He dropped out of the city’s Fitzwilliam College in 1969 after the release of debut album Five Leaves Left. This is surely the most unexpected, strangely compelling release in years,” wrote Robin Denselow of the Guardian, reviewing it, while Joe Boyd, Nick’s producer, went so far as to claim that Molly was “the missing link in the Nick Drake story – there, in the piano chords, are the roots of Nick’s harmonies”.

Nick Drake by Richard Morton Jack review – genius remembered

Although a foreword by Gabrielle Drake maintains that this is not an authorised work, she provided Drake’s own papers, her father’s diary and gave her blessing for everyone around Drake to contribute. Psychiatrists were mystified by his decline into a state of mute catatonia, interrupted only by explosions of fury and destructive violence (he smashed guitars, a chair, a radio, his car window). He also did not “retreat to the country estate” when the 1971 follow-up, Bryter Layter, also failed to deliver the commercial success or critical acclaim he craved. Towards the end of his life, Drake was pulled between two places he felt damaged him in contrasting ways. In the years since there have been countless magazine articles, retrospectives, and concerts by other artists performing his songs.Morton Jack’s book is the first of its kind to be written in tandem with Drake’s family and seeks to bring an equal measure of light and shade to an English musical figurehead who has become uniquely mythologised. Musician Richard Thompson, who had collaborated with Drake, heard Pink Moon when [producer] John Wood played it to him in Sound Techniques: “I was disturbed. They met in Paris, and it came to nothing but later, but as his mental condition worsened, he travelled to France trying, and failing to, see her.

Nick Drake: The Life by Richard Morton Jack | Waterstones

I think Nick’s sister Gabrielle gave permission and was willing to collaborate with me because a lot of the people who knew Nick are inevitably now in their 70s or older, and with them would die a lot of interesting and valid history,” he explains. The 1999 Volkswagen advert is 60 seconds long but nearly a quarter of a century later, viewers are still posting online about its profound impact, not because of the stylish visuals but because of the haunting music accompanying them: Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. But the exhaustive and reverential Nick Drake: The Life by Richard Morton Jack, a regular contributor to Mojo and other music magazines, will stand as the definitive account. For all the parental fondness evident in the letters to their son (one letter from Rodney to Nick when the latter was chucking in Cambridge to pursue music, you suspect, is all that a child could have wanted from a parent in such circumstances – loving and supportive, despite disagreeing with his decision) and for all that Far Leys was a place of refuge for their son in his depression years that led to his death, they could not save him.If i can travel through times, i will go to the time where nick was still alive and be friends with him. It's a perfectly fine book, but it proves two things very conclusively: 1)people who make beautiful music don't necessarily have exciting lives and 2)depression and suicide are not interesting, glamorous or romantic, they're just miserable and tragic. I thought it was self-destructive, a capitulation, as if he were saying: ‘Fuck it, I don’t care whether people listen to it or not.

Nick Drake: The Biography by Patrick Humphries | Goodreads Nick Drake: The Biography by Patrick Humphries | Goodreads

Now it falls to Gabrielle to tend her brother’s grave under the beech tree in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene in Tanworth. No footage – and one photograph – of Nick Drake performing live exists, although Morton Jack points out he was happy to play various “cavernous auditoriums”, including London’s Royal Festival Hall, to kickstart his career.

Each time I re-read this, I'm always sad all over again that the mental health resources that are so ubiquitous and considerably less tinged with stigma today were not really available to him. Having discussed the matter at length with [his wife] Molly, Rodney sent him a considered reply the following week. But fortunately Patrick Humphries doesn't concentrate only on those dark days in the last years of his short life, which were undeniably there.

Nick Drake: The Life by Richard Morton Jack review – folk’s

Upon discovering that they were in its grand dining room, says Julian, “Rick went in with Nick and told them how great Nick was at the guitar. Containing unseen photos, previously unreleased correspondence and the insights of the people who knew Drake best, it provides a rounded portrait of an artist whose recorded works continue to beguile and resonate. Nick Drake in February 1971, a few months before the two sessions that comprised recording Pink Moon.He watched The Doors play London’s Roundhouse in September 1968 and Bob Dylan a year later at the Isle of Wight Festival.