[3]
By
Published: 2006
Category: Biography [4]
Darker Than the Deepest Sea: The Search for Nick Drake
Trevor Dann
Friends said that Nick Drake's music “brushes the ear.”
That his songs were like “butterflies chained to anchors.”
That his “breathy beige voice” was ideally suited to a message of “gentle doom.”
That, far from communicating, he made music that turned inward, as if he were playing for himself.
That listening to him was “like being at the bedside of a dying man who wants to tell you a secret but who keeps changing his mind at the last minute.”
Which is to say: In a few short years, on the 31 tracks of three CDs, Nick Drake made music that's chilling in its beauty. Chilling and exhilarating at once, to be exact, for that voice and that open-tuned drone of a guitar suck you into to a private world --- your private world. Nick Drake may not have been able to reach out to anyone during the 26 years of his life, but he knew how to do it with his music. He is the Crown Prince of Gentle.
As those who have read my wet kiss of a review for Five Leaves Left [6] know, I fell in love with Nick Drake early, when he was just a sad dead guy cherished by the faithful. Now he has a cult. “Pink Moon” was used in a VW commercial a few years ago, and in the following month, there were more sales of Nick Drake CDs than there had been in 30 years.
And now there's a biography.
Trevor Dunn produced Live Aid. He was head of music programming for BBC TV. If anyone could penetrate the mystery of Nick Drake's life and death, he was in position to do so. And he has, in ways that will probably please Drake addicts and confuse the newly aware and merely curious.
The thing is, Drake was a mystery in his life, and his “secret” died with him. Was it that he was a child of privilege who just couldn't take the hard knocks of the music business? (“Hard knocks” is somewhat ironic --- he got his record contract when he was a 19-year-old student at Cambridge.) Did he smoke so much dope that he finally pushed himself into schizophrenia? Could he have been saved if he'd been institutionalized? Or did he just never recover from the conviction that he was supposed to be an overnight star? And, of course: Did he kill himself, or accidentally overdose?
It's fascinating to watch Dann follow the breadcrumbs of evidence that Drake left behind. And I find that the prose does what it should: give me fresh respect for the struggles of a sensitive soul crushed by what he felt was fate.
Mostly, I'm left with an image from Nick Drake's childhood: the boy standing and conducting when music came on the radio. Knowing how the story plays out, you want to reach across time to that boy. Failing that, you want to close your eyes, listen to the music and let the pictures come.
To buy “Darker Than the Deepest Sea” from Amazon.com, click here. [5]
To buy “Five Leaves Left” from Amazon.com, click here. [7]
To buy “Bryter Later” from Amazon.com, click here. [8]
To buy “Pink Moon” from Amazon.com, click here. [9]
To buy “Way to Blue” from Amazon.com, click here. [10]