Nick Drake

Spain. Costa del Sol. Summer 1971: amid the waves and the spray, music blasting at high volume from the beach resorts, noisy tourists, sand scorched by the African sun, someone sits alone.

Off to one side, silent and not remotely tanned. He's a handsome young Englishman, just 23 years old. Tall, dark-haired, well dressed. A beauty out of another era, like some nineteenth-century country gentleman. He speaks to no one, wearing an absent, sullen air. He stares at something on the horizon: a detail, a transparent sound hovering among the clouds. A memory that must be seized. Music is everywhere, and that's why he's there. A songwriter in search of inspiration, Nick Drake is a guest at the lovely seaside villa made available by his record label's boss. Everything is about to be decided.

Chris Blackwell, head of Island, is the distinguished man who believes in him, despite his commercial misfortunes. Because Drake has released two albums at home, "Five Leaves Left" (1969) and "Bryter Layter" (1970): two wonderful gems of acoustic folk, baroque and melancholy, superbly arranged with the help of the crème of the folk musicians of the day. Gems that, unfortunately, sold almost nothing. Perhaps because of the artist's legendary shyness, which led him to categorically refuse any publicity or promotion: just one brief interview in his entire career, very few troubled concerts, often ending with him half-fleeing the stage. Or perhaps it's simply down to bad luck: after all, the public in that same period was rewarding the likes of Cat Stevens, in some ways close to his own musical sensibility. But for Drake, just as brilliant (and far more so), there seems to be no room.

October 1971: his ideas are back in order. Time to head back to London. Nick has something new in mind, very different from his previous albums: a record made of nothing but voice and guitar. During his Spanish "retreat" he worked out several ideas, and now he needs to get them down on tape. Immediately.

He calls his trusted sound engineer John Wood, the only engineer who has stayed by his side in the studio throughout, and tells him what he has in mind. John, who has received precise instructions from Island ("record whatever Nick proposes"), gladly accepts the task and sets a date.

Drake walks into the studio around midnight, carrying nothing but his beloved acoustic guitar, the Guild that already featured prominently on the cover of "Bryter Layter". He settles in, takes a deep breath, and launches into all eleven songs that will make up the record, one after another.

There's an almost unnatural silence. John is left speechless by the beauty of those songs, entranced by the spleen oozing from every groove. The session lasts no more than a couple of hours: once it's over, Nick gets up and leaves the room. He'll return to the studio two days later to add a minimalist piano part to the title track. Everything else is superfluous now, it no longer matters.

At barely thirty minutes long, "Pink Moon" is one of the most intense albums in British acoustic folk and, at the same time, one of the finest in the entire history of the "singer-songwriter" tradition. As brief and stark as it is dense with meaning. More than its predecessors, the record reveals who Nick truly was: to make it, he fought one last battle against the demons of depression that had gripped him for years, and for once managed to tame them. "Pink Moon" is the final light. After it, only oblivion.

According to Chinese tradition, the pink moon is a harbinger of misfortune. This is the color it takes on during the eclipse. Drake seems aware of the impending doom and, in the title track's lyrics, he prophesies: “L’ho visto scritto e l’ho visto dire/ la luna rosa è in cammino/ e nessuno di voi starà così in alto/ la luna rosa vi prenderà tutti”. The sweetest guitar accompaniment, built on open tunings (in the manner of Bert Jansch, Davey Graham, Donovan, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell), seems to want to exorcise the pain, while those few, sensual piano chords underline the state of mind she's in: suspended on a star, in some otherworldly dimension.

"Place To Be" is the second track. The Guild's circular arpeggios form a single stream of consciousness. Memories of adolescence, when he was "young", "strong", "full of light" and yet still unable to face "reality head-on". Nick holds a tender memory of his family: Rodney, his father (a timber merchant), his mother Molly (a poet and amateur musician), and his older sister Gabrielle (a future film and TV actress). Each of them had given young Nick all the affection they could, showering him with attention and fulfilling his every wish. And then there was the family home, "Far Leys": that large two-storey house, covered in red brick, with its garden and the Warwickshire hills in the distance. So many songs whispered in the shade of those trees, so many hopes held close in Tanworth-in-Arden, three hours from London...

Nick still needs a guide, whether male or female, it doesn't matter. "A road to be travelled" all the way, as he tells us in "Road". He seems almost to nurture within himself one last hope of redemption against that world of winners, capable of seeing the sun without fearing anything.

The cosmic pessimism that fuels his poetics is softened by some beautiful guitar moments: concentric circles, warm arpeggios, full of arcane serenity. In "Which Will" he addresses someone, once again a presence theoretically capable of resolving things, whom Drake asks: "Which will you love?/ which will you choose?/ Which one of many stars/ that shine will you lose/ Or will you find/ Some way to give/ light from behind". His tone of voice is moving when the hypothesis becomes "if you won't choose me". By now Nick is aware of the wall he has built against society through years of non-communication. The presence evoked by the song now seems celestial, otherworldly. After the instrumental "Horn", in which it falls to the guitar to sing of inadequacy, the strangled cry of a shattered psyche, comes "Things Behind The Sun".

This is the album's most lyrical and tense moment: for the first time Nick musters up the courage and chooses to tell the truth. About a world he doesn't like, made up of opportunists, arrogant and superficial people; know-it-alls who grew up too fast, dispensers of an ephemeral, "borrowed" beauty.

Drake urges the listener (though it's as if he were speaking to his own reflection) to be wary of all this. To use honesty in order to be respected, without too much haste or wisdom, simply remaining oneself. To avoid shyness and speak out, to let the sunlight in so as to finally run free and happy. This is Nick's testament, followed by the harsh, severe notes of his acoustic guitar.

After so much verbosity, here comes another skeletal episode, "Know". Here lies the full extraordinary sense of blues possessed by the songwriter: "Know that I love you/ know that I don't care/ know that I can see you/ know that I'm not there". More evanescent than ever, Drake turns himself into a Robert Johnson and howls his blackmail at the moon. "Parasite" offers yet another confirmation of the artist's sense of inadequacy. With the lightest touch of the plectrum, Drake hisses: "Take a look you may see me on the ground/ for I am the parasite of this county". His thoughts perhaps turn to an old flame keeping him company, someone who has helped him survive. A reassuring presence who, however, tired of his being elsewhere, stops taking care of him. And Nick wanders along the "north line", staring at his "shoes that shine". Unable to give himself an answer, confessing that he never knew how to give love to those who asked for it.

In "Ride" he even makes fun of this supposed character, claiming to know him all too well: "I care about you/ I like to study all the photos on your wall/ and all the people coming to your ball/ but now listen to me/ won't you give me a ride for free?".

Nick Drake plays the clown, but without a mask - the game is about to end. There's less and less time left.

The screw tightens unbearably: "Falling fast/ falling free/ looking for a friend/ falling fast/ falling free/ this could be the end". Drake once again foresees defeat, but this time he seems serene: with that stoic, Epicurean calm that recalls the philosopher Seneca and the Latin poet Lucretius. Both dead, albeit for different reasons - both by suicide.

Drake's paradisiacal dream lies entirely in the closing track, "From The Morning". At last he's able to see a magnificent dawn. At last he stops fearing the night, which takes on a "beautiful air". He rises from his bed and sees before him new "endless, colored paths". Once again, Drake's candor, his innocence, brings you to tears.

"And now we rise/ and we are everywhere/ and now we rise from the ground/ watch her fly/ she is everywhere too/ watch her fly all around, now see it all/ and the long summer nights, and go play the game that you learned/ from the morning".

"Pink Moon" was released on February 25, 1972. Despite Island's reasonable commitment, it would sell even less than the previous albums. Drake decides to leave London for good and return to his parents' home in Tanworth. As before, he continues to suffer from depression. After yet another nervous breakdown, his family entrusts him to doctors, who in turn prescribe heavy doses of antidepressants. He stops washing, stops changing his clothes. Even to the few friends he has left (among them John Martyn and his wife Beverley) he gives off the air of a vagrant. He takes long, solitary drives, alone in the car.

In 1974 he records one last handful of songs, then leaves for France hoping to meet the singer he loved, Françoise Hardy. No one can say for certain how the meeting went, if it ever happened at all. On the night of November 24th he's back home. He falls asleep early. On the turntable, Bach's "Brandenburg Concertos"; on the dresser, Camus's "The Myth of Sisyphus". It's his mother who finds him lifeless the next day. A sad end for a genius who died of love.

Nick Drake had poured his whole life into his records, the only way he had of communicating with the outside world. Nothing else mattered to him. His existence shone in a celestial empyrean made of simple things - trees, the sea, the moon, the leaves. Only his songs offered any foothold for deciphering his soul, for finding his secret suffering. Sadly, his art went unrecognized. In ignoring it, every hope was erased. His guitar fell silent forever.

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29/10/2006