Nick Drake: The Life

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RU: This is hindsight, but – especially because I’m from the United States – it seems like barely anything was done to get him an international audience, especially in North America, which might have helped with his desire for some sort of validation, some sort of recognition.

But the realisation that a lot of it was actually repetitive and that, whilst different anecdotes have slightly different weight, ultimately you only need one of them to give the picture, was liberating. Firstly, he had been led to believe by all of those on the inside of his career, and with all the right motives, that he was going to be very successful. But I fear his outcome was inevitable, based on his illness: it was eating away at him to the point where he couldn’t see any plausible future. He sent Nick Drake’s songs to Roberta Flack for consideration, although she didn’t record any, but Millie Small, the pioneering ska / reggae singer most known for My Boy Lollipop, did record one of his songs.The sadness inherent in the music had been veiled behind beautiful arrangements and an intriguing voice that drew you in. 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. The assumption has been that smoking dope defined his days, and probably didn’t help when it came to his descent into mental illness.

In fact, though always quiet and introverted, he was funny, intelligent, seriously cool, deeply loved by a wide circle of often talented and eclectic friends and his wonderful and compassionate parents and sister.It was a large room with a long table immediately on the left, deserted but for the Stones and their entourage.

After I had been turned down very politely, Bob [Drake’s friend Rick Charkin, so nicknamed because he was thought to resemble Bob Dylan], whose nerves seem to stop at nothing, proceeded to ring up the Stones’ suite and ask if they might be wanting a little musical entertainment! To an extent – maybe tacitly – Nick’s parents have been criticised for not having recognised that they had a genius in their midst, but that’s not how life works.What were you trying to bring to this biography that’s lacking in so many popular music biographies? There were five or so covers during his lifetime – very few, and none that would have brought in any money. And these things were worth recording for Rodney, because Nick didn’t always have the energy or confidence to face the world, even in terms of a small transaction like that.