He had the gift of writing melodies of incredible beauty.” [Joe Boyd, producer]
NICK DRAKE, SONGWRITER
Nick Drake was an English songwriter who emerged in 1969 in a bloom of anticipation. With three essential requirements to success—great talent, fabulously handsome, and being in the right place at the right time—all very present in Drake, a great career was apparently just around the musical corner and the expectation was high.
He was born in Burma in 1948 and grew up around music. He became an accomplished musician after the family returned to England and his guitar became the center of his teenage universe. Obsessive about writing, technique, and experimenting he would stay up through the night creating music and writing lyrics. His mother would hear him “Bumping around at all hours,” affectionately adding “I think he wrote his nicest melodies in the early morning hours.”
He developed a fascination for alternative tunings and unusual chords. As a result, an unconventional picking style and a soft baritone vocal delivery that suited this nocturnal experimentation emerged. And as much as the musical smoke of a Dylan or a Cohen is sensed, so too can the writings of Blake or Yeats. He used elemental images from nature – the Moon, stars, and the ocean, rain, trees, and the sky populate and characterize his lyrics.
It’s as if he was “Viewing his life from a great, unbridgeable distance,” as one commentor later put it. His friend and musical collaborator Robert Kirby described the lyrics as a “Series of extremely vivid, complete observations, almost like a series of epigrammatic proverbs,” designed to “Complement and compound a mood that the melody dictates.”
He would occasionally play his songs to friends in pubs and cafés, but with no desire to climb aboard the folk music live circuit to get heard, his satisfaction seems to arise from the initial creativity of writing rather than from repetition. Despite this reluctance, he came to the attention of Joe Boyd, an American producer driving the new wave of folk wave in late 1960s Britain. Boyd offered Drake the chance to make an album.
Convinced he had discovered a major new talent, Boyd made it his ambition to capture Drake’s magic on record. But once in the studio, Drake became stressed and tense as Boyd tried to capture the emotion and intimacy of the songs he’d heard in those smokey cafés.
The term of “reluctant pop star” is often aimed at Drake to capture the essence of this quiet, reserved, and preoccupied university student and his very short recording career. But that’s too easy – he wanted success, and he wasn’t reluctant. At least, not deliberately.
For Drake, the creative process was already done – the songs were done. The tunings found, the chords chosen, and the words written – the songs as he knew them in his head were the best versions they could be. Somehow, recording them – setting them in amber – was akin to putting out the fire. He made three beautifully crafted albums filled with extraordinary melody and lyrical imagery, delivered with a voice and guitar like no one else. All three disappeared without trace, making no dent in the musical landscape. When his record company organized interviews and live performances he declined, increasingly preferring to spend time at his parent’s home. He wanted to write songs, not be a part of the mechanism that sold them.
HAPPENING
February 5–March 3, 2024 STRING THEORY
Call for Art – Fiber exhibition
Submission deadline: Friday, January 26, 2024
Called “String Theory” – this exhibition will explore the wide range of possibilities within fiber art, including but not limited to weaving, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and felting. We welcome all submissions that showcase the beauty and versatility of fiber as a medium.
WARRIOR
Thursday, January 18, 10–11am
WINTER WARRIORS: STRENGTH & SAFETY SEMINAR
with Dr Lynne DiPirro
Member: $14 Non-Member: $16