This is Nick Drake, my newly-assembled self-titled album meant to act as a fourth and final LP of its' singer-songwriter's far-too-short career. Drake had released three beautiful and carefully crafted records around the turn on the '70s, all of which had barely sold any copies by the time he died. When he passed away, he was in the middle of recording his fourth album, and a written sequence he left behind show that he had recorded the entire first side of the record. None of the three official releases of the "final four" songs from his final sessions (as they were known before a fifth was found and they became the "final five") used this intended sequence, so I am trying to rectify that now to bring this collection of his final songs (and older leftovers) more in line with his creative vision.
History
I'll start with some background info. Nick Drake had recorded his final LP Pink Moon (1972) over the final two days of October 1971, and unlike his two previous albums, this one featured him alone on guitar, which he recorded sitting facing the studio's wall. Only the title track recieved so much as a single piano overdub, and the only other person in the studio with him was longtime engineer and first-time producer John Wood. Drake's record company didn't even know that he was recording anything until the mastertape arrived at their door. Included on that album master, maybe for a later project, was a short intstrumental cover of "Plaisir D'Amour," which has still never recieved a widespread release. I managed to find it as a hidden bonus track to the SACD edition of the A Treasury compilation, but it's not even on the CD of the general-release version.
One outtake is more than what came out of the sessions for his second album, though. Bryter Layter (1971, but recorded in 1970) contains three instrumentals, and since the album's final sequencing was being left to Drake's original producer Joe Boyd, Drake didn't want to risk any of his instrumentals getting cut at behest of new songs. Because of this, he said he had no new material when he absolutely did ("Voices" was a home demo as early as 1967), so no other songs were ever attempted.
Luckily, four extra songs from the sessions for his debut Five Leaves Left (1969) do exist. He plays guitar unacompanied on "Joey" and "Clothes Of Sand," along with on "Time Of No Reply." This one had an orchestral arrangement written out at the time by one of Drake's university friends, but due the song being cut from the album, budget limitations prevented that from being recorded. The same fate befell the song "Magic," which was origially recorded with an unsatisfactory backing band and also never got the chance for an intended orchestral redemption; with "Way To Blue" making the cut, he didn't want a second song without any guitar on it. There have also been a few alternate versions from those sessions to be released over the years. Only one other song of his was ever put to tape in the studio, "Mayfair," during the audition for his label Island Records. He flubbed the lyrics partway through, and because of that, the substandard audio quality, and the general weak nature of the song, I chose not to include it here as it brought down the album as a whole no matter where it was placed in the sequence.
1972 was the first year that Drake made no studio recordings, although Pink Moon was released in late February. He returned to the studio in 1973 during a bright spot in a long and deep depression. Here I will copy vertabim this reddit post except for the added italics, which the lyrics at the end of my blog post are taken from as well:
This is based on the fantastic book Remembered For a While (2014) by Gabrielle Drake. The first recording session was 22 February 1973 with John Wood, the sound engineer who he worked on Pink Moon with: 'We went in and we did three songs – just tracks, because Nick hadn’t got complete lyrics, which was very unusual for him. There were two versions of “Black Eyed Dog”, one with heavy [guitar] strings and the other with light [guitar] strings – that‘s what the “strings” denotes on the tape box. Then we did “Rider on the Wheel” and we did "Hanging on a Star” – again, both without lyrics – although what surprises me, having seen the tape box label, is that he must have had a bit more lyrically than he let on, because all the titles [for the three songs] are written on there.' There were further abortive recording sessions in October 1973 when Joe Boyd got back from Los Angeles and the final recordings took place in July 1974. “Tow the Line” was the final song Nick recorded. Here's the planned track listing:
1. “Voices (aka Voice from the Mountain)”
2. “Black Eyed Dog”
3. “Rider on the Wheel”
4. “Hanging on a Star”
5. “Tow the Line”
6. “Saw You on a Starship”
7. “Old Fairytale”
8. “Even Now”
9. “On This Day”
10. “Long Way to Town” [end quote]
"Tow The Line" was for some reason left unmentioned on the tape box, and was only discovered in the 2000s. Drake had rough mixes made of the other four songs, and took home a listening tape of them (and these early mixes sound really nice, actually). He died from an overdose of perscription medication on November 25, 1974, almost certainly a suicide.
Those four recordings from 1973 and '74 have been released together on three different occasions. The first time was as bonus tracks to the Pink Moon disk in Drake's first ever posthumous release, the 1979 Fruit Tree box set of his three albums. They were sourced from that listening tape, as they were on this next release. In the late 1980s the Fruit Tree box set was reissued with a bonus disk that got put out on its' own shortly thereafter, as the Time Of No Reply compilation from 1987. It includes two songs from his audition for his label Island Records (including the afformentioned "Mayfair"), the four outtakes and one early version of a song all from his debut album, a few home demos, and closed out with the "final four" in a slightly different order to how they were in the Fruit Tree set. It's a good collection well worth getting for any fan of Drake's who likes the three main albums as it contains unique versions of some songs (the home demo of "Fly," for example, is arrestingly haunting and I prefer it to the studio version), but overall Time Of No Reply really doesn't have the best sound quality. Along with that, the sequence holds the album together cohesively but nonetheless doesn't sound as cohesive as any of his studio LPs.
Nick Drake finally began gaining the notoriety he deserved when his song "Pink Moon" was used in a Volkswagen commercial around the turn of the millenium. This sparked his record company to work on a reissue campaign where they remastered his albums, released a new "best of" compilation, and slightly later on put out an album of home demos. They were also planning on remastering Time Of No Reply, but they changed course partway through and decided to fully rebuild it from the ground up, whereupon it evolved into a different compilation called Made To Love Magic (2004). Everything was remixed and sounds far, far better. They removed the audition songs, switched out the home demos, kept the four Five Leaves Left outtakes (although "Time Of No Reply" and "Magic" had originally-intended orchestral additions overdubbed onto them), added a second alternate version from that same album, and as they had just located "Tow The Line," released the entire "final five" all together for the very first time. They did use a different take of "Hanging On A Star" though, and both are good in different ways. I find the 1987-released version to be less of a tight performance (and ends very abruptly), but has more emotional power than the fragile Made To Love Magic one. The entire sequence was changed as well; instead of the roughly-chronological Time Of No Reply, the songs were all insterspersed with each other with a detrimental effect to the total cohesion.
Reasoning Behind The Album
This collection is intended to serve as an eulogy to Nick Drake, a musical epitaph of sorts, beginning with his final songs and then returning full circle to some of his first, before closing out on the only non-original song Drake ever recorded in the studio, a short and beautiful instrumental version of the classical French love song "Plaisir D'Amour." To me it serves as a symbolic goodbye, both to and from him, or in other words acts as a send-off to the afterlife.
The first five songs are in Drake's intended order, and I used older outtakes and leftovers to make up the second side of this imaginary LP. His playing evolved a lot over the course of his short career, and due to the chronologically-diverse nature of the source material (four outtakes from '68/'69, one from '71, and five from '73/'74), Nick Drake is an album of two distinct halves, but I've sequenced it so that the division is as smooth as can be and there are no sudden breaks in mood. On every "final five" song except for "Rider On The Wheel," Nick is singing in his falsetto, which is a stark contrast against the warmth of his normal singing voice. Indeed, this only adds to the dark mood that hovers over much of the album, but with the older numbers, and especially the orchestral songs near the end, it pulls out of that to finish with a more positive atmosphere (that atmosphere is no doubt why "Plaisir D'Amour" was left off the much more subdued Pink Moon). The older songs are admittedly quite a bit weaker than the first half, but there's nothing that can be done about that, and at 27:25 minutes long, it's only about half a minute shorter than his last album; a very professional length.
As far as I know, there was no intended album title yet at that stage of the recording process, but since Nick Drake never had a self-titled album (except for a rare US-only compilation made of songs from his first two records), I figured that it made a lot of sense to name it after the creator, as it showcases his talents at very different points in his development. The cover for this album is one of the only pieces of album artwork I've made myself for my reconstruction projects. The starkness of the white text on flat black background fits the mood of the first half of the album perfectly.
I think the most fitting way to close this out is with Nick Drake's own words, so here are the lyrics to the unrecorded second half of the album he was working on in 1973 and 1974. Before that though, here are two other songs found among the others which did not make the cut for the album. All is taken from the reddit post above, which is sourced from Gabrielle Drake's book.
“Sing A Song”
Sing a song, sing it low,
Sing a song, make it slow,
Sing a song, let it show,
I am yours from now on.
All new games we can play,
All new words we can say,
All new words won't betray,
I am yours from now on.
You are my treasure-trove,
You are my stars above,
Hold on tight, let me prove,
I am yours from now on.
“Paid Brain”
Well they's paying him in gold,
And they's paying him in smiles,
And they's payin for his brain,
And they's payin for his wiles;
He's a paid brain,
Lord say he should be so,
Yes he's a paid brain
And the Lord say he should be so.
Lyrics for the second side of the fourth album:
“Saw You on a Starship”
Saw you on a starship, moving so free
Called out to you, won't you please see me,
Saw you with the dragon between your knees,
Said, Hey you, won't you help me please,
You can travel, I can travel too,
We can travel, travel two by two.
Saw you on a journey, a witch's broom,
Said move over won't you please make room,
Saw you on a cloudburst, so cold, so warm,
Said, Hold on, just a passing storm,
You can travel, I can travel too,
We can travel, travel two by two.
Sailing easy, flying high,
Watching all the times go by,
In the slipstream, broke down and confessed,
You're the one that we love the best,
You can travel, I can travel too,
We can travel, travel two by two.
”Old Fairytale”
You open the door, don't you make a sound,
The light come in, you spread it all around,
And you cast your spell right across the ground,
It's an old fairytale.
The days go by, you're looking for a theme,
The night come down you go to be to dream,
While the people they change from blue to green,
It's an old fairytale.
So call the tune, don't you call for me,
What you see is a mystery,
You can say it has to be,
An old fairytale.
You open the door don't you make a sound,
The light come in, you spread it all around,
And you cast your spell right across the ground,
It's an old fairytale.
“Even Now”
You can tell me that you're coming through,
I can tell you that I'm changing too, won't you see me through,
We can seek you out,
We can scream and shout,
Even now, even now.
Even at the point of no return,
We can sit and watch our bridges burn, don't you see 'em turn,
We can follow down,
All around the town,
Even now, even now.
And if you're losing what you started with,
Don't you grieve for what you're parted with, broken-hearted with,
You can bring it through,
Maybe make it new,
Even now, even now.
You can tell me that you're pulling through,
I can tell you that it's happening too, won't you see it through,
We can fall about,
And we can seek you out,
Even now, even now.
“On This Day”
'A' train just don't run,
Good time just won't come,
On this day, on this day.
New sun just don't shine,
New love just ain't mine,
This old time, this old time.
New day just won't dawn,
New love just ain't born,
On this day, on this day.
See you coming, I know the score,
And I know that you know it too,
See you going, ask you for more,
'Cos I know that you want it too,
See you coming, I can't be beat,
And I tell you it's for real,
See you going, bring on the heat,
Won't you tell me how you feel.
'A' train just don't run,
Good time just won't come,
On this day, on this day.
“Long Way to Town”
Well I don't wish to deceive you more,
And I don't wish to call you down;
And I don't wish to deny my name,
But it's a long long way to town.
And long long way to town, to town,
A long long way to town.
