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The Nick Drake Song Collection
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- GenresMusic
158 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 2003
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About the author
Nick Drake
7 books7 followersNicholas Rodney Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician best known for his acoustic, autumnal songs. His primary instrument was the guitar, though he was also proficient at piano, clarinet, and saxophone. Although he failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime, Drake's work has grown steadily in stature, to the extent that he now ranks among the most influential English singer-songwriters of the last 50 years.
Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20 years old and released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. By 1972, he had recorded two more albums—Bryter Layter and Pink Moon. None of the albums sold more than 5,000 copies on their initial release. His reluctance to perform live or be interviewed further contributed to his lack of commercial success. Despite this, he was able to gather a loyal group of fans who would champion his music. One such person was his manager, Joe Boyd, who had a clause put into his own contract with Island Records that ensured Drake's records would never go out of print.
Drake suffered from depression and insomnia throughout his life, and these topics were often reflected in his lyrics. Upon completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. On 25 November 1974, Drake died from an overdose of amitriptyline, a prescribed antidepressant; he was 26 years old.
There was residual interest in Drake's music through the mid-1970s, but it was not until the 1979 release of the retrospective album Fruit Tree that his back catalogue came to be reassessed. By the mid-1980s, Drake was being credited as an influence by such artists as Robert Smith and Peter Buck. In 1985, The Dream Academy reached the UK and US charts with "Life in a Northern Town", a song written for and dedicated to Drake. By the early 1990s, he had come to represent a certain type of 'doomed romantic' musician in the UK music press, and was frequently cited by artists including Kate Bush, Paul Weller, and The Black Crowes. Drake's first biography was written in 1997, and was followed in 1998 by the documentary film A Stranger Among Us. In 2000, Volkswagen featured the title track from Pink Moon in a television advertisement, and within a month Drake had sold more records than he had in the previous thirty years.
Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20 years old and released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. By 1972, he had recorded two more albums—Bryter Layter and Pink Moon. None of the albums sold more than 5,000 copies on their initial release. His reluctance to perform live or be interviewed further contributed to his lack of commercial success. Despite this, he was able to gather a loyal group of fans who would champion his music. One such person was his manager, Joe Boyd, who had a clause put into his own contract with Island Records that ensured Drake's records would never go out of print.
Drake suffered from depression and insomnia throughout his life, and these topics were often reflected in his lyrics. Upon completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. On 25 November 1974, Drake died from an overdose of amitriptyline, a prescribed antidepressant; he was 26 years old.
There was residual interest in Drake's music through the mid-1970s, but it was not until the 1979 release of the retrospective album Fruit Tree that his back catalogue came to be reassessed. By the mid-1980s, Drake was being credited as an influence by such artists as Robert Smith and Peter Buck. In 1985, The Dream Academy reached the UK and US charts with "Life in a Northern Town", a song written for and dedicated to Drake. By the early 1990s, he had come to represent a certain type of 'doomed romantic' musician in the UK music press, and was frequently cited by artists including Kate Bush, Paul Weller, and The Black Crowes. Drake's first biography was written in 1997, and was followed in 1998 by the documentary film A Stranger Among Us. In 2000, Volkswagen featured the title track from Pink Moon in a television advertisement, and within a month Drake had sold more records than he had in the previous thirty years.
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June 11, 2023
Musician’s musician
As anyone likely to be in the market for this book will already know, Nick Drake was possibly unique.
Nic Jones was an astonishingly original guitarist, master of wild tunings; Gordon Lightfoot a consummate songwriter; Art Garfunkel a sensitive and distinctive singer. But none of them combined all these attributes as Nick Drake did. Only Joni Mitchell seems comparable, and she didn’t record until her late twenties; Nick made Five Leaves Left when he wasn’t even old enough to sign the recording contract, and five years later he was dead.
Nick’s music, then, is more than the sum of its parts, the melody, guitar-work, lyrics and voice interweaving to produce an “emergent phenomenon” — the Nick Drake magic.
How did he do it? If we expect to find a clue, it should surely be in a book like the present one. Here, however, we have some good news and some bad news. First, the good news.
Contents of the book
Nick’s legacy is three studio albums, some alternative- and out-takes, plus a few odds and ends, mostly collected on Time of No Reply. All the tunes from the main albums are notated here including the instrumentals from Bryter Later. There are also five songs from Time of No Reply: the title track, Rider on the Wheel, Black Eyed Dog, Hanging on a Star, and Voice from a Mountain. I Was Made to Love Magic, Joey, Clothes of Sand, Mayfair and Strange meeting II are omitted.
The book is intelligently and attractively designed. There is a thoughtful preface by Nick’s preferred arranger, Robert Kirby, and then the complete lyrics are given, interspersed with many interesting and unfamiliar family photographs of Nick.
The songs are then presented in staff notation, grouped by album.
Now the bad news. The format throughout — unfortunately for guitarists — is vocal line plus piano. Guitar tunings and capo positions are specified, and chord symbols and fretboard diagrams appear above the staff, but there is no tab. Even Horn, a pure guitar piece, is presented on a piano staff.
Also unfortunately for guitarists , the songs are notated at absolute pitch — so that (for instance) The Thoughts of Mary Jane (which Nick plays in A capo’d at 6) appears in E♭.
And so we come to the crucial question.
How accurate are the transcriptions?
I haven’t yet had a chance to work right through the book, but the melody lines appear to be accurate, as do the lyrics — something one should be able to take for granted, but often can’t.
However, the accompaniments are not Nick’s but arrangements by one Roger Day (it says in small print at the end). Where the guitar part is easily played on the piano — as with the aforementioned Horn — they are reasonably close; but this is not often the case with Nick’s music. To be brutally frank, many of these arrangements could fairly be called travesties. One of the constant joys of discovering Nick’s music, is that if you can only find the right tuning, many of his pieces almost play themselves. But here, most of that is lost.
For instance, Road (bizarrely labelled Radio on my copy of Pink Moon, incidentally) is a miniature masterpiece; the transcription, however, is a mere shadow of the original, and even the bass line is wrong. Furthermore, I’m not even convinced that the tuning given (DGDDAD capo’d at 4) is correct; it makes parts of the piece (the original, that is) virtually impossible, or at least very difficult. EADEBE capo’d at 2 seems to me more likely, and certainly much easier.
Summary
If you’re a pianist, or if you’re just interested in the lyrics and melody lines, then this is a good, even an excellent book.
If you’re a guitarist who wants to know what Nick played, however, then things are less rosy. It seems to me that an honest effort has been made to present information for guitarists; but it just isn’t adequate.
You can certainly use this book as a starting point. If you have the time, energy and inclination, you can (as I have done, out of curiosity) copy a piano part here into a notation program such as Finale or Sibelius, and transpose it to the original guitar (i.e. sans capo) key. If you keep the voices in separate layers, you can then copy and past the bass and treble clefs into a single guitar (8vb treble) clef. However, you will not in most cases get a correct guitar part without a lot of tweaking.
“More than accurate”? I think not.
As anyone likely to be in the market for this book will already know, Nick Drake was possibly unique.
Nic Jones was an astonishingly original guitarist, master of wild tunings; Gordon Lightfoot a consummate songwriter; Art Garfunkel a sensitive and distinctive singer. But none of them combined all these attributes as Nick Drake did. Only Joni Mitchell seems comparable, and she didn’t record until her late twenties; Nick made Five Leaves Left when he wasn’t even old enough to sign the recording contract, and five years later he was dead.
Nick’s music, then, is more than the sum of its parts, the melody, guitar-work, lyrics and voice interweaving to produce an “emergent phenomenon” — the Nick Drake magic.
How did he do it? If we expect to find a clue, it should surely be in a book like the present one. Here, however, we have some good news and some bad news. First, the good news.
Contents of the book
Nick’s legacy is three studio albums, some alternative- and out-takes, plus a few odds and ends, mostly collected on Time of No Reply. All the tunes from the main albums are notated here including the instrumentals from Bryter Later. There are also five songs from Time of No Reply: the title track, Rider on the Wheel, Black Eyed Dog, Hanging on a Star, and Voice from a Mountain. I Was Made to Love Magic, Joey, Clothes of Sand, Mayfair and Strange meeting II are omitted.
The book is intelligently and attractively designed. There is a thoughtful preface by Nick’s preferred arranger, Robert Kirby, and then the complete lyrics are given, interspersed with many interesting and unfamiliar family photographs of Nick.
The songs are then presented in staff notation, grouped by album.
Now the bad news. The format throughout — unfortunately for guitarists — is vocal line plus piano. Guitar tunings and capo positions are specified, and chord symbols and fretboard diagrams appear above the staff, but there is no tab. Even Horn, a pure guitar piece, is presented on a piano staff.
Also unfortunately for guitarists , the songs are notated at absolute pitch — so that (for instance) The Thoughts of Mary Jane (which Nick plays in A capo’d at 6) appears in E♭.
And so we come to the crucial question.
How accurate are the transcriptions?
I haven’t yet had a chance to work right through the book, but the melody lines appear to be accurate, as do the lyrics — something one should be able to take for granted, but often can’t.
However, the accompaniments are not Nick’s but arrangements by one Roger Day (it says in small print at the end). Where the guitar part is easily played on the piano — as with the aforementioned Horn — they are reasonably close; but this is not often the case with Nick’s music. To be brutally frank, many of these arrangements could fairly be called travesties. One of the constant joys of discovering Nick’s music, is that if you can only find the right tuning, many of his pieces almost play themselves. But here, most of that is lost.
For instance, Road (bizarrely labelled Radio on my copy of Pink Moon, incidentally) is a miniature masterpiece; the transcription, however, is a mere shadow of the original, and even the bass line is wrong. Furthermore, I’m not even convinced that the tuning given (DGDDAD capo’d at 4) is correct; it makes parts of the piece (the original, that is) virtually impossible, or at least very difficult. EADEBE capo’d at 2 seems to me more likely, and certainly much easier.
Summary
If you’re a pianist, or if you’re just interested in the lyrics and melody lines, then this is a good, even an excellent book.
If you’re a guitarist who wants to know what Nick played, however, then things are less rosy. It seems to me that an honest effort has been made to present information for guitarists; but it just isn’t adequate.
You can certainly use this book as a starting point. If you have the time, energy and inclination, you can (as I have done, out of curiosity) copy a piano part here into a notation program such as Finale or Sibelius, and transpose it to the original guitar (i.e. sans capo) key. If you keep the voices in separate layers, you can then copy and past the bass and treble clefs into a single guitar (8vb treble) clef. However, you will not in most cases get a correct guitar part without a lot of tweaking.
“More than accurate”? I think not.
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