by Joe Boyd
When the group arrived, David ushered us to a large corner table. After they ordered, I told them the saga of David Simon: the deals, the names (Mike found ‘Wolfgang and the Wolf Gang’ hilarious), the shrugs from old Cambridge friends if I enquired about his whereabouts. The kid I knew in Harvard Square was never on time for anything, dressed like a bum, and never looked anyone in the eye. What a contrast to the bright-eyed, super-efficient, highly energetic maître d’ who had just seated us! They listened, gripped by this tale of transformation in ways I failed to comprehend.
In years to come I often pondered this moment when, despite the girl waiting at the bar of Max’s Kansas City, I couldn’t resist the sound of my own voice. Fate feeds off such egotistic impulses. I told them to have a good time and I would see them when I returned from California. By the time I met up with them next, Simon had enrolled them all as Scientologists.
Chapter 23
‘UH, HELLO?’ THE VOICE ON the other end of the line was low and soft, almost embarrassed. In the years to come, I would get used to Nick Drake’s way of answering the telephone as if it had never rung before. When I told him why I was calling, he was surprised. ‘Oh, OK, uh, I’ll bring it in tomorrow.’ He appeared at my office the next morning in a black wool overcoat stained with cigarette ash. He was tall and handsome with an apologetic stoop: either he had no idea how good looking he was or was embarrassed by the fact. He handed me the tape and shuffled out the door.
When I had some peace and quiet later that winter afternoon in 1968, I put the reel-to-reel tape on the little machine in the corner of my office. The first song was not one of his best: ‘I Was Made To Love Magic’. The sentimental chord at the beginning of the chorus became one of the few moments in a Nick Drake song to annoy me. But that first time, it drew me in: it was, after all, the first Nick Drake song I ever heard. Next came ‘The Thoughts Of Mary Jane’, then ‘Time Has Told Me’. I played the tape again, then again. The clarity and strength of the talent were striking. It was like the moment I heard Robin Williamson’s ‘October Song’ or Richard Thompson’s solo at UFO, but there was something uniquely arresting in Nick’s composure. The music stayed within itself, not trying to attract the listener’s attention, just making itself available. His guitar technique was so clean it took a while to realize how complex it was. Influences were detectable here and there, but the heart of the music was mysteriously original.
Nick came in the next day and listened as I explained what I wanted to do. He nodded and stammered, staring down at his hands, then asked whether I minded if he smoked. I couldn’t take my eyes off his hands: they were huge and stained with nicotine, the fingers strong and articulate, with long, evenly trimmed nails caked with grime. He moved them constantly as he listened to my plans for him.
My productions had until then been mostly with working groups, which meant simply recording what was already there. But Nick’s compositions cried out for arrangements, an ideal setting for each song. One source of inspiration was John Simon’s production of the first Leonard Cohen album. Simon had adorned the tracks with choruses, strings and other additions that set off Cohen’s voice without overwhelming it or sounding cheesy. Cohen’s voice was recorded close and intimate, with no shiny pop reverb. Nick hadn’t heard it, but he liked the idea of strings. He described performing with a string quartet at a Cambridge May Ball, the first moment of our meeting when he became animated.
His accent was at the aristocratic end of ‘received pronunciation’. Born in Burma, where his father was a doctor in the Colonial Service, he attended Marlborough and was now at Cambridge, reading English. I had met many public schoolboys (Chris Blackwell, for example) who seemed to have not an iota of doubt in their entire beings. Nick had the accent and the offhand mannerisms, but had somehow missed out on the confidence.
One evening, Nick played me all his songs. Up close, the power of his fingers was astonishing, with each note ringing out loud – almost painfully so – and clear in the small room. I had listened closely to Robin Williamson, John Martyn, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. Half-struck strings and blurred hammerings-on were an accepted part of their sound; none could match Nick’s mastery of the instrument. After finishing one song, he would retune the guitar and proceed to play something equally complex in a totally different chord shape.
Sixties London was not brimming with good arrangers. George Martin did his own. Denny Cordell and Mickie Most used John Cameron, but I felt he would have been too jazzy. I rang Peter Asher at Apple and asked him about Richard Hewson, who worked on the first James Taylor record. Peter spoke well of him and gave me his phone number. I sent him a tape of three songs and we paid him a visit. Nick looked at his shoes a great deal and muttered agreements to things I said. It must have been painful for him to go through this process, knowing Robert Kirby was back in Cambridge. But I never thought to ask who had written the arrangements for the May Ball and Nick didn’t volunteer.
In those pre-computer days, there was no way to hear an arrangement before recording it. On the day of the session, Nick, engineer John Wood and I sat in the control room as the musicians rehearsed their parts, trying to imagine how they would sound with the songs. When Nick joined them in the studio, I listened as carefully to his performance as to the instruments. I needn’t have bothered: Nick was perfect every time. The arrangements, on the other hand, were competent, mediocre and slightly fey, distracting from the songs rather than adding to them. After we listened back to our morning’s work and I admitted it hadn’t worked, Nick breathed a sigh of relief: you could see how wary he was of complaining. After a silence, he said, ‘I know someone at Cambridge who might be able to do the job.’ John and I looked at him. ‘He’s already done some arrangements for my songs. They, uh, well, they’re not too bad.’
I wasn’t sure what to make of Nick’s suggestion. I wanted a world-class production, so the idea of using a fellow student struck me as a step backwards. Yet for the supremely cautious Nick to recommend his friend was impressive. I agreed to drive up to Cambridge the following week to meet Robert Kirby.
What can you tell about a musician from meeting him? Kirby was hearty and jolly like a young music tutor, but beneath the banter there was no hiding the deep affection he had for Nick and his music. I liked their ease together. When Robert talked about the songs, he was down to earth and practical. Encouraged, I set a date for the recording.
They started the session with a song I hadn’t heard because Nick didn’t play it on the guitar. As John isolated the sound of each instrument, adjusting the mic position or the equalization, I could barely contain my impatience to hear the full sextet. The individual lines were tantalizing, unusual and strong. When at last John opened all the channels and we heard Robert’s full arrangement of ‘Way To Blue’, I almost wept with joy and relief.
We moved quickly on to ‘The Thoughts Of Mary Jane’ and ‘Fruit Tree’. Each arrangement was devoid of clichés and affectionate towards the song, setting off Nick’s voice and lyrics perfectly. The consistency of Nick’s performances gave us the luxury of recording everyone together in the same room, Nick and the strings moving together under Robert’s direction. John experimented with different microphones for Nick’s voice, eventually settling on a Neumann U67 that brought out the depth and also captured its breathy, delicate quality.
The words to ‘Fruit Tree’ didn’t particularly strike me that day. I took them as a gloomy romantic ode to the lives he may have read about in English class at Marlborough: poet Thomas Chatterton, for example, dead at nineteen and acclaimed decades later; Shelley, drowned in Italy at twenty-four; or maybe Buddy Holly and James Dean. How were we then to grasp the implications of his words?
Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound
It can never flourish
’Til its stalk is in the ground.
And then:
Safe in your place deep in the earth
That’s when they’ll know what you were truly worth.
These lyrics didn’t seem at all prophetic that first year. Nick was shy and unsure of himself, but seemed to have plenty of friends. He travelled frequently between London and Cambridge and was pleased to be working on his record. Sometimes I ran into girls at parties who would say, ‘Nick? Oh I simply adore Nick, isn’t he wonderful?’ One, Alice Gore, always made a point of telling me what great friends they were. Lord Harlech’s daughter, later Eric Clapton’s girlfriend and fellow addict in the early ’70s, Alice would die of an overdose a few years after Nick’s death.
We took our time finishing Five Leaves Left, taking stock after each session before planning the next. I had worked with Danny Thompson a few times by then. He is a large man with a formidable technique on the double bass who brings an inimitable energy to a session. His drive propels ‘Three Hours’ and ‘Cello Song’ and his no-nonsense attitude worked wonders with Nick. Most people, myself included, were too careful, wary of disturbing his silences. Danny would slap him on the back, tease him in rhyming slang, make fun of his self-effacement and generally give him a hard time. Nick would crack a hesitant smile and be relaxed and laughing by the end of the session.
Blackwell made me a present of John Martyn. He had released a couple of LPs on Island but Chris didn’t really know what to do with him and thought I ought to. I admired his playing but had never been a huge fan. When John started living and performing with Beverley Kutner, an ex-Denny Cordell artist Tod Lloyd wanted to sign to Witchseason, I was stuck with him. I recorded an album with the couple in America using a New York pianist named Paul Harris as musical director. I thought Paul’s style would work for ‘Time Has Told Me’, so when he came to London to finish John & Beverley’s Stormbringer, I introduced him to Nick.
Paul spent hours talking to Nick, visiting him and working on ‘Time Has Told Me’ and ‘Man In A Shed’. He kept scratching his head, as if trying to figure out what planet this kid was from. This was typical of the responses musicians had to Nick: they couldn’t figure out how to categorize him. Some, like Harris, recognized the fragility of his genius and became extremely protective of him.
Richard Thompson would listen to a song of Nick’s, ask to hear it again, then again, frowning in concentration, then come up with a great part. He would stand in the door of the control room listening to a playback, concentrating quizzically. Richard likes to figure out every kind of music he hears, but Nick puzzled him. Where did that come from?
Five Leaves Left’s final piece fell into place when Kirby announced that he was not up to ‘River Man’. He had tried, but just couldn’t manage what he knew Nick wanted and what the song deserved. John Wood immediately suggested Harry Robinson, aka Lord Rockingham. When rock’n’roll first invaded British television with 6.5 Special the resident band was Lord Rockingham’s Eleven. Harry had also been on the board of Island Records in the early years but had sold his shares years before. As a composer he had scored all those Hammer horror movies starring vampires-in-chief Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele. After telling us these colourful but irrelevant facts, John came to the point: as an orchestrator, Harry was a master mimic. You want Sibelius? He could give you Sibelius. Since Nick wanted ‘River Man’ to sound like Delius, Harry, said John, was our man.
Nick and I went to visit Robinson at his house hidden in the middle of Barnes Common, just below the tree that was to kill Marc Bolan ten years later. Having heard a tape, Harry was already intrigued when we arrived. Nick played the song through, then strummed chords as the tape played, showing Harry the textures he wanted for the string parts. I had never heard him so articulate or so demanding. Harry made notes and nodded. The result was a track which – next to the Volkswagen ad’s ‘Pink Moon’ – is the most often played and discussed of all Nick’s songs. Whenever I saw Harry in later years, he would talk about the day we recorded it, with Nick surrounded by the orchestra, playing and singing while Harry conducted – just like Nelson Riddle and Frank Sinatra.
Five Leaves Left was released in the summer of 1969. My expectations, like my production approach, had been influenced by Leonard Cohen. His first album sold over 100,000 copies in America while Cohen refused all offers to perform. But when Nick’s album was released in Britain, we had no radio outlets like the American free-form FM stations that played ‘Suzanne’ so often. John Peel played Nick’s album, but he was one of the few; Radio One was all about ‘pop’ in its myriad British guises, none of which bore much resemblance to Nick. And many critics were dismissive: ‘an awkward mixture of folk and cocktail jazz’, said Melody Maker.
Island had no US office in those days, so Chris and I had made deals with A&M for Fairport Convention and Warner Brothers for John & Beverley Martyn. Some American A&R men liked Nick, but none actually made an offer; they said they needed to see him perform. David Geffen loved Nick, but somehow a deal with Asylum never materialized.
That autumn saw the re-emergence of Fairport Convention and the release of Liege and Lief. To honour the occasion, Roy Guest booked the Royal Festival Hall and we made it a Witchseason night: John & Beverley would open, then Nick would finish the first half. Never having seen him perform in front of an audience, I was nervous; Nick remained his usual monosyllabic self. I introduced him to scattered applause. The emotion surrounding Fairport’s fatal accident meant that the audience was very respectful. They listened in silence while he sang ‘Three Hours’, then erupted in applause. Nick looked at them suspiciously, not sure how much to smile. The silence resumed during Nick’s wordless retuning. Finally, he played the opening chords of ‘The Thoughts Of Mary Jane’. As each song was rewarded with huge applause, I could feel the affection surging towards the stage. When he finished, the cheering soared and I pushed him back on stage for an encore. As I stood watching from the wings, my mind was racing: Nick can tour. He can play concerts after all. It doesn’t matter that he can’t talk to an audience. He’ll learn how. He can have a real career. I’m not whistling in the dark, after all.
Everyone in the Witchseason office adored Nick and was thrilled by his performance. The next morning we started booking his first British tour. Two months later he set off for a series of club and university dates around the country. I was busy in the studio but planned to see one of the shows later in the tour. When he called me from the road after the third date, his voice had the crushed quality of defeat: ‘I, uh, I don’t think I can do any more shows, uh, I’m sorry.’ He just wanted to come home.
I spoke to the promoter of one of the shows. He said people talked a lot and when Nick started tuning between songs they talked more and bought more beer. The noise of glasses clinking and conversation became louder than Nick’s music. He never said anything on stage, just tuned and sang, and when the noise became too much, looked at his shoes for a minute then got up and walked off the stage.
I felt briefly angry with Nick. Why can’t he just say something? Why can’t he be more professional? By this time he had left Cambridge and had no supporting group of friends near at hand. After the abandoned tour he retreated to his room in Hampstead. He had always smoked hashish, but that now became the pattern of his days: play guitar and smoke joints, go out for a curry when he got hungry. He came to life when we started recording the second album but between sessions he went back to his isolated existence.
I was aware of only three regular social outings. One was to Bob Squire’s to play liar dice, another was home to visit his parents and the third was up the road in Hampstead to John and Beverley’s. Beverley took on the role of Jewish mother, making him chicken soup, chiding him about his hair and sometimes even washing his clothes. She loved him and was tremendously kind to him. John is a complicated character who certainly admired Nick and even said that he loved him. But I doubt any guitar player could watch Nick play without envy. I joined Nick at John and Bev’s for dinner sometimes and we would all get high and listen to records. Even in these relaxed surroundings, Nick remained guarded and quiet.
Françoise Hardy, the long-haired
chanteuse ruling the French charts, sent word that she was a fan. Letters and messages were exchanged about a collaboration. Nick and I travelled to Paris and climbed the ancient stairs to take tea in her top-floor flat in the Ile St-Louis. The entire time, he barely uttered a word. I think she found him too strange and nothing came of it.
Despite the lack of sales, the absence of an American deal and the failure of the tour, I couldn’t wait to make another record. I looked forward to being in the studio with Nick more than with any other artist. We started creating more rhythm tracks with Nick’s vocal and guitar plus electric bass and drum kit, adding an instrumentalist or an arrangement afterwards. Robert was stretching out, writing for brass as well as strings. When I heard ‘Poor Boy’, I thought of ‘So Long, Marianne’ on the Leonard Cohen album and its mocking chorus of girls’ voices. When I suggested it to Nick, he looked at me for a minute, unsure how to respond, but didn’t seem entirely convinced.
I was virtually living at Sound Techniques by then, with more artists joining the Witchseason roster and none being dropped. The day we recorded the track for ‘Poor Boy’, I had spent the morning mixing a record by the South African jazz pianist Chris McGregor. When Nick and the other musicians arrived, Chris asked whether he could stick around to listen. Chris had grown up in the Transkei bush, smoking dagga with the Xhosa boys from the village. That day he sat at the back of the control room in his dashiki and pillbox cap, stuffed his pipe full of grass and listened. After the morning mix, my ears were full of Chris’s piano. When Nick, Dave Pegg and Mike Kowalski started running through the song, I turned and saw Chris grinning. I asked whether he was thinking what I was thinking. While John went to get the microphones, I buzzed down to the musicians in the studio, ‘You’re getting a pianist in a minute,’ then introduced Nick to Chris. He had a look at the chord sheet Nick wrote out and we turned on the tape. That first-take piano solo on ‘Poor Boy’ is one of my favourite moments in the studio.