![]() It was a tragedy that passed largely unnoticed at the time. He died on November 25, 1974, at the age of 26, from an overdose of anti-depressants. The lack of sales for Pink Moon disappointed Drake, whose depression was deepening. Danny Thompson, who worked with Drake on Five Leaves Left and played bass on John Martyn’s classic Solid Air, which is an album about Drake, said: “Ultimately, it’s the real beauty of his music that draws people in, and his stunning guitar playing, which was so clean.” For example, he tuned his bottom string down to a low A just so he would get the right fret on one line of “Free Ride,” to emphasize one of the lines. One of the highlights is “Things Behind The Sun,” on which Drake plays some beguiling picking guitar as he sings:ĭrake was a talented technical guitarist and a painstaking musician. Nevertheless, Island Records kept faith in the young singer, and the company knew that with such exceptional songs (“Road,” “Which Will”) they had something special on their hands. Pink Moon received good reviews, but its intimations of darkness (“Now I’m weaker than the palest blue,” Drake sings in the masterful “Place To Be”) left people feeling uncomfortable. Drake said he didn’t want it arranged, just to stand “naked.” In the brilliant and bleak “Parasite,” Drake uses the device of a journey on the Northern Line of the London Underground to offer a chilling view of the emptiness of contemporary life. The album, which is only 28 minutes long, has an unsettling simplicity. In the end, a surrealist painting by Michael Trevithick, who was the boyfriend of Drake’s sister Gabrielle, was chosen and seems fitting. Drake did not know what he wanted on the cover of his new album, except that it had to feature a pink moon. Pink Moon is Drake’s music at its starkest and most uncompromising: no other musicians, no arrangements, just Drake and his acoustic guitar and one piano solo on the title track, with its ill-omened pink moon a portent of disaster. Listen to Pink Moon on Apple Music and Spotify. Ruston Kelly Returns With New Single And Video ‘Mending Song’.‘Pink Moon’: Finding Hope In Nick Drake’s Bleak Masterpiece.Reading Between The Bars On Elliott Smith’s ‘Either/Or’.Wood later said that “it felt like there was a kind of urgency about it.” Drake then snuck away with producer John Wood to lay down a new album, which was recorded over just two late-night sessions at Sound Techniques in London’s Chelsea, in October 1971. With no immediate plans to make a new record to follow 1969’s Five Leaves Left and 1971’s Bryter Layter, Drake spent time recuperating at Chris Blackwell’s Spanish villa, at the personal request of the concerned Island Records chief. His final public gig, at Ewell Technical College, in Surrey, in June 1970, had been abandoned halfway through the song “Fruit Tree” before a disconsolate Drake walked off stage. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, released on February 25, 1972, is a short and intense masterpiece from the British folk singer-songwriter.īy 1971, the 23-year-old was overwhelmed by depression and had lost all confidence as a live performer.
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