Music |
Nick Drake
By
Published: Jun 19, 2023
Category:
Rock
Nick Drake was born on June 19, 1948. He would have been 75 this year. But that’s impossible. Nick Drake either did or didn’t kill himself in 1974, when he was 26.
If you know Nick Drake’s music, it’s probably because you remember a Volkswagen commercial. A moonlit night. Two young couples driving along a lake road on a moonlit evening in a VW Cabriolet convertible. Acoustic guitar on the soundtrack. The car reaches its destination: a club. We see kids coming in and out, sense the excitement and noise within. Close-up on the kids in the car: They’ll skip the thrills of the club. And off they drive into the night. Watch it here.
That commercial briefly made Nick Drake a star.
Alas, he had been dead for almost three decades.
There are musicians born for fame — big-chested, thick-skinned, driven guys like Bruce and Bono — and then there are musicians who just don’t have the toughness for the game. Their music may be as good as that of the greats. But they drop by the wayside, and when they do, so does their music.
How good was Nick Drake?
Friends have said that his music “brushes the ear.”
That his songs were like “butterflies chained to anchors.”
That his “breathy beige voice” was ideally suited to a message of “gentle doom.”
That, far from communicating, he made music that turned inward, as if he were playing for himself.
Looking for the secrets in the songs is pointless. They’re beautiful and subtle and seductive — they bring you into a world that’s almost familiar, but isn’t. Listen here. And here. And here.
Some of the songs are sad in the extreme — someone said that listening to him was “like being at the bedside of a dying man who wants to tell you a secret but who keeps changing his mind at the last minute.” And yes, his story is sad, and that, of course, is part of its attraction. Drake was a riveting character — six feet, three inches tall, with broad shoulders that he hunched up, like a turtle preparing to hide its head. He started playing guitar at an English boarding school, where, in the mid l960s, he could not help but be influenced by the Beatles. He moved on to Cambridge University, where he was an indifferent student — all he cared about was writing songs and perfecting them. At 20, a producer signed him to a recording contract, and he made “Five Leaves Left” — the title comes from the warning message found near the end of packs of cigarette papers. It got great reviews. It didn’t sell. [To buy the CD of “Five Leaves Left” from Amazon, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]
He made another CD. Same story. Crushed, he left London. When he returned, he brought with him a “a black fog” that lasted for three years. A friend recalls: “He has a daily routine of sitting in a chair, gazing out of the window or staring at his feet. Sometimes he sits there in total darkness. He has by now moved back to his parents, but he is now and then driving to London. Sometimes he will change his mind half way there and drive back.”
One night he decided he was ready to record again. He went into the studio and — in two hours or two days; accounts differ — made “Pink Moon.” There were no arrangements, just his guitar and, on the title song, a piano. The album contained just 30 minutes of music, but that it exists at all is impressive; by this point, Drake was so withdrawn he could hardly speak. [To buy the CD of “Pink Moon” from Amazon, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]
“Pink Moon” suffered the same fate as its predecessors: great reviews, no sales. Drake returned to his parents’ home, spent five weeks in a psychiatric hospital. Nothing worked: “I can’t cope. All the defenses are gone, all the nerves are exposed.” And then he overdosed on an anti-depressant. The coroner’s verdict was suicide. But there was no note.
There’s a boxed set of Drake’s best songs, but it’s built on a fallacy — all his songs are his best. So start with “Five Leaves Left,” his first CD, recorded when his career was still ahead of him and his sensitivity was leavened by flashes of hope:
Strange face, with your eyes
So pale and sincere.
Underneath you know well
You have nothing to fear.
That was the upside. But I can’t think of another writer who knew at 20 how fast it all goes and how we don’t get to know what we’ve achieved and given to others:
Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
‘Till its stock is in the ground.
So men of fame
Can never find a way
‘Till time has flown
Far from their dying day.
Forgotten while you’re here
Remembered for a while
A much updated ruin
From a much outdated style.
Safe in the womb
Of an everlasting night
You find the darkness can
Give the brightest light.
Safe in your place deep in the earth
That’s when they’ll know what you were really worth.
Forgotten while you’re here
Remembered for a while
A much updated ruin
From a much outdated style.
His sister has spoken of the fans who tell her: “I was in a dark place. And Nick knew what that was. And his darkness brought me back to the light.” What an irony! Nick Drake had no way to help himself, and yet his music helps us. But don’t get caught up in that. Enormous pressure is put on coal, and, over time, we get diamonds. We can, if we like, remember how the coal suffered. But the diamonds — how they shine.
BONUS: His last song
The guitar is almost a drone, isn’t it? Listen here.
