The idea of writing a book about Nick Drake is one which I resisted for many years, not least because I worried that it might be an unbearably depressing task. Eventually, though, all roads really did lead to Nick Drake, and having pondered the family connection – my uncle was the doctor who brought baby Nick into the world — I began to see a certain symmetry. Perhaps I could discover something about Nick’s life and not just dwell on the last few years leading up to his death.
While I was researching my biography of Richard Thompson, Nick’s name was mentioned regularly, and I began to think that perhaps the moment had come. When I mentioned the idea to Joe Boyd, while interviewing him about Richard, Nick and Richard’s producer cast his eyes heavenwards, patiently explaining that I was not the first to come to him with this idea and that he was weary of cooperating on projects which never came to fruition. His response was simply: we’ll talk when you’ve got a publishing deal. But publishers are like policemen — there’s never one there when you need one – so it took time. One British publisher rejected the detailed proposal and chapter breakdown, explaining that they didn’t consider there was sufficient market for ‘a book on Nick Cave’.
By the time I had found a publisher with sufficient faith and vision – a genuine debt of gratitude here to Penny Phillips of Bloomsbury – both Joe and Nick’s sister, Gabrielle Drake, had decided not to cooperate, which meant I was unable to quote from Nick’s lyrics. This did, of course, make my task a less straightforward one, but by that time I had gone too far to turn back.
Slightly daunted, I went through the journalistic motions with little hope of much success. In the event, I was quite overwhelmed by the response: there seemed to be dozens of people who had known and remembered Nick Drake, simply waiting for someone to ask them about him. New undreamed of angles started to emerge, and a strange, unfamiliar picture of a very different Nick Drake began to develop. Far from being depressing, the project became exciting, even uplifting. The fondness of his schoolfriends for the young Nick was particularly contagious, and I began to feel I had a mission to give this young man his life back.
Nick’s parents are now dead, but I very much wanted to use their words, not just for the background to his early family life, but because, more than anyone else, they were in a position to shed light on the last few years, when his illness had taken hold. I am therefore indebted to T.J. McGrath for allowing me to use tapes of interviews he conducted with Rodney and Molly Drake in 1985; these gave me the backbone of Nick’s story.
Joe and Gabrielle have both been interviewed many times and, where necessary, I have drawn on, and acknowledged, these previously published sources; otherwise their quotes come from interviews I conducted with them in 1994 for a magazine piece which never appeared. All other quotes, unless otherwise noted in the text, are taken from the dozens of interviews which I conducted exclusively for this book.
In the past, myth and rumour have attached themselves like barnacles to Nick Drake. Rock ’n’ roll is notoriously unreliable: session logs have disappeared, corporate take-overs have seen archives vanish, correspondence has been ditched, original press releases shredded. Misquotes and misinformation proliferate. For too long Nick has been the victim of myth-making. In the end, out of twenty-six years, twenty-three were spent by and large happily, either with his family, at school and university, or beginning his recording career. It was only towards the end that, in his mother Molly’s sadly chilling phrase, ‘the shadows closed in’.
It would have been nice to have some of the story in Nick’s words. As it is, he lives on not only in his music, but in the fond memories of the many whose lives were touched by his, and through them, I hope in this book. This is a life of Nick Drake, in the words of those who knew him. And if that is not enough, there is always, and always will be, the music.
Patrick Humphries
London, September 1997