nick drake

dobro

Well-known member
Anybody here familiar with the work of Nick Drake? Bryter Layter is in my top 20. The more I hear it (I listen to it a lot in the autumn) the more I think his suicide explains a lot in the album. Without the suicide, it would have been charming and enigmatic. After the suicide, it makes the album crystal fucking clear.
 
I've listened to Five Leaves Left a fair bit - I really like Saturday Sun. I saw a guy playing his stuff on the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury one year.
 
I was not familiar with him but just checked him out and read some of the Wiki on him. Very interesting dude and very unique in his approach. So it is not for sure if it was suicide or accidental over dose of anti depressants...I guess it's like the adage "You don't know what you got till it's gone" how death and the fact that the works of artist suddenly become more valuable and more important...when the well goes dry.
i.e. Vincent Van Gogh who also was a pretty depressed sort.


Nick's Black eyed dog was supposedly inspired from Winston Churchills reference of "The Black Dog" and his own bouts with depression...He got it from the literary genius Samuel Johnson ...

Here's one of Sam's quotes:

"When I rise my breakfast is solitary, the black dog waits to share it, from breakfast to dinner he continues barking ..." Heavy man.


Thanks for sharing his name Dobro...glad I got to take a peek into his life and music.
 
I think when someone starts doing stuff (like gobbling amounts of medication that are dangerous or fatal) that can end the life of the body, that they can be described as suicidal. I don't think suicide has to be intentional, necessarily. I think that when you start doing stuff that's really dangerous and the natural fear of injury or death isn't kicking in, you can be described as suicidal. When the misery and desire for it to stop are stronger than fear, and you start doing stupid shit, you're suicidal.

By contrast, I *don't* think that daredevils and extreme sports people are suicidal. I think they're adrenaline junkies. Suicidal people are driven my misery, daredevils are driven by adrenaline rush.

 
Many years back, someone posted a cover here of Place To Be and it was done really well. That turned me on to Drake's music.
 


So stoned, so far beyond anything that's pertinent. What a beautiful fuckup. I love his stuff. He's in his twenties in the picture in the youtube link, even though he looks sorta like an old 14 year old.
 
Anybody here familiar with the work of Nick Drake? Bryter Layter is in my top 20. The more I hear it (I listen to it a lot in the autumn) the more I think his suicide explains a lot in the album. Without the suicide, it would have been charming and enigmatic. After the suicide, it makes the album crystal fucking clear.

Yeah, that album's in my top 10 I think, and I tend to think about his records in seasonal terms too. Five Leaves Left=Spring, Bryter Layter=autumn, Pink Moon=winter.

By the time it gets to Pink Moon, his music is just so stark - I still love it though.

I'm not a big fan of elevating suicide in musicians, but in his case the limited nature of music, footage and even photos of him has really consolidated his legacy into just these three almost perfect records. John Martyn was probably one of his closest contemporaries and was allowed to get old enough to tarnish his reputation with dubious 80s records and tales of wife beating...

There's some interesting insight into him in this documentary (though I find the covers of his work on it pretty dull):

 
Yeah, the commentary's more interesting than the covers - I wonder why they didn't simply have Nick's tunes as backing tracks. But thanks for that - interesting bits. ("I always play with knackered strings.")

You've seen this one, right?

 
Ah, yeah I've seen that one - but a long time ago. I didn't think so and then I saw the interview with his sister and his mother's music and it all came back.

The 'knackered strings' comment struck me as well. Partly because there was a thread on here about rejuvenating old strings on here fairly recently, and partly because I prefer the knackered string sound myself too. I know it's one of those things that most people don't tend to like, but to me old strings have a bit more of a gutsy thud that I find pleasing, whereas new ones are a bit jangly and metallic.

It's worth digging out some of his home recordings if you can. It's fascinating to hear the gestation of some of his Bryter Layter songs...and also a weirdly haunting middle of the night monologue.
 
Nick Drake was extremely important during the hardships of my teenage years. That man was an incredible songwriter. I must have listened through the "Pink Moon" album at least 60 times over the years, and I still do.
 
Sort of off topic but timing can be crucial in the appreciation of an artist. When I was 19, one of my housemates tried to turn me onto Nick Drake and I just wasn't into his music. But if it had been 2 and 1/2 - 3 years earlier, I might've gotten into his stuff because I was opening up my musical head and in that period was discovering the Stones, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, 50s rock'n'roll, Melanie, Supertramp, Hendrix and Creedence Clearwater Revival as well as other singles oriented 60s acts like the Fortunes, Tommy Roe, Jimmy Ruffin and others.
But by that point in '82 when Andy was trying to convert me to Nick I was firmly ensconced in heavy rock. But towards the end of that year, I began to open up to jazz and jazz rock fusion and over the next two years took in a lot of that and Indian music too and I may well have been up for some Nick. But Andy had moved !
At each important musical juncture of my life when I was ripe for new things, Nick Drake was never there and now I'm no longer interested in anything new or artists I've not previously heard. Lousy timing, eh ?
Oh well.
 
I heard him in my twenties and liked him immediately. I thought Bryter Layter was perfection. But listening to it scared the shit out of me, cuz I knew he'd killed himself and the lyrics were so tortured and down. And I was tortured and down, and I thought that if I listened to his stuff too much, I might start resonating with it to the extent of encouraging end-of-life impulses. Now I'm older and I don't give a shit about that anymore, so I can just let myself into the music and let it talk.
 
I loved Pink Moon when I was in my 20s, so stark and raw.. but it took me years and years to like Bryter Layter, and it's still not my favorite. I got too used to the idea of him being this stripped-down minimal production guy and couldn't handle the dense arrangements on BL, even though I go for those qualities in other people's music.. and I love the Thompson/Cox rhythm section on just about everything else they play on (which is aLOT of those British folkie records). Gotta say when the VW commercial came out, I found myself wanting to listen to it less and less, which is too bad.


 
I think the audio for the VW commercial has been re-EQ'ed to make it brighter.

I also think that Bryter Layter is a bit like Lenny Cohen's first album, with all the arrangement added to the artist and his guitar. But I think Bryter Layter worked better though, cuz the musicians were almost a house band at Sound Techniques Studio - really good talent. I also think it's easier to move from BL to PM, the way I did it, than the other way round like you.

I think I think too much.
 
I loved Pink Moon when I was in my 20s, so stark and raw.. but it took me years and years to like Bryter Layter, and it's still not my favorite.

Imagine that Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen arranged their own strings. I mean, I've got the software to do that with my tunes, so it isn't hard to imagine that. Would they have done as good a job as this:



I doubt it.

But I'm learning.
 
All three albums got the remastering treatment a few years back, so it's possible that the bryter EQ on pink moon came from the layter album edition. I know that my copies pre-date the remastering, and perhaps yours do too?

I think I've got a remastered version of Bryter Layter that I bought for my wife before we lived together somewhere, but I don't think I ever listened to it. Might be an interesting A/B exercise.

Take a listen to his home demo for Fly. I love John Cale's additions to the former, but the song still sounds so incredibly full even with just voice and one guitar. Definitely one of his finest works that song:

Nick Drake - Fly (Acoustic Version) - YouTube

I wanted to link the demo for Poor Boy too, which I actually really prefer to the album version stripped down without all the bells and whistles - but I can't find it on youtube.
 
Back
Top