Nicholas Rodney Drake was born on 19 June 1948 in Rangoon, Burma, a few months after the country's independence from Britain. His father Rodney was an engineer with the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation. His mother Molly, the daughter of a senior member of the Indian Civil Service, was a poet. The family moved back to England when Nick was young, settling in Tanworth-in-Arden, a small village in Warwickshire where almost nothing happened and the nearest city was Birmingham.
Far Leys, the family home, was not a quiet house. Both of Nick's parents were musical: Rodney could sing and play piano, and Molly wrote her own songs, recording them on a reel-to-reel tape machine she kept in the drawing room. Recordings of Molly's music have surfaced since her death, and the resemblance to her son's work is striking: the same fragile vocal delivery, the same sense of foreboding. For Nick, the act of writing songs and recording them at home was completely normal. He perhaps wouldn't have realised until well into adolescence that nobody else's mother did that.
His older sister Gabrielle went on to become a successful screen actress. Nick, encouraged by his mother from the start, learned piano as a child, then picked up the clarinet and saxophone at school. He was sent to Marlborough College, the Wiltshire public school his father and grandfather had both attended, and turned out to be a gifted athlete: an accomplished 100- and 200-yard sprinter who represented the school's Open Team in 1966. His sprinting records reportedly stood for over 20 years. It was at Marlborough that he picked up the guitar at 16 and, within two years, began writing his own songs.
Before Cambridge, Nick spent time on a course in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. An American songwriter called Robin Frederick met him there and was so taken by the "wandering, rootless, tantalisingly unattainable" young Englishman that she wrote a song about him called "Sandy Grey". A Scottish folk singer called John Martyn later recorded it on his debut album, without knowing it was about the same person who would become one of his closest friends.
Joe Boyd and the First Album
Nick arrived at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge in 1967 to study English. He spent almost no time socialising with his year group. A supervision partner recalled that no matter how early he arrived for tutorials, Nick was always there before him, standing on the stairs gazing out of the window. He played regularly around Cambridge, and it was at a London gig that Ashley Hutchings of Fairport Convention spotted him and brought him to the attention of producer Joe Boyd.
Boyd, the American who had produced Fairport Convention's early records and run the legendary UFO Club, listened to a reel-to-reel demo Nick had recorded in his college room. Halfway through the first song, he knew. He called Nick back in and said he wanted to make a record. Nick stammered, "Oh, well, yeah. Okay." It was, by all accounts, one of the longer sentences he'd offered that week.
Five Leaves Left (1969)
Nick had to skip lectures to travel by train to Sound Techniques studio in London for the sessions. Engineer John Wood recalled that he would track live, singing and playing guitar alongside the string section, with no overdubs. For "River Man", Boyd described Nick playing on a stool in the centre of the studio, surrounded by a semi-circle of instruments.
The string arrangements were written by Robert Kirby, a fellow Cambridge student who was just 20 years old. Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention and Danny Thompson of Pentangle both played on the record. The title came from the warning printed inside Rizla cigarette papers: "Only five leaves left." It was, by any reasonable measure, an extraordinary debut. It attracted almost no attention whatsoever.
On 5 August 1969, Nick pre-recorded four songs for John Peel's Night Ride radio show on the BBC. A month later, he opened for Fairport Convention at the Royal Festival Hall. Folk singer Michael Chapman was there: "The audiences did not appreciate Drake and wanted songs with choruses. They completely missed the point. He didn't say a word the entire evening. It was actually quite painful to watch."
Nick played a handful more concerts. They were brief, awkward and poorly attended. Because many of his songs used different tunings, he spent long stretches between numbers silently retuning his guitar while the audience waited. He rarely spoke. He never came back for an encore. He was, by temperament, almost comically unsuited to performing in front of other people.
The Album Nobody Wanted to Hear
Bryter Layter (1971)
Disappointed by his debut's poor sales, Nick agreed to Boyd's suggestion of a more upbeat, jazzier sound with bass and drum tracks. Boyd imagined it as more commercial. Bryter Layter is arguably the most beautiful of his three records: warmer, more layered, with Kirby's arrangements reaching new heights and contributions from the Velvet Underground's John Cale on harpsichord and celeste. "Fly" later appeared in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums. "One of These Things First" ended up on the Grammy Award-winning Garden State soundtrack.
Record Mirror praised Nick as a "beautiful guitarist, clean and with perfect timing." Melody Maker called it "an awkward mix of folk and cocktail jazz." It sold even worse than the first album.
Shortly after its release, Boyd sold his production company Witchseason to Island Records and moved to Los Angeles to work in film. The loss of his mentor, combined with another commercial failure, pushed Nick further into himself. He was unhappy living alone in London, visibly nervous at the few remaining concerts he played, and retreating from everyone who cared about him.
Solid Air
It was during this period that Nick's friendship with John Martyn became one of the most important relationships in his life. They'd been introduced by a mutual friend called Paul Wheeler, and despite being "poles apart" on paper (Nick: upper-middle-class English, reserved, precise; Martyn: working-class Glaswegian, wild, tactile) they connected deeply. Joe Boyd described them as fascinated by the contrast in each other's playing: Martyn was spectacular but rough, always reaching beyond; Nick would sit for hours working out a part and then play it absolutely impeccably every single time.
Linda Thompson, who often put Nick up in her London flat, described the bond: "John wasn't at all uncomfortable or frightened of loving a man, not in a physical way, which was quite unusual in those days. Nick and John loved one another. It was quite Greek, without the sex."
Nick babysat John's children. He joined the Martyn family holidays. He laughed at John's jokes, which friends noted was rare. Martyn, in turn, was fiercely protective of his fragile friend. In 1973, he wrote "Solid Air", a song that captures with devastating precision the impossibility of reaching someone who is slowly disappearing. It includes declarations of unconditional love and the solemn promise to "follow you anywhere". Danny Thompson, who played bass on the track, said he had no idea whether Nick ever knew the song was about him. "John would not be the kind of person to phone up Nick and say, 'I've written this about you!'"
"Fame is but a fruit tree, so very unsound. It can never flourish till its stock is in the ground."
That's from "Fruit Tree", a song on Five Leaves Left. It turned out to be one of the most accurate predictions anyone has ever committed to vinyl.
Two Nights, One Microphone
Pink Moon (1972)
Pink Moon was recorded over just two nights in October 1971 at Sound Techniques, with only Nick and engineer John Wood in the studio. No producer, no string arrangements, no other musicians. Just voice and guitar, with a brief piano overdub on the title track. The whole album runs to 28 minutes. Every note is exactly where Nick wanted it.
Contrary to popular belief, he was not in the grip of depression during these sessions. Wood, who was there, said Nick was focused, intentional and proud of what he was making. Cally Callomon of Bryter Music, which manages Nick's estate, has pointed out that Nick was incapable of writing or recording while suffering from depression. The darkness people hear in Pink Moon was artistic, not documentary.
Island Records had no idea the album existed until Nick walked into their London offices and quietly left the master tapes with the receptionist. Label boss Chris Blackwell recalled that about an hour after Nick had visited, the receptionist called up to say he'd left his tapes behind. Blackwell went downstairs and found a 16-track master labelled NICK DRAKE PINK MOON. Nobody had been told. Nobody had been consulted. The album was just done.
An advert in Melody Maker captured the situation perfectly: "Pink Moon: Nick Drake's latest album. The first we heard of it was when it was finished."
It sold fewer copies than either of its predecessors. A&R manager Muff Winwood recalled "tearing his hair out" in frustration, and said that without Blackwell's support "the rest of us would have given him the boot."
The Long Retreat
After Pink Moon, Nick stopped recording and stopped performing. He moved back to his parents' home in Tanworth-in-Arden, to the bedroom where he'd first started writing songs as a teenager. In April 1972 he suffered a nervous breakdown and spent five weeks at a nearby psychiatric hospital. He was prescribed antidepressants but was reluctant to take them, worried about how they'd interact with the marijuana he smoked regularly. He lived on a £20 weekly retainer from Island Records, which was eventually cut off.
His father, trying to find him a path forward, arranged a trial as a computer programmer. Nick passed the intelligence test and started the job. On the following Monday, they sent him to London alone, and he walked away from it within the week.
In March 1974, Nick visited his close friend Sophia Ryde and, with no warning whatsoever, asked her to marry him. They had known each other for six years and spent countless hours together, but had never been a couple. She was so surprised that all she could say was "I'll think about it." She later called herself Nick's "best (girl) friend" and described her response as "stupid and insensitive." The relationship ended shortly before his death.
Late in 1973, after a pep talk from Joe Boyd about the talent he was wasting, Nick picked up his guitar again and recorded four new songs with John Wood. Boyd considered them "absolutely wonderful." For a brief moment, things looked like they might be turning around.
On the evening of 24 November 1974, Nick was in his bedroom at Far Leys, working on new songs and recording them on his home tape machine. Nobody knows exactly what happened in the hours that followed. His mother believed he had trouble sleeping, got up in the night for a bowl of cornflakes, and took extra pills to help him rest. He died in the early hours of 25 November from an overdose of Tryptizol, the antidepressant he'd been prescribed. He was 26 years old. The coroner ruled it suicide. His family and friends have never been sure.
Fame Is But a Fruit Tree
Nick Drake's three albums sold a combined total of roughly 4,000 copies in his lifetime. He gave one proper interview, to Jerry Gilbert of Sounds, at Joe Boyd's insistence. He told his mother that if his music had got through to even one person and made a difference, that would give him a sense of validation he didn't have.
The slow rediscovery began in 1979, when Island's new press officer Rob Partridge arranged the release of the Fruit Tree box set, collecting all three studio albums. It sold weakly but kept the music in print. Through the 1980s, Nick's name surfaced occasionally in the music press as an influence. The first biography appeared in 1997. Then, in 1999, a Volkswagen Cabrio advert in the United States used "Pink Moon" as its soundtrack. The ad showed four young friends driving through the countryside at night, saying almost nothing. It was 30 seconds long, and it introduced Nick Drake to millions of people who had never heard his name.
Sales surged. The 2004 compilation Made to Love Magic surpassed his entire lifetime sales on its own. His songs appeared in The Royal Tenenbaums, Serendipity and Garden State. Brad Mehldau began playing his songs on jazz records. R.E.M., Lucinda Williams, Badly Drawn Boy and countless others cited him as an influence. The publisher who commissioned the first biography recalled an editor rejecting a detailed chapter-by-chapter summary because she saw no market for "a book on Nick Cave."
John Martyn, who had written "Solid Air" about his friend a quarter century earlier, went on to work closely with Phil Collins: Collins played drums on Martyn's Grace and Danger (1980), the pair bonding over simultaneous painful divorces, and Collins later produced Martyn's Glorious Fool (1981). In 2008, Collins presented Martyn with a lifetime achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Martyn died in January 2009. He never stopped talking about Nick.
Nick's ashes are buried in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene in Tanworth-in-Arden. His parents donated money for one of the organ stops in his memory. Once a year, the church organist plays a special recital of Nick's songs, and the townspeople come and sing. His gravestone bears the last two lines from "From the Morning", the final song on his final album: "And now we rise / And we are everywhere."
Three albums. 28 months of recording. Almost no audience at all. And yet somehow, half a century later, there are people all over the world for whom these records feel like the most intimate, essential music ever made. Nick Drake told his mother he hoped his songs might reach one person. They have reached millions. He just wasn't around to find out.