Nick Drake - hype and reality

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 11:07 PM

By chance, I've been listening to one of my stations on Pandora - the music genome project. I set it up entering Mark Knopfler then it plays a bunch of what it perceives as similar. Richard Thompson, whom I've heard before, and Nick Drake, whom I have not heard until now, are both cycling through, as well as a few other well-knowns.

I have to say, I have clicked to maximize the window several times, today, only to find it was Nick Drake and I really liked what I was hearing. I don't recall hearing a lot of strings, etc., so it must be his early works, but it was his voice that attracted me most, anyway.

Too much hype or not enough...I like his music, so far.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 01:05 AM

Maybe yes, maybe no. He had good taste in guitars.

Don

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 04:34 AM

Murray, absolutely right about his sister, and a lovely speaking voice too.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 04:38 AM

Kat - the strings are on the first couple of albums. The second album also some 'rock' arrangements which have dated rather badly. The third album is just guitar & voice.

I met someone who'd known him a while back; she was very dismissive, called him a mummy's boy who should have pulled himself together. I ventured the opinion that it might have helped if he'd cut down on the dope a bit, but this just set off a disquisition on the amounts everyone used to smoke in those days, kids these days had no idea.

I once did Fruit Tree and introduced it with, "This is a song written by a nineteen-year-old lad, about how nobody appreciated him and we'd all be sorry when he was dead. Unfortunately he was right."

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Will Fly
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 04:40 AM

An interesting point about Richard Thompson from Wesley. I happen to think Richard Thompson is a superb writer, performer, guitarist, etc. I've most of his recorded work and have seen him many times. And there are very good and talented musician friends of mine who also can't get on with him - so you're in good company! Another acquired taste for some.

Spot of thread drift, for which apologies.... I'd just make one comparison between Drake and Thompson in terms of their songwriting, which others may think is valid (or not). For me, Nick Drake seemed to me to write songs about his own condition, whereas Thompson seems to write songs about the human condition. Like my thread on the adotion of a persona in songwriting, Thompson's songs, many of which are filled with - as he himself puts it ironically - "doom and gloom". But he himself is not filled with doom and gloom, though his own life has had its fair share of incident.

As has been said above, it would have been interesting to hear how Drake matured had he lived.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 04:59 AM

I never understood what the fuss was about Nick Drake until I heard Pink Moon. There's only two Drake albums you need: Pink Moon and Family Tree. They're the two albums on which he just plays guitar.

So there's none of the MOR schmaltzy strings. You can really hear that he's got a unique guitar style, influenced by Jansch, to be sure, but also with Robert Johnson and bossa nova and flamenco in there too.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Smedley
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 05:18 AM

Pip, I agree with your Drake/Thompson comparison. Although I might be tempted to put it less charitably, and say that Drake could never see past his own ego, whereas Thompson is aware of the big wide world.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 05:30 AM

"Drake could never see past his own ego"

I think that's a fairly bizarre thing to say. If you read the biography of Nick Drake, the picture you get is of someone who's painfully shy and soft-spoken. Hardly surprising, when you hear the music.

You do get a sense, in the book, of someone who was aware of his talents, and proud of them, as you'd expect, but certainly not an egotist.

If you're talking about the lyrics, well, he doesn't really sing about himself even when there are first-person lines. He wasn't really much of a lyricist - he tended to string vaguely poetic-souding, pretty phrases together, with a slightly melancholy cod-philosophical bent. It's what sensitive young men in their late-teens/early twenties have tended to do for centuries.

They suited his songs though. They conjure a mood. The lyrics on Pink Moon, while perhaps trite in themselves, are quietly rather devastating, in the music's context.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 05:40 AM

"can't say I ever cared much for Nick Drake, but Oh Lord, that sister of his ...WHOOAAHHH !!"

the pair of them sing a lovely harmony duet of "All My Trials" on Family Tree.

The Family Tree album is a beautifully compiled piece of work. It has Nick's early reel-to-reel home demos, with covers of songs by Jackson C Frank, Dylan and few blues standards, complete with a couple of Noel Coward-esque songs written and sung by Nick's mum, among other oddities.

It's really intelligently, thematically compiled and sequenced, and Nick's early demise can't have been far from the compiler's mind. Songs about time, family ties, journeys and commitments. The CD comes with a booklet and a set of photographs that are painfully/wonderfully evocative of the sort of sepia-brown upper-middle-class suburbia that my late grandparents retired into. Must admit it did make me feel a bit weepy.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Smedley
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 05:43 AM

Matt, I mis-phrased what I meant to say. ND wasn't an egotist in the boastful sense, but (compared to someone like Thompson) he was unable to get past his own perceptions (which in his case were bound up with insecurities). He was all inwardness, which is one reason he's become a poster-boy for the screwed-up.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Stower
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 05:52 AM

As with all music - or art of any sort - surely you either 'get it' or you don't? On another thread someone made a disparaging remark about Joanna Newsom, who I happen to think is close to being a genius, but I didn't respond because I don't think any explanation of any sort of art to another person will help them 'get it'. OK, maybe I'm overstating it a little, but I think it's rare that an explanation will help a person 'get it', because that is essentially an emotional or gut reaction, not a cerebral one.

Wherever there is something to be sold - Nick Drake's music, in this case - there will always be hype. Wherever there is art there will be enthusiasts who wax lyrical in what others see as an overblown way. So what's new?

Of course, Nick having been something of a recluse and having possibly ended his own life (this is unclear, as I understand it), he can be made to conform to the 'sensitive misunderstood artist' stereotype so beloved of the media.

I like his music, for its own sake. I don't have to listen to the hype to know that.

Stower.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 06:05 AM

"ND wasn't an egotist in the boastful sense, but (compared to someone like Thompson) he was unable to get past his own perceptions (which in his case were bound up with insecurities). He was all inwardness"

I don't what you mean. Are you talking about his lyrics? Or his personality? It sounds like you're saying a little of both.

I think 'unable to get past his own perceptions' is a bit meaningless. In a sense we're all unable to get past our own perceptions: they're ultimately all we have.

His lyrics were no more self-centred or solipsistic than, say, John Clare's poetry. Maybe you have no time at all for that whole vein of subjectivity typical of English Romantic poetry, which Drake would have studied at Cambridge. That in itself is understandable.

I'm never comfortable with the idea that just someone singing about recognisable, definite, named things is somehow more "outward-looking" than someone dealing in more abstract stuff. Taken to an extreme, it wilfully misses the whole point of what a metaphor is.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 06:07 AM

While Drake's lyrics are mostly pretty callow and kiddy-crayon, that in itself sometimes paid dividends. I might be about to embarass myself here, but I think the combination of naivety and directness in these, for instance, is rather beautiful, even without the music backing them up:

Would you love me for my money
Would you love me for my head
Would you love me through the winter
Would you love me 'til I'm dead
Oh, if you would and you could
Come blow your horn on high.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Smedley
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 10:16 AM

Matt, many have claimed Drake belongs in that Romantic-poet tradition. In which case, the more expansive, outward Thompson would be something like Dickensian. Both valid traditions, both can be done good or badly.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 12:44 PM

Thanks, Pip, for the info. You, too, matt.

I do remember one of the albums listed on Pandora was Pink Moon.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 03:15 PM

GUEST, "Northern Sky" still breaks my heart, especially those lines - most of all that awful last line. The first four lines express naked longing with a really childlike plainness, but as soon as he's gestured towards actually reaching out to someone he has to cover it up with a bit of misty Arthurian imagery. Oh, if you would and you could... then give the poor lad a ring!

This is the sense in which I think Nick Drake's emotional world, as expressed in his songs, was self-centred & self-enclosed (far more so than John Clare, incidentally, who was a terrific observer of nature). So much of what he wrote was about loneliness, rejection and isolation, or else about an ideal love which never quite stays in focus. "Fly" is another example - "Come ride in my merry car by the bay", for goodness' sake. Wonderful song, and the emotions at the heart of it seem very real; they just don't seem to involve any other human being.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 04:55 PM

In my experience, Nick didn't really catch the imagination of folk club types back in the late 60s early 70s. One could hear lots of songs by his contemporaries in the clubs, Ralph McTell, Bert Jansch, Al Stewart, John Martyn and even the odd song by Roy Harper; and, of course, Richard Thompson's songs were everywhere. It could be argued that Nick's songs were more personal, less universal, and - certainly on first hearing - less catchy. I could easily - and very enjoyably - enter the song world of Al Stewart, but not so Nick's. I also had trouble with the "voice" that Nick used. To my ears, it didn't ring true and certainly didn't sound right coming from the 1960s university educated, middle-class person that he was.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 07:09 PM

Could you explain that last bit? To my ear - coming to it a few years later - Nick Drake's voice was precisely that of a university educated, middle-class person.

Interesting about the songs not being taken up. There's a definite lack of blokishness, which can't have helped; I also wonder if the technique-to-flash ratio is just too high for most people to bother learning them. I mean, a tune like Anji is a sod to play, but sounds brilliant when you do. A lot of Nick Drake's stuff requires you to play eight different chords in a tuning of DADGBF#, and when you can do that what you get sounds... quite nice. I think a lot of the songs are very good, but with a few exceptions they're not *striking* - they don't cry out to be learned.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 07:43 PM

Or EAEAAE. Please, if you want to make relevant class-based observations, learn the differences between middle class, upper middle class, almost county, county, and upper class.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 02:28 AM

Pip Radish, Nick clearly invented his singing voice, and anyone with ears would say that it doesn't go with his background! You'll be telling me next that The Beatles sang with strong Liverpool accents!

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 03:29 AM

lots of interesting sub-divisions there, Richard.

I would have put Nick Drake in at "county", would I be correct? Or was he more "almost county" ?

He only went to Marlborough, so he probably doesn't qualify as "upper class" ...

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 03:53 AM

Murray: Talking about accents, Bert Jansch and John Martyn have never sounded particularly Scottish to me; certainly, not the way Bert's onetime guitar teacher Archie Fisher does.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 05:17 AM

I think probably "almost county". How extensive were his family's landholdings and how many generations back did they go?

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Smedley
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 05:34 AM

There is a colonial dimension - his parents met in ''''the Empire'''' (Burma, to be precise). Father was an engineer (so possibly not 'old money'), Mother the chld of very senior civil servants in imperial India (so possibly 'old money').

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:07 AM

"Nick clearly invented his singing voice, and anyone with ears would say that it doesn't go with his background! You'll be telling me next that The Beatles sang with strong Liverpool accents!"

From what I've heard of Nick Drake's speaking voice, he sang very much as he spoke. He sings in a soft English middle-class accent. Like a (much more) effete, slightly feminised Syd Barrett. He might have softened some of his Ts to Ds, but that's about it.

Listening to Nick singing the blues standards he sings on Family Tree, I always think it's quite impressive that, as a teenager, he had the maturity and confidence to sing them in his public-school educated, English accent, making no concessions whatsoever to how other people would expect them to be sung. (Unlike almost every other non-US singer who's ever sang the blues...)

You might say, as many probably have, that he sounds ridiculous doing so. Nick Drake's voice took me a while to get used to, I must admit. I just thought, initially, he sounded like a wet blanket. But the songs - that is, those of Family Tree and Pink Moon, unimpeded by the schmaltzy, unnecessary production of his other albums – won me over by virtue of being bloody great.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:16 AM

"In my experience, Nick didn't really catch the imagination of folk club types back in the late 60s early 70s. One could hear lots of songs by his contemporaries in the clubs, Ralph McTell, Bert Jansch, Al Stewart, John Martyn and even the odd song by Roy Harper; and, of course, Richard Thompson's songs were everywhere. It could be argued that Nick's songs were more personal, less universal, and - certainly on first hearing - less catchy. I could easily - and very enjoyably - enter the song world of Al Stewart, but not so Nick's. I also had trouble with the "voice" that Nick used. To my ears, it didn't ring true and certainly didn't sound right coming from the 1960s university educated, middle-class person that he was."

Ditto my post above - when I hear Nick Drake's voice, I hear a 1960s university educated, middle-class person! Kind of find it strange anyone would hear anything else.

But, yes, I can see why Nick Drake wouldn't have appealed to folk clubs in the late 60s, early 70s. Actually, Drake would probably have done better if he'd been in LA at that time. The Laurel Canyon folk-ish singer-songwriter scene was a lot closer to what Drake was doing: James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, CSN&Y et al.

In the Drake biography, the descriptions of his solo folk club gigs sound hellish. He clearly wasn't a "performer" at all: he just couldn't talk to people. Patrick Humphries suggests in the book, as many contemporary eyewitnesses he interviews do too, that it would have been much better if he'd been given a band. You can imagine that, if he could have gone out on the road with a bassist or a percussionist, it would have been a whole different ballgame.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:18 AM

I've just come from Youtube were the first thing up of Nick's was Pink
Moon. If anyone doesn't think that he's singing that a song in a manufactured voice that doesn't bear any resemblance to his environment/background then I'm flabbergasted!

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:19 AM

Tunesmith - still not with you. When I listen to Fruit Tree or Fly or Which Will, the singing voice I hear is the voice of someone quite young, a bit shy and rather posh. Very RP - a voice that would have slotted right in on Radio 4, twenty-odd years ago, or on Jackanory.

Funny you use the Beatles as a contrast (rather than the Stones, say). There wasn't much of Liverpool left in the Beatles' singing voice, but there was some (listen to the Us in "Penny Lane") - which was pretty revolutionary in itself.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:21 AM

PS. Crossed in the post. Or Pink Moon.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:32 AM

That's "almost county".

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:34 AM

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:36 AM

Interestingly, Nick sounds like John Martyn at times - or vice versa?
Which is a bit strange as John is a Glaswegian.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:37 AM

Pip - that GUEST was me. Cookie problems.

"GUEST, "Northern Sky" still breaks my heart, especially those lines - most of all that awful last line. The first four lines express naked longing with a really childlike plainness, but as soon as he's gestured towards actually reaching out to someone he has to cover it up with a bit of misty Arthurian imagery. Oh, if you would and you could... then give the poor lad a ring!"

yeah, the last line is awful, as are some of the others in that song. It never occurred to me to think of it as Arthurian: I always thought it sounded a bit Christian, a bit "Kumbaya" ish: it sounds like a Bible verse. I sang that song in a church wedding last year, and it was a hit with the vicar: he came up to me afterwards, asked me what it was, and remarked how appropriate it was. (I tweaked one or two of the words - that new-age-codswallop "new minds eye" line - but I kept the "horn" one)

"This is the sense in which I think Nick Drake's emotional world, as expressed in his songs, was self-centred & self-enclosed (far more so than John Clare, incidentally, who was a terrific observer of nature). So much of what he wrote was about loneliness, rejection and isolation, or else about an ideal love which never quite stays in focus. "Fly" is another example - "Come ride in my merry car by the bay", for goodness' sake. Wonderful song, and the emotions at the heart of it seem very real; they just don't seem to involve any other human being."

Don't wanna make *too* much of any conncection to poetry here - ND was ultimately a very cat-sat-on-the-mat lyricist: much less so than Noel Gallagher but a lot more so than Bob Dylan.

But John Clare's poetry remains an apt comparison in the sense that people don't feature overmuch in it: he is as you say an observer of nature, and it doesn't tend to be overpopulated. When people do crop up, they tend to be lone figures, or lone female objects of obsessive (unrequited or lost) love. (The more "populated" Clare poems tend to be ones where he is deliberately, methodically and self-consciously copying Byron eg his satirical ones)

(and of course Clare's poetry could also sometimes be quite cat-sat-on-the-mat: he wrote a lot, and had a hit-rate of about 1 in 5)

When I think of Nick Drake lyrics I do tend to think of nature images. Or at least, country-town images. Bells, spires, rivers, the colour blue, clocks, skies, the shipping forecast, fruit, sun. I don't tend to think of his songs being very indoorsy.

(With the exception of his songs about time, which always bring us back to grandfather clocks in big old surburban houses, or mantelpiece clocks in university halls of residence)

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Smedley
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:43 AM

The Ian Macdonald essay on Drake (it's in M's posthumous collection The People's Music) zooms in on Drake's nature imagery & connects it both to non-European spiritualities and to a rejection of materialistic thinking. (Those two, at the time Drake was working, were often linked.)

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:47 AM

"I've just come from Youtube were the first thing up of Nick's was Pink
Moon. If anyone doesn't think that he's singing that a song in a manufactured voice that doesn't bear any resemblance to his environment/background then I'm flabbergasted!"

prepare to be flabbergasted. he's singing in a posh english accent. if that's a "manufactured voice", I'm curious to know what template setting the factory is using. who do you think he sounds like there? Mick Jagger? Bert Jansch? Bob Dylan?

the only thing I can hear that sounds like a recognisable influence from his time, is the slightly Donovan-esque way he enunciates the "k" on the end of "pink" (so it sounds a bit like "pinka").

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:48 AM

Carrying on with the John Martyn/Nick Drake connection; now, we know they were friends and shared common musical influences e.g. Bert Jansch, and the blues. One vocal mannerism that they both share is the slurring of sounds, and I wonder what is the precedent for that? Did Bert or maybe the I.S.B. slur words?

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:55 AM

Now Donovan has been mentioned, maybe there is a Scottish connection! Donovan, Bert, John Martyn - and maybe Robin Williamson?

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Smedley
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 07:05 AM

Now it's been suggested, I think there is a Donovan tinge to some of Drake's vocal inflections.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 08:37 AM

Warning! Please keep very quiet about a possible Donovan influence on Nick because, if he hears about it, we will never hear the end of it. Donovan already believes a) that he is one of the major figures in rock history b) that he evented folk-rock c) that he created the "love" generation, and other things besides!

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Smedley
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 02:31 PM

OK, we'll whisper. The most intense Drake cultists will want it hushed up too - Donovan remains rather unfashionable in the UK, while Drake's reputation continues to grow. Both of those trends are somewhat unwarranted in my eyes.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: RTim
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 02:36 PM

Well at least this thread made me go and listen again to the recordings I have. He had some Great musicians to back him up, this improves the whole aspect.
His songs are good and interesting enough, but I think that about many performers.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,guest - Jim Younger
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 03:10 PM

Ah, just want to say that Nick Drake's social class, and however subtly anyone may wish to grade it, has nothing to do with his power as a musician, for me.

An interesting point was raised earlier about trying to copy (or learning, should I say?) ND's guitar style. Like trying to play Nic Jones, it rarely works (never, for me, I should say, but I still have a go).

The guy was unique - yes, there were Jansch, Graham, Dave Evans, and all the other great players of that time ... and others, who we heard once: maybe when they woke up on our kitchen floor, picked up a guitar, astonished all us space cadets, and then vanished ... on a 63 'bus.

And for me, there is real beauty in much of Nick Drake's work, a rare enough quality.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 03:21 PM

Jansch frequently slurred his words, and likewise Graham. Likewise a whole lot of 60s folksong singers, many of whom were pissed/spaced a lot of the time.

The point about Drake's class is that people portray him as the suffering indigent aesthete. All he had to do to be rich and comfortable was to go home. He was not even trapped in the aspirational spiral of the middle classes.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Will Fly
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 03:25 PM

With respect, Richard, Davy Graham only slurred his words in his later years. His diction, in his early, '60s stuff - as in his conversation - was clear and precise.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Smedley
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 03:28 PM

Another point about Drake's class background is that the alluring myth of the misunderstood artist is one that invariably appeals to middle-class audiences. (And overwhelmingly male ones.)

Nothing at all wrong with that, but just as equally it does no harm to point it out.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 03:36 PM

"People portray him as the suffering indigent aesthete"

Do they, though? I don't think he was ever portrayed as skint, just unrecognised in terms of his music. Not really sure of the relevance of his class background - are some people suspicious that poshness is an indicator of inauthenticity? If so, don't worry - inauthenticity is one of the many musical gifts the UK gave to the world, along with the notion that "keeping it real" is wildly overrated... (a paraphrase of Ian McDonald again, this time from the intro to "Revolution in the Head").

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,biff
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 03:38 PM

gotta approach him from the wordsworth/keats/lake poets angle to see full value, he was a poet on strings, stuck somewhere between aesthetic reverie and despair, a half accomplished personality, speaking from a wisp of a cloud

anyways I like his stuff but not all the time, it's a sweet and sad world, good for sunday afternoons

a friend of mine who is gob struck on him claims to have visited him on the astral plane

since I don't believe in this necessarily i just pass it on to you

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 04:01 PM

Will - as to Davy Graham - only when he was straight.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Will Fly
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 04:05 PM

Agreed Richard. I knew DG pre- and post-H. I last saw him to speak to in 1968 - a sad and depressing experience.

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 04:28 PM

Subject: RE: Nick Drake - hype and reality
From: GUEST,guest - Jim Younger - PM
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 03:10 PM


...an interesting point was raised earlier about trying to copy (or learning, should I say?) ND's guitar style. Like trying to play Nic Jones, it rarely works (never, for me, I should say, but I still have a go)...

Oh,   pleeze !!!

Mentioning Nick Drake's guitar syle in the same breath as Nic Jones' is like comparing William Shatner's acting to Dustin Hoffman's.

Drake's specialty was noodling around aimlessly in obscure tunings, I defy anybody to point to a specific example of his recorded guitar work and say, "genius", in the same way as, for example, you could point to Nic Jones' accompaniment on "Canadee-I-O", which for certain will never be successfully emulated, by anybody, anywhere, anytime.