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Interview with David Sandison




TALKING TO DAVID SANDISON. 24/4/96
by Jason Creed
(reprinted from Pink Moon #6)

David Sandison: What I was saying earlier about those misconceptions, the biggest beef I've got is Nick Kent, because of the re-prints that have been on the piece he did, saying he's convinced that Nick killed himself. Well that just sort of suits Nick Kent's ideal rock and roll star, which is a dead one, and it's so destructive and it gives the wrong impression because there's no doubt that everybody that had seen Nick (Drake) in the last few weeks or months, said he was as positive as they'd ever known him. Nick Kent also took the piss out out of that (David points to his Pink Moon advert on the back cover of the fanzine), called it embarrassing record company bullshit. It wasn't. Chris Blackwell wouldn't have allowed it to have been published. It was an honest statement of the situation, which was so far Nick hadn't sold diddley squat. You know we are just so proud to have him. The guy was a gem, he was rare and distinguished and Island was kind of big enough, if you like, to go with it and say fine, well, you know.

Jason Creed: Why do you think Nick sold so few records?

DS: Partly because he didn't, he wasn't capable of, or couldn't do that promotion thing that you just have to do. You've got to be real about it, and the fact of the matter is if you're not out there... even if he'd been doing small gigs with a manageable number of people, which probably would have doubled or tripled sales, and word of mouth would have done a bit more as well but, you know, how many gigs did he play in his life? There weren't any radio stations that were going to play him. John Peel played some stuff, but where else were he going to be played? It was severely left field in commercial terms, so there was nothing really that Island... I mean, okay, Island could take out adverts, but adverts are only part of a jigsaw which includes live performance and interviews and radio play, and three out of four of those were missing. Because the one interview I managed to persuade him to do with Jerry Gilbert, the fact that Jerry got two or three paragraphs out of him was amazing, a triumph of skill over reality. In the half hour that we sat in that café, I would think Nick probably said a dozen words. We finished up like two idiots sort of blithering at him. Jerry would spend two minutes asking him a question that demanded an answer, and Nick would say "yes" or "no" and then hum a bit and stir his tea and maybe sort of start a sentence and then kind of give up. Witchseason were amazed that he agreed to do it. I met him at the Queen Elizabeth Hall when he opened for John and Beverly Martyn, at a backstage party afterwards, and I said, you know, that the show was really nice, and he sort of said "thank you" and then wandered away. And I just thought, well okay, because I'd seen the set and I'd heard the albums, so I didn't expect him to throw his arms around me and say "thank you very much", because, again, during the show I think if he introduced one number he certainly didn't do anymore than that, and he didn't even say "thank you and goodnight". But, you know, Gabrielle says "that's not the way I remember it".

JC: That's right, some people say his performances were mesmerizing, yet others say he was almost embarrassing to watch. What's your opinion?

DS: He was embarrassing, if you wanted a big sort of "Hi, here's my new single", or "Here's a track off my new album"! He was embarrassing because he was very gauche, and there were long pauses between numbers because he was either re-tuning or thinking about it. But it was intense. I would love to have seen that same set in a smaller room, rather than in a room with fifteen hundred people. It's too impersonal, but it was engrossing because the songs were engrossing and the mood was engrossing. But the contrast between him and John and Beverly who came on with a full band, the contrast couldn't have been greater. But it was still as mesmerizing as the albums because the songs were still self sufficiently engrossing.
And I still don't know why he agreed. I think I passed a message to Anthea Joseph (Witchseason) saying "would he do an interview?" and she was amazed that he agreed. To be fair, Jerry had written a couple of nice reviews and positive things, and quoted him in context with other people in past features, so he knew who he was talking to. But there was no point in, for instance, I mean Nick Kent didn't discover him until he was dead, and he could easily have discovered him while he was alive, and with Nick Kent's pulling power and cred at the time... but he didn't, well if he did he never told anybody; but once he was dead he became a wonderfully exotic and romantic figure. It sounds corny to say it, but the fact that you, I mean how old are you?

JC: 23

DS: Were you even born when he was...?

JC: '72, the year of Pink Moon. But I only got into him about three years ago.

DS: How did you get across him?

JC: Paul Weller mentioned him in an interview, and because he was a hero of mine I would go out and buy every record that he mentioned. So I went out and bought Five Leaves Left. To be honest I had it for about six months, and I listened to it occasionally and I liked it, but it never really grabbed me. It wasn't until I bought Way To Blue, which I listened to properly, and that was what really took me.

DS: But that's back to what you asked me earlier, you know, why didn't he sell? Your experience is... You got interested because you heard a recommendation from somebody whose taste you admired.

JC: Well I think anyone who listens to Nick for the first time, they're not even going to hear him. It takes at least half a dozen listens.

DS: And who's got time, you know? Okay, when they were released, if somebody came across it and said, "Oh, you should hear this new album", how many people are going to buy an album on that recommendation?

JC:I'm just surprised it's taken him so long to gain recognition. I'm sure that if, at the time, more people had said, "We should be listening to this music", the word would have spread.

DS: Well, Connor McKnight did. I tried to do a little bit, but the reality was that there was always something that was more pressing, better promoted. But it is remarkable that a sort of mini-industry has built up over the last five years, partly because of Island deciding not to delete the albums. It carries on. It have always been there at a certain level. There's certainly the glamour and the mythology of a long dead singer. You know, incredibly good looking guy, great introspecte songs. They still appeal to people sitting in their bedsits at university, they're charming in that regard, because they're not specific. They are genuine, they are, if you like, eternal in their subject matter, and they do reflect a mood, and they do reflect a confusion; they're incredibly lyrical and melodically they are beautiful, and that's a rare combination. He wrote albums. There's no break in the mood of his albums, so you can sit down and listen to an hour without suddenly getting a jingly jangly break or something. So that's where it works, and I mean we could only tell so many people while he was still alive. He needed four elements to work together, and three of them were missing.

JC: Was there any pressure on Nick to come up with a hit record?

DS: Joe would never do that. I think he knew from day one that wasn't the sort of artist he was getting involved with. Nick just would have been on the first train out of town. I mean, back then there were album artists and there were singles artists who did make good albums. And given time maybe Nick would have played it and it would have been a big hit, but I don't think it would have changed his attitude and it wasn't what he was about anyway. I just think he was a very rare and precious jewel, and unique, and you can't put him in to any bracket.

JC: In you Zig Zag article you said: "At the time of Bryter Layter I got the impression from Nick that he didn't like the strings, or the way the album was presented". Can you remember what Nick said or did to give you that impression?

DS: It's quite funny actually because this connects with a conversation I had with Tim Hardin, who had the same beef about his first album. He (Tim) claimed that the strings had been put on after he'd left the studio, and the first time he heard it he said, you know, "What the fuck are these? Where did they come from?" And I could never understand it at the time because Robert Kirby was such a close friend and he had been brought in by Nick. Now whether he... I don't think it was the presence of the strings, he still wasn't quite happy with either the arrangements, or he would have preferred them to be done again, or if Robert had more time maybe, I don't know.

JC: Do you think maybe Nick felt he had to have strings, because Joe Boyd had suggested it?

DS: No, I think it was part of the pattern he had in his mind, and Robert was the person he thought could make sense of it, rather than get an outsider to arrange it. But I think it really just didn't meet his expectations, rather than he didn't like the strings being there.

JC: You also said in Zig Zag that: "Nick spent a lot of time in a secret world of his own making". What did you mean by that?

DS: You know, he just didn't make contact with the people on whom he depended artistically, like Joe.

JC: Do you think Nick felt that his music was the only thing in his life that was real or genuine?

DS: I think he felt his music was the only real part of him. Whether he wouldn't or couldn't dress it up anymore elaborately to make it more commercial, or whether that wasn't the point anyway, I don't know. I mean, he was incredibly lucky to have Joe, because he was prepared to invest money in him, and if that's what he got, then that's what he got, and it went out. Obviously with help from Joe and with help from John (Wood) they could enchance what they could and add what they could. But it was just that sort of contract, between times as well, with people who would normally be responsible for developing a career. I don't think the word "career" ever occured to Nick's mind vocabulary. It was just what he did, and the next album wasn't going to lead anywhere, it was just going to be the next album.

But it's like that story that John Martyn told me about the time that Nick came down to stay with him and Bev in Hastings, and they were sitting either watching TV or listening to something, and Nick got up and left the room. They'd been chatting before Nick left the room and John thought he'd gone for a pee or to make a cup of tea, and in fact, about an hour later, he realised Nick hadn't come back and he opened the door and there was Nick sitting outside, hunched up against the wall with his knees up. John said, well, you know: "What are you doing here?" and he didn't get any kind of answer that made any kind of sense, and he just sort of got used to it. But John was one of the people who was prepared to give Nick that space, and to give him support by being a friend, as much as Nick wanted it, and you couldn't force it on Nick. He'd draw on it when he wanted to draw on it. I just do think he was withdrawn into a world of his own for so long.

JC: Why do you think Nick became so withdrawn?

DS: I'm not a psychologist so I couldn't tell you whether it was manic depression or what. He may have dropped some acid at some point, you know, some bad acid and got locked inside himself, I don't know. I don't know enough about him before to know how normal he was at Marlborough, how out-going he was before that. You know, was there a cut off point? Was it the pressures of academic life? For a lot of people it is, they suddenly get overwhelmed.

JC: Do you think Nick was an ambitious person, in that he would have been affected by a lack of commercial success?

DS: No, because I don't think it was part of his vocabulary.

JC: It's just that some reports say that he was crushed when Bryter Layter failed to sell.

DS: I expect Bryter Layter was the closest he came to promoting an album. He did a gig. He did an interview.

JC: Do you think he would have lived the "rock star" life if he could have, or was it something he simply wasn't interested in?

DS: I don't know if he harboured, in the early days, an ambition of stardom, but he certainly didn't display any willingness to follow the routes that you have to take to achieve it. Now whether the first experience, when he did some folk club gigs, was so horrific to him because he discovered that he wasn't good enough for it, or ready for it, I don't know. He certainly shouldn't have been crushed by any reviews that Bryter Layter got because thay were all very positive. But if he wasn't going to get himself involved in other parts of it, either he couldn't or wouldn't, then he didn't have the right to be disappointed.

JC: When Robert Kirby talks about the early gigs, the folk clubs and college appearances, he says they were always enjoyable.

DS: Yeah, in that case I suspect something happened to him either chemically or psychologically. Because working at that level when you're first starting out was one thing, but when you're confronted with the reality of doing something grander or bigger or more sort of assertive, and you either don't want to do it or realise you can't do it, for whatever reasons, it can affect your confidence. But I don't get that impression with him. There was very definitely a wall that he did erect around himself that very few people got over or through. John Martyn certainly did, obviously Joe Boyd and John Wood did, and there may have been some others, Robert Kirby, but apart from that...

JC: What's the full story about the Pink Moon tapes, did he really just leave them at the reception and disappear?

DS: I saw him in reception after I came back from lunch and I was talking to somebody and I saw a figure in the corner on the bench, and I suddenly realized it was Nick. He had this big, 15 ips master tape box under his arm, and I said "Have you had a cup of tea?" and he said "Erm, yes", and I said "Do you want to come upstairs?" and he said "Yes, okay". So we went upstairs into my office, which was on top of the landing, it was a landing that went into the big office with a huge round table where Chris and everybody else worked - very democratic - and there was a big Reevox and sound system there, and he just sat in my office area for about half an hour. I think we got him another cup of tea, and I had a couple of phone calls to make and a couple came in, and I have to be honest, I didn't really relish trying to make conversation because he wasn't offering any, and the interview with Jerry Gilbert had proved to me that you couldn't force anything out of Nick. After about half an hour he said "I'd better be going", and I said "Okay, nice to see you", and he left. Now, he went down the stairs and he still had the tapes under his arm, and about an hour later the girl who worked behind the front desk called up and said "Nick's left his tapes behind". So I went down and it was the big sixteen-track master tape and it said NICK DRAKE PINK MOON, and I thought "that's not an album I know".

JC: Were you the first person to hear the album?

DS: No. The first thing to do was get it in the studio to make a seven and a half inch safety copy, because that was the master. So we ran off a safety copy to actually play, and I think twenty four hours later or so, it was put on the Reevox in the main room and we heard Pink Moon. And I think Chris or Muff Winwood called John Wood and said "What is this?" and well, you know, we knew it was Nick's new album, but "thanks for telling us folks".

JC:Did Nick have anything to do with the artwork for the album?

DS:I don't think so.

JC:Was Michael Trevithick an artist that Nick admired?

DS:I assume he was given approval. Someone must have liased with him. I told you about finding the original artwork. Chris bought the house next door to Island to extend his offices, and there was a load of debris in the basement, and they said "This is going to be your office", so I said "Thanks a lot", because there was desks piled up and everything, and part of the debris was the framed original Pink Moon painting. It didn't have any of the credits on it or any of the tracks or anything, it just had the Island logo and the spread. So I took it upstairs and said "SDoes anyone want this?" and they said "No", so I said "Can I hang it in the office?" and they said "Yes, if you like". And I meant to put it up but didn't because it didn't work with what we had in the office, and eventually I said "Look, I'm going to take this home, does anybody mind?" and they said "No". And it hung in my house in North London for about two years, and then I moved to Hertfordshire and took it with me and hung it there, and then I moved back toi London and I was working for a company called "Caribiner", a conference production company, and one of the women who worked there on the theatrical side of mentioned she'd just done a TV thing with Gabrielle. So I said "Look, can you get in touch with her and ask if her parents would like the painting?". And a message came back: "Yes please". And I wrapped it up and got it delivered to her agent, and I had a very sweet letter from Molly thanking me for it. I saw Gabrielle about eighteen months ago and introduced myself, because I'd never met her, and reminded her and she said "Thank you for that, my parents were very happy".
I don't honestly know whether Nick would have had sight of it, I can't believe they wouldn't have tried to show him. So I don't know how they would have done it. We didn't know where he was half of the time.

JC: Do you know where he was living when he recorded Pink Moon? Because he moved back to his parents after Bryter Layter. Was he living in London at the time or did he come down just to make the record?

DS:Around the time of Pink Moon he definitely had another place in Hampstead. On one occasion I tried to get hold of him, because if you don't ask you don't get. I think John Wood gave me a number in Hampstead where he said he thought he was, but they said he was in Paris, that he wasn't there, he'd left anyway. But that was about the third call, the first two people I spoke to didn't know who he was, so it must have been a bunch of flats. I mean, there was a bank account into which money was paid, and withdrawals were made from it. So Joe looked for him incredibly well with that deal, I mean, he sold Witchseason to Island for about a pound I think it was, and the condition was "Look after everybody, but especially Nick". Nick especially was to be persevered with. But nobody ever tried to pressure him because they knew it was impossible, because he just functioned at his own pace.

JC: Did you see Nick again after he left the tapes at Island?

DS:No. That was it.

JC:Is there any one thing in particular, from your meetings with Nick, that still sticks in your mind today?

DS:(laughter) Three words, in no particular order: Extracting, blood and stone. Erm, no. I suppose you could call it hard work. I was mortified because I think I can get on with most people and I can get most people to open up... (silence) I was just reliving the moment of the advert we ran, you know, the weird smile. It was an emabarrassed smile, it was really strange.

JC: A nervous smile?

DS:No it was embarrassed, not nervous. It was almost like was embarrassed to be the subject of attention. It's like when people say "If you really want to know about me, listen to my songs". I mean, most of that is bullshit, just somebody plugging their new album who can't be bothered to do an interview. But I think with Nick it was probably true. I think the songs were the closest he was able to come, certainly for many years, in articulating anything about himself and how he was feeling and what turned him on, what excited him, you know, what took him, what moved him. I do think that when you listen to Nick Drake, you're hearing Nick Drake. I think you are hearing a very gifted songwriter. But i don't think there was a lot of artyness, if you like, on those songs, apart from the difficulty of rhyming or whatever. I think whatever was going on in Nick's mind is there in the songs. I mean, I don't know if Nick ever had any therapy.

JC:He visited a psychiatrist sometime after Bryter Layter. Joe Boyd called Nick from the States and advised him to go and see one, and I think that was when Nick was prescribed the anti depressants.

DS:Yeah, we all know those things are incredibly persuasive and very easy to get into, to the point where you get blocked out from having to deal with reality.

JC:Do you know if Island ever collected any live footage or recordings of Nick? Perhaps if somebody had recorded the Fairports or John and Beverly, Nick's set may have been included.

DS:There is a possibility that whoever worked the sound desk at those gigs might have. The chances are they might have let it roll during Nick's set, but Nick was such a mystery and such an unknown quantity that I'm not sure if anybody had been bootlegging that night, as a John and Bev fan, they would have recorded Nick. If somebody was recordinf off the desk, which did happen, they might have recorded some of Nick's songs. But I would be very surprised, simply because they haven't already appeared. Because I think the rarity value alone would make them a wonderful part of a compilation, with extra live tracks added to the CD or whatever. But I suspect that... No, you know, I think we can safely assume that had anything been recorded it would have appeared by now.

JC:How do you feel about the distribution of the various bootlegs?Joe Boyd is obviously very down on them, and apparently Gabrielle is too.

DS:Well, certainly when they're mass produced by sharks it's bad news, but when members of a fan club or appreciation society swap them I don't think there's any harm. But it's a big industry, like all the Springsteen and Dylan bootlegs that have appeared through the years. Somebody's making an awful lot of money out of those and they're ripping the artist off. But I think when somebody's got an iffy cassette recording from a hand-held mic from two thirds of the way back at a folk club, I think it's perfectly acceptable because it's a manifestation of love and admiration. But I think the fact that people are still finding ways of getting Nick Drake out is wonderful.

JC:What do you think a Pink Moon is?

DS:(laughter) I don't know, I don't know.

JC:Do you think that Nick's 'illness' was something that he struggled to overcome, or something that he accepted?

DS:I think he worked at it to some degree. The fact that he did see a psychiatrist, he did take medication, albeit unwillingly, I think he had to accept it. I noticed your next question which is whether the songs were an escape, and I don't think they were, I think the songs were an articulation of it. Back to what I said, that Nick's songs were an expression of the person. Okay, some are fantasies, some are whimsies, some are allegories, but I think they were all Nick, and they were his way of expressing really what he was all about. In that regard maybe they were kind of release of pressure, but they weren't an escape. I mean, sadly, I don't think he ever escaped. That's the problem, we're talking about a dead person because he didn't escape it. Which is not to say he committed suicide. No, if Nick had been in Amsterdam or Paris or somewhere like that, after six months of doing whatever he did in exile, you would maybe say "okay". But he was at home, he was back with people who loved him. He was safe where he was, there were no threats or pressures, because his parents wouldn't apply any pressures.

JC:Nick once said: "I don't like it at home, but I can't bear it anywhere else".

DS:Well everyone else posed too many problems. I just had this terrible suspicion that Nick dropped something sometime and it was bad stuff and it tipped him over. Something he couldn't get out of. It's pure guess work, but there was definitely a point at which Nick retreated. Why did he retreat? Who knows?

JC: Do you know anything about the apparent Francoise Hardy collaboration and romance?

DS:No, just that there was a kindred spirit fired, there was certainly an intense spark that went on. I don't know, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he wasn't deeply in love with her because anybody with a reasonably normal level of testosterone around during that time would have followed Francoise Hardy to the end of the world!

JC:What about the four 'scrapped' songs from July '74?

DS: I don't know about those.

JC:Well, you mentioned them in your Zig Zag piece.

DS:Did I? I did? (laughter) Oh, shit!

JC:You said that Joe, John and Nick got together and recorded four tracks before Joe went back to America.

DS:Oh, right. Yes. Okay, I remember talking to Joe about this just a few years ago actually. They just didn't basically hang together, and I think they might have probably come together, but they weren't together in a qualified, finished take. And he really had got to the stage where he couldn't sing and play guitar at the same time, and neither of these areas of responsibility were very good on that occasion. So I suspect they were just wiped, and the tape used for the next person who came into the studio.

JC:Do you know anything about the forthcoming TV documentary?

DS:No. I don't. Who's it for?

JC:I think the BBC are interested.

DS:Someone like Arena probably.

JC:I was surprised that any TV company would be interested in a documentary on Nick.

DS:Oh, I don't know. I mean Arena maybe, it's the only strand I can think of that the BBC would be interested in. I can see Channel 4 perhaps being interested for one of their late night shows. If it's a late night strand, which I thought Nick would have slotted into beautifully. They're definitely looking at a series of programmes about casualties, and I suspect Nick would fit very well as somebody who retreated from fame. I don't know, there was definitely a pull back from Bryter Layter, or Five Leaves Left in fact, and I don't whether he had a look at what was involved and what it entailed and decided he didn't want it. You can theorise and theorise and at the end of the day the only person who can tell us is Nick, and he's not here. It was so marked that I just think that were some event, rather than an accumulation of events. And whether it was a chemical event, or whether it was an emotional event...? He pulled back and decided to do it at his own pace, and he was very lucky to have Joe Boyd because nobody else I can think of would have persevered with that state of affairs. It made no commercial sense, it made artistic sense to very few people. It's like Van Gogh, you know, during his lifetime he sold one picture, and maybe Nick was ten years ahead of his time in some ways.
The romantic, dead poet is a wonderful attraction for a lot of people. It doesn't really matter how they get into him, as long as they get into him, and they discover him. As far as I'm concerned, he's a kind of little island of tranquility which is very nice to visit now and again.