Nick Drake

by Patrick Humphries

  In the light of the frequent allegations of record company indifference, it is interesting that Gabrielle feels strongly that Island could not have been more supportive of her brother: ‘Mum and Dad were in London, very worried, and I rang up Island because we thought that he was deeply depressed at that time because Island weren’t supporting him, that he’d brought out a record, and they’d never give him dates and things like that… They said we’d do anything for Nick, give him publicity, but he won’t do it. Chris Blackwell said if he doesn’t want to do public performances, fine, we’ll put him on a stipend of however much it was a week. And I suddenly realized that on the contrary, Island were prepared to do anything. And that that was not where the problem lay.

  ‘I read about Nick railing that he wasn’t more famous, but in the end, you jolly well have to set about becoming famous. As a young artist of any sort, you have to push. I think he was very lucky – he was also extraordinarily talented – but he found somewhere like Island who were prepared to support him, to nurture him, and not mind that he didn’t do the publicity.’

  Although his real success came with the re-release of ‘Streets Of London’ in 1974, Ralph McTell was fiendishly busy throughout this period. By 1972 he had moved up from the folk-club circuit to the Royal Albert Hall, but he still kept a watchful eye on his contemporary singer-songwriters: ‘There was definitely this thread of guys who dressed reasonably smartly and sang in this particular style. And I would say Nick was definitely there. He would have hated Cousins and that folk circuit. It’s a strange paradox: you really want to get your ideas across and record them. But playing in public, performing in front of an audience … the terror of actually going on.’

  Even at Cambridge, friends had sensed that Nick’s shy and soulful nature had an element of conscious image-building to it. As someone who had seen him close-up, had Ralph McTell ever felt that? ‘I always thought all of it was. I thought we were all affected in some way … Bert was the only one who wasn’t mannered. He revealed himself in different ways. He was unable to talk in a fluent way, that’s why he wrote songs … On reflection, perhaps Nick was the same. But I doubt it. Bert was not an articulate man. He’s not someone who enjoys conversation. Whereas somebody who’s been to Marlborough and then on to Cambridge … It’s almost like slumming it somehow, they should be doing something else.

  ‘There was that element when people were being deep and dark, you thought at what point are they going to say fuck this, I’ve got to go and have a drink and have a bit of fun. Some of them just never did – Nick would be one of them. If Nick didn’t have a job to do, you wouldn’t see him round and about. You’d bump into other people at gigs, but Nick was very outside of that, on the edge.’

  Brian Cullman, who had supported Nick at Cousins, was a fixture around the London folk scene at this time, and thanks to his friendship with John and Beverley Martyn he saw a lot of Nick: ‘I would often go round to John and Beverley’s basement flat in Hampstead in the afternoon and listen to music and drink tea, get stoned and watch the sun set over the heath …

  ‘The third or fourth time I stopped by … Nick was there, hunched up in the corner of the room, smoking a joint. He had an odd way of sitting that made him seem smaller and frailer than he was (it was always a surprise, when he stood up, that he towered over John and nearly everyone else) … Nick asked to try out my guitar, and I passed it over to him, curious to hear what his music sounded like, both because he seemed so self-contained and distant, but also because John treated him with such care and deference, as if, at any moment, he might fade away … Nick ambled over, took my guitar, then walked out of the room and closed the door. I could hear the faint sounds of fingerpicking, like the ocean, far away … Ten, maybe fifteen minutes later, the sound stopped, and he walked back in, nodding to himself. Nice, he said handing it back. Then he studied the front, as if he’d just noticed the design on the pickguard. “Gibson,” he said. And then he left.’

  How much of that air of mystery Nick cultivated, and how much of his remoteness sprang from genuine shyness is hard to say. Certainly Cambridge friends and colleagues from Island thought they detected an element of contrived mystery; a sense that he was always conscious of the impression he was making; a feeling that Nick knew, by dressing almost entirely in black, saying little and smiling inscrutably, he was aiding and abetting the myth-making process.

  Paul Wheeler: ‘This just comes to mind, someone talking about a Rolling Stones concert, you had Mick jumping about all over the stage, and then Keith just moved one step, and the whole place went wild. And I think there was an element of that with Nick. I’m not saying it was conscious, but I think he knew how to play the crowd … The one comment that Nick would add to the conversation you would really hear, because he said so little the rest of the time.’

  John Martyn was quoted in Dark Star as saying of Nick: ‘He was quite conscious of the image portrayed in his songs. He was not a manic depressive who picked up a guitar; he was a singer-songwriter in every sense.’

  From the moment he first heard the demo tape, Joe Boyd worked as closely with Nick as anyone. Joe was the person who put Nick on the map, the man who encouraged and nurtured his talent, and as such was well placed to observe him at close quarters, but even with Joe, he does not seem to have moved beyond a close working relationship: ‘I got along very well with Nick, but a lot of the dialogue was not outside of specific, concrete stuff to do with production. There was a lot of one-way traffic. He struck me as a very shy and – dare one say it – even repressed upper-middle-class English person … He didn’t stutter, but he had a little hesitation at the beginning of his sentences.

  ‘He certainly liked being around people who were a lot more relaxed and outgoing than he. In particular, there was a semi-retired, East End minor villain that I had befriended, where we used to go round and play Liar Dice, smoke dope, drink tea, and Nick loved going there. Because this guy geed him up all the time, cuffed him on the shoulder. “C’mon Nick, what’s up? Spit it out, boy” … He loved playing Liar Dice and the congeniality of that situation, but he remained very quiet. He could be very funny and very witty when he did speak, but I never found him the life and soul of the party; he was a very reserved guy.’

  Perhaps at some level Nick felt that if he spent enough time with ebullient, larger-than-life characters, he might acquire some of their vigour and robustness. Danny Thompson was another who Nick seemed keen to get close to. Older by ten years than most of the singer-songwriters he was to work with, Danny had begun playing in the skiffle era after National Service. By the time Pentangle formed in 1967, he was nearly thirty, and had worked with everyone from Cliff Richard to Rod Stewart. While working on Five Leaves Left, Danny sensed that Nick was keen to forge a friendship: ‘He wanted to get close. I know that. Either he liked the way that I was or for whatever reasons. I don’t want to come over as some important bloke in his life, but he really did want to know.

  ‘He said could he come out to the house – I lived out in Suffolk, in a manor house, with loads of acres – so I said yes. I thought it would be a good opportunity for him to come out, go down to my local pub … but it wasn’t his sort of thing. He didn’t open up at all – the whys and wherefores of life, the tragedies of being … no, none of that.’

  Danny felt that by getting Nick away from London, he might be able to get to know him better and help him come out of himself. But even the Suffolk countryside could not break through the cocoon into which Nick had withdrawn: ‘He was very shy, very quiet. I had the feeling his mum and dad wanted him to get a proper job, finish off at university, and had pretty much laid a path for him to follow. I have no proof of this at all, but I just felt he was under pressure. I know he used to smoke a lot, which I wasn’t aware of at the time, and that in itself is an indication, trying to get lost in it. Me, I used to like a few pints and know what was going on – each to his own. He could never be a close mate of mine, because I wasn’t into dope. I wasn’t into b
eing a lost soul. I wasn’t into all that deep and meaningful stuff, and I never have been.

  ‘I felt it all a bit tragic really. Because I’d been in the Army and all that … and come from a background of real blokes, and I thought all he needs is a bloody good bacon and chip buttie and a good kick up the arse and a couple of good shags and he’ll be all right. And I just thought, well, I’ll have a go.’

  Try as he might, Danny Thompson was frustrated by his inability to get through to Nick, and also by the effect it was having on himself: ‘For people who didn’t know him, it’s very hard to describe how … draining it is on you. When you see someone, and you can’t really work out what the matter is … In the end, you sort of lose patience and say get on with it, because it takes up so much of your own time. You’ve got your own problems; particularly then: I was about thirty-something.’

  Joe Boyd feels that Nick’s natural reserve and inability to make connections was heightened by an awareness of the social class into which he was born: ‘For Nick, someone lacking in confidence, it is very difficult to be part of that public-school group, people who are bred, trained; people who behave as though they are the most confident people on the face of the planet. So to be the one who was a bit shy, hesitant, in that context, I would imagine could be very difficult… All those songs about longing for contact and longing for relationships, and yet at the same time, a very clear awareness of how difficult it is for him.’

  One thing Nick never did, even when cultivating the company of minor East End villains, was to deny, or try to shake off, the marks of the social class into which he was born. He seems always to have accepted his background for what it was: an unalterable accident of birth. The other problem with trying to blame Nick’s class or upbringing for his increasing sense of unease is explaining why the signs did not show themselves earlier. Certainly there are some people in Nick’s life who only really knew him when he was troubled, but equally there are those who knew him when he was apparently happy and well-adjusted. The fact that there are so few who actually witnessed the change has much to do with Nick’s talent for compartmentalizing his life.

  Most of the time Linda Thompson knew Nick he was troubled, but even she has fleeting memories of a happy Nick: ‘He was a class act, Nick. The lanky aristo … I remember at the beginning when I used to see him, when he did smile, or he laughed, you just felt thrilled for weeks. It used to make me so happy when he smiled or laughed. He was an adorable person.’

  Linda was well placed to observe Nick in and around London as he started to make his way as an Island artist. A singer herself, Linda was engaged to Joe Boyd before marrying Richard Thompson in 1972: ‘I can’t remember the very first time I met Nick, whether it was with Joe, or at this drug dealer Bob’s house. We’d all go there to play cards, and people would sing. Nick would sing, Richard would sing, John Martyn. I really don’t know if Nick was getting drugs off Bob – Richard and I certainly didn’t; we must have been awfully stupid, because we didn’t really know he was a drug dealer.’

  Later Linda and Nick would embark on a somewhat half-hearted relationship: ‘The fact that he came to my flat once a week, lots of people, myself included, thought we were boyfriend and girlfriend … We would drink macrobiotic tea, and I’d put on records for him. And if he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t say anything, he’d just shake his head, and I’d have to rush over and take the record off.

  ‘He made monosyllabic seem quite chatty. And he was still fairly up then, he wasn’t too bad at all. We’d sit on the bed … we’d have a bit of a cuddle. But it was always strangely detached … He never said very much. Then I’d see him the next week, same night, and then it just got a bit too much like hard work … Instead of thinking to myself, God, this isn’t right, he’s not well.’

  Though Nick’s sexuality has increasingly become a focus of attention in the years since his death, there is no real evidence that he was gay. Friends from Marlborough are agreed that he showed no homosexual tendencies and they feel sure that in the hothouse public-school atmosphere, it would have been apparent. David Wright: ‘I do remember that Nick wasn’t of the “little boy” persuasion. At Marlborough in those days, before girls came along, the main topic of conversation wasn’t weather, it was little boys. Though very little, if anything, actually happened … it was a classic girl-substitute during term time. Certainly I don’t recall Nick being interested in that.’

  Contemporaries from Cambridge even recall Nick’s enthusiastic heterosexuality; one even remembers ‘getting laid at the same party’. But just as many are convinced that he was sexually ambivalent, unable or unwilling to commit himself to the demands of a sustained relationship, with anyone, of either sex. There is no real evidence of any sustained relationship in Nick’s life. Linda Thompson remembers that he went out with one of her friends and that he played them off against each other. Schoolfriends remember a girlfriend in Aix in 1967, and Nick’s friend from Marlborough, Jeremy Mason, met a girl in Beirut, shortly after Nick died, who spoke of being engaged to him.

  Twenty years on, attempts to contact her for this book failed, and Jeremy felt that without her permission it was unfair to reveal her name: ‘Nick was meant to have got engaged to her towards the end of his life. She was in Beirut while I was there with an exhibition, and she talked about Nick a lot, because she saw him for the last few months of his life. She was a very sensitive girl … I think she met Nick’s parents. She knew all about the end. She was very good looking. We got quite close to her in Beirut, over this brief period of time … Her eyes used to fill with tears every time she mentioned his name.’

  Unfortunately, this account cannot be confirmed, though its timing seems to lend it credence. Molly Drake had noticed that in the last few months of Nick’s life, he seemed to have attained a degree of happiness, but until now it has been assumed that the reason for his contentment was his visit to Paris in the months immediately preceding his death. This possible romance would offer another reason for Nick’s brief happiness just before the end.

  By the beginning of 1971 Joe Boyd was feeling the pressure. Witchseason was struggling, and he was labouring under a heavy burden: Richard Thompson and he had been at loggerheads over Fairport’s last album, Full House, and when Richard announced he was quitting the group, Boyd’s primary interest in Fairport went with him. He was having problems with Sandy Denny and her plans for the future; to his concern, The Incredible String Band were becoming increasingly immersed in Scientology; and Nick had already announced that his third album would be a solo effort, with little need for any of Boyd’s production flourishes.

  After selling Witchseason to Chris Blackwell at Island Records, Boyd left London to take a job with the music division of Warner Brothers films. By all accounts, one condition of the sale was that Nick Drake’s records should never be deleted from the Island catalogue. It was a condition to which Blackwell, a long-time admirer of Nick’s work, readily agreed.

  Anthea Joseph: ‘Joe got this offer to go to the States, and that’s when we all broke up – he told me at London Airport … We sat down on those awful plastic seats … and he said: “I’ve taken a job in Hollywood.” And that was it. And I said: “You’ve gotta do it – if you get an offer of that kind you’ve got to do it.” He said: “Are you sure?” and I said: “Well, of course, it’s an experience you can’t turn down – we’ll all survive somehow.” And that was the end of Witchseason.’

  Some who have suggested that Nick – whether wittingly or not – was homosexual, have seen Nick’s evident fondness for Joe Boyd as a manifestation of such feelings. Certainly Nick did admire Boyd, and not just for his proven ability at producing records. But if there was more than simple affection on Nick’s part, it seems likely that it was not secret desire, but secret envy. For how could he not envy the consummate ease with which Boyd managed his life? With his high cheek-bones and face framed by long, fair hair, Boyd was strikingly good-looking. His cultivated Boston upbringing lent him self-assurance,
and he was capable of communicating swiftly and with a personal commitment which made you feel you were the sole object of his concern. In short, Joe Boyd was everything Nick Drake was not. And when Boyd left London, it removed another strand from Nick’s already unravelling life.

  Nick’s parents were both fond of Boyd and they appreciated how much he had contributed to their son’s career, but they were worried by how much Nick missed him when he went back to America. Anthea Joseph also noticed Nick’s dependence: ‘Nick relied enormously on Joe. He was emotionally tied to Joe, it was a mental thing, a brain thing. I mean, neither of them were homosexuals, by any stretch of the imagination. Joe rang a bell in Nick, I think, and vice versa. Joe really did care about him and tried to look after him as best he could.’

  Linda Thompson, who knew both men, told me: ‘All those stories that Nick had a crush on Joe. I don’t think Nick ever had a crush on anybody … Fantastically good-looking man, unbelievably good-looking. Tall and lanky. He was just gorgeous. Long, tapered fingers. A fabulous-looking bloke. But he was totally other-worldly, Nick. He really, really didn’t seem like he belonged.’ Linda, like so many others who knew him, seems to discount the theory of Nick being gay: ‘The time I knew him he was twenty to twenty-five. I think you would have seen him give a loving glance to some bloke, or being somehow involved. Somebody would have come out of the woodwork by now.’

  So many people speak of Nick’s unwillingness to communicate, that there is frequently a tangible sense of frustration when they remember him. A well-spoken young man, educated at public school and university, who wrote such beautiful songs, should have been able to articulate his feelings.