1. An accomplished acoustic guitarist, Nick Drake signed to Island Records at the age of twenty while still a student at the University of Cambridge.
70 Facts About Nick Drake
1. 2.
Nick Drake suffered from depression and was reluctant to perform in front of live audiences.
3.
On 25 November 1974, Nick Drake was found dead at the age of 26 due to an overdose of antidepressants.
4.
Nick Drake's music remained available through the mid-1970s, but the 1979 release of the retrospective album Fruit Tree allowed his back catalogue to be reassessed.
5.
Nick Drake was born in Burma on 19 June 1948, a few months after the independence from the British Empire.
6.
In 1934, Rodney Nick Drake met Molly Lloyd, the daughter of a senior member of the Indian Civil Service.
7.
Nick Drake proposed marriage in 1936, but the couple had to wait a year until she turned 21 before her family allowed them to marry.
8.
In 1951, the Nick Drake family returned to England to live in Warwickshire, at their home, Far Leys, in Tanworth-in-Arden.
9.
Rodney Nick Drake worked from 1952 as the chairman and managing director of Wolseley Engineering.
10.
In 1957, Nick Drake was sent to Eagle House School, a preparatory boarding school near Sandhurst, Berkshire.
11.
Nick Drake developed an interest in sport, becoming an accomplished 100- and 200-yard sprinter, representing the school's Open Team in 1966.
12.
Nick Drake played rugby for the C1 House team and was appointed a House Captain in his last two terms.
13.
School friends recall Nick Drake as having been confident, often aloof, and "quietly authoritative".
14.
Nick Drake formed a band, the Perfumed Gardeners, with four schoolmates in 1964 or 1965.
15.
In 1966, Nick Drake enrolled at a tutorial college in Five Ways, Birmingham, where he won a scholarship to study at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
16.
Nick Drake began to smoke cannabis, and he travelled with friends to Morocco; according to travelling companion Richard Charkin, "that was where you got the best pot".
17.
Nick Drake returned to England in 1967 and moved into his sister's flat in Hampstead, London.
18.
Nick Drake's tutors found him bright but unenthusiastic and unwilling to apply himself.
19.
Cambridge placed emphasis on its rugby and cricket teams, but Nick Drake had lost interest in sport, preferring to stay in his college room smoking cannabis and playing music.
20.
In January 1968, Nick Drake met Robert Kirby, a music student who went on to write many of the string and woodwind arrangements for Nick Drake's first two albums.
21.
Nick Drake began performing in local clubs and coffee houses around London, and in December 1967, while playing at a five-day event at the Roundhouse in Camden Town, made an impression on Ashley Hutchings, bass player with Fairport Convention.
22.
Nick Drake looked wonderful, he seemed to be 7 ft [tall].
23.
Nick Drake recorded his debut album Five Leaves Left later in 1968, with Boyd as producer.
24.
Nick Drake had to skip lectures to travel by train to the sessions in Sound Techniques studio, London.
25.
Tension arose as to the direction of the album: Boyd was an advocate of George Martin's approach of using the studio as an instrument, while Nick Drake preferred a more organic sound.
26.
Dann observed that Nick Drake appears "tight and anxious" on bootleg recordings from the sessions, and notes a number of Boyd's unsuccessful attempts at instrumentation.
27.
Nick Drake suggested his college friend Robert Kirby as a replacement.
28.
Nick Drake was unhappy with the inlay sleeve, which printed songs in the wrong running order and reproduced verses omitted from the recorded versions.
29.
Nick Drake ended his studies at Cambridge nine months before graduation and in late 1969 moved to London.
30.
On 5 August 1969, Nick Drake pre-recorded four songs for the BBC's Night Ride show presented by John Peel, which were broadcast after midnight on 6 August.
31.
Nick Drake subsequently recorded "Bryter Layter" for another BBC radio broadcast, in April 1970.
32.
Nick Drake seemed reluctant to perform and rarely addressed his audience.
33.
Trevor Dann noted that while sections of "Northern Sky" sound more characteristic of Cale, the song was the closest Nick Drake came to a release with chart potential.
34.
Nick Drake did the first set and something awful must have happened.
35.
Nick Drake was doing his song 'Fruit Tree' and walked off halfway through it.
36.
Island Records urged Nick Drake to promote Bryter Layter through interviews, radio sessions, and live appearances.
37.
Nick Drake appears on Pink Moon accompanied only by his own carefully recorded guitar save for a piano overdub on the title track.
38.
Nick Drake definitely wanted it to be him more than anything.
39.
Nick Drake delivered the tapes of Pink Moon to Chris Blackwell at Island Records, contrary to a popular legend which claims that he dropped them off at the receptionist's desk without saying a word.
40.
At Boyd's insistence, Nick Drake agreed to an interview with Jerry Gilbert of Sounds Magazine.
41.
The "shy and introverted" Nick Drake spoke of his dislike of live appearances and little else.
42.
Nick Drake toyed with the idea of a different career and considered the army.
43.
In February 1973, Nick Drake contacted John Wood, saying he was ready to begin work on a fourth album.
44.
In 1971 Nick Drake's family persuaded him to visit a psychiatrist at St Thomas' Hospital in London.
45.
Nick Drake was prescribed antidepressants, but felt uncomfortable and embarrassed about taking them, and tried to hide the fact from his friends.
46.
Nick Drake rarely left his flat, and then only to play an occasional concert or to buy drugs.
47.
Nick Drake once said to me that everything started to go wrong from [this] time on, and I think that was when things started to go wrong.
48.
Nick Drake returned to live at his parents' home in Tanworth-in-Arden, and while he resented the regression, he accepted that it was necessary.
49.
Nick Drake would disappear for days, sometimes arriving unannounced at friends' houses, uncommunicative and withdrawn.
50.
Nick Drake was a close personal friend of fellow folk musicians John and Beverley Martyn, and visited them regularly when they lived in London and subsequently Hastings.
51.
Martyn later wrote the title song of his 1973 album Solid Air about Nick Drake and described him, in this period, as the most withdrawn person he had ever met.
52.
Nick Drake would borrow his mother's car and drive for hours without purpose, until he ran out of petrol and had to ring his parents to ask to be collected.
53.
Early in 1972, Nick Drake had a nervous breakdown, and was hospitalised for five weeks.
54.
Nick Drake was initially believed to have major depression, although his former therapist suggested he had schizophrenia.
55.
Nick Drake had tried to stay in touch with Sophia Ryde, whom he had met in London in 1968.
56.
Nick Drake had gone to bed early after spending the afternoon visiting a friend.
57.
Nick Drake's mother said that around dawn he left his room for the kitchen.
58.
Nick Drake's family had heard him do this many times before, and presumed he was eating cereal.
59.
Nick Drake returned to his room a short while later, where it is believed that he took an overdose of amitriptyline, an antidepressant.
60.
Nick Drake had been accustomed to keeping his own hours; he frequently had difficulty sleeping and often stayed up through the night playing and listening to music, then slept late into the following morning.
61.
On 2 December 1974, after a service in the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Tanworth-in-Arden, Nick Drake's remains were cremated at Solihull Crematorium and his ashes interred under an oak tree in the church's graveyard.
62.
Boyd wrote that "the roots of Nick Drake's harmonies" were in his mother's piano playing, which drew from West End acts such as Noel Coward, Sandy Wilson, and Julian Slade.
63.
Nick Drake asked Robertson to write an arrangement for "River Man" in the vein of Frederick Delius.
64.
Nick Drake was obsessive about practising his guitar technique and would stay up through the night writing and experimenting with alternative tunings.
65.
Nick Drake sang in the baritone range, often quietly and with little projection.
66.
Nick Drake was drawn to the works of William Blake, William Butler Yeats, and Henry Vaughan, whose influences are reflected in his lyrics.
67.
Nick Drake employed a series of elemental symbols and codes, largely drawn from nature.
68.
Nick Drake gained further exposure in 1985 when the Dream Academy included a dedication to Nick Drake on the sleeve of its hit single "Life in a Northern Town".
69.
On 20 June 1998, BBC Radio 2 broadcast a documentary, Fruit Tree: The Nick Drake Story, featuring interviews with Boyd, Wood, Gabrielle and Molly Drake, Paul Wheeler, Robert Kirby, and Ashley Hutchings, and narrated by Danny Thompson.
70.
In November 2014, Gabrielle Nick Drake published a companion to her brother's music.