Nick Drake's rare talent was almost ignored in his brief lifetime. But since his suicide 30 years ago, his legend has grown, writes Patrick Butler
At a recent concert held in The Village, Dublin, to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of singer-songwriter Nick Drake, one middle-aged audience member remarked: "I was well and truly in the 60s, but I don't remember Nick Drake".
Today, Nick Drake's music is not just remembered, it is revered. Dave McGuinness, once of Irish rock band Lir and organiser of the tribute concert, discovered Drake's music in the late 1980s. "For me, it just encompasses everything that music should be: melody, words atmosphere. To me, as a musician and a songwriter, it makes me feel good."
Although the folk singer released three acclaimed albums from 1969 to 1972, the combined sales only totalled 20,000. He had no hit records and rarely performed live.
When he died from an overdose of anti-depressants, aged 26, in November, 1974, his death went largely unnoticed. Yet, like other musicians of the period who died young - Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison immediately come to mind - Drake has become an icon.
"I've been watching over the years as he got bigger and bigger," says John Hutchinson, director of the Douglas Hyde Gallery. "He has become a cultural figure in a way I did not notice before."
Hutchinson was one of the few who bought a Nick Drake album when it was first released. To mark the 30th anniversary of Drake's death, he presented a once-off screening of the 1999 Dutch documentary film, A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake. It was part of his gallery's Huts exhibition, the theme of which was isolation and a return to nature.
Drake's early death, the often- melancholic nature of his work and his posthumous fame - as well as photographs that always show him alone or apart from others - have created the notion of a persistently unhappy individual, unable to relate to a wider society. However, his family has always insisted that Drake's severe bouts of depression only came in his final years.
Born in Rangoon in 1948, the son of English parents, Nicholas Rodney Drake was two years old when his family returned to their native England and settled in a small country village in Warwickshire.
He had a typical upper middle-class upbringing and attended preparatory school (he was head boy) and then proceeded to Cambridge, where he studied English for two years and developed a passion for the Romantic poets, William Blake in particular.
However, his first love was always music. At a gig in Cambridge, Drake was spotted by a member of Fairport Convention who put the shy singer in touch with renowned producer Joe Boyd. Boyd went on to produce the first two Drake albums, Five Leaves Left and Bryter Later.
Both albums are lush and melancholic - a combination of Drake's laid-back very English voice and Robert Kirby's string arrangements. Five Leaves Left, however, is consistently melancholic tone, achieved through evocative lyrics, which use imagery reminiscent of the English Romantic poets: of nature, time, isolation.
While Drake went on to make what are generally considered two better records, Bryter Later (favourably compared with Van Morrison's Astral Weeks) and Pink Moon, it is the prescient lyrics of first album, released in 1969, that linger in the memory.
Five years before his death and only 20 years old, it is eerie that Drake could pen such lyrics as those contained in the song Fruit Tree. "Fame is but a fruit tree/So very unsound/It can never flourish/'till its stock is in the ground," he sings.
FOLLOWING THE COMPLETION of his third album - which sold as poorly as its predecessors - a despondent Drake moved back to his parents' home, where he spent much of his last two years isolated and withdrawn, under a cloud of depression.
He was found dead on November 25th, 1974. Although the coroner returned a verdict of suicide, his family disputed this and insisted that the overdose of anti-depressants was accidental.
Had it not been for devoted fans and a record company agreement with producer Joe Boyd never to delete his albums from its catalogue - therefore making them always available - the story of Nick Drake might have ended there.
However, as the years have passed, Drake's reputation as a singer-songwriter has only grown. Drake's influence stretches far, from artists such as Josh Ritter, Badly Drawn Boy, David Gray, Belle and Sebastian and REM to less mainstream, but equally well-regarded performers including jazz pianist Brad Medhlau.
In September, the CD single release of Drake's River Man included a cover of Day is Done by the massive-selling, multiple Grammy award winner, Norah Jones.
INTEREST IN DRAKE'S work has also spiralled in the US. One of his admirers, actor Brad Pitt, narrated a BBC radio documentary broadcast last May.
His popularity in the US partly came about through a quirk of luck. Four years ago, Volkwagen used the title track from Pink Moon in a television commercial. It led to sales of 73,000 copies of the album, which pushed it into the Billboard chart and the amazon.com top five.
In Ireland, a number of groups and singers - most notably The Frames - have championed his legacy. Singer-songwriters such as David Kitt, Damien Rice, Gemma Hayes, Mundy, and Mark Geary have all been influenced by Drake.
Although Dave McGuinness welcomes references that enhance and spread the reputation of Drake's work, he has reservations with the ease with which many performers now associate themselves with the folk singer. "In some ways, it's easy to name-drop Nick Drake," he says.
This year, three decades after his death, Drake finally made it into the UK charts, with a top 40 hit single Magic, taken from the top 30 album, Made to Love Magic, a compilation of rare tracks and remixes. It contained the previously unheard song, Tow the Line, recorded in the middle or the latter part of 1974 and believed to be one of the last things he committed to tape.
For John Hutchinson, the rise of Drake's popularity has been astonishing, particularly among people in their 20s and 30s. When Hutchinson recently asked a young artist why the current generation were so interested in Nick Drake, the artist replied: "Well, he was probably the first singer-songwriter to be really depressed."
If this is the case, then perhaps Drake's current stature can best be explained by the words of the opening song, Time Has Told Me, on his first album, Five Leaves Left. "Time has told me/You're a rare rarer find/A troubled cure/For a troubled mind".
Made to Love Magic and the recently released compilation, Nick Drake: A Treasury, are on Island