Nick Drake: The Life

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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.” Gabrielle also discloses that her mother struggled with depression when she was young. Molly and Rodney had met in Rangoon before the war. He was an engineer with the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, she the daughter of an officer in the Indian civil service. “Shortly after they were married, she had pneumonia and went through a depressive illness. But my father was a great stay and support. I think he helped her through it.” So it is that Drake has gone from relative obscurity during his lifetime to appearing on the cover of music magazines, being the subject of a Radio 2 documentary presented by Brad Pitt, and having his music appear in mainstream Hollywood movies such as A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood and hit TV shows such as Normal People. He's even had a beer named after one of his songs by a Californian craft brewery. 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.

Nick Drake story I want to complicate the Nick Drake story

After the VW advert, according to US music journalist Amanda Petrusich's 2007 book on Pink Moon, sales of the album "increased nearly 500% during the first 10 weeks of 2000, when Drake shifted more than 4,700 copies of Pink Moon, compared to 815 in the same period in 1999". The New York Times reported in 2001 that sales had jumped from about 6,000 copies a year to more than 74,000.

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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. 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. 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). 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.

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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.

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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 If Molly Drake’s song has a subtext,” writes her daughter in the book insightfully, “it’s surely that angst isn’t the sole domain of the young – should they be inclined to dwell on them, older generations have no shortage of accumulate compromises and regrets upon which to hang their anxieties.”

Nick Drake: The Life by Richard Morton Jack review – folk’s

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. The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our The Endless Coloured Ways takes its title from a line in From the Morning, a song on Pink Moon which, unlike Drake's previous albums, is very stripped down. Some fans see its songs as bleak evidence of his deteriorating mental condition: Fairport Convention’s Richard Thompson, who had played on a couple of numbers on the earlier albums, was "disturbed" when he heard the LP. It "seemed a stark cry for help. The voice of a man teetering on the edge of sanity," he writes in his 2021 memoir Beeswing. This book filled in lots of gaps although I now understand how many questions have remained unanswered. I liked the approach of the author in avoiding more myth building and attempting to recognise the human achievements of this exceptional musician. That may have upset some worshippers but I think it was a fair and balanced approach.It was the same story with the next two; 1971's relatively upbeat Bryter Later and 1972's much starker Pink Moon. There was limited publicity and Drake’s eventual refusal to play live did not help. His last proper live performance ever was in 1970 and he played little more than 30 shows in his whole career. He simply didn't enjoy it. "There were only two or three concerts that felt right, and there was something wrong with all the others," he said in one of those two press interviews, in 1971 with Sounds magazine. He had champions in the celebrated producer Joe Boyd and in the Velvet Underground's John Cale, who had insisted on working with him, but it wasn't enough. Drake became seriously depressed and returned to live with his parents, telling his mother "I've failed in every single thing I've ever tried to do". He saw psychiatrists, spent five weeks in a psychiatric facility and was even treated with electroconvulsive therapy. Does she think Rodney and Molly would mind her publishing their letters and diaries? “If they’re up there looking down, I hope they’re not too cross.”

Nick Drake Song Collection (Music) Piano Vocal Guitar The Nick Drake Song Collection (Music) Piano Vocal Guitar

The headstone on Drake's grave in St Mary Magdalene churchyard, Tanworth-in-Arden, is inscribed with a From the Morning lyric. It says: "Now we rise and we are everywhere". Drake's intended meaning may be uncertain but the line is certainly true of his fans. Jan 16 - Put the correct solo section in "Things Behind The Sun" / Mar 16 - "Cello Song" made less rubbish The author interviewed 200 people from all areas of Drake’s life and was given access to his family's private papers. His research suggests that, contrary to what some believe, the musician was not a heroin addict; he was not gay; he had not been abused at school; and conflict with his father was not at the root of his problems. An open-top car glides through the moonlit Californian night, its passengers gazing out at the star-filled sky. It pulls up at a beach house where a rowdy party is being thrown. The four young people in the convertible look at each other and, silently agreeing that it's just not their scene, drive on.He was so congenitally mellow that hanging out with the Rolling Stones seemed normal to him Julian Lloyd Raby 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. Actually I've read the Indonesian translation version. Read this book as an attempt to understand the interplay between musicians and depression: why are musicians prone to depression? And what is the best strategy to fight it.