Nick Drake (43 page)

In 1986, twelve years after Nick's death, a young American guitarist called Scott Appel wrote to Rodney and Molly Drake, expressing his appreciation of Nick's music. Scott was particularly fascinated by the unusual guitar tunings which Nick had used, and wondered if his parents could help clarify them. Neither could, but his enquiry opened up a correspondence which continued until Molly's death. Scott was clearly an aficionado of Nick's work, and both his parents responded to his knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, their son's music.

A
Daily Express
profile of Gabrielle in 1997, published to coincide with her West End opening in
Lady Windermere's Fan
, dubbed Nick ‘Britain's answer to Bob Dylan' and quoted Gabrielle on the people who made pilgrimages to Far Leys: ‘After he died, youngsters from all over the world would turn up at my parents' home to talk about Nick. They were welcomed. His fans were delightful. Some had the kind of problems which used to trouble him. My parents were destroyed by his death, but it never dominated their lives. They didn't become sad. They took pleasure in the interest young people showed in Nick. That was a great help to them.'

They came from Europe and America, drawn to the neat and tidy house in the tiny village of Tanworth. Rodney and Molly were largely unaware of how valuable Nick's possessions were to his fans, but they were touched by the continuing interest, and consequently, irreplaceable manuscripts, photos and other items were handed over in good faith, never to be returned. Joe Boyd and Island Records advised them, but they too were probably unprepared for the enduring intensity of interest in Nick's music.

Scott Appel's initial contact with Rodney and Molly coincided with the release of Nick's posthumous fourth album, and Molly wrote to him just after they had received a finished copy of
Time Of No Reply:
‘Knowing that young people still love and play Nick's music has been our only comfort since he died … Rodney and I feel the more Nick's music is given out to the world the happier we shall be.'

In their continuing correspondence with Scott Appel, the Drakes sensed someone with a real affinity for Nick's music, and they wrote to him about some ‘work tapes' which Nick had left behind: ‘Some time in 1974 Nick, who was by then
very
withdrawn and uncommunicative, went over to Suffolk to see John Wood who used to own a recording studio of his own and also recorded for Island and understood Nick and his problems. Nick returned with this tape but never told us what was on it – he just put it away with the other tapes he had. I did not discover it till after his death by which time Island had the recordings of his last four songs, complete with words.'

Through a mutual love of Nick's music, Scott and the Drakes began to discuss the idea of Scott working from Nick's tapes to develop the fragments, a prospect which delighted his parents. They were, however, very clear about how it should be handled: ‘provided the songs are kept the same in essence and not made unrecognizable – and providing too that it is always clear – and I know with you at the helm it always
would
be made clear – that these are Nick's songs'.

True to his word, Scott sat down and began transposing snippets of tape, and trying to figure out the tunings, which were unique to Nick. It was like trying to crack the Enigma code. Nick's friend Robert Kirby understood the problems Scott faced: ‘I defy anyone to sit down with a Nick Drake song and try to figure out how to play it,' he was quoted as saying on the sleeve of Scott's finished
Nine Of Swords
album, ‘the songs just don't follow the ordinary rules of composition.'

Talking to me in 1997, Kirby was still keen to sing Nick's praises as a guitarist: ‘When he first came into my room … as soon as he played the guitar, I've never heard anything like it before or since, in terms of virtuosity. Maybe some people play faster, maybe some people play more complicated pieces, but he never gave a bad performance … I know for a fact that he practised a phenomenal amount. When he was at home alone, he practised and practised and practised. He had to, just to maintain that technique. Even on the first album – something like “River Man”, or something like “Three Hours”, where there is a very complicated guitar part – it was always note for note the same. He might vary tempi sometimes … but every string, every fingernail connected at the same microsecond, each time he did it.

‘All five of the fingers on his right hand could be used equally for playing a melody … the thumb would come up and do the tenor part on the D and A strings. But he wouldn't just get the notes right, he
would control the tone and timbre … He'd got the technique of a virtuoso classical guitarist.'

At the core of
Nine Of Swords
are Nick Drake originals which he never lived to record. The record opens with ‘Bird Flew By', one of the first songs Nick ever wrote; a wistful lament, and in Scott Appel's hands, quintessentially Nick, with its rhetorical refrain ‘What's the point of a year or a season?' The song evokes the haunted territory which Nick had made his own, with its ‘list of false starts and crumbled broken hearts'. Though long in his repertoire, Nick had never felt happy enough with ‘Blossom' to record it. It is one of the most optimistic songs in his canon, with the influence of Joni Mitchell's ‘The Circle Game' and ‘Both Sides Now' faintly evident.

Concerned that the release of
Nine Of Swords
would sully Nick's memory, Joe Boyd was reluctant to grant Appel permission to tamper with Nick's music. Nick's parents, however, had no doubts: ‘I'm sure there can be no objection whatever to your developing the piece you are interested in – indeed, as far as Molly and I are concerned we should welcome it,' wrote Rodney in 1986. The following year he confirmed: ‘On the legal position over your making use of Nick's music (developing his themes and so on) I do not see that there can possibly be any restriction on your using songs that have never been published, beyond getting our agreement, and that you have.'

There is no knowing how Nick himself would have tackled these works in progress, or indeed if he would have chosen to develop them at all. But Nick's fans are insatiably hungry for any crumb of unreleased music, and if the only way they can hear ‘Bird Flew By' or ‘Blossom' is to hear them interpreted by Scott Appel, then they will happily settle for that.

Having spent so much time assimilating his unique musicianship, Scott Appel wrote a revealing article on Nick's guitar playing for
Frets
magazine: ‘Drake's right hand technique was considerable. He produced a dreadnought-like sound with a small-bodied Guild M-20 – the only guitar he ever used to record. He fingerpicked with a combination of flesh and nail, and used only his nails for strumming. He never used picks of any kind. The recorded sound of Drake's guitar was also partly due to the miking techniques of his sound engineer John Wood, who already had recorded British musicians Richard Thompson, John Martyn and Robin Williamson, using a four microphone setup for Drake's acoustic. One ambient mike was placed all the way across the room. Power was not the only characteristic of Drake's right-hand technique. He played unusual
and irregular patterns with his thumb, contrary to the clearly defined bass rhythms played by the thumb in most fingerpicking patterns (the alternating bass, for example).'

Paul Wheeler, who had innumerable opportunities to observe Nick and his guitar technique, smiled when he remembered those Cambridge days: ‘There was a professionalism about Nick … I don't remember many gigs, but even just sitting round people's rooms, if he'd written a new song or something, if he played through something, he would always get it absolutely right. He would wait until people were listening before he played it. He would never play it twice. There was always a sense of professionalism. He never played a bum note. He wouldn't do the washing-up because it might break his nails. So he was conscious of his reputation.'

As a fellow guitarist, Paul Wheeler studied Nick's playing closely; he too felt that the unique strength lay in his right hand: ‘As a guitarist, Nick used his right hand in a way that I don't think anyone like John or Bert used it … You see, even someone like Richard Thompson doesn't use his right hand that subtly … Speaking as a guitarist, it's his right hand that's interesting. Synchronizing your fingers, most guitarists only use two fingers on the right hand. Nick definitely used his whole hand, and he used it in a very interesting way. Listen to “River Man”, and get a guitarist to explain to you what's happening, and he won't be able to!'

Over the years, Nick Drake's inimitable guitar playing has contributed hugely to his enduring appeal. While the songs are timeless and beguiling, for musicians Nick's tunings, his fluent fingering and playing are transcendent. An accomplished singer-songwriter and nimble guitarist himself, Clive Gregson is fascinated by Nick's playing: ‘I cannot figure out the guitar tunings, I don't know what the guitar's tuned to 99 per cent of the time; the chords, the fingerings, the way his voice sounds that good, it's so dry. It's a complete mystery. But at the end of the day, it's just a bloke playing the guitar and singing. But it doesn't sound like anything else I've ever heard.'

Just what is it about Nick's guitar tunings which continues to fascinate people?: ‘I think it's incredible technique, for a start. He's finger-picking in really odd rhythms … “River Man” is in 5/4, and the rhythmic part, the playing on that, is just astonishing. And in some ways it sounds simpler than it really is. I can sit down, and pick out certain things, but it never sounds … right. It's a technical facility way beyond … I guess it's a very musician thing, and a lot of the latter interest in Nick is from musicians and players. It's terribly
understated, it's very tasteful. “The Road”, off
Pink Moon
, that is just rhythmically so complex, and yet it's not hard chords. There are aspects of it that are simple … There's a little instrumental called “Horn”. The way he plays it, tiny little thing, most people wouldn't even think that way. The comparison with Richard [Thompson] is interesting, because having worked with Richard, I can rationalize, I can understand what Richard does, because I've seen him do it a lot – I can't do it, I can't begin to do it – but I kind of understand it. Whereas with Nick, there's a lot of it that I don't understand.'

No mean guitarist himself, Nick's friend John Martyn was equally fascinated by his guitar tunings. Martyn had watched Nick firsthand, but was still baffled by just how he did it. He spoke in 1986 of his memories of watching him hunched over his guitar, endlessly tuning and retuning: ‘Nick was extraordinarily secretive about all that. I could probably work them out for you … he used seconds quite a lot, very strange tunings, diminished as well, so when you applied just two fingers you'd change the thing in a very radical way. I remember his fingering here – he had the most beautiful fingers when he played, and they were made even more beautiful by the fact that the shapes that he'd play were not those you would normally see when other people play. Very interesting little shapes … I just never asked him, I was too busy toddling off on my own and doing my own stuff. He's a much-underrated player.'

Jeremy Mason was there, in early 1967, as Nick Drake developed his guitar tunings. Nick had learned the basic guitar chords from David Wright at Marlborough only a few years before, but in Aix, Jeremy was driven mad by Nick's endless tuning and retuning of his guitar. Because there was nothing else to do, Jeremy began drawing, and because there was nobody else to draw, his first subject was the teenager on the bed opposite: ‘What was probably my first attempt at drawing was a drawing of Nick playing his guitar, which I turned into a linocut. And bad as I was, that was the way I remember him sitting. He always wore those moccasins. He always looked at the guitar. The guitar picking, the sound that you hear now on the records, he developed in Aix … He sat for hours on his bed. I knew then he was getting pretty serious about it.

‘He used to sit on his bed, and loosen the strings on his guitar, completely, as I recall. I think he had now obviously started to smoke – marijuana – and he would strum away, and tighten them up as he went. I think he formulated it there, because the sound I hear on the records now is the sound he was getting then.'

At Cambridge and at Sound Techniques, Robert Kirby watched Nick develop his unique guitar style. He was also one of the few people with whom Nick ever discussed the actual mechanics of songwriting. For Nick, the genesis of a song came from playing the guitar, and finding a phrase which he could make his own and develop. With memories of Nick in London and Cambridge, Kirby remembered: ‘What he'd do is play for fifteen or twenty minutes, non-stop, moving from figure to figure, and the figure that I'm thinking of is the introduction to “Things Behind The Sun”. That was going for years before he recorded it on
Pink Moon.
I think a lot of Nick's writing came from the fact that he would experiment with a detuning, experiment with a figure within it, and that would give him the basis for a song …

‘He did talk about the music, when we were at Cambridge, or when we were doing
Bryter Layter.
He would come up with strong guitar phrases, harmonic sequences, tunings … He would have these parts in his head for a long time, and then as lyrics came, he'd got a library of parts that would go with that. It makes it sound a bit mechanical, but I believe that's the way they came … I'm sure there must have been plenty of songs when he was sitting there and a lyric came, and then he wrote some music for it, but all of his experimentation came with the guitar. He took the guitar to extremes.'

Both Rodney and Molly Drake were delighted with what Scott Appel had achieved with Nick's music on
Nine Of Swords
and they continued to correspond for years. When Molly moved to a smaller house after Rodney's death in 1988, Scott suggested donating Nick's manuscripts to a museum archive, but Molly's reply confirms what many still fail to understand: ‘there is
so little
that Nick left behind him – apart from the legacy of his music. He never wrote anything down, never kept a diary – hardly even wrote his name in his own books. It was as if he didn't want anything of himself to remain except his songs – to quote from one of those songs – I have always described him to myself as “a soul with no footprint” …