Nick Drake
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Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, Pink Moon and Heaven Is A Wild Flower
Review by Martin Aston, Q, August 1990
RAISED BY UPPER-middle class parents in the Black Country, educated at public school and Cambridge, Nick Drake's life was never as comfortable as his upbringing ...
Audio interviews
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Rock's Backpages Audio, Fall 1994
The legendary producer looks back at the brilliant, doomed singer-songwriter: Drake's enduring qualities; first hearing him; has strong hands and guitar playing; the onset of his troubles, and the clues in his songs.
File format: mp3; file size: 29.3mb, interview length: 32' 02" sound quality: *** (phoner)
List of articles in the library
Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left (Island)
Review by Mark Williams, International Times, 18 July 1969
I DON'T think I've been so impressed by an unknown singer/songwriter since I got the Duncan Browne album on Immediate, eighteen months ago, (why don't ...
Added attractions to Fairport's concert... plus Gypsy
Review and Interview by Lon Goddard, Record Mirror, 4 October 1969
LAST Wednesday's Fairport Convention concert at the Royal Festival Hall contained additions to the great prospect of Sandy and the bunch live on stage. Fairport's ...
Fotheringay, Humblebums, Nick Drake: Royal Festival Hall, London
Live Review by Karl Dallas, The Times, 1 April 1970
Group of promise ...
Nick Drake: He locks himself away – to write his songs!
Interview by uncredited writer, Jackie, 30 May 1970
NICK DRAKE is tall, gentle, modest, and very, very shy. ...
Review by Andrew Means, Melody Maker, 13 March 1971
THIS IS A particularly difficult album to come to any firm conclusion on. For one thing the reaction it produced depends very much on the ...
Review by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 13 March 1971
I GET THE FEELING that only a Joe Boyd-Paul Harris alliance could have produced such a superb album as this. And once again a great ...
Something else for Nick? An interview with Nick Drake
Interview by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 13 March 1971
NICK DRAKE IS A SHY, INTROVERTED folk singer who is not usually known to speak unless it is absolutely necessary. But Nick is not the ...
Nick Drake: Nick Drake (Island)
Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, November 1971
NICK DRAKE — who is, despite his name, a singer/songwriter and not a prototypical 1942- vintage private detective radio hero — has made a first ...
Review by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 25 March 1972
ISLAND APPEARED to have forgotten about Nick Drake until he ambled into the offices one day and presented them with this album. No one knew ...
Review by uncredited writer, Melody Maker, 1 May 1972
JOHN MARTYN told me about Nick Drake in ecstatic terms and so it seemed the natural thing to do, bag the album when it came ...
Report and Interview by Connor McKnight, ZigZag, June 1974
SIX MONTHS AGO I walked wearily into the office of ZigZag’s production consultant. Weary because it was 1.30 in the morning, and because the then ...
Nick Drake: Requiem For A Solitary Man
Obituary by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 8 February 1975
ON OCTOBER 25th, 1974, at approximately six in the morning Nick Drake, a 26-yearold singer/songwriter, died from an overdose of Typtasol, an antidepressant, in the ...
Review by Stephen Demorest, Rolling Stone, 30 June 1977
NICK DRAKE may be the most ethereal recording artist I've ever heard. His fleeting career — the moody, mysterious music, the remote relationship with his ...
Review and Interview by Len Brown, New Musical Express, 9 August 1986
NICK DRAKE was one of Britain's finest folksingers. Now Hannibal Records have re-released his complete works – and included some previously unavailable songs. LEN BROWN ...
Joe Boyd: "Our own little Motown"
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, June 1987
In the late '60s, Joe Boyd helped create a peculiarly English form of folk-psychedelia, producing albums for Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band and Nick ...
Retrospective by Len Brown, New Musical Express, 11 March 1989
Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left ...
Review by Mark Cooper, MOJO, June 1994
WHEN NICK DRAKE'S Five Leaves Left first came out in 1968, albums with gatefold sleeves by moody songwriters accompanied by orchestras were almost two a ...
Nick Drake: Way To Blue (Island)
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, July 1994
IN FEBRUARY 1972, upon the release of Pink Moon, Nick Drake's third and final album proper, the press information issued by Island Records ran, in ...
Hanging On A Star: In Memory of Nick Drake
Retrospective by Gerrie Lim, BigO, November 1994
HIS MUSIC IS as evocative and haunting as ever, though much of his life remains mysterious. Nick Drake died 20 years ago this month, on ...
Essay by Mick Brown, Sunday Telegraph, 12 July 1997
His records didn't sell while he lived. But since Nick Drake's untimely death he has become an icon. Mick Brown reports on a very English ...
Tortured Artist: Nick Drake: The Biography by Patrick Humphries (Bloomsbury) ***
Book Review by Mark Cooper, Q, January 1998
Nick Drake: still an enigma after all these years ...
Guide by Tom Cox, The Guardian, 29 January 1999
1 Nick Drake Bryter Layter (Island, 1970) ...
Nick Drake: Exiled From Heaven
Retrospective by Ian MacDonald, MOJO, January 2000
DURING THE ACADEMIC year of 1968-9, Cambridge University felt an alien influence from beyond its ancient facade of curtain walls and quiet quadrangles. Sober flag-stones ...
Retrospective by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, August 2000
"I was born to sail away into a land of forever/not to be tied to an old stone grave/in your land of never" — Nick ...
Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left****; Bryter Layter****; Pink Moon*****
Review by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, August 2000
Lost poet's main works re-released ...
Nick Drake: Stranger To The World
Retrospective and Interview by Pete Paphides, Observer Music Monthly, 25 April 2004
Nick Drake's rare talent was almost ignored in his brief lifetime. Since his suicide 30 years ago, his legend has grown and now the discovery ...
Brighter Very Much Later: Nick Drake
Retrospective by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, 20 May 2004
POSTHUMOUS ACCLAIM is not uncommon in rock - "death sells" and all that - but the clamour surrounding the English singer-songwriter Nick Drake gets more ...
Nick Drake: Bryter Later (Island, 1970)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, June 2004
THE CULT OF Nick Drake, posh Lost Boy of post-folk singer-songwriting, shows little sign of abating. That’s because his mellow, Colin Blunstone-ish burr of a ...
Nick Drake: Made To Love Magic
Review by Pete Paphides, MOJO, June 2004
The most anticipated Drake release since his death includes a gorgeous five-minute version of 'Three Hours', and the hitherto undiscovered 'Tow The Line'. ...
Nick Drake: Made To Love Magic
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 3 June 2004
PRECIOUS. TRAGIC. BEAUTIFUL. SENSITIVE. DELICATE. DOOMED. These are some of the words that people use about Nick Drake, born in Rangoon, died in Tamworth-In-Arden. Drake ...
Trevor Dann: Darker Than The Deepest Sea – The Search for Nick Drake (Portrait)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 5 February 2006
THIS BOOK IS surprisingly topical, and not just because of the deepening spell cast by Nick Drake, the English singer-songwriter, 31 years after his death. ...
The Enigma's Variations: Darker Than The Deepest Sea: The Search For Nick by Trevor Dann ***
Book Review by Colin Irwin, MOJO, March 2006
A bold attempt to unravel the tragic secrets of an enduring, but still elusive, cult hero, says Colin Irwin ...
Joe Boyd: White Bicycles – Making Music in the 1960s (Serpent's Tail)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 14 May 2006
THIS PROTEIN-PACKED memoir entwines a number of stories that reach well beyond the subtitle's modest brief. At one level it's a boy's own adventure. Joe ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2007
LISTEN TO NICK DRAKE with one ear and you'll hear a (self-)parody of the Sensitive Young Troubadour – the posh Poor Boy, long ways from ...
Comment by Kirk Silsbee, LA CityBeat, 4 October 2007
HOW MANY of us wish we could have seen and heard Ellington's Jump For Joy musical at the Mayan Theatre, Charlie Parker at the Finale ...
Empire of the Sun: Island at 50
Retrospective and Interview by Tom Doyle, Q, June 2009
The grand scheme of a gambler with a taste for chicken blood, Jamaican label Island Records introduced Bob Marley and U2 to the world. On ...
Obituary by Colin Irwin, The Guardian, 7 October 2009
IN HIS FIRST YEAR as a music student at Cambridge University, Robert Kirby sought to join Footlights, the undergraduates' fabled arts and drama club. He ...
Obituary by David Hepworth, The Word, December 2009
THE SPARSENESS of the three albums Nick Drake released in his lifetime are part of their enduring appeal. On two of those albums, string arrangements ...
Nick Drake and Five Leaves Left: An Interview with Omnibus' Chris Charlesworth
Interview by Eddie Blower, unpublished, 2010
In 2010, Chris Charlesworth was interviewed by Eddie Blower about Nick Drake and Five Years Left for an unpublished article. ...
Solid Air: John Martyn and Nick Drake
Report and Interview by Nick Coleman, Independent on Sunday, 10 November 2013
JOHN MARTYN and Nick Drake have just tipped up backstage at an Oxford College Commemorative Ball. It is 1973. The older, newly-successful man, Martyn, is ...
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