It’s hard to know what to say about Nick Drake’s life without sounding trite or sentimental. Yes, I know this is a review of an album, and not a biography, but like most fans, I find his life fascinating, if depressing, and I think it’s necessary to know a bit about him to understand the Nick Drake ‘phenomenon’, for want of a better word. Nick was an English singer-songwriter born in 1948. He released three exceptional albums during his life, which were received by the public with great indifference, partly because of his refusal (or inability, due to intense shyness) to tour and promote his work. He became more and more alienated, lost faith in his own talent, and eventually withdrew almost completely from the world around him. On November 25th, 1974, Nick died from an overdose (seemingly more accidental, or desperate, than pre-meditated) of the anti-depressants he had been prescribed.

And that was more or less that, as far as his career went, until 1979, when his record company released a box set of his albums, and discovered that the power of Nick’s songs had not diminished with time. Over the next two decades, many musicians acknowledged the influence of Nick Drake on their own work. It seemed to become almost compulsory at one point for young ‘sensitive’ musicians to name-drop him. A tribute album was released; people began making pilgrimages to Tanworth-in-Arden, the village where Nick grew up and died; the cult of Nick Drake was established.

In 1994, the compilation album ‘Way to Blue’ was released, and this is when I finally saw the light and became a Disciple of Nick. I’d heard of him before, vaguely, and was cornered once by a girl at a party who knew my musical tastes and decided I was ripe for conversion, but I hadn’t really paid much attention. All of a sudden, I kept seeing posters and ads for the album everywhere – this extremely attractive image kept cat
ching my eye, and that was just the gorgeous forest he was standing in. The young man in the photo looked about 14, but was disturbingly beautiful, even more so when I made the connection and realised I was leching over someone who’d died 20 years previously in extremely unhappy circumstances. He seemed to be wearing an insane hippie jumper. I read avidly that he had suffered from depression, died young, and was unappreciated during his life, and that only now did everyone realise his true genius. I could relate to that. Sold to the rather pretentious young woman with the delusions of grandeur and the suicidal fantasies. Yes, you madam, at the back, with the saliva on your insane hippie jumper.

My cider clock is telling me it’s time to get on with reviewing the album itself (well, the Chinese people had a water clock, didn’t they? I’ve got a cider clock. By checking how far down I’ve got in the bottle, I can tell what stage I should have got to in my review.) Ok, so I’ve admitted that I came to discover Nick Drake for all the wrong reasons. A morbid admiration for the idea of a doomed youth, destined to be misunderstood until it was too late, not forgetting a healthy portion of good old-fashioned lechery. But the reason I came to love Nick Drake, or rather his work, is to be found in the little silver disc found under the enticing picture. The music. The lyrics. His voice. My God, his voice.

‘Way to Blue’ is a perfect introduction to all the wonders of this artist. It’s such a well-chosen compilation that I would probably go for it as my Nick Drake desert-island disc. There’s the innocence and yearning from the album ‘Five Leaves Left’, the jazzy lyrical cleverness of ‘Bryter Layter’, and the dark moodiness of ‘Pink Moon’. I’ll go through it track by track, but concentrate on the ones I really like. Don’t be put off by the length of the fi
rst one – there are some concise ones later on.

Cello Song (from Five Leaves Left)

The first Nick Drake song I ever heard, and still my favourite. I suppose no piece of music can be perfect, but if there’s anything that comes closer to it than this, I’d like to know about it. I love the way it builds up in layers – first the acoustic guitar, intricate and clever and uplifting, joined by something that sounds like bongos (or another sort of drum that you hit with your hands, sorry, know very little about percussion), like the backbone of the song, then the cello itself, rich and sweet, warm and mournful at the same time, if that’s possible. The resulting sound almost hurts to listen to, it’s that good, and that’s before he’s even opened his mouth.

“Strange face, with your eyes so pale and sincere…”

I want to hug myself with glee when I hear him sing this opening line. It could have been such a let-down – I had no idea what he sounded like – but his voice complements the arrangement so well (maybe that should be the other way around, but that’s the order that you hear it in), I think I knew at that moment this was The Real Thing. True Love, in a musical appreciation-type way. His voice is incredibly intimate, as if he was singing softly to you and you alone, but powerful, too. His enunciation is unashamedly English, slightly upper middle-class, which is refreshingly truthful, as that’s what he was. I think it’s a shame more singers don’t have the confidence or honesty to retain their own accents, and not assume some kind of Mockney or trans-atlantic pronunciation.

Nick Drake was not the greatest singer in the world technically, but he was certainly competent, and for me, the immediacy and emotion that his voice conveys put him up there amongst my favourite singers. He sounds vulnerable, rather shy, but determined to commun
icate the message of what he’s written.

“So forget this cruel world where I belong
I’ll just sit here and wait and sing my song.
But if one day you should see me in the crowd
Lend a hand and lift me to your place in the cloud.”

In black and white it’s in danger of sounding melodramatic or maudlin, but it’s neither. Promise.

Hazey Jane I (from Bryter Layter)

This is not a favourite of mine. I admire the way that the strings, drums and bass interact to create a certain mood, but it feels over-produced compared to other, sparer tracks. This is a problem I have with much of ‘Bryter Layter’ – a lot of the heart seems to have been taken from the songs with the producer’s intention to make it more marketable. The lyrics of this one are wonderful:

“Do you like what you’re doing?
Would you do it some more?
Or will you stop once and wonder what you’re doing it for?”

but the message is muddied by the sound. It’s lost the highly personal feel of his earlier work.

Way to Blue (from Five Leaves Left)

The title track, obviously, and it’s a good one, although I wouldn’t have picked it myself for the album title. It’s just Nick’s voice to a background of string instruments; his singing seems to be particularly suited to a string accompaniment, with all the associations that the sound brings: mellow, moving, sad, spiritual. His enunciation sounds particularly proper on this one, with the sort of perfection and delivery that could be labelled effeminate.

Me, I love his vowel sounds – I won’t try to reproduce them in print, but they are so obviously his own natural way of speaking, I think they’re wonderful. Sorry to bring this up again; I haven’t got a thing about ‘posh’ voices, at all, quite the opposite in fact. I just love the fact t
hat despite what he felt about himself, in the end, he was never afraid to sing out in his true voice.

I also love the line from this song

“We will wait at your gate, hoping like the blind”.

Like many of his lyrics, it evokes such a complicated but recognisable image in a few words.

Things Behind the Sun (from Pink Moon)

Just Nick and an acoustic guitar again, lovely. But oh, it’s from Pink Moon, and the effect is much darker. The song’s message is at first both cynical and warning:

“Please beware of them that stare
They’ll only smile to see you while your time away.
And once you’ve seen what they have been
The earth just won’t seem worth your night or your day.”

The lyrics change to being optimistic and hopeful, but it’s not totally convincing, and the song ends on a bleak note. It’s easy to say in retrospect, but I feel that many songs taken from this album, however personal, maintain a distance from the listener which shuts us out, and so are not at all the same as hearing ‘Five Leaves Left’. Nick is still saying the same type of thing, but he’s not including us, anymore. He’s on his own, and you’ll be left with a feeling that you are, too, if you identify with some of the songs taken from this album.

River Man (from Five Leaves Left)

A flowing acoustic guitar, then those ubiquitous strings again. Very laid back, mimicking a boat bobbing along lazily. Wistful vocals and equivocating lyrics :

‘Betty said she prayed today
For the sky to blow away
Or maybe stay
She wasn’t sure.’

Poor Boy (from Bryter Layter)

This track makes me screw my face up, actually. I don’t like it, in fact it irritates me. It’s just a charming ditty about someone down on their luck, but the producer has decided to give it the full work
s, with all sorts of jazzy noodlings on piano and sax, and not one, but two backing singers crooning all over the shop. At 6 minutes 30, it’s by far the longest song on the album, too (many others are under 3 minutes, which leaves you gagging for more in the best way). Grr. Press the skip button, please.

Time of No Reply (from the posthumous out-takes album, Time of No reply)

A deceptively simple sounding acoustic guitar melody – I say deceptive because apparently, Nick tuned his guitar in an extraordinarily eccentric way, to the extent that later musicians have been flummoxed when attempting to reproduce his music. The vocals on this are not particularly inspiring, but the lyrics are, as usual, intriguing and poetic.

‘Time goes by from year to year
And no one asks why I am standing here
But I have my answer as I look to the sky
This is the time of no reply.’

From the Morning (from Pink Moon)

Acoustic guitar and vocals stand alone, again, romantic and dreamy this time. Nick uses the higher end of his register for much of the song, and he sounds frail and other-wordly. Again it’s a retrospective view, but this song gives me the sense of someone drifting out of reach.

‘So look see the days
The endless coloured ways
And go play the game that you learnt
From the morning.’

One of These Things First (from Bryter Layter)

Hooray, a track from Bryter Layter that I really like! I was starting to feel a bit disloyal there for a while. As with ‘Cello Song’, the instrumental parts are magical, with piano, bass, and drums looping together in a gorgeous, soaring dance. I think these are some of the finest lyrics on the album, or maybe they just paricularly appeal to me. The singer is considering the choices he has made in life, perhaps regretting missed opportunities. At first he uses careers as an example:

‘I could ha
ve been a sailor, could have been a cook’

but quickly becomes more whimsical, imagining himself as a book, a clock, or a kettle. My favourite is ‘Could have been a boot.’ It sounds so satisfying somehow, I always think “yeah, being a boot would be cool.” It’s a perfect example of how his writing takes you to strange and inexplicable places, if you let it. Some time later, of course, I think, “being a boot? What on earth was I on about?”, but while the spell lasts, I just enjoy it. There’s a childlike wonder and imagination at work here, and we could all use a bit more of that in our lives.

Northern Sky (from Bryter Layter)

This has been described as ‘the greatest English love-song of all time.’ I’m glad it’s not just me who’s prone to overstatement when It comes to this man’s work. The words are achingly lyrical, but the music comes to within a whisker of drowning it in sentimental cheese. You know that keyboard effect called ‘Dewdrop’, or something equally naff? They’ve put something sounding very like it on here. It’s totally unnecessary, with the sincerity of Nick’s voice, and the poetry of the lyrics, to have heartstring pulling Yamaha-type noises in the background. John Cale, of all people, was responsible, too (well, for pressing the keys, at least; I don’t expect it was actually his idea.)

You can’t curdle pure genius with half an ounce of slush, though. Hold your loved one tight and listen to this one, preferably gazing into each others’ eyes, having been for a long walk on a chilly day.

‘I never felt magic as crazy as this
I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of the tree
But now you’re here
Brighten my northern sky.’

Which Will (from Pink Moon) <
br>
The singer asks the object of his desire which lover he or she will choose. Sorry about the awkwardness of having to use ‘he or she’, but Drake never specifies, you see, in his songs, and that’s part of the beauty of it. Love-struck young men and women, of whatever sexuality, can sing along with equal abandon. There’s been a lot of debate over the years along the lines of ‘was he? wasn’t he?’ gay, and some interesting analysis of his work from a gay perspective. Whatever he was or wasn’t, it doesn’t seem that he ever had a serious or lasting love relationship with anyone, which is a crying shame, and of course adds to the mystique. My own view that he would have been white-hot in the sack is probably best kept to myself. Oops.

Anyway, the song. Pure and simple, guitars and vocals, you know it by now if you’ve read this far. He doesn’t sound at all convinced that he will be the preferred one, though.

‘Which do you dance for
Which makes you shine
Which will you choose now
If you won't choose mine?’

He sounds the tiniest bit scornful of the person that’s not appreciating him, or maybe that’s my imagination. I hope he was, though. It’s so hard to tell with that perfect diction of his.

Hazey Jane II (from Bryter Layter)

Right, sorry, but I’m going to have yet another rant about the album that this track is taken from. This is a superbly-crafted song, with some classic lyrics (I especially like ‘the weasel with the teeth that bite so sharp when you’re not looking in the evening’), but again, it’s been mucked around with so much that his voice flounders and appears to struggle to keep up with the pace of the backing, which is mediocre. I imagine that after his first album, some very well-meaning people in the music business said “Listen. You’re wonderful, you should be
a star, and we’re going to make you one. All we have to do is pep your songs up a bit, make them more commercial, and bingo – we’ll all be in the money.”

Shame no-one stopped to realise that his stuff shines out all by itself if left well alone.

‘What will happen in the morning
When the world it gets so crowded that you can’t look out your window in the morning?’

Time Has Told Me (from Five Leaves Left)

A good contrasting pace to the last track, with piano, electric guitar and bass (by Richard and Danny Thompson, if you’re interested), meandering along while the vocals sound confident and resonant. It’s another love song, questioning conventional ways of living, and the song that seems to me to add the most weight to the ‘Nick was gay’ theories.

‘Your tears they tell me
To stay by my side
To keep on trying
'til there's no more to hide.

So leave the ways that are making you be
What you really don't want to be
Leave the ways that are making you love
What you really don't want to love.’

It’s a powerful piece beneath the mellow sound, expressing something that was fiercely important to him.

Pink Moon (from Pink Moon)
This is the darkest song yet, and is probably as close as Nick got to ever railing against the shallowness of life. The trouble is, he still sounds so ruddy polite. He’s obviously deeply resentful, but he can’t quite let go and spit it all out in a torrent of venom. I heard this done in a punk version once, with the singer literally screaming the words out, and it was absolutely brilliant, if a little scary. I sometimes go off by myself when things are bad and try to emulate it (and usually end up in fits of laughter, so it does the trick).

‘I saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand s
o tall
Pink moon gonna get you all
It's a pink moon
It's a pink, pink, pink, pink, pink moon.’

A pink moon was apparently seen as the harbinger of doom in the middle ages. It’s such a wonderful, bizarre threat to make. Try it next time you get hassled down the pub. Watch it, 'cause pink moon gonna get you all.

Black-eyed Dog (from Time of No Reply)

I guess Churchill’s depression is pretty well-known as having been described as “my black dog”. Somehow, a black-eyed dog sounds much more sinister and fitting, though. This is a real bluesy number – Nick adored blues and privately recorded a lot of his own, and others’, blues songs (I’ve got the bootleg, nyah, nyah). I love the contrast of the brooding music with his rather fey voice. On this track, however, he does at last let go, and sounds like he’s going to start howling at the moon. Depression certainly dogged Nick’s life, and ultimately ended it. This is a frightening and moving song, full of despair and rage.

‘A black-eyed dog he called at my door
The black-eyed dog he called for more
A black-eyed dog he knew my name…

I'm growing old and I wanna go home
I'm growing old and I don't wanna know
I'm growing old and I wanna go home.
A black-eyed dog he called at my door
A black-eyed dog he called for more.’

Fruit Tree (from Five Leaves Left)

And this is the end. Has to be, really, on a Nick Drake compilation, despite being one of the first songs he ever released. It features all the best bits of all his work – clever, driving guitar melody, grief-filled strings, yearning, sensitive vocals, angst-filled, dreamy lyrics. But what makes this the song that people remember above all others, is, of course, the subject matter.

‘Fruit tree, fruit tree
No-one knows you but the rain and the air.
D
on't you worry
They'll stand and stare when you're gone.’

Using the metaphor of a tree, which doesn’t really produce anything lasting until its fruits have rotted in the earth to create new trees, Nick muses about the nature of fame, and why so many people’s life work is never lauded until after their death. This was always going to be a song to send pleasurable shivers down the spine, but naturally, Nick’s lack of prestige during his life, and the feverish interest in him now, nearly 30 years after his death, lends another aspect to it.

It’s all too easy to see him as a precognitive genius, of course. It was probably more of a self-fulfilling prophecy – anyone who wrote a song like that and then died young, was bound to attract the attention of the romantic and sometimes miserable – and there are hordes of us out here. But if you catch me weeping while listening to this song, and dare to suggest that I’m being maudlin, then be careful. 'Cause pink moon gonna get you all.

Last word to Nick.

‘Fruit tree, fruit tree
Open your eyes to another year
They’ll all know that you were here
When you’re gone.’