← A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs
A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs
PLEDGE WEEK: “Fruit Tree” by Nick Drake
This episode is part of Pledge Week 2025. For five days this week, I will be posting old Patreon bonus episodes to the main feed to encourage people to subscribe to my Patreon. If you want more of these, and only if you can afford it, subscribe for $1 a
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- [00:00]
Andrew Hickey
This episode is part of pledge week 2025 for five days this week I will be posting old Patreon bonus episodes to the main feed to encourage people to subscribe to my Patreon. If you want more of these, and only if you can afford it, subscribe for $1 a month at patreon.com andrewhickey whether you do or not, I hope you enjoy before we begin, this episode contains discussion of mental illness and suicide, so if those topics are likely to be disturbing, you may wish to skip this one or to read the transcript. As with the last Patreon bonus episode on Gaudete by Steel Eyespan, this episode is one I originally planned to go with the Fairport Convention main episodes before the story of Never Learn not to Love expanded so much, though as it happens there are also connections to the current episode Nick Drake, like Steel Icebrean and Fairport Convention and like John Martin and the Incredible String Band, who we've covered earlier, was part of the flourishing of British folk music at the end of the 1960s, centred around Joe Boyd, who was the major connection between the folk and psychedelic scenes in Britain at the time. But there was a difference between Nick Drake and those other artists, where they were all people who collaborated with each other and so ended up building each other's audiences. Nick Drake was a solitary performer who did little in the way of collaboration with other artists, and partly for that reason he remained largely unknown during his brief lifetime, and it's only in the last few decades that he has slowly started to become recognised as a major figure in music. Nick Drake came from a background that was very different from almost every other musician we've covered in the podcast, one of far more privilege than is usual for musicians of his generation. He was born in Rangoon in 1948, a child of the British Empire. His father was an engineer with the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation, while his mother was the daughter of Sir Idwald Geoffrey Lloyd, who was prominent in the Indian civil service. When Nick was three, the family moved back to England along with their Burmese servant Noah Rosie Parr too, who was the nanny for Nick and his elder sister Gabrielle during Nick Drake's lifetime and for a couple of decades afterwards. Gabrielle was by far the most successful of the siblings, making a name for herself as an actor, most famously in the proto Dallas drama series the Brothers, but also in the cult science fiction series ufo, several rather poor British sex comedies, and the soap operas Crossroads and Coronation Street. Molly, Their mother was herself a songwriter. Her songs were never intended for public release, but she recorded them on a tape recorder, a rare thing in the 1950s and a sign of privilege in itself. And they've seen release in recent years. They're quite astonishing. And it's very, very easy to see the influence that she had on her son.
- [03:17]
Nick Drake
A seed carries a field of grain Love lies in the arms of change As a joy carries a pain and no one knows how wild the wind.
- [03:39]
Molly Drake
Blow.
- [03:45]
Andrew Hickey
Molly Drake's songs, Once They Saw the Light, became celebrated enough that they've been performed quite a lot themselves, including in two albums by the folk group the Unthanks, one of the most highly acclaimed folk bands of recent decades.
- [03:58]
Nick Drake
We tramp the open moorland in the rainy April weather and came upon the little inn that we had found together A landlord gave us toast and tea and stopped to share a chill and I remember firelight I remember fire light I remember fire light and you remember Small.
- [04:45]
Andrew Hickey
Nick Drake himself started writing songs at a very early age. His sister remembered him writing one about a children's book called Cowboy Small when he was 3 or 4. And Molly encouraged him to have piano lessons, and he became relatively proficient on the instrument. Indeed, when he was 11 and away at prep school, he wrote back to his family, telling them, half jokingly, that he'd decided he was going to join the music business. This might in part have been due to him, by this point, actually knowing one person who had been a success of sorts in music. The French teacher at his school, John Watson, had written the UK entry for the 1960 Eurovision Song Contest. Looking high, high, high.
- [05:25]
John Watson
I want hello but oh, I loved her very dearly she told me she love I thought she spoke sincerely but one day away I found that she had flown so off to find a love of mine I set her low Looking high, high, high Looking low, low, low Wondering why, why, why did she go, go, go for if I don't find my love I know I shall die, die, die.
- [05:58]
Andrew Hickey
By the time he went off to Marlborough Public School, and note, for Americans, this doesn't mean what you think of as public school, but rather the opposite. This is a boarding school for the children of the rich. He was becoming seriously interested in music in two different directions. He was becoming a fan of jazz and took up the clarinet. Friends commented on how natural a musician he was, with one saying, I started learning the clarinet but didn't make much progress. Nick picked it up one day and effortlessly played it 10 times better than I could. I actually found it quite annoying. The posthumous compilation album Family Tree, made up of home recordings of Drake and Sometimes his family members made before he started his music career has a recording of him playing a Mozart piece on clarinet with his aunt and uncle on viola and piano. And he does sound very competent for someone not playing his main instrument. He switched from clarinet to alto saxophone and formed a jazz group with some schoolmates. His other musical interests became the American folk music revival and British jazz influenced R and B music. There's a letter from early in his time at Marlborough asking his family to send his copies of the Free Wheel in Bob Dylan and the Five Faces of Manfred Mann. And he's also known to have gone to a lot of gigs at the Marquee and Flamingo, seeing people like the Graham Bond Organisation. A school friend remembers him being so impressed with a Ginger Baker drum solo that he spilled a pint of beer down his front without noticing Chris Farlow and Georgie Fame. He was also for a while the lead singer and piano player of a blues rock band named the Perfumed Gardeners. Though he never wanted to be the singer, just nobody else in the band had been capable of it. According to school friends, his musical tastes at the time were both impressive and eclectic. He was listening to John Coltrane and Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and Odetta, Segovia, Salmon and Garfunkel, Mose Allison, Donovan, Booker t and the MGs, the Beach Boys, the Incredible String Band, the Birds, and British folk baroque guitarists like Bert Jansch and John Remborn. Pretty much everyone at his school says that he was someone who was difficult to get to know, and he was largely an academic failure, being uninterested in anything except his music. Though he was from such a privileged background that he was accepted into Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, despite getting E's in three of his four A levels, the exams British people take when they're 18. To get into Oxford or Cambridge from a less privileged background, one would have to have at least three, as he'd taken up the guitar as a hobby in his early teens, but became more serious about it after seeing one of the first gigs by Cream. As a Graham Bond fan, he'd wanted to see Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker's new band. And being impressed by Clapton, however, he didn't turn to electric rock music. Indeed, he seems to have had a little bit of contempt for the underground rock scene, writing a teenage poem that went in part forced jerked rhythms and sweating eyes, hysterical enjoyment and unnatural benevolence. How can man so delude himself? Rather, he went fully in the direction of the British folk baroque guitarists at Les Cousins, which he Joined in the winter of 1966 in a gap year before going off to university. If you don't remember, Les Cousins, it was the home of the style of guitar playing that people like Bert Janch, John Remborn, Martin Carthy and Davy Graham specialised in, and we talked about it in the Patreon bonuses on Pentangle and Jackson C. Frank. Drake soon became an accomplished guitarist in this style himself, and these musicians had a profound influence on him. There are early recordings of him doing Burt Janches Strolling down the highway.
- [10:10]
Molly Drake
Highway Just keep on down walking to hear my guitar rocking While I stroll on down on down the highway People think I'm a crazy.
- [10:32]
Andrew Hickey
And Jackson C. Frank's blues Run the Game, a song which seems to have been a profound influence on him.
- [10:50]
Molly Drake
Catch a boat to England, baby maybe to Spain Wherever I have gone Wherever I've been and gone wherever I've come.
- [11:09]
Andrew Hickey
He also went off with a couple of his school friends to France for a few months, ostensibly to improve his French, and it was there that for the first time, he started seriously writing songs himself. He also, while in France, had an experience that seems to have left a mark, at least according to some of the other friends there. The group of friends had a go at a seance, and Drake seems to have convinced himself that he'd made contact with the ghost of a great uncle he didn't know about. He apparently got so freaked out by this that he phoned up his mother long distance from France, and she confirmed that apparently she did have an uncle who died recently. The friends were apparently followed for much of the rest of the day after the seance by a large black dog. And while most people have interpreted Drake's later song, Black Eyed Dog as being about his depression, at least one of his friends believed it was actually about that experience.
- [11:58]
Molly Drake
A black eyed dog he called at my door A black eyed dog he called for more A black eyed dog, he knew my name.
- [12:29]
Andrew Hickey
In the middle of this time in France, Drake and some of his friends decided to do what many privileged bohemian teenagers were doing at the time, and make their way to Morocco. First, they went to Tangier, where they discovered that some of the Rolling Stones were staying, as we discussed in the main podcast in the Sympathy for the Devil episodes. They went to the Stones Hotel and saw the mentoring, and one of Drake's friends actually phoned the Stones suite to see if they were interested in having Drake perform for them. They weren't, but Drake did perform at a local bar and apparently went down well. They then moved to Marrakech which was also where the Stones had moved on to. Again, as we discussed in that episode, this time Drake did get to perform for them, and according to one of the other people on the trip, they were bombed out of their minds, yet clearly impressed by Nick. At the end of the encounter, Mick said to him, you must come and see us when you're back in London, which I doubt, he said to everyone. This led to some problems as they continued on their trip, going on to other parts of Morocco. One of Nick's companions boasted to the locals that he'd recently played guitar for the Rolling Stones and they got the wrong end of the stick and thought that Drake was the Stones actual guitarist. When Nick and his friends realised the error, they played along as a joke, which was fine until rumours got around that the Rolling Stones were in town and the local police tried to bust them for dope possession. Thankfully, while they did all smoke dope, none of them were carrying anything at the time. On their return to France, one of Drake's friends recorded his early repertoire on a cassette recorder. It included the first recordings of Drake's own songs, Strange Meeting Two and They're Leaving Me Behind.
- [14:13]
Molly Drake
I listen to the echo of his heart for some there's a future to find but I think.
- [14:39]
Andrew Hickey
After his return to the uk, while he was ostensibly studying at Cambridge, he became quietly determined to make a career out of his music, though it's difficult to piece together exactly to what extent he thought this was possible. Drake was always a very compartmentalised person. He seems to have had many friends, but not many close friends, and all of them seem to have known only some aspects of his life. He also seems not to have had any real romantic relationships, despite apparently being found very attractive by many women or had any real interest in sex with partners of any gender. He was always very withdrawn and only seemed to get more so as he entered adulthood. One school friend's girlfriend, though, happened to live in the flat below Tom Jones's agent and took it upon herself to be something of an unofficial agent for Drake, making contacts for him with various record producers, labels and publishers. A music publisher was interested in buying some of his songs, but when he saw that they reserved the right to alter his words and music, he refused to sign the contract. Chris Blackwell of Ireland Records was a better prospect, but as Blackwell says in his autobiography, he played me some songs, never daring to look at me while I listened. The songs were delicate and tentative, but confident in their idiosyncrasy. They came across like magic spells. He had created as a defence against the world, I suppose. The songs were everything he had at the time and he'd worked hard on them and knew they were strong. I liked them very much, but compared to Traffic and Spooky Tooth and the other rock stuff I was focusing on at the time, they seemed a little flimsy. I told him, I love what you're doing, but I'm not sure whether we're the right people, credibility wise to sell your music. That said, why not come back in six months and see where we're both at? So he did come back, but nothing had really changed. I liked his music a lot but didn't feel I could do anything with it. We were used to mixing our acts on tours, but I thought that if I included a solo singer as understated and confessional as Nick, it would get lost. However, Blackwell's label would end up being the one that would release Drake's work, and it was because of something that happened on the same trip to London as that six month later visit to Blackwell. He had gone to London to take part in a benefit concert that had been organised at the Roundhouse by Victoria Ormesby Gore, the daughter of Lord Harleck and a friend of some of his school friends. It was his first real concert appearance, accompanied by a friend on double bass and flute somewhere near the bottom of her bill that also included Pentangle and Country Joe and the Fish making their first UK appearance. Drake was by all accounts petrified with stage fright, but Ashley Hutchings of Fairport Convention happened to be in the audience and was impressed by Drake's songs, by the fact that he sang in an educated English accent, a real rarity at that time when it was still de rigueur for British singers to put on a fake American accent, but most of all by his stage presence and charisma. Hutchings was so impressed that he immediately went up to Drake and offered to introduce him to Fairport Conventions producer Joe Boyd. Boyd was someone who had been around the music industry in different capacities for a few years. He had been responsible for the sound for Dylan's electric appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, and he had been running the UFO Club for a while, and he had recently started producing records with the first album by the Incredible String Band and with the Pink Floyd single Arnold Lane. Boyd phoned Drake a few days later and got him to bring in a tape of his songs, which Boyd found incredibly impressive. He was even more impressed with Drake's guitar technique, saying in his autobiography 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 Martin, Bert Janche and John Renbourne. 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. Boyd signed Drake up to his which Season Productions Company, one of several organisations in the UK at the time, like those of Robert Stigwood, Andrew Oldham or Stampin Lambert, modelled on the Motown formula, where an entrepreneur would be the manager and agent and record producer and publisher for an artist looking after their whole career, and where that company would make the records in house and then license them to a distributor rather than the artist signing to a label. This kind of thing can be very dodgy when the entrepreneur in question is as exploitative as many were. But by all accounts, Boyd was someone who actually had the best interests of his artists at heart, and with him it allowed the artists to get on with their work, knowing someone they trusted had everything in hand. The two, in collaboration with engineer John Wood, who was a vital part of the production process, got to work on what would be Drake's first album. Five Leaves left a name taken from a piece of cardboard that used to be found in Rizzler cigarette papers, telling smokers they were about to run out of papers, which should give an idea of what Drake's main interests were other than music and the poetry of Blake and Yeats. Of course, both Drake and Boyd had been impressed with Leonard Cohen's first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, and particularly with John Simon's production and the use of strings on it. Boyd had also recently been involved with the recording of Judy Collins album In My Life, which had featured orchestral arrangements by Joshua Rifkin, on a selection of songs which included many by favourite songwriters of Drake's such as Leonard Cohen, Donovan, the Beatles and Randy Newman.
- [20:41]
Nick Drake
Broken windows and empty hallways A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray Human kindness overflowing and I think it's going to rain today.
- [21:00]
Andrew Hickey
They wanted to do something similar, but Boyd couldn't arrange strings himself. He got in touch with Peter Asher, formerly of Peter and Gordon but now working at Apple Records, and Asher recommended Richard Hewson, who had made himself a bit of a kneeshot Apple doing the strings for James Taylor's first album produced by Asher and Mary Hopkins. Those were the days produced by Paul McCartney. He would later orchestrate McCartney's Thrillington album, and he was to gain a certain notoriety for his arrangements for Phil Spector's controversial overdubs on the Beatles Let It Be album. But after they commissioned Hewson to write arrangements and went into the studio, they discovered that his arrangement style was completely wrong for Drake's music, and they scrapped the sessions. Instead, Drake suggested a university friend, Robert Kirby, who was a music student who had made a few records himself as a member of a vocal group called the Gentle Power Of Song.
- [22:01]
Molly Drake
Rake knew Kirby was well, insofar as.
- [22:27]
Andrew Hickey
He really knew anyone they'd met when they both failed the auditions for the Footlights, the Cambridge Theatrical Club, which had counted as recent members people like Peter Cook, John Cleese and Graham Chapman, and which at that time had Clive James and Jermaine Greer in its membership. And the two had discussed the music that Drake was most interested in emulating at the time, as well as the Leonard Cohen album. Drake wanted the arrangements to sound like Van Dyke Parks arrangements on Mandy Newman's first album, Jimmy Webb's on the 5th Dimension's the Magic Garden, and Jerry Yester's on Tim Buckley's Morning Glory. He also mentioned the Beach Boys, Pet Sounds and the guitar playing of Django Reinhardt as further touchstones. Kirby put together a score for a small group of orchestral instrumentalists, and they tried them out at a handful of live shows, among the very few that Drake ever played at small Cambridge events with scratch bands made up of amateur orchestral musicians, one of whom, Mark Wing Davey, later went on to fame playing the role of Zaphod Beeblebrox in the radio and TV series the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So when Hewson's arrangements didn't work, Boyd agreed to give Kirby's a try. Kirby ended up doing all the orchestral arrangements for the album, except for the song Riverman, which was instead arranged by Harry Robertson, also sometimes credited as Harry Robinson, who was suggested by John Wood after Kirby found himself unable to write anything that convincingly worked in the 5:4 rhythm of the song.
- [24:09]
Molly Drake
Summertime.
- [24:24]
Andrew Hickey
Robertson had an odd career, starting as musical director of oh Boy and writer of Hootsmon by Lord Rockingham's Eleven, before arranging My Boy Lollipop for Millie and records for Jim Dale, Mike and Bernie Winters, the Swinging Blue Jeans and Judy Garland. After working with Drake, he would go on to arrange Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the west for Benny Hill, several albums by Don Estelle and several Serge Gainsbourg records, and composed the music for many Hammer horror films. But Other than Riverman, the orchestral tracks were arranged by Kirby and cut live in the studio. Sessions had to be timed around Drake's university terms, though he dropped out soon after the album was completed and so the album took nearly a year from the first session to the final one. Though Kirby remembered that the four tracks he orchestrated were cut in one three hour session with few or no overdubs. Drake played guitar and sang live as the small group of orchestral musicians played on songs like Fruit Tree, the song which would later more than any other, define Drake and the public eye.
- [25:35]
Molly Drake
Far from their dying day, forgotten while yet remembered for a while, a much updated ruin from a much outdated style.
- [26:00]
Andrew Hickey
The other five songs on the album were performed with musicians from the circle of folk rock performers that Boyd often worked with. Danny Thompson of Pentangle played double bass on all those tracks, and Riverman. Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention, no relation to Danny, though the two have often worked together, played electric guitar on the opening track, Time has Told Me. Piano player Paul Harris, with whom Boyd had worked on a recent album by John and Beverly Martin, who have also both soon to become close friends of Drake, contributed to a couple of tracks. And there was percussion on the closing track by tympanist Tristan Fry, who had played the timpani part on A Day in the Life, and on two other tracks by Rocky Gijorno, who as Rocky Dijon, had played the congas on Sympathy for the Devil.
- [26:52]
Molly Drake
You would seem so frail in the cold of night when the armies of emotion Go out to fight the wild.
- [27:20]
Andrew Hickey
The album was gentle and beautiful and is rightly regarded now as a classic, but at the time it went almost completely unnoticed. It got mediocre reviews, one comparing it unfavourably to Peter Sarstedt and sold very little. Several of Drake's friends who were used to hearing these songs performed by Drake on his own, were disappointed by the arrangements on the album and preferred the songs in the sparse versions they had grown to know. This has led through a process akin to the game of telephone, to people thinking that the orchestral arrangements on the album were added against Drake's will, when every account we have of the album's recordings says that they were his idea and done to his specifications. Because the album took so long to record, it actually ended up being released through a different label than it had been intended for. When they started work on the album, which season had a deal with Polydore, who, according to Boyd, were delighted with the initial recordings with Hewson's arrangement and started talking about how Drake could be the new Engelbert Humperdinck. But in the intervening time, Boyd had broken with Polydore and signed an exclusive agreement with Ireland Records instead. Chris Blackwell of Ireland had mostly been interested because of Fairport Convention, but he was also pleased that Boyd was working with Drake, whose talent he thought Boyd would be able to nurture in a way that Blackwell hadn't had time for. There were, though, problems with promoting the album. Ireland put out three Witch Season albums at the same time, so they could advertise all three at once. But other than these adverts, both Witch Season and Ireland seemed to think that the other company was responsible for promotion, and most of the attention any of the albums got was for Fairport Convention's unhalfbricking, which overshadowed Five Leaves, left the big stars, on which season. Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band were powerful live performers, and Boyd encouraged Drake to perform live himself, but he was never comfortable on stage and he was never a dynamic live performer. There was also the problem that he needed to retune his guitar after every song, because the songs were all performed in different tunings and he was not someone who could banter with the audience while doing that, so the audience would grow impatient and start talking and throw him off. He soon gave up live performance and moved to London, and his social circle started to deteriorate. He had always been withdrawn, but he became more so as his cannabis use grew more frequent. Many have suggested that his later problems were symptoms of cannabis psychosis, and he was soon seeing almost nobody. Though he would often visit John and Beverly Martin, he was apparently very close to Beverly Martin, with John mostly just tolerating him, though John Martin would later play up their closeness after Drake's posthumous fame. He also refused to do any interviews to promote the album, and only made one radio appearance on a show presented by John Peel. While the album sold very little, Boyd still had faith in Drake and paid him a weekly salary as an advance against publishing royalties, assuming that songs of the quality of Drake's would soon get covered by prominent artists. Indeed, Boyd, thinking that his artist's songs would do better if people heard them in a less pokey context, decided to record a quick demo album of songs by Drake, John and Beverly Martin, Mike Herron of the Incredible String Band and Ed Carter, who Boyd had signed as a member of the new Nadir by now had become a member of the Beach Boys touring band. In rock styles, members of Sandy Denny's new band Fotheringay played the instrumental part, and the vocals were by two singers Boyd knew half were by his then girlfriend Linda Peters, later to become famous under her married name after marrying Richard Thompson, and the other half were by someone who had recorded a couple of his own albums but had still not had his big break and was getting session work.
- [31:06]
Nick Drake
Saturday sun.
- [31:13]
Molly Drake
Came early one morning In a sky so clear, clear and blue.
- [31:34]
Nick Drake
But Saturday.
- [31:38]
Andrew Hickey
Sadly, even Elton John couldn't make Nick Drake's commercial potential, apparently, and the only cover that came along was one of a song that wasn't included on that demo album, a reggae version of Mayfair, an outtake that had been recorded for Five leaves left, but left unreleased by Milly Small.
- [32:07]
Nick Drake
Night, Mayfest, Rain Train, Just in the Afternoon Mayfair stretching far above Full of fame but lacking love could it be we see the Mayfair moon?
- [32:27]
Andrew Hickey
Millie promoted that song with topless photos in an adult magazine also called Mayfair, but it didn't sell many records. But still, they were going to work on the next album, which would be much more commercial again. Kirby was going to be the arranger of the orchestral material, and Drake was again thinking of Pet Sounds as a touchstone, with its use of instrumentals to sustain the mood, as well as Neil Young's recently released solo debut, which had included the Jack Nitschie instrumental string quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill. So Brighter later, the second album, would also have instrumental tracks.
- [33:02]
Molly Drake
Sa.
- [33:34]
Andrew Hickey
Unlike the first album, though, almost every track on Brighter later would feature rock instrumentation, particularly in its rhythm section. 3 of Fairport Convention appear on the album. Richard Thompson again adds electric guitar to one song, while Dave Pegg adds bass to nine of the ten tracks, with Ed Carter playing on the tenth. One of these things first.
- [34:01]
Molly Drake
A real live lover could have been a book I could have been a signpost could have been a clock as simple as a cattle Steady as a rock I could be.
- [34:29]
Andrew Hickey
The drums on that were by Mike Kowalski, who also played with Carter and the Beach Boys Band and played on four of the album's tracks, with Dave Mattox of Fairport playing on five and one track, Fly, featuring no drums. The album was definitely made with the intention of creating something commercial, to the extent that one track, poor Boy, has backing vocals by P.P. arnold and Doris Troy. Towards the end of the sessions, there were two songs left unfinished, Fly and Northern sky, and Drake had no idea how he was going to record them. The problem was solved when Boyd was working on Nico's second solo album, Desertshore, with John Cale and played some of Drake's music for him. Cale was astonished and insisted on dropping the session they were working on and going to meet Drake. Right. Then the next morning, Cale called him and said, we're going to need a pickup for the viola, an amp, a Fender bass and bass amp, a celeste and a Hammond B3 organ this afternoon.
- [36:08]
Molly Drake
Been a long time and I've wondered But through the people I have known oh, if you would and you could straighten my new mind's eye.
- [36:27]
Andrew Hickey
Brighter later is often regarded as Drake's best album, but it's also the one he expressed most ambivalence about in the rare occasions he talked about his own work. Joe Boyd, as said, Nick, liked control over how his work sounded and was always very closely involved with Robert's arrangements. But the contributions by McGregor and Cale were unplanned accidents. Everyone loved the way they turned out, which maybe made it difficult for him to dissent. He never complained to me about their contributions, but perhaps he felt the album had slipped away from him. Boyd was very proud of the work, but he was growing less happy with Witch Season as a whole, finding himself spread too thin. He said later, my relationships with the artists had always been what got me out of bed in the morning. But when those started collapsing, I lost enthusiasm. There was the Fairport Crash. The Incredible String Band had become Scientologists. Sandy had left Fairport. Fotheringay was expensive and difficult. Richard and I had argued over what to include on Full House. Nick had flopped and his mental state was going downhill. I felt overworked because I was taking on more and more. I still had my own obligations and things were dividing in an amoeba like fashion. Instead of producing Fairport, I now had Fairport and Fotheringay to produce. Mike Herron was doing a solo album at the same time as the Incredible String Band were doing more recordings. Boyd wrote in his autobiography, Looking back, I can see that we were all so enamoured of Nick's music, we moved happily into the vacuum created by his diffidence. Nick, I think, felt left out of his own album. His refusal to include My Favourite Things behind the sun and his insistence on including those three instrumentals were his way of stamping his foot. His ghost is having the last laugh. The stark Pink Moon is his best selling album, While Brighter Later Trails in third place after Five Leaves, left Pink Moon, the only album Drake would complete without Boyd was indeed stark.
- [38:19]
Molly Drake
Take a look, you may see me on the ground For I am the parasite of this town but take a look, you may see me in the dirt For I am the parasite who hangs from your sky.
- [38:48]
Andrew Hickey
Which season was going badly into debt? Boyd produced 16 albums in 1970 and most of them lost money. He was trying to find ways to expand the organisation's income, and one idea he had was to set up a reciprocal publishing agreement with a Scandinavian publisher. They would get the Scandinavian rights to all Witch Season's artists songs as a straight swap for which Season? Getting the English language rights to their songs, none of which had been hits, but in which Boyd saw some potential. But before the deal was agreed, Boyd got a job offer from Mo Austin at Warner Bros to go and work for them in la. Chris Blackwell agreed that Boyd had to take the job, and so Island Records bought which Season, taking on all its debts. One of the conditions of the sale was that Nick Drake's albums, which Boyd was proudest of, would remain in print no matter what. Boyd left the contract with the Scandinavian publisher unsigned and thus missed out on getting the English language publishing royalties for ABBA in exchange for those of the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Nick Drake in Scandinavia. Drake saw his mentor's departure as crushing. He was also devastated by the release of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album and thought his next record needed something of its sparse style. He determined that his next album would be just him. Pink Moon is an entirely solo album, with Drake on guitar and no other instruments except for piano overdubs on the title track, which he also written.
- [40:17]
Molly Drake
Bingamoon is on its way. None of you stand so dull.
- [40:44]
Andrew Hickey
Joe Boyd had told him that he would fly back to the UK from the US to produce him anytime he asked, and was indeed still trying to push Drake's recordings in the us, even while he was now working for a competing label. But Drake decided that he would make the album without Boyd and with John Wood now producing. Pink Moon was recorded in just two sessions, and the first Island Records knew that there even was a new Nick Drake album was when he turned up at their offices and sat around unspeaking for a couple of hours before finally asking to see Chris Blackwell and handing him the tape. It's often regarded as a masterpiece, with people comparing it to the work of Robert Johnson, but some of Drake's friends found it too upsetting to listen to. Beverly Martin said of it, I thought, this boy's gone, we've lost him, we can't reach him anymore and he can't reach us. I wondered why he'd bothered to record some of the tracks and who had thought it was a good idea to let him go into the studio and do so. They were so dark and sad and telling about the state of his Mind doom, gloom and despair with apocalyptic elements. People listen to it and say, that's a great line, and talk about the songs and the surreal cover, like they're a puzzle they can solve. But Pink Moon is like the Book of Revelation. It doesn't make sense and it's a manifestation of illness, of madness. When people are really ill, they don't know what they're saying, they don't hear what's coming out of their own mouth. I thought those songs, those words, were the product of a sick person. I don't think Nick himself knew what he was driving at.
- [42:33]
Molly Drake
You know, I'm not.
- [42:37]
Andrew Hickey
Pink Moon would be the last album Drake would complete. He was 23 when he recorded it and he died just over three years later. Soon after recording Pink Moon, he moved back in with his family, his mental illness having progressed to the point that he could no longer take care of himself. They did their best to look after him and he was given treatment. But medical treatment for mental illness in the early 1970s was primitive even in comparison to today's, far from wonderful standards. He was seen by a succession of good doctors, prescribed the best antidepressants then available and treated with electroconvulsive therapy. But nothing worked. He had been fastidious about his appearance, but he was now often unshaven, went days without washing, barely spoke, and worst of all, let his fingernails grow long. He'd always kept them short for his guitar playing. By now he was no longer playing much. He could no longer sing and play at the same time. Whether because of his illness or medication side effects, he'd lost the coordination that had let him be, by many people's reckoning, the best acoustic guitar player in Britain. By 1974, Joe Boyd had left Warners and had moved back to the uk. He got in touch with Drake more out of care for his well being than for professional reasons. And Drake came round to see him. And according to Boyd's autobiography, he looked far worse than I had ever seen him. His hair was greasy, his hands dirty, his clothes rumpled. More unnervingly, he was angry. I had told him he was a genius and others had concurred. So he demanded, why wasn't he famous and rich? This rage must have festered beneath that inexpressive exterior for years. I confessed my own disillusionment. I had thought a great record would open all doors. Some good reviews, a few plays on John Peel. With no live shows, it hadn't been enough. I proposed starting a new album. I had no idea what would emerge, but it was the only therapy at my disposal. Boyd and Wood worked with him on four new songs, though they couldn't work the same way that they had before. He had to cut the guitar and vocal parts separately because he could no longer play and sing at the same time.
- [44:45]
Molly Drake
When you deem me so high when you deem me so high when you.
- [44:55]
Andrew Hickey
Deem me.
- [44:59]
Molly Drake
So high.
- [45:07]
Andrew Hickey
After that session, Boyd had to return to the US and stayed a little longer than he wanted, writing to Drake a few months later. Dear Nick, I'm sorry things didn't work out for me to be in London this autumn. I know I got you started on thinking about doing some more recording and then didn't really follow it up. All I can say is that I still would really like to do another album with you, and I hope I will be back in London long enough this winter to get something done with you. I know you want to get things straightened out with Ireland. I will be glad to help when I get back, but in the meantime, Richard Williams is the man to speak to if you need anything. I'm sure they would be willing to give you an advance, but it must be under a proper contract. I told him that you wanted an accounting for the first three LPs, and he will be trying to get that brought up to date. See you soon, Joe. A few weeks after receiving that letter, though, Nick Drake died by suicide, overdosing on his antidepressant medication. He was only 26, and at the time he died, he was prone to telling people that everything he'd ever done was a failure, and certainly in purely commercial terms it had been. At the time he died, none of his albums had sold more than 5,000 copies. But as Ireland had agreed with Boyd, the music stayed in print. In 1979, Ireland put out a box set titled Fruit Tree, containing all three of his albums, plus four of the songs he'd worked on with Boyd and Wood in that last set of sessions. In the 80s, the box set was reissued with the four bonus tracks expanded to a full album's worth of outtakes and home recordings. More archival recordings followed, and almost straight away after his death, Drake started to get name checked by musicians. R.E.M worked with Joe Boyd, in part because Peter Buck was a fan of Drake. The Cure named themselves after a line from one of Drake's lyrics. Kate Bush name checked him. By the mid-80s, there was a devoted Nick Drake cult, and he would regularly get mentioned in music magazines. By the mid-90s, he was appearing on the COVID of magazines like Mojo, by the late 90s, Fruit Tree was used in the soundtrack to the popular UK TV drama Heartbeat and included on a massively successful soundtrack CD for it, while Pink Moon was used in a Volkswagen commercial that saw sales of that album in the US go from 6,000 to 74,000 in the year after the commercial. It is now a commonplace that of all the artists on Ireland records at that time, Drake is the most influential and the one who is most present in the culture. And it's worth bearing that in mind on a day like today, when things seem at their most hopeless, when you think you've not made a difference, that things can never get better. Sometimes, just sometimes, they do. And it's worth sticking around to see that happen. Rock and roll.
- [47:56]
Nick Drake
Yeah, rock and roll.
- [47:58]
Andrew Hickey
Roll and roll away. Up and down, round and round we'll.
- [48:04]
Nick Drake
Sway with these swell in the spell rocking rhythm of the sea Rock.