Nick Drake

by Patrick Humphries

  There is an intimacy to Nick’s singing which makes it the perfect voice for headphone communication. Not these modern, flimsy cotton-bud earpieces which make you go Walkman crazy on the Underground, but good, old-fashioned headphones — big, bulky cans which wrap around your ears, insulating you from the world and making you look like a Second World War bomber pilot. While the music coils around your head in the otherwise silent dark.

  Paul Wheeler remembers Nick being intrigued by headphones when they first became fashionable: ‘He was fascinated by the idea that he could sit in the car with headphones on … Maybe he foresaw the kind of insular world, a Walkman world …’

  Despite his avowed fondness for American blues, what registers first is the innate Englishness of his beautifully enunciated singing voice. From the birth of rock ’n’ roll, British singers have strained for a mid-Atlantic sound in their singing voices, attempting to ape the Bronx authenticity of Dion, the Texas hiccuping of Buddy Holly or the Deep South snarl ’n’ sneer of Elvis. But Nick makes no concession to the prevalent American sound.

  Even though The Beatles’ early repertoire was 100 per cent American-influenced, part of their appeal was that they didn’t try to sound like Elvis, or like the Queen. By the time Nick came to record, there was certainly no shame in sounding English, but few singers in rock history have sounded quite as English as Nick – certainly not so politely upper-middle-class English. Later, Ian Dury, Paul Weller and John Lydon would be lauded for their refusal to adopt American vocal mannerisms, but that was largely a result of Punk’s veneration of working-class culture and attitudes.

  Nick Drake’s singing voice is more Noël Coward than Robert Plant. The only other singer I have heard who sounds remotely like Nick Drake is Peter Skellern. The Bury-born Skellern was a year older than Nick, and his singing voice contains a hint of the North, rather than Nick’s public-school received pronunciation, but there is the same vocal huskiness and precise Englishness in both men’s singing styles.

  With origins knee-deep in American music, it was not until the 1970s that British rock stars felt confident enough to display their own natural voices: Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour and Kevin Ayers came from the same social class as Nick Drake, and kept the voices they were bred with. The Floyd’s Syd Barrett also refused to sacrifice his natural voice when recording. But unashamed posh pronunciation in pop didn’t arrive until the year of Nick’s last album, when Roxy Music made their debut – also on Island — and the rock world marvelled at Bryan Ferry’s mannered tones.

  Nick’s labelmate John Martyn considers this unashamed Englishness an important part of Nick’s enduring appeal. Interviewed on Radio 1 a decade after Nick died, Martyn said: ‘The thing that set him apart… is his implicit, innate Britishness. Whilst everyone else on the Island roster … including myself, were having flirtations with American-based sounds — in the same way that Elton John was with his very first record … the whole idea was to try and sound like The Band if you could… He was just very quietly going his own way and producing very … British sounds.’

  In the gentle and perfectly modulated vocal stylings of Nick Drake are all the years spent at Marlborough and Cambridge. There are no dropped aitches or final Gs. The sound of Nick Drake singing is almost aristocratic in style. But unique as the voice was, ultimately it was the songs he sang and the way those songs were set that marked him out.

  On its release, Five Leaves Left received the sort of quiet, respectful admiration that the bulk of Island releases were accorded — though the words ‘Witchseason’ and ‘Joe Boyd’ undoubtedly lent some extra credence to the debut of this young unknown. Five Leaves Left was released on 1 September 1969, but the appearance of a trade ad and review two months before, suggest that the record was originally slated for a summer release.

  Melody Maker of 5 July 1969 featured an advertisement for Fairport Convention’s third album, Unhalfbricking. This was the band’s second LP for Island (‘it may even be better than the first’), and the record company ad also found space to mention the debut releases of Dr Strangely Strange and Nick Drake: ‘All the LPs were produced by Witchseason – that means Joe Boyd and the artistes concerned … There’s nothing unusual about the fact that Nick Drake writes his own songs and plays good guitar — you’ve heard that before about hundreds of new artistes. Listen to the record because of the great playing by Danny Thompson, Paul Harris and Richard Thompson and the amazing string arrangements — then you’ll find out about the singer and his songs.’

  The same issue of Melody Maker carried an advertisement for the first Rolling Stones single since the death of Brian Jones, the swaggering ‘Honky Tonk Women’; there was also a full-page ad for ‘Give Peace A Chance’ – a picture of a telephone directory with the tag-line ‘You are the Plastic Ono Band’. The letters page featured one B. Odwyn, claiming that Led Zeppelin ‘must be the most over-rated group in Britain’. The Liverpool Scene were looking for a new drummer: ‘We don’t want anyone who doesn’t play with feeling.’ In the Folk Forum column, Nick Drake was conspicuous by his absence, but The Strawbs were at the White Bear, Hounslow, Ron Geesin was at Cousins and Al Stewart at the Hanging Lamp, Richmond.

  Five Leaves Left was reviewed as you would expect, in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker, the two most important weekly pop-music papers. The Melody Maker review, dated 26 July 1969, which ran to fewer than fifty words, makes for interesting reading in these days of ponderous, full-page expositions: ‘All smokers will recognise the meaning of the title – it refers to the five leaves left near the end of a packet of cigarette papers. It sounds poetic and so does composer, singer and guitarist Nick Drake. His debut album for Island is interesting.’

  Five Leaves Left was the last review on half a page that week, and was preceded by The Third Ear Band – ‘a demanding mixture of Eastern and European influences’. Other reviews that week included Fairport’s Unhalfbricking (‘Fairport maintain a gentle, tasteful approach and should they ever seem too steeped in sadness, humour bubbles through’); The Paupers’ Ellis Island; Mighty Sparrow & Byron Lee’s Sparrow Meets The Dragon; Nova’s Local Nova; Murray Roman’s Blind Man’s Movie; The Unauthorised Version’s Hey Jude; Burt Bacharach’s Make It Easy On Yourself; and soundtrack albums of The Italian Job and Monte Carlo Or Bust.

  The NME review of Five Leaves Left, by one G.C., appeared in the issue dated 4 October 1969: ‘Nick Drake is a new name to me, and probably to you. From an accompanying biography I read that he is at Cambridge reading English, was “discovered” by Fairport Convention when they played on the same bill and spent some time travelling in Europe, a trip which has greatly benefited his songwriting. I’m sorry I can’t be more enthusiastic, because he obviously has a not inconsiderable amount of talent, but there is not nearly enough variety on this debut LP to make it entertaining.

  ‘His voice reminds me very much of Peter Sarstedt, but his songs lack Sarstedt’s penetration and arresting quality. Exceptions are “Mary Jane”, a fragile little love song, and “Saturday Sun”, a reflective number on which the singer also plays a very attractive piano.’

  For folk-related, Witchseason-style acts, the pages of Melody Maker were the natural habitat and crucial platform. The paper’s August round-up of LP releases found Jethro Tull’s second album, Stand Up, voted Pop LP of the Month. Other selected titles were Fairport’s Unhalfbricking, Julie Driscoll & The Brian Auger Trinity’s Street Noise, Yes’s eponymous debut, Dionne Warwick’s Soulful, Clouds’ The Clouds Scrapbook, Tim Buckley’s Happy Sad (‘needs a lot of listening’) and Dr Strangely Strange’s Kip Of The Serenes (‘creeping ennui sets in with numbing effect’). Squeezed between Lonnie Donegan’s Lonnie Rides Again and Betty Everett’s There’ll Come A Time was Five Leaves Left (‘interesting debut album from composer-singer-guitarist Drake’).

  The pop landscape of 1969 was dominated by new acts like Led Zeppelin (‘the new Cream’), The Doors – Jim Morrison’s shaving off his beard was worth a mention in the MM – as was
one Paul Monday, who bore an eerie resemblance to Gary Glitter, with his new single, ‘Here Comes The Sun’. Besides Nick Drake, the year saw debut albums from Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Blind Faith, King Crimson and Noel Redding’s Fat Mattress. But the old guard were still of interest: ‘Will you be on the Isle of Wight on August 31?’ an MM ad asked. ‘Bob Dylan will!’ Advance sales of 50,000 were announced for the new Beatles album, Abbey Road. ‘Presley Says “I’m Coming To Britain”!’ ran one headline, while The Rolling Stones went the other way, announcing an American tour which would conclude with a free concert somewhere in California.

  It was the year of Woodstock. A time for forging a new nation, united by peace and love and rock ’n’ roll, and led from the front by Dylan and The Beatles, Donovan and The Stones — the shamans who had all the answers. Amid the frenzy of tribal gatherings, love-ins and days of stardust, there wasn’t much room for newcomer Nick Drake.

  The impact of the prestigious Melody Maker readers’ poll was substantial, alerting the world to the names to watch. The final poll of the sixties was dominated by names which had already mapped out the pop landscape of the decade – Dylan, Beatles and Stones. In the ‘Brightest Hope’ category, Blind Faith, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Led Zeppelin were the new names which attracted readers’ votes. Nick Drake received no mention.

  The pre-publicity had not even reached some of those closest to Nick, as his sister Gabrielle admitted: ‘I had begun acting professionally, odd bits of television, and had a flat in Battersea. Nick was working with Joe Boyd, and looking for somewhere to live. He was never very good at integrating people from the different portions of his life. I knew he was recording but I didn’t know how far it had got. By this time, he had become much more introverted. He suddenly came into my room one day, said: “Here you are”, and threw down this record, which was Five Leaves Left. I couldn’t believe it. There it was, a record, with my brother’s picture on the front.’

  Simon Crocker knew Nick well at Marlborough and had visited him in Cambridge: ‘For us, someone we knew, making a record. And then I guess he left Cambridge, and I didn’t hear anything at all, he kind of dropped out, and obviously what he was doing was recording his album, because the next thing was I was walking past a record shop one day and suddenly there was this album of Nick Drake. I remember ringing everyone I knew who knew Nick, saying: “He’s got a record out, and it’s on Island!” We were all terribly proud of him. And then played it, and it was so good, so we were doubly chuffed.’

  Iain Dunn, who had heard Nick’s songs evolve in various rooms around Cambridge, was surprised at what he heard on Five Leaves Left when it was finally released: ‘I remember being disappointed – I think it was probably part of the culture rather than the quality of the album — but it felt over-produced, which actually now it doesn’t at all … It didn’t feel like the same person who’d been sitting in the room playing songs. Inevitably you thought there were better songs that should have gone in … there was that difference between “it’s official”, and a rather attractive unofficial side of it.’

  Iain Cameron also remembers reservations: ‘The inside feeling among the cognoscenti was that the arrangements, the production, are not 100 per cent sympathetic to the spirit of the songs — of the performance as we knew and loved them. There was a feeling that it was slightly overdone, hasn’t quite got the delicacy required, except, I must say, the Richard Thompson … there you have two masters complementing each other, it is a textbook account of how to sensitively accompany a good song and add something to it.’

  In the summer of 1969, having learnt that he was to be enshrined on the second track of Five Leaves Left, Jeremy Mason rang Nick, whom he had not seen since Aix, and arranged to meet up in London. The meeting was only a few weeks before Five Leaves Left was released, but Jeremy remembers that Nick was not yet happy with the way it was sounding: ‘He was speculating whether he needed another instrument to make his music “more interesting”. He was talking about learning the sitar, or something more exotic.’

  By the time Simon Crocker bumped into him on the street in London, about a month after the album came out, Nick had a whole new set of worries: ‘The only thing I remember him saying was they wanted him to play live. They wanted him to go and do concerts, and he was kind of nervous of doing them on his own.’

  Island Records were happy enough with Five Leaves Left, the album coming in at between £3000 and £4000, so even if it didn’t sell, the outlay had been minimal. David Betteridge recognized that there was a real problem getting new acts noticed: ‘Nick was definitely one of those artists where, in retrospect, this was a worthy talent. But there was so much talent about then … so many things happening … that artists weren’t being picked up or weren’t being promoted properly … Nick’s albums were well received inside Island, but there were certainly the questions: “Where’s the single?” and “Is he on the road?” And if you can’t answer those two questions …’

  In the absence of a single, and with Nick reluctant to undertake gigs to promote the album on his own, sales levelled off in the low thousands. By the time of its release, Pete Frame had founded Zig Zag magazine, the first English publication to take rock ’n’ roll seriously. Like Rolling Stone had been doing in America since 1967, Frame set out to try and make sense of the burgeoning rock culture: ‘I’m not surprised Nick’s records only sold 5000 — that’s all a New Riders Of The Purple Sage album would have done. But the Underground was very small. A lot of the hippies didn’t have any money, and if they did they’d spend it on dope. I remember seeing a memo from the bloke who set up Dawn – Pye’s “Underground” label — explaining to Louis Benjamin, who ran Pye, what the Underground was: “Hippies are obliged to smoke dope and listen to these kinds of records and Pye are not filling this niche in the market.” ’

  Low sales have been cited as a reason for Nick’s growing depression, but they were not uncommonly low for a debut album from an unknown singer-songwriter. The previous year, Ralph McTell’s debut, Eight Frames A Second, sold barely 3000 copies. To try to boost sales of Five Leaves Left, Nick did, reluctantly and sporadically, go out to try his hand at promoting the album, but the gigs were fragmentary and disappointing.

  Folk singer Bridget St John, who was just beginning her career, was working the same circuit as Nick and remembers him as a kindred spirit: ‘We write differently, but in some ways from a similar sensibility. The gigs I did with him were mostly at Les Cousins, on Greek Street in Soho, from 1969 onwards. I have a picture of the two of us one summer evening, sitting quietly on the steps outside a pub a little north of Cousins on the opposite side of the street. We never talked a lot but this night was probably a little different – or it wouldn’t have stayed with me. My feeling is that mostly we understood each other without the need to say much. Both shy and best able to say things through songs rather than conversations.’

  Chapter 8

  The end of the first year of the new decade lay bitten and spat out, like an old cigar. All the conflicts and confusion, all the tension and buoyancy which the sixties had raised, remained unresolved at the end of 1970.

  The Beatles had been the fairy tale which obsessed the sixties, but the new decade did not bring a happy-ever-after ending, just a bitter, protracted and very public break-up. The deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin within weeks of each other in the new decade’s opening year also seemed to presage pessimism, rather than an overspill of sixties optimism.

  Anthea Joseph’s working days were spent around the Charlotte Street offices of Witchseason: ‘I was the in-house nanny. My job was looking after Fairport particularly, but if they were off somewhere, and I was in London, I was given someone like Nick to nanny. He needed more nannying than most, because he loathed live performing – he was difficult enough in the studio, where he hadn’t got an audience, but Joe had endless patience with the most difficult people – Nick in particular. So he was given space to do what he wanted, when he wanted t
o do it. When he was in the right frame of mind …’

  Boyd’s idea of a Witchseason family was partly altruistic, in keeping with the communal vibe of the times, but it was also economic. Offering management and agency representation, Witchseason could cut costs by having artists help each other out on record. Late in 1969, Fairport Convention had moved to a converted pub called the Angel, in the village of Little Hadham, near Bishop’s Stortford. A few months later Nick paid a visit to the Angel to rehearse with Fairport guitarist Richard Thompson, bassist Dave Pegg and drummer Dave Mattacks, who would accompany him on his next album.

  Dave Pegg: ‘It was sometime during early 1970. It was actually very good fun, because we had a rehearsal room there, which was very rarely used … Nick came down for about three or four days … He was so introverted, you could never tell if he liked stuff or not, but we got an awful lot done in that time. It was just running through arrangements for Bryter Layter. He had all the songs, and fairly positive ideas about how he wanted them done. His songs were fairly guitar-based, and he was a great guitarist. That was enough, really, on a lot of those things – they were so complete with what he did, and it was early days, we were only learning rhythm-section things.’

  In London, Robert Kirby was aware that Nick lived in a succession of different places: ‘I remember Nick in a flat down in Earls Court that someone had lent him. There was a monkey that used to sit on the record player going round … That was one of his bolt-holes. Nick used to have a lot… Certainly he was in Haverstock Hill while we were recording Bryter Layter. His was the back room on the ground floor overlooking the garden on the corner … french windows opening out… Very imposing, large, Gothic house which has been demolished … Bare floorboards from what I remember; a record player, a few books, a guitar, a single bed, posters on the wall. He got more minimalist as time went on.’