", 1967) of "The Avengers" (with Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg).
(Thanks to Perry Moree for this information)
Gabrielle has appeared in a couple of movies, including Crossplot (UK, 1969), There's a Girl in My Soup (UK, 1970), Connecting Rooms (UK, 1971) and Au Pair Girls (UK, 1972)
According to Joe Boyd, Gabrielle is also the one who sings harmony with Nick on All My Trials, a song performed on an early home recording in 1967 (the song's included on both available bootlegs of Drake, see Discography).
Drake, Molly & Rodney
Nick's parents. A rather typical English upper-middle-class couple. Rodney worked for a British lumber firm, Molly was an amateur songwriter in the Noel Coward vein. Nick stayed with his parents, in Tanworth-in-Arden, on and off for all his life. Rodney died in 1988 and Molly in 1993. They are buried together with Nick in the churchyard of Parish Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Tanworth-in-Arden.
E
Education & Early song-writing
Nick studies at local schools (in rural Warwickshire), where he does very well. He is frequently picked out to be the "headboy" of the class in his Surrey prep school, as well as being the captain of the rugby team. A techer's remark in a grade report, however, indicates that there is more to Nick than meets the eye: "But none of us really know him...".
At the age of thirteen he is sent off to Marlborough, an English public school and a recruiting ground for the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. He is still a star athlete and sets a still-unbroken (1986, that is) record for the 100-yard dash. Nick later made this remark on the subject of English public schools:
[It's a place] "where the sensitive experience a horrified dissociation from reality that can sometimes never fade away." (Keep, p. 70)
Nick Drake's musical career begins at Marlborough. He's learning the clarinet, the flute and the saxophone And by playing so well, he becomes the conductor of the school's jazzband, performing swing standards at student parties.
In Marlborough he also buys his first guitar at the cost of 13 pounds. Since there is no guitar teacher at school, Nick begins to experiment, finding his own style of guitar playing. He also learns by copying old blues numbers, like Strolling Down The Highway and Cocaine All Round My Brain, as well as various acts from the obligatory Dylan songbook, like A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. His learning is fastened up by the fact that he can listen to a song once and repeat it from memory. The cornerstones in Nick's record collection consist now, in 1965, of Dylan's 'Freewheelin', The Beatles' 'Rubber Soul' and Bach's Brandenburg concerts.
On his spare time Nick is starting to compose, writing songs. Inspired by the idyllic settings, the songs are dealing with rain, wind, sun and the changes of the seasons. Like one of his earliest songs, Birds Flew By: "One would like to know / The reason / What's the point in a year / Or a season ".
Musically, the songs are bluesy ballads, in structure bearing resemblances to Dylan, Donovan and Bert Jansch. The lyrics are now more than anything concerning the eternal adolescent themes - unhappy love and lost innocence. He is, in his daily life, suffering from a lack of self esteem and bears an almost phobiac fear of physical contact with other people, not to mention girls. It's been said that he dated a girl only once in his life, declaring her his love with disastrous outcoming.
He's frequently overwhelmed by his inner "dark forces", the uncontrollable powers that have a paralyzing effect on decisive moments. This brings Nick into a state of chronic unhappy love, a feeling of being betrayed by girls, by the world as such. A state which leads him into building his own romantic fantasy world, populated by nymphs and princesses, living in mystic and unreachable castles. Only in this world - in his songs - can he become the king of his own thoughts and his romantic conceptions. The result, isolation from the brutal reality of the real world, is described by Rodney Drake:
"He played his own songs over and over again. He used to practise late at night, until dark, without turning the light on. He just sat there strumming, hour after hour. If you tried to get in touch with him, he would just glance absent mindedly at you and mutter some monosyllabic word for an answer." (Rasmussen p.27)
His favorite spot for writing songs is an orange armchair. Sometimes he spends all night in it, working out chord progressions. According to Molly Drake, Nick was an insomniac, who wrote his nicest melodies in the early mornings.
After getting his grade at Marlborough, Nick wins a scholarship to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He is now studying English Literature, taking great interest in Blake's poems, but after some time he will seldom attend lectures, preferring to develop his guitar skills. He gives up his athlete career and starts finding his way to the small music clubs in the Cambridge area. He becomes something of a boheme, a poetic figure, with books by Verlaine and Baudelaire stuck in his torn coat pockets. Arthur Lubow:
"He became the poet in black, smoking hashish, strumming guitar, listening to Randy Newman, Tim Buckley and Van Morrison before anyone else had heard of them. His own songs were of moons and seas, landscapes borrowed from French Symbolists. Sometimes he would drive a friend to the Suffolk coast at night. In the blackness they would hear the sound of pounding waves."
In the summer of 1967, he spends some time in Aix-en-Provence, a town by the French Mediterranean coast, writing songs in the daytime, hanging out with troubadours and poets in caf�s at night. This summer, which also includes a trip to North Africa, has been described as "idyllic".
Back in Cambridge, his head is full of music and lyrics, and he goes into a period of intense song-writing. Sometimes he shows up at friends' houses with a guitar, playing his new songs. Rumours of his talent as a song-writer soon spread to the folkmusic circuit of Cambridge and Nick becomes a guest artist at the small town pubs.
Some home-recorded tapes of these early songs exist. Tapes, wich Rodney Drake smuggled out of Nick's house - " because otherwise they would have been lost for ever, since Nick was so self-critical. He could record a song twenty times just to, in a rage of fury, throw them all away. He would scorn his own songs, calling them "childish and foolish", while we thought they were great." (Rodney Drake, Rasmussen p.24-25)
Two of the songs on these tape, Strange Meeting II and Been Smoking Too Long, are included on 'Time Of No Reply'. Here are also early versions of Way To Blue (eventually on 'Five Leaves Left'), Mayfair and Joey (considered for that album, but dropped). Sometimes Rodney would play these tapes for visitors and fans, who come to visit Tanworth-in-Arden.
It is now, in november 1967, that he starts his collaboration with Robert Kirby, a young music student from another Cambridge college, at the time studying the works of Debussy. They work out arrangements on some of Nick's songs, starting with River Man, Way To Blue, Day Is Done and The Thoughts Of Mary Jane. These songs are now given a kind of baroqueish frame, a style not unfamiliar to Nick, being the son of a classically trained, song-writing mother. The same winter Nick makes his first live performance with these new arrangements.
After the release of 'Five Leaves Left' in 1969, Nick is only a year from graduation, when he decides to drop out of college and move to London. His father tries to make him reconsider this decision, writing a letter about the safety of staying in Cambridge. Nick, however, replies that safety is the one thing he doesn't want.
F
Fanzine
A Nick Drake fanzine called "Pink Moon" is put together in England by Jason Creed. So far (July, 1997) there are eleven issues available. The content is basically a collection of articles, reviews, photographs, interviews and everything else that has a connection with Nick Drake. A great part of the articles mentioned in my Articles & Books section can be found here, as well as copies of some rare original reviews. I'd say this fanzine is a must for every Drake fan. The ordering procedures goes as follows:
Issues 1 to 11 are currently available from:
Jason Creed
34 Kingsbridge Road
Walton on Thames
Surrey, KT12 2BZ
England
The UK price is �2 per issue (cheque, postal order, cash), and the overseas price is �5 for two issues. Overseas customers can make payment with: International Money Order or Eurocheque (in Pounds Sterling), UK cash, or the equivalent in US dollars. All prices include postage. Please make all payments to Jason Creed.
The cassttes containing rare home recordings, interviews and demos are no longer available from Jason Creed.
Five Leaves Left - the record
Nick's debut album, released in 1969 on Island Records. The title is an allusion to British Rizla cigarette papers, where an emblem with those words indicate that you are five sheets from the last one.
See Reviews for contemporary reviews of 'Five Leaves Left'.
Five Leaves Left - the story - 1968-69
One evening in early 1968, Nick Drake is one of the acts playing at The Roundhouse in London, when Ashley "Tyger" Hutchings, bass player of the folkmusic group Fairport Convention passes by. "Tyger" likes what he sees and hears, and he makes contacts with their manager and producer Joe Boyd. Boyd is also in charge of Witchseason, a progressive record company, and producer for acts like Incredible String Band and Pink Floyd. Contact is made and Nick Drake is sent home to Cambridge with the message that he as soon as possible should put together a tape for Witchseason. It's done within a couple of days. Joe Boyd:
"What impressed me first of all was Nick's melodies. There was something sophisticated and modern about them and the way they were performed. While I was listening, a person came into the room and said that it sounded "just like Donovan". I've heard others say that too later. I, on the other hand, had a feeling that this was a really remarkably original singer. And from a producer's point of view, these songs seemed like a challenge; with the right arrangements they would be close to perfect. So I invited Nick to my office and we decided to make an album..." (Rasmussen p.40, quote from McKnight)
Once in the studio, Nick has a very distinct picture of what he wants his songs to sound like. A well-known arranger (Richard Hewson, who produced James Taylor's 'Apple' album) is brought in by the record company, but Nick isn't satisfied with his musical treatment and he makes it clear for everyone that there is a temper and a strong will beneath his timid appearance. John Wood, the sound engineer:
"Nick started getting hotter and hotter under the collar. He was very young and he had struck me as a person that you could push about. But he was getting more and more aggrevated, and in the end, he dug his heels in and dissmissed the arrangements." (Lubow)
Instead, Robert Kirby, his friend from college, is hired as arranger and the result is, as one says, history.
The album is released in July 1969. It is critically admired - Melody Maker calls it "poetic and interesting" - but it doesn't sell. One of the reasons for this could be the record company's confusion in how to market Nick as an artist. Here's an extract from a press release at the time:
"Nick Drake is tall and lean. He lives somewhere close to the university... because he hates wasting time traveling, does not have a telephone -- more for reasons of finance than any anti-social feelings and tends to disappear for three or four days at a time, when he is writing, but above all... he makes music." (quote from McGrath)
The idea of making it big, however, has not entirely escaped Nick's mind, and after failing on the live scene, he decides to concentrate on songwriting. He drops out of college with only one year from graduation and moves to London, to a Notting Hill flat with a female friend.
Meanwhile, the record company in some way succeeds in creating an interest in Nick as a songwriter. The female French singer Francoise Hardy gives Joe Boyd a call and asks if Nick can write some songs for her next record. Whether a record deal is signed or not is unclear, but the French singer, with a staff of technicians and musicians, are brought to London and installed near the Witchseson studios. Nick, however, does not show up. Finally, they manage to locate him in his Notting Hill flat. Nick's only reply: "I don't have any songs. For Francoise Hardy..." Laconic and hard as this seems, the reason is probably that he's too depressed to write her any songs.
Another version of the Drake-Hardy "affair" exists, in which Drake is the one who goes to France to see Francoise. In Nick Kent's words:
"After much goading, Drake, ticket in hand, doggedly set off to the Hardy chateau and after a long journey arrived at the door which was answered by the maid. When asked who he was, Drake muttered, 'Um... I'm Nick... Nick' prompting the maid to become suspicious. Upon questioning the guest's present (Ms hardy was unfortunately not there at the particular moment) as to whether they knew who 'zis Ne-ek is', and getting blank looks for replies, she more or less shut the door in his face." (Kent, NME)
This version also suggests there really is a collaboration between them eventually, not only musically, but on a more personal level (of course with an unhappy ending). I can't really tell which version is right (none? both?), but in terms of keeping the romantic myth alive, I guess the second one is to prefer. Chronically, the second version is suggested to have taken place a little later, after 'Bryter Layter'.
After some time, Nick gets a room of his own in Hampstead, near the Hampstead heath. Here he writes the songs for the second album, 'Bryter Layter'.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z