About 15 years ago people wouldn’t shutup about him
(I’ve never listened)
I mentioned Bryter Later on Friday (on the evening thread)
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What really gets people is when you casually mention that before there was a Nick industry for her to be executor/spokesperson of, Gabrielle Drake was famous enough as an actor to have had her own This Is Your Life (Nick gets a passing mention at 10:30)
And oddly fans of Gabrielle’s through UFO or Crossroads as a rule don’t seem to know about Nick’s fame.
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There was recently a really, really bad R4 program ‘about’ Nick Drake, which was mostly posh randoms (presumably related to the show’s producer) telling uninteresting stories about their supremely upper middle class lives, and then desperately trying to integrate Drake into the anecdote.
“My boyfriend was recuperating in the South of France having stubbed his toe on a polo pony. I learned half the verse of a Nick Drake song on daddy’s harpsichord.”
I had a proper class-war meltdown in the car on the way to Leeds.Then I hummed Northern Sky.
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I’ve listened to the audiobook of the recent family endorsed biography about him. Very impressive and forensic detail, particularly of his tragic last years. Actually quite hard to listen to/read.
Without any doubt my favourite singer/songwriter of all time.
Would have thought her name would be Gabrielle Duck
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He was beefing with Kendrick Lamar just the other day
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The reason there was a sort of renaissance about fifteen years ago was because they used one of his tracks on an advert which was really popular, think it was VW, and it became cool for celebrities to champion his work. Before that he was a relative artists’ artist.
I love him. Think he only sold a few thousand records in his lifetime. I’d put him right there with Jansch, Martyn, Renbourn, etc. Can see why people don’t like him though, was a very posh dude, and a lot of his material is very Sunday lunchtime/coffee table MOR.
For me there’s a real depth of emotion to both his story and his music. He could hardly perform live. He suffered badly with depression to the point of barely being able to communicate or function.
The three records are so different as well. Five Leaves Left absolutely floors me still to this day.
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he was the Burial of folk singer/songwriters
got into making beatless stuff by his third album too, basically the same guy
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get on this one, barls
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The tribute album that came out last year is excellent; a good mix of faithfuls and reimaginings including, and I shit you not, an extremely good take on Place To Be by David fucking Gray.
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The VW advert is always cited but I don’t think it ran in the UK, his reputation just grew through word of mouth up to then.
The opener on that tribute album - Cello Song - is by miles the best thing Fontaines DC have ever done
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Easily.
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Had a big revival 30 ish years ago (in the UK). I think just because the albums got issued on cd. I thought he had stayed pretty well known in a low key way ever since
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Maybe.
I think it was also partly due to a lot of artists loosely dubbed Strange Folk, mainly from the States, early-00s to mid-00s, championing him as well in interviews and such.
I think I got into him after hearing the Golden Apples of the Sun Arthur Magazine compilation and someone on there had cited him, 2004/5.
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Is great but strong disagree generally
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This is what I remember. I have the original Fruit Tree box-set that came out around then. I was pretty obsessed in my younger, more naïve ‘I could totally make music my vocation’ years, and I felt a kinship with Nick in that I too was crippled with depression and social anxiety and could barely play a note live. I like to think that he too would now leave his guitars and keyboards to gather dust as he writes 8 bar looped ambient techno bangers in GarageBand on his iPad.
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I went to the village he was from once when passing through the Midlands, it’s not far from Solihull. Really beautiful. His family donated the organ to the church, and most of them are buried there. There’s a nice pub called The Bell. The window off the cover of Five Leaves Left is visible from the road.
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