Nick Drake Appreciation - Album By Album & All Things Nick Drake*

For me, the revelation was hearing Fly without the arrangement. I'd never warmed to the song, but stripped of the intrusive viola and harpsichord, it really spoke to me. An album like that would be stunning.

 

Bring

the studio versions are sealed in stone.

Maybe a stripped comp of sorts would be doable.

 

Indeed. I love the Kirby arrangements too. Had the Hannibal box on yesterday and can't imagine bettering "At The Chime Of A City Clock" by deleting the sax and the lonely London atmospheric strings..a jazz standard to my ears as is, or "Fly" without its stunning stings arrangement, or "Northern Sky" without the stunning keyboard & strings.

 

Right. A gatefold double LP! A newly mixed and mastered John Wood analog collectible!

 

You'll always have the original. I find something so refreshing in hearing the stripped Fly and Northern Sky, I'd love to hear the whole thing like that.

 

I get what you are saying, EM...I agree we will never have enough Nick! So bring them on... a completely "unplugged" (if you know what I mean) Bryter Layter AND Five Leaves Left would be a dream. Those along side Pink Moon would be amazing. So now I've opened a discussion for a three album box....all just Nick and his guitar!

 

And one other instrument where it's melody is key - the Pink Moon rule'!

 

BL ?
A production wet dream. Simply gorgeous.

 

Pink Moon was designed to be stark. But I know what you mean.

 

But why was it designed to be stark? At least in part a reaction against what had gone before and how he had been persuaded of certain choices. Yet he still allowed piano on the title track. I love that even at his most bleak and determined, he still deferred to his inner musical sensibility and added the piano. That's the prism through which I see my ideal unplugged Bryter Layter.

 

I do wonder if Nick was actually more onboard with the arrangements/strings etc on Bryter Layter....from all I've read, after the failure of Five Leaves Left, Nick wanted to very much create what Brian Wilson had with Pet Sounds, the concept album idea, big production n' all. Nick was adamant about the instrumentals (strings included I assume) and had wanted four instrumentals -- one to open and close each side. The concept album idea had taken root, so I wonder how much was on Joe, or maybe it was on both Nick and Joe....at least that Nick was onboard with all the strings etc. Nick was much more assertive during the BL sessions and was very hard headed about the instrumentals that Joe was so against. Nick was far more vocal, by all reports, during the Bryter Layter sessions than with Five Leaves Left so maybe it turned out how he'd hoped at the time.

With his Pink Moon recordings, I am thinking that Nick was so depressed, so disillusioned with the whole music industry, with broken dreams and what seemed to him like total misdirection all 'round...that he just thought: to hell with this, how about just me, stripped down, alone this time, since all the rest didn't work to enhance his fame. I also wonder with his deepening depression and self-isolation, whether or not he could have handled anyone else around with him in the studio...safety in numbers: just Nick tucked safely in the studio by himself, and John isolated in the booth, that may have been all the interaction he could handle...production considerations aside.

 

According to Cally, Nick wasn't actually depressed during the writing and recording of Pink Moon. He first told Joe Boyd that the next album would not have additional musicians at the end of recording Bryter Layter, so personally I think he turned against the fully arranged soundscape, albeit was happy enough with the choices made at the time.

 

Right...thanks for the reminder...it was during the final sessions after Pink Moon that Nick seemed to be so troubled. And I agree that Nick may have been mostly onboard with Bryter Layter's production overall, trusting in Joe's instincts, but turned against that approach soon after. With Joe gone back to America, Pink Moon's stripped down approach would be much easier for Nick to put forth.

 

Cally's assessment aside, I must say that Nick's troubling disheveled appearance during the Pink Moon photo sessions had to have revealed some pretty low self-esteem going on to his friends and folks at the label, if not a fairly depressed state (with all due resect to Cally), so much so that they didn't feel any of the photos were "right" for the LP jacket, hence the Dali-like art approach.

I do believe as you say, EM, that Nick was likely buoyed at the prospect of writing and recording again, once more hopeful of some kind of breakthrough with an as yet untapped audience for his wonderful music.

 

What did Nick get payed for Pink Moon( if anything)?

 

I've never heard whether he got an advance on Pink Moon---certainly the sales never generated an residuals. He never got much more than what he needed to pay the rent it seems, although Nick demanded more of an "allowance" from Joe after his frustration with the lack of success with album sales. Not sure what happened with Nick's financial arrangements after Joe sold Witchseason. Didn't he move home not long after; or was he already home.

 

Any monies from the next two years after Pink Moon release ?

 

Pink Moon?
Couldn’t have cost much.
Block studio time after 11.00 pm( 2/3 nights )
Must have been £500 studio cost.
+
Engineer: fee.
Manufacturing cost ( how many copies pressed)?


No studio musicians fee.

 

I thought I read of a suicide attempt in 1972. A year is a long time and there's plenty of room for despair and managed parental care, alongside other periods of productivity, creativity and (with John Wood), collaboration - notwithstanding long periods of gloom and hopelessness.

 

I'm fairly sure I read that he was asked for the costs and given an immediate cheque, the amounts involved being so pitifully small.

 

Sadly that was Nick's life...ups and downs and ups and very downs. Even at the time of his passing some reports were that he was feeling much better. Therefore I tend to think it was accidental as was often the case with that powerful medication--much to easy to tragically O.D.

 

Studio costs in London in the late eighties( some studios/ block booking ) from 11.00pm ..8 hours was £160 per session. Meant sleeping during the day.

 

No doubt Island have recouped over the past 50 years, studio costs for all his albums.

 

Chris Blackwell (as detailed by Trevor Dann) asked him what Pink Moon had cost on his infamous fleeting visit to Island. Nick said 500 or so pounds so Chris paid him there and then. "It was hard to put pressure on someone who wouldn't tour when their record only cost 500 quid!"

 

I tend to agree. I've been on the same drug and you quickly progress from finding that one pill helps enormously to four barely touching the sides. Yet you know that the only relief you're going to get is if the pills take hold. I hadn't even noticed that my Dr had been upping the dosage on each pill too, so I was on a much higher dosage than when I'd started.

A terrible accident seems just as tragic as a suicide, although I know that Gabrielle liked to think that he was making a deliberate act to bring about some change.