WHEN the gifted singer-songwriter Nick Drake died, aged 26, fifty years ago this month, very little news of his passing was published. It was understandable, perhaps, given that Drake had in his lifetime released three albums that despite their brilliance had not sold very well. Though fellow musicians spoke highly of his abilities, he was a diffident live performer, and was reluctant to promote his albums; his media profile, to use a modern expression, was non-existent.

Obituaries were scarce even in the major music weeklies, though a tribute did appear in Sounds, written by Jerry Gilbert, who had interviewed a taciturn Drake in 1970. It was left to Nick Kent, the prominent New Musical Express (NME) writer, who was a long-term admirer of Drake’s, to fill the gap with a lengthy article that was published in February 1975.

“All I can say when all is said and done that I liked Nick Drake”, Kent wrote. “His music was the proverbial good companion at a time when I appreciated such a commodity. It was strange really after turning my back on that whole particular era of my life some two and a half years ago, I only recently rediscovered how fine his music was some few weeks before his death was reported (and it must have been the most pitifully under-publicized death in the whole ugly, depressing tradition of the whole “death” in rock thing)”.

Reflecting upon that article in his 2010 memoir, Apathy for the Devil, Kent acknowledges that it was not one of best efforts but that it gave Drake’s musical legacy “much-needed acclaim and exposure and helped instigate a mystique around his name that has only grown with the passage of time”.

In the decades since Drake’s death his reputation has been burnished as more and more people come across his work. His low-key yet charismatic presence, the introspective, poetic nature of his lyrics, his outstanding technique on the acoustic guitar, his distinctive voice, all have been discovered anew and appreciated. Musicians cite him as an influence; fans have set up pages on Facebook to promote his bewitching music and his legacy.

Such well-known musicians as Tom Verlaine, Green Gartside, Stuart Murdoch, Linda Thompson and Vashti Bunyan have spoken of their admiration of Drake. David Geffen, the music industry magnate and producer, one declared that Drake’s three LPs – Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, and Pink Moon, all released between September 1970 and February 1972 – “were fabulous”.

A Drake song, Pink Moon, turned up on a Volkswagen advertisement in 1999 and suddenly, posthumously, Drake started selling records. The album, Pink Moon, sold noticeably well in the US. In May 2004 Brad Pitt narrated a BBC Radio 2 documentary, Lost Boy – In Search of Nick Drake, which stirred considerable interest in the songwriter. A Drake song, Magic, went to number 32 in the charts, while its parent album, the compilation Made to Love Magic, charted at number 27 (it contained, for the first time, Tow the Line, from July 1974, the last song Drake ever recorded).

Not Fade Away 1970: Northern Sky, by Nick Drake

Several books have been written about Drake, including Richard Morton Jack's superb, extensively-research Nick Drake: The Life, which was published to admiring reviews in the summer of 2023. Magazine cover articles have commemorated Drake's “fragile genius” and explored the stories behind his compositions. Concerts and CDs have seen notable artists covering his songs, to the point where, in July, the conductor Jules Buckley brought together a range of artists including The Unthanks and the BBC Symphony Orchestra for a unique celebration a special Prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The songs chosen by Buckley included River Man, Cello Song, Time Has Told Me and the luminous, magnificent Northern Sky.

Now the actor Mackenzie Crook (The Office, Detectorists), who only began listening to Drake’s music in 1997 while sharing a flat with the writer/comedian Iain Lee at the Edinburgh festival, has written a slender volume, entitled If Nick Drake Came to My House.

“I listened to the albums in the wrong order”, Crook writes in a recent edition of the Sunday Times Culture section, “starting with his last, the hauntingly stark Pink Moon. It was the purity and the clarify of his voice and guitar playing that washed over me as a kind of antidote to the grunge [music] that had been my staple for so long.

“Almost as alluring as the music was the story of this charismatic but shy young man who died so early, at the age of 26, before his work had found its audience and who never got to enjoy success”.
Drake died at his parents’ home on November 25, 1974, from an overdose of antidepressants. Echoing a widespread view, Crook takes the view that Drake has since become “widely recognised as the genius he was and all of my favourite artists cite him as an influence”. Crook has written and illustrated what he describes as “a strange little book, a poem that is intended as a heartfelt fan letter and tribute”.

Nick Drake was born in Rangoon, Burma, to Rodney and Molly Drake. The family relocated to India and then sailed  for England, settling in Tanworth-in-Arden, in Warwickshire. Nick attended Marlborough public school, where he wrote his very first songs, and set a record for the 100-yard dash, before studying at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Between school and university there was a summer spent studying French in Aix-en-Provence.

Various artists: Way To Blue, The Songs of Nick Drake (Navigator)

His debut album, Five Leaves Left, was released on the pioneering label, Island, in September 1970, its exquisite arrangements courtesy of Robert Kirby, a friend from Cambridge. But it, and the second album, Bryter Layter, were released to “thundering indifference”, in the later words of Joe Boyd, who produced both records. Drake's final album – the starkly powerful Pink Moon – also failed to sell in significant numbers.

The musician Richard Thompson, who played electric guitar on one of the songs on Five Leaves Left, has written (in his memoir, Beeswing, of his reaction to listening to some of the tracks on Pink Moon: "I was disturbed. Part of what had made Nick's earlier music so appealing was a balance between dark and light. The sadness inherent in the music had been veiled behind beautiful arrangements and an intriguing voice that drew you in. However, his third album seemed a stark cry for help, the voice of a man teetering on the edge of sanity". 

The Guardian, in a rare interview in 2022 with John Wood, the sound engineer and producer of Pink Moon, noted that descriptions such as "desolate" and "bleak" ignore the album’s paradoxical elements, such as the sky-high hopefulness of the title track’s melody, and the rhythmic propulsion of another song, Road. “Nick played his guitar like a metronome,” said Wood. “I cannot think of anybody else I’ve ever recorded, with that little studio experience and at that age, who had that ability. It was extraordinary.”

Much has been written about Drake's declining mental health in the decades since his death in 1974. His sister, Gabrielle, has with considerable justification observed that his story has too often been overshadowed by the tragedy of his final illness. If there is an interest in his short life, she writes in a foreword to Morton Jack's book, "it surely lies in those years that led up to his illness, the years in which the seed of his talent was planted, nurtured and brought to full bloom in three albums of songs that have blazed a trail long after his sad death".

Nick Drake never knew fame during his lifetime but he has posthumously become one of the most loved and influential singer-songwriters of all time. As a Mojo magazine profile put it in 1994: “Drake’s work has survived a damn sight better than of the similarly soft-voiced and once infinitely more famous Donovan, because there is something wonderfully opaque and narcotic about his husky, confiding voice, his mesmerising, circular tunes and his tantalisingly fragile presence. He was of but not merely part of his times, which is why his music continues to reach out, not as mere ephemera or nostalgia (though it’s that too) but as a kind of spiritual succour.”