Nick Drake - The Life - Richard Morton Jack.

‘He was very quiet, a real contrast to Robert. He rarely came out of his shell. He could have pushed himself on the music scene in Cambridge, but my memory was that he was never keen to become known.’

This is a thorough and well- researched biography of Nick Drake. I discovered his music as a teenager – folk songs that struck me as utterly haunting, quietly aching, dreamy, otherworldly and tinged with a raw sadness at times. ‘Take a look, you may see me on the ground, I’m a parasite in this town.’ Readers and reviewers alike tend to circle the same need: to really know Nick Drake - his personality, his inner life, his way of moving through the world.

People are drawn to the lives and personality of great musicians. This one, though, kept himself at a remove - less interested in being known than in being heard. He wanted his music to succeed but was often quiet and did not engage, he would not do the necessary things to promote the album. Often teachers complained in feedback that Nick did not speak and was silent. Often people cannot cope with someone behaving very differently to others.

The mind can struggle with the complexity of the social world, the brain can only take in so much information, because of this the brain categorises people they meet into familiar boxes. We sort people from expectation and habit. When someone arrives who fits none of them, it can cause a real problem. It can unnerve people. That discomfort can be seen as the person in front of us is being difficult, is not conforming to the norm, other people do this, so why not this person. It may even make a person dislike an individual - not for any flaw, but for the simple offense of being unplaceable in the usual category. It's not a comforting thought, that it's this easy for someone's brain to label a person negatively, simply because they do not adhere to social norms.

And this was Nick Drake, he didn’t behave the way the other students did, as a musician he could not do what other musicians did on a promotion level. But he was simply different, he was struggling mentally so would have found it impossible to tour. He may not have been able to articulate that. He may have been afraid of reactions. By the age of twenty-five his mental health spiralled downwards, he often refused psychiatric help. He made the statement that he could not see himself living the way he was at forty. He was in no mental state to do a job to earn money and lived from a small family trust fund before he died.  

This book is probably as close as anyone will get to his complicated interior, though Drake was someone who kept his inner difficulties and part of himself carefully out of view. Some people that suffer from depression often guard it. They may feel guilty at the thought of burdening others, or a sense of being somehow misaligned with everyone around them. He was secretive, a friend states.

Many things will stay sealed with Nick Drake. He was very private and didn’t particularly like too much attention. I suspect he may have been happy discussing almost anything else - than what was happening inside him. Some people are very private, and occasionally this may be because they are hiding something very difficult. This book gives you many personal insights from students that studied with him, his closest friends, and other musicians. You do learn about how he crafted his songs, what kind of music influenced him, how he worked in the music studio. So, if you are interested in his life this is a good read.

Nick Drake was born into an upper-middle- class home, a world of expectation to fit into what all the other middle-class children who have been offered a exceptional education. At university, he struggled. His parents imagined for him a stable, respectable career that other sons fit into without a problem. But Nick could not follow. The only thing that held any meaning for him was music; it was not a hobby or an ambition, but a compulsion.

The idea of the tortured artistic genius is a familiar one, yet studies suggest that musicians’ higher rates of anxiety and depression stem less from a personality and more from the risky realities of their profession: paying bills, navigating the music industry, travelling for performances, and the relentless pressure to make finances their art. Within the UK, support structures for those in the creative arts remain notably inadequate.

Music is now used to treat anxiety and depression, and I believe that creating music can help with trauma, I think it can bring joy to someone who may have experienced trauma in their life. Certainly, when Drake made music, when creating he appears happy, he was perhaps, freer when he did not have to think about the pressures of real-life, a long-term career, how being a musician might be viewed by others who may have wanted him to have a more comfortable safe job.

Nick Drake is brought to life here through the testimonies of those who crossed his path - a figure who resists easy categorisation, an artist who stood apart from other musicians. If he’d had fame in his lifetime, he may have found it very difficult; he didn’t seem to like being monitored or watched for too long. But despite all the mental health problems Nick Drake had, in the short time he was with us, he left some of the most beautiful folk music ever made.