Nick Drake
Nick Drake |
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Nicholas Rodney Drake (June 19, 1948 – November 25, 1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician best known for his acoustic, autumnal songs. Drake's primary instrument was the guitar, but he was also proficient at piano, clarinet, and saxophone. Though he failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime,[2] Drake's work has since grown steadily in stature,[3] to the extent that he is now widely considered one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the last 50 years.[4][5][6]
Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20 years old, and released his debut album Five Leaves Left in 1969. By 1972 he had recorded a further two albums. However, none sold more than 5,000 copies during their first release,[2] and his reluctance to perform live[3] or to be interviewed contributed to his lack of commercial success.
Drake battled with depression, insomnia and acute shyness throughout his life,[7] and the topics would often appear as the subject of his lyrics. Upon completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. On November 25, 1974, Nick Drake died from an overdose of antidepressants, at the age of 26.
Biography
Early life
Nicholas Rodney Drake was born on June 19, 1948 into a wealthy family of Anglo-Burmese origins, still living in colonial Rangoon, Burma. His father, Rodney, had emigrated there in the early 1930s to work as an engineer with the East India Trading Company. In 1934, Rodney met Molly Lloyd, and the couple married three years later. The family returned to the Warwickshire village of Tanworth-in-Arden in 1950,[8] to live in the country estate of Far Leys. Drake had one older sister, Gabrielle, later a successful film and TV actress. Both parents were musically-inclined,[9] and encouraged by his mother, Drake learned to play piano at an early age. He began to compose his own tunes, which he would record on a reel-to-reel tape recorder kept in the family drawing room.[6]
In 1957, Drake enrolled at Eagle House School, an English public boarding school in Berkshire. Five years later, he graduated to Marlborough College in Wiltshire, where his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all previously attended. He developed an interest in sport, and was captain of the school's rugby team for a period. School friends recall Drake at this time as having been "confident and quietly authoritative," although often aloof in his manner.[10] His father Rodney remembered: "in one of his reports (the headmaster) said that none of us seemed to know him very well. All the way through with Nick. People didn't know him very much."[11]
Drake played piano in the school orchestra, and also learned clarinet and saxophone. In 1964/1965, he formed a band with four other school friends, with whom he played piano and occasionally alto sax and vocals. Titled The Perfumed Gardeners, the group performed Pye covers and jazz standards, as well as numbers by The Yardbirds and Manfred Mann. The line up briefly included Chris de Burgh, but he was let go, as his taste was seen as 'too poppy' by the other members.[12] Drake's academic performance at this time was more mixed, and although he had accelerated a year in Eagle House, at Marlborough he began to neglect his studies in favour of music. Though he attained seven GCE O-Levels in 1963, this was fewer than his teachers had been expecting, and he failed 'Physics with Chemistry'.[10] In 1965 Drake paid £13 for his first acoustic guitar, and was soon experimenting with open tuning and finger-picking techniques.[13]
Cambridge
In 1966, Drake won a scholarship to study English literature at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, though he delayed attendance to spend six months at the University of Aix-Marseille, France, beginning in February 1967. While there he began to practice his guitar playing in earnest, and to earn money would often busk with friends in the town centre. It was around this time that Drake began to smoke cannabis, and that spring he traveled with friends to Morocco, because, according to traveling companion Richard Charkin, "that was where you got the best pot."[10] It is probable Drake took his first LSD trip while in Aix.[10][12]
Upon returning to England, he moved into his sister's flat in Hampstead, London, before beginning at Fitzwilliam that October. While there, he met fellow student Robert Kirby, who was studying music at the time, and would later go on to engineer and score his first two albums. By this time Drake had discovered the British and American folk music scenes, and was taking influence from performers such as Bob Dylan, Josh White and Phil Ochs. He began performing in local clubs and coffee houses around London, and in February 1968, while playing support to Country Joe and the Fish at the Roundhouse in Camden Town, he made an impression on Ashley Hutchings, bass player with Fairport Convention.[1] Hutchings recalls being impressed by "what a good guitarist he was", but more so by "the image. He looked like a star. He looked wonderful, he seemed to be 7ft."[11]
Hutchings introduced Drake to the American producer Joe Boyd, owner of the production and management company Witchseason Productions. Witchseason were at the time licensed to Island Records, and Boyd, as the man who had discovered Fairport Convention, and responsible for introducing John Martyn and The Incredible String Band to a mainstream audience, was a significant and respected figure in the UK folk scene.[11] He and Drake formed an immediate bond, and the producer was to be a mentor figure to Drake throughout his career. A four track demo, recorded in his college room early in 1969, led Boyd to offer a management, publishing, agency and production contract to the twenty year old, and to initiate work on a debut album. According to Boyd: "In those days you didn't have cassettes – he brought a reel-to-reel tape [to me] that he'd done at home. Half way through the first song, I felt this was pretty special. And I called him up, and he came back in, and we talked, and I just said, 'I'd like to make a record'. He stammered, 'Oh well, yeah, okay'. Nick was a man of few words. He seemed pleased, in his own diffident way."[11] Drake's friend Paul Wheeler, in a 2004 interview, remembered the excitement caused by his seeming big break, and recalled that the singer had already decided not to complete his third year at Cambridge.[11]
Five Leaves Left
Template:Sound sample box align rightTemplate:Sample box end Drake began recording his debut album Five Leaves Left during the spring of 1969, with Boyd assuming the role of producer. The sessions took place in Sound Techniques studio, London, during days when Drake would skip lectures to travel by train to the capital. Inspired by John Simon's production of Leonard Cohen's first album, Boyd was keen that Drake's voice would be recorded in a similar "close and intimate" style, "with no shiny pop reverb". He also sought to include a string arrangement to similar Simon's, "without overwhelming...or sounding cheesy".[15]
To provide backing, Boyd enlisted various members of the London folk rock scene, including Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson, and Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson.[16] John Wood was recruited as engineer, with Richard Hewson drafted to provide the string arrangements. However, initial recordings didn't go well. The sessions were irregular and rushed, taking place during studio downtime borrowed from Fairport Convention's production of their Unhalfbricking album. Tension arose between artist and producer as to the direction the album should take – Boyd was an advocate of George Martin's 'using the studio as an instrument' approach, while Drake's preference was for a more organic sound.[10] Biographer Tervor Dann has observed that Drake appears "tight and anxious" on bootleg recordings taken from the sessions, and notes a number of Boyd's unsuccessful attempts at instrumentation.[10]
Both were unhappy with Hewson's contributions, and Drake suggested using his college friend Robert Kirby as a replacement. Boyd was sceptical at taking on a music student without prior recording experience, but was impressed by Drake's uncharacteristic forthcoming, and agreed to a trial.[15] Kirby had previously presented Drake with some arrangements for his songs,[17] and went on to provide a spare chamber music quartet score associated with the sound of the final album.[18]
Confident of the album's success, Drake ended his studies at Cambridge just nine months before graduation, and in autumn 1969 moved to London to concentrate on a career in music.[19] His father remembered "writing him long letters, pointing out the disadvantages of going away from Cambridge...a degree was a safety net, if you manage to get a degree, at least you have something to fall back on. His reply to that was that a safety net was the one thing he did not want."[20] Drake spent his first few months in the capital drifting from place to place, occasionally staying at his sister's Kensington flat, but usually sleeping on friend's sofas and floors.[12] Eventually he moved into a ground floor bedsit in Belsize Park, paid for by Witchseason .
Post-production difficulties led to the release being delayed by several months, and the album was poorly marketed and supported when it finally arrived.[10] Reviews in the music press were few and lukewarm. In July, Melody Maker referred to the album as "poetic" and "interesting", NME wrote in October that there was "not nearly enough variety to make it entertaining".[12] Drake was unhappy with the inlay sleeve,[10] which printed songs in the wrong running order and reproduced verses omitted from the recorded versions. His disappointment in the final result is reflected in an interview comment made by his sister Gabrielle: "He was very secretive. I knew he was making an album but I didn't know what stage of completion it was at until he walked into my room and said, 'There you are.' He threw it on to the bed and walked out!" [17]
Bryter Layter
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That August, Drake recorded three unaccompanied songs for the BBC's John Peel show. In October he opened for Fairport Convention at the Royal Festival Hall in London, followed by appearances at folk clubs in Birmingham and Hull. Remembering the performance in Hull, folk singer Michael Chapman commented: "The folkies did not take to him, [they] wanted songs with choruses. They completely missed the point. He didn't say a word the entire evening. It was actually quite painful to watch. I don't know what the audience expected, I mean, they must have known they weren't going to get sea-shanties and sing alongs at a Nick Drake gig!"[1] The experience reinforced Drake's retreat from live appearances, the few other concerts he did play around this time were usually brief, awkward, and poorly attended. As Boyd recalled: "Nick didn't perform, he didn't talk to the audience, and all of his songs were in different tunings. And so he had to re-tune between numbers."[21]
Drake's second album, 1970's Bryter Layter, was again produced by Boyd, and introduced a more upbeat,[3] jazzier[16] sound. Like its predecessor, it featured musicians from Fairport Convention, as well as contributions from John Cale on two songs; "Northern Sky" and "Fly". In his 1999 biography, Cale admitted to using heroin during this period,[22] and older friends such as Brian Wells had begun to suspect that Drake was also using.[7] Both Boyd and Wood were confident that the album would be a commercial success,[23] but it went on to sell fewer than 5,000 copies. Reviews were again mixed, and while Record Mirror praised Drake as a "beautiful guitarist – clean and with perfect timing, [and] accompanied by soft, beautiful arrangements", Melody Maker described the album as "an awkward mix of folk and cocktail jazz".[21]
Soon after the release Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records, and moved to Los Angeles, to work with Warner Brothers in the development of film soundtracks. The loss of this key mentor figure, coupled with the album's poor sales, led to a further retreat into depression. Drake's attitude to London had changed, he was unhappy living alone, and visibly nervous and uncomfortable performing at a series of concerts early in 1970. In June, Drake gave one of his final live appearrances at Ewell Technical College, London. Ralph McTell, who also performed that night, remembered: "Nick was monosyllabic. At that particular gig he was very shy. He did the first set and something awful must have happened. He was doing his song, Fruit Tree, and walked off halfway through it. Just left the stage."[24] His frustration turned to depression,[25] and in 1971 Drake was persuaded by family to visit a psychiatrist at St Thomas's Hospital, London, where he was first prescribed antidepressants. He felt uncomfortable and embarrassed about taking them, and tried to hide their fact from his friends.[12]
Pink Moon
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Island Records were keen that Drake promote Bryter Layter through press interviews, radio sessions and live appearances. Drake, by this time smoking what Kirby has described as "unbelievable amounts" of cannabis,[10] and exhibiting "the first signs of psychosis", refused. By the winter of 1990, he had isolated himself in London.[19] Disappointed by the reaction to the album, turned his thoughts inwards, and withdrew contact from family and friends. He left his flat only occasionally; to play a rare concert or to buy drugs. "This was a very bad time" his mother later recalled, "he once said to me that everything started to go wrong from (this) time on, and I think that was when things started to go wrong."[10]
Though Island neither expected nor wanted a third album,[10] Drake approached Wood in October 1991 to begin work on what would be his final recording. The sessions took place over two nights, with only Drake and the engineer present in the studio.[6] The bleak songs of Pink Moon are short, and the eleven track album lasts only 28 minutes, a length described by Wood as "just about right. You really wouldn't want it to be any longer."[11] In contrast to Bryter Layter, Drake appears unaccompanied, save for a single piano overdub on the title track. "He was very determined to make this very stark, bare record", Wood later recalled. "He definitely wanted it to be him more than anything. And I think, in some ways, Pink Moon is probably more like Nick is than the other two records."[26]
Upon completion, Drake personally delivered the master tapes to the front desk of Island office building, leaving them on a receptionist's desk. They lay there over the weekend, unnoticed until later in the next week. An advertisment for the album placed in Melody Maker in February opened with "Pink Moon - Nick Drake's latest album: the first we heard of it was when it was finished."[27] Pink Moon went on to sell fewer copies than either of its two predecessors, though it did receive some favorable reviews: "Nick Drake is an artist who never fakes. The album makes no concession to the theory that music should be escapist. It's simply one musician's view of life at the time, and you can't ask for more than that." [28] He began to talk of retiring from music, planning to train to be a computer programmer, or possibly to write songs for others to perform.
Final years
Template:Sound sample box align rightTemplate:Sample box end In the months following Pink Moon's release, Drake became increasingly introverted and distant from those close to him. He returned to live at his parent's home in Far Leys, and though he resented the regression, he accepted that it was made necessary by his illness. "I don't like it at home", he told his mother, "but I can't bear it anywhere else".[9] His return was often difficult for his family, as his sister Gabrielle explained, "good days in my parent's home were good days for Nick, and bad days were bad days for Nick. And that was what their life revolved around, really."[11]
He would often disappear for days, sometimes turning up unannounced at friends' houses, uncommunicative and withdrawn. Robert Kirby described a typical visit: "He would arrive and not talk, sit down, listen to music, have a smoke, have a drink, sleep there the night, and two or three days later he wasn't there, he'd gone. And three months later he'd be back."[10] Referring to this period, John Martyn (who in 1993 wrote the title song of his album "Solid Air" for and about Drake) described him as "the most withdrawn person I've ever met."[29] He would borrow his mother's car and drive for hours without purpose, on occasion until he ran out of petrol and had to ring his parents to ask to be collected. Friends have recalled the extent to which his appearance had changed, his nails grown, his hair and frame long and thin. Early in 1992, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for five weeks.[7]
In July 1994, Drake again contacted John Wood, stating he was ready to begin work a fourth album.[10] Boyd was back in England at the time, and agreed to attend as producer. In his 2006 autobiography, the producer recalled Drake "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. Why wasn't he famous and rich. This rage must have festered beneath that inexpressive exterior for years."[15] Both Boyd and Wood noticed a discernable deterioration in Drake's performance. According to Boyd: "It was chilling. It was really scary. He was so...He was in such bad shape he couldn't sing and play the guitar at the same time. We put down the guitars and overdubbed the voice. It was all one day, we started in the afternoon and finished about midnight – just for those four tracks."[7] The return to the studio served to raise Drake's spirts. His mother later recalled: "We were so absolutely thrilled to think that Nick was happy because there hadn't been any happiness in Nick's life for years."[7]
Death
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Drake1.jpg/115px-Drake1.jpg)
By autumn 1994, Drake's weekly retainer from Island had ceased, and his illness now meant that he was in contact with only a few remaining close friends. He had tried to stay in touch with Sophia Ryde, whom he had originally met in 1988. Ryde has been described by Drake's biographers as "the nearest thing" to a girlfriend in his life, though she herself now prefers the description 'best (girl) friend'.[10] In a 2005 interview, Ryde revealed that a week before he died, she had sought to end the relationship: "I couldn’t cope with it. I asked him for some time. And I never saw him again". As with Linda Thompson, Drake's relationship with Ryde was never consummated.[30]
In the early hours of Monday November 25, 1994, Nick Drake died at his home in Far Leys, at the age of 26, from an overdose of Tryptizol, a type of antidepressant. He had gone to bed early the night before, having spent the afternoon visiting a friend. Sometime around dawn his parents heard him pass towards to the kitchen to have a bowl of cornflakes. He returned to his room a short while later, and took some pills, "to help him sleep".[10] Drake was accustomed to keeping his own hours, and frequently had difficulty sleeping, and would often stay up through the night playing and listening to music, sleeping late into the following morning. Recalling the events of that night, his mother later stated: "I never used to disturb him at all. But it was about 12 o’clock, and I went in, because really it seemed it was time he got up. And he was laying across the bed. The first thing I saw was his long, long legs."[12] There was no suicide note, though a letter addressed to Ryde was found near to his bed.[10]
At the inquest that December, Drake's coroner stated that the cause of death was as a result of "Acute Amitriptyline Poisoning – self administered when suffering from a depressive illness", and concluded a verdict of suicide, though this has been disputed by some members of his family.[4] Rodney Drake described his son's death as unexpected and "extraordinary"; however, he admitted in a 1999 interview to "always [being] worried about Nick being so depressed. We used to hide away the aspirin and pills and things like that."[30] Gabrielle Drake prefers "to think Nick committed suicide, in the sense that I'd rather he died because he wanted to end it than it to be the result of a tragic mistake. That would seem to me to be terrible…."[30]
On January 14, 1995, Drake was buried under an oak tree in the St Mary Magdalene churchyard in Tanworth-in-Arden.
Posthumous popularity
- "During the early Eighties, I drifted away from the music scene. When I returned, I was surprised to find that Nick Drake was becoming famous." Ian MacDonald[6]
Drake's public profile remained low through the mid and late 1990s, though there were occasional mentions of his name in the music press. Island records initially saw little commercial value in his back catalogue, and following a 1995 NME article written by Nick Kent, stated "...we have no intention of repackaging Nick's three albums, either now or at anytime in the foreseeable future".[12] By this time his parents were receiving an increasing number of fans and admirers as visitors to the family home in Far Leys. In 1999, Rob Partridge joined Island Records as press officer, and commissioned the release of the Fruit Tree box set. Partridge had been a fan of Drake's, and had seen him perform early in 1989 - "The first thing I did when I got to Island was suggest we put together a retrospective – the studio albums plus what whatever else was there. I wasn't necessarily expecting massive vaults with millions of tunes, live recordings or whatever, but there was very little..." The release brought together the three studio albums, as well as the four tracks recorded with Wood in 1994, and was accompanied by an extensive biography written by the American journalist Arthur Lubow. However, sales were poor, and the album received little press notice, and in 2003 Island deleted Fruit Tree from its catalogue.[13]
By the mid 1996 Drake was being cited as an influence by musicians such as REM's Peter Buck and Robert Smith of The Cure. Smith credited the origin of his band's name to a lyric from Drake's song "Time has told me" ('a troubled cure for a troubled mind').[10] Drake gained further exposure with the release of The Dream Academy's hit single "Life in a Northern Town", which included an on-sleeve dedication to Drake.[31] His reputation continued to grow, and by the end of the 1990s, Nick Drake's name was appearing regularly in music magazines in the UK, and he had become an archetypal posthumously popular artist, an "enigma wrapped inside a mystery".[19]
In early 1999, BBC2 aired a 40-minute Nick Drake documentary, A Stranger Among Us – In Search of Nick Drake, as part of its Picture This strand. The following year saw the release of a documentary by Dutch director Jeroen Berkvens, titled A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, featuring interviews with Boyd, Gabrielle Drake, Wood and Kirby. Later that year, The Guardian newspaper placed Bryter Layter at number 1 in its "Alternative top 100 albums ever" list.[29] In 2000, Volkswagen licensed the title track of Pink Moon to a commercial in the US, leading to a large increase in record sales,[32] and a number five placing for Pink Moon in Amazon.com's sales chart.[33] Since the late 1990s Drake's music has featured in the soundtrack of a number of hollywood films, including Hideous Kinky (1998), Serendipity (2001), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and Garden State (2004).
In recent years, several musicians, including Jack Johnson, Duncan Sheik, Lucinda Williams, Badly Drawn Boy, Jose Gonzalez and Lou Barlow have cited Drake as an influence. In 2004, nearly 30 years after his death, Drake gained his first chart placing when two singles ("Magic" and "River Man") released to coincide with the compilation album Made to Love Magic, made the middle reaches of the UK charts. In support of the album the BBC aired a radio documentary about Drake, narrated by Brad Pitt. In October 2006, Duncan Sheik released his first career-spanning compilation entitled Brighter/Later: A Duncan Sheik Anthology paying tribute to the title of Drake's second album.
Musical style
Drake was obsessive about practicing his guitar playing, and would often stay up through the night experimenting with tunings and working on new songs. His mother remembered hearing him "bumping around at all hours. I think he wrote his nicest melodies in the early-morning hours."[13] A self taught guitarist,[23] Drake's style is characterised by his use of cluster chords.[34] Such chords are normally difficult to achieve on the guitar; Drake was able to get around this by detuning his guitar, so that the lower strings were tuned higher than the strings above them.[19] In many songs he accents the dissonant effect of such non-standard tunings through his vocal melodies.[34]
Drake studied English literature while in Cambridge, and was particuarly drawn to the works of William Blake, William Butler Yeats, and Henry Vaughan. However, his lyrics do not invoke the metaphors and imagery typical of such influences.[6] Instead, Drake employs a series of elemental[35] symbols and codes, largely drawn from nature. The moon, the stars, the sea, rain, trees, sky, mist and the seasons are all commonly used, influenced, in part, by his rural upbringing.[6] Images related to summer figure centrally in his early work; from "Bryter Layter" on, his language is more autumnal, evoking a season commonly used to convey senses of loss and sorrow.[6] Throughout, Drake writes with detachment, more as an observer than participant, a point of view described by Rolling Stone "as if he were viewing his life from a great, unbridgeable distance."[35]
Selected discography
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3c/NickDrakePinkMoon.jpg/120px-NickDrakePinkMoon.jpg)
Studio albums
- Five Leaves Left – September 1, 1969 (Island Records)
- Bryter Layter – November 1, 1970 (Island Records)
- Pink Moon – February 25, 1972 (Island Records)
References
- ^ a b c ""Nick Drake - Chronology"". michaelorgan.org.au. Retrieved November 11.
{{cite web}}
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suggested) (help) - ^ a b c d e f g MacDonald, Ian. "Exiled from Heaven", January 2000, Mojo Magazine
- ^ a b c d e Hunt, Rupert (2001). ""Nick Drake - Life and Music in Quotes"". nickdrake.com. Retrieved September 02.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Brown, Mick. The Sad Ballad of Nick Drake, 12 July 1997, Sunday Telegraph (UK)
- ^ a b c Berkvens, Jeroen (2000). "A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake" (Video documentary). Roxie Releasing.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Dann, Trevor. Darker than the Deepest Sea: The Search for Nick Drake (2006), (Hardback) Portrait. ISBN 0-7499-5095-1
- ^ a b c d e f g Paphides, Peter. "Like A Heart with Legs On", Western Mail (Wales), 21 May 2004, Questia Retrieved Sept 16th 2006
- ^ a b c d e f g Humphries, Patrick. Nick Drake: The Biography (1997), (Hardback) Bloomsbury. ISBN 0-7475-3503-5
- ^ a b c McGrath, T.J. (1992). ""Nick Drake - Darkness Can Give You the Brightest Light"". Retrieved August 22.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Lim, Gerrie, Hanging on a Star: In Memory of Nick Drake, November 1994, Big O
- ^ a b c Boyd, Joe, White Bicyles – Making Music in the 1960s, Serpant's Tail, 2006. ISBN 1-85242-910-0
- ^ a b Encyclopedia of Popular Music (2005). ""Nick Drake"". BBC.co.uk. Retrieved November 08.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Drake, Rodney. Interview conducted by Walhalla Radio Station, 1979
- ^ a b Sandall, Robert, "Brighter Very Much Later", Daily Telegraph, May 20, 2004
- ^ Cale, John. What's Welsh for Zen (1999), (Hardback), Bloomsbury. ISBN 0-7475-4383-6
- ^ a b BBC.co.uk (2002). ""Nick Drake – Singer and Songwriter"". BBC.co.uk. Retrieved September 13.
{{cite web}}
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suggested) (help) - ^ Macaulay, Stephen (2006). ""Nick Drake - Bartleby the Musician"". Glorious Noise. Retrieved October 26.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Fitzsimmons, Mick (2002). ""Bryter Layter – Nick Drake"". BBC.co.uk. Retrieved October 26.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Wood, John. Interview conducted by Walhalla Radio Station, 1999
- ^ Sandison, Dave (1991). ""Pink Moon - UK Press Release"". Retrieved November 14.
{{cite web}}
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suggested) (help) - ^ McKnight, Connor, "In search of Nick Drake", Zigzag Magazine, #42, 1992
- ^ a b Guardian Unlimited (1999). ""The alternative top 100"". Retrieved September 03.
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suggested) (help) - ^ a b c Brooks, Richard (2006). ""Heartbreak letter clue to death of cult singer"". Retrieved October 26.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Fitzsimmons, Mick. ""Nick Drake – Under the Influence"". BBC.co.uk. Retrieved September 02.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Drake, Nick (2006). ""Nick Drake - You're Nicked"". Independent (UK). Retrieved September 25.
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- ^ a b Frederick, Robin (2001). ""Nick Drake - A Place To Be"". RobinFrederick.com. Retrieved October 26.
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Further reading
- Dann, Trevor, Darker Than the Deepest Sea: The Search for Nick Drake, Da Capo Press. London. 2006. ISBN 0-306-81520-6
- Various sources, Way to Blue: an Introduction to Nick Drake , Omnibus Press. 2003. ISBN 0-7119-8179-5
- Humphries, Patrick, Nick Drake: The Biography, Bloomsbury USA. 1999. ISBN 1-58234-035-8
- Boyd, Joe, White Bicyles – Making Music in the 1960s, Serpent's Tail. 2006. ISBN 1-85242-910-0
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/34px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png)
- Bryter Music: The Estate of Nick Drake Official website
- IGUANA: The Nick Drake Files features discography, lyrics, transcripts of interviews with Drake, accurate tab, etc.
- NickDrake.com Unofficial website featuring lyrics, a guide to Nick's music and a forum for fans.
- Lost Boy – In Search of Nick Drake – BBC Radio documentary
- 1948 births
- 1974 deaths
- Alumni of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
- Anglo-Burmans
- Cause of death disputed
- Drug-related deaths
- English folk musicians
- English male singers
- English singer-songwriters
- People from Tanworth-in-Arden
- Old Marlburians
- Peel Sessions artists
- Popular musicians who committed suicide
- Singer-guitarists
- Universal Music Group artists