More than three decades ago, British folksinger Nick Drake gulped down a fatal handful of prescription antidepressants, overwhelming his tender, 26-year-old heart and prematurely concluding his career, which hadn’t been going well. Drake’s first three LPs were commercially insignificant and largely ignored by critics; it didn’t help that Drake despised touring and interviews. But since his death in 1974, his reputation has swelled to absurd proportions. Plenty of artists have garnered posthumous fame, but Drake’s second act— a 30-year renaissance that includes tribute albums, scads of celebrity endorsements, an acclaimed car commercial, two biographies, loads of reissues and compilations, placement in films and television shows, a handful of documentaries, an endless ring of websites, and constant, unmitigated canonization by the press—is remarkable by any standard.
In response to the continuing interest, Drake’s estate—run by his sister, Gabrielle, and a man named Cally Calloman—has not only reissued his entire discography on more than one occasion, but also unleashed a steady stream of hodge-podge anthologies (some more vital than others), satiating fan demand and ensuring that Drake remains an essential artist for anyone even remotely compelled by acoustic music.
It’s impossible to discern to what degree Drake’s death—an end that plenty consider poetic—has colored or guided his success; likewise, there’s no way of knowing whether Drake’s music would have been discovered and celebrated were his life not so easily mythologized. Earlier in 2007, the Drake estate released Family Tree, a 28-track collection of scratchy home recordings, including a duet with Gabrielle and two swooning piano songs written and performed by Drake’s mother, Molly. (It’s hard to listen to Molly purr the lyrics to “Poor Mum”— “Poor Mum / Nothing worked out in the way that you planned”—and not wince a bit at their prescience.)
Family Tree was preceded by five other posthumous releases: two collections of outtakes and rarities and three introductory greatest-hits compilations. And then there are Drake’s official albums, the ones he made while still alive. On Five Leaves Left (1969), recorded while he was a student at Cambridge University, Drake was backed by members of Fairport Convention. The album introduced listeners to his peculiar, impossible-to-replicate vocal style and open-tuned guitar. Its follow-up, 1970’s Bryter Layter, is Drake’s most lavish: Once again using members of Fairport Convention (and adding the Velvet Underground’s John Cale), Bryter Layter is packed with swooning strings and rapturous arrangements. Drake’s final record, 1972’s stark, stunning Pink Moon, features only the singer and his finger-picked guitar. (The record’s lone overdub—a short string of piano notes—appears on the title track.) Pink Moon is 28 minutes of bare, disconsolate folksongs; it’s Drake’s bleakest work, and also his most beloved.
This is an awfully complicated trail of plastic for an artist who only officially recorded 31 original songs in his short lifetime. So the question sticks: Why is Nick Drake so intensely adored now, three decades after his death? Why not in his lifetime? What changed for Drake, and when? Is there a crueler success story in all of pop-music history?
Repackaging An Icon
Legendary producer Joe Boyd—who signed and managed Drake and produced his first two records for Island— believes that Drake’s posthumous success is not an especially mysterious phenomenon. “The music is great and it took a while for people to get it,” Boyd says. “I think the back story is a very small part of [his] posthumous success. It’s all down to the music.”
Boyd is equally skeptical about the ways in which Island’s initial marketing of Drake’s records may have impacted their sales. “There might have been more imaginative ways of handling [the marketing], but fundamentally the lack of a live career meant it was terribly difficult [for Island to sell Drake’s music],” Boyd explains. Those precious few studio recordings have had to suffice.
In the late ’70s, former rock critic Rob Partridge took a gig as press officer for Island; one of the first things Partridge did was suggest that the label release a comprehensive collection of Nick Drake’s studio work— the resulting release, 1979’s Fruit Tree box set, contained all three of Drake’s LPs and a collection of outtakes. Fruit Tree has been out of print since 2000 (although all three of Drake’s records have been steadily available for individual purchase), and this fall, the Drake estate opted to reissue the box: The new version again includes Drake’s three studio albums, plus the DVD documentary A Skin Too Few: The Last Days of Nick Drake and a 108-page book featuring song analysis and commentary from a bevy of Drake insiders. The original Fruit Tree box included a fourth, untitled LP of outtakes and rarities that was released on its own in 1986 as Time of No Reply, but it’s absent from the latest version.
“We remade [Time of No Reply] as a new title, Made to Love Magic. It came out some three years ago and is still a very strong seller,” Calloman explains. “It seemed mean to include Made to Love Magic in the boxed set as so many ‘new’ fans—[at] whom the box is aimed—may have only just bought it, plus, it would have made the cost of the box far too high to remain reasonable,” he continues. “The idea is: Discover Nick through the Treasury compilation, buy all three albums—in the Fruit Tree box or singularly—and if you are a really big fan, there are two extra releases, Made to Love Magic and Family Tree, and that’s it. We are trying hard not to do a Jeff Buckley,” Calloman promises, alluding to the long stream of releases that followed the singer/songwriter’s 1997 death (which, like Drake’s, remains shrouded in mystery).
Still, even the most ardent Drake disciples still have to wonder why it didn’t all stop with those three perfect LPs. Earlier this year, in the liner notes to Family Tree, Gabrielle included a letter addressed posthumously to Nick, expressing her reservations about the glut of elective releases and questioning whether her brother would have ever wanted to be this exposed, this aggressively sold. “Up ’til now, every decision I have taken— I have been allowed to take—on your behalf about your music has been guided by what I believe might have met with your approval,” she wrote.
Drake’s catalog has aged improbably well—but folksinging was hardly an unusual pursuit in England in the 1970s, and it’s still perplexing that Drake’s music was so universally underappreciated in his lifetime, and that it’s so universally celebrated now. Certainly, Drake’s legend is—however wrongly—bolstered by his presumed suicide: For whatever reason, the notion of the artist as a tragic figure remains a perversely satisfying way to process art. But even if Drake’s death inadvertently spawned his posthumous rebirth, it’s hard not to be thankful for these records—in whatever package you finally find them.