A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake (2002) - full transcript

I don't think he wanted to
be a star, but...

I think he'd got this feeling
that he'd got something to say...

to the people of his own generation, a
feeling that he could make them happier.

And he didn't feel that he did that.

It's great that people have
been discovering Nick.

Once you discover Nick,
you're going to tell other people.

If you met a girl and you took
her back to her room...

and if there were some Nick Drake
records there...

you would probably want to marry her.

I feel a bit of affinity with him.
I think if...

if like Nick makes you think of home.



I think that one of his
great tragedies...

I think he said to someone:
"I've got no more songs. "

There were moments when it was
very... sad working with him;

later on.

Well, I came to Nick Drake's
music very late.

And he's got some sort of...

magical quality, you know...

There's a lot of mysticism,
no, mystique...

attached to Nick Drake, because
he only made three records.

And not much is known about him,

there's no film of him.

Very little recorded words.

But there's still a kind of magic
about his music, I think.

A kind of fragility...



which a lot of people indentify with.

My parents were both wonderful.

They had an idyllic early
marriage out in Burma.

Because life was wonderful
for colonials at that time.

We were very typical, I suppose,
of a certain class.

Of a middle class.

My father as a young man
had gone out east,

and was an engineer.

My mother was very much Nick's mother.

She was very beautiful and
she was very creative.

And I think... really, would
have been a troubled soul...

if it hadn't been for having
married my father.

My father made living
possible for my mother.

But he did not destroy her
creative ability either.

She flourished as a songwriter.

We came back to England.
Nicky was four.

And our very earliest
school was together.

And I always remember... I remember
Nick's first day at school.

And I was by that time
head girl of this school.

And I remember being
absolutely beastly to him...

him running into my class
for a bit of... comfort...

I almost denied the fact that
he was my brother.

It was something I felt so deeply
ashamed of afterwards...

I put it him and he'd completely
forgotten about it in later years.

But I never forgot it.

He was captain of various games and
things when at his first school...

and when he went to the next school he
became the head boy of his first house.

But, it didn't really seem to mean
very much to him.

The Headmaster gave him a very
good report, but said at the end...

"None of us seem to
know him very well. "

And I think that was it all the
way through with Nick.

People didn't know him very much.

Music was very much
a part of my life...

As I said my mother and
my father were both...

composing songs from
my earliest youth...

I remember it happening;
particularly my mother,

who wrote songs about both of us.

From my earliest childhood.

I think that Nick was unconsciously
very influenced by her...

He may be horrified at the
time to have heard this.

But I'm quite certain he was influenced
by her whole chord structure...

and by her way of composing.

Perhaps the best way of showing this
is to actually play one of her songs.

And you can see, somewhere,
the similarity and the influence.

I met Nick Drake when I was
here in Cambridge...

and he was up in Fitzwilliam College
reading English.

There was an element of us
feeling slightly superior...

to other students who were cycling
to lectures on their bicycles...

We would get up late,
we would smoke dope...

we would... not go to lectures...

I think we felt we were
sort of superior...

I was the guy who smoked
more dope than anybody else...

and I'm the guy who went on
to have drug problems... later on.

But there was this... it was really
a three-year holiday...

and Nick would go off
and just play his guitar...

I'd sometimes go and see him
up in Fitzwilliam.

And he'd be just playing the
same riff over and over again.

He always made it look effortless. I was
always struck by his guitar playing...

because I would sort of strum
Beatles songs or something.

He was playing this...
folky, bluesy style...

It was always very clean and
with great precision...

and he could repeat it
over and over again.

And just go on and on for hours
playing this amazing riff.

With interesting finger picking
and stuff.

It just amazed me.

We never actually did a whole lot.

I can read you a bit...

I have to say that I'm afraid
that this letter...

got eaten by mice.

In the drawer where it was kept.

So, there are bits that are missing,
but not... not too badly.

Yes, here we are.

"It may surprise you to hear
that during the last few weeks...

"I've been extraordinarily
happy with life.

"And I haven't a clue why.

"It seems that Cambridge can in fact do
nice things to one, if one lets it.

"And I'm not sure that
I did let it before.

"I think I've thrown off one or two
useless and restrictive complexes...

"that I picked up before coming here.

"The work isn't too bad at the moment.

"I'm doing seventeenth and
eighteenth century poets.

"People like Swift, Pope, Blake, etc.

"Who have quite a lot
to offer in their way.

"But they seem to be very difficult
to write about.

"Must stop now and go to bed. "

Both of us were very keen on
him staying at Cambridge.

Whatever else you did in life,
if you managed to get a degree...

at least you'd have something
to fall back on.

His replies were that a safety net was
the one thing he did not want.

So that rather cut the ground
from under my feet.

He used to look back on Cambridge days
with a certain amount of nostalgia.

Anyway, that's... another story.

We were actually sharing
a flat together in London.

Until one day, Nick came into my room...

and... he was a man of
few words, my brother.

And, said... "Here you are. "

And he threw onto the bed the complete
record of "Five Leaves Left. "

I was absolutely astonished...
I couldn't believe...

This is my brother, my little brother...

had produced a full long-playing record,
as it was then.

It was amazing.

He was great to work with.

All you needed to worry about
was the other people.

Because Nick's guitar would
always be right.

Nick's voice would always be right.

Nick was just there... and I think...

When you listen back to the records,
one of the things that is most...

extraordinary is the guitar, because...

it's so clean and so strong, and all
the notes are equally balanced.

It's very unusual to have
such complicated...

finger picking parts played in
such a clear strong way.

Every note... So that you really can...

construct the whole recording
around the guitar.

Nick and I were living in London then.

And I think "At the Chime
of the City Clock"...

I'm just going before the studio,
not how I worked on it.

But very much tried to
capture the mood of it, and...

it was bleak, lonely, wet.

October evening, trotting around
some street in London.

There's several songs like that, that
Nick does... "Parasite", on Pink Moon...

I think it's a similar sort of mood.

So we decided to put like
counter-melodies... but no chords.

So most of it is another tune,
to make it lonely and bleak.

And basically there's either the
fiddles an octave apart...

or the cellos doing the low line.

It's similar on "Fruit Tree", the way
the oboe and the cor anglais are...

they're all just playing one long tune
and one takes off after the other.

'Cause I didn't want to take over
from the guitar playing,

which is really sort of... well, you'll
notice when you hear it, it's...

It's like a machine, I don't want
to take the art out of it...

'cause it's beautiful and
very spiritual, but...

it's all demanding, you mustn't
go against the rhythm...

'cause Nick's always going to
keep that rhythm perfectly.

We were looking for a bleak,
lonely sound, and I think...

John did it perfectly again.
There was the guitar, strings...

and the woodwinds overdub, isn't it?

So here in one track
you have the guitar.

And that's the rock that
the whole thing's built on.

That's his voice coming
down the guitar microphone.

And there's the singing.

That's Dave.

That's probably Dave
playing the guitar.

Bass guitar.

And that's the drums

What you're hearing now is just
the raw product put down.

At the time, when we sat in
the control room, it sounded like this.

But we would then...
put a perspective on the sound.

For which we'd start using echo.

And you can just hear the
playing again out there.

I thought that it all would be fine.
We're gonna send Nick out on the road...

and it's all gonna be great.

And so we sent him out on a tour
of colleges and clubs... you know.

And it didn't work at all, because...

of the situation where you have a bar
or you have people drinking and talking.

He couldn't get anybody to stop talking.

He didn't know what to say to them,
he took a long time tuning his guitar...

because every song
has a different tuning.

And eventually he got so discouraged by
the fact that people wouldn't shut up...

You know, he wasn't like Keith Jarret.

He wouldn't stop and say "shut up, I'm
not gonna play until you be quiet. "

And he just called up one day
and said: "I'm coming home. "

And we cancelled the rest of the dates.

And he never really did another show.

A friend of mine went to see him
and he hammered on the door...

and there was no reply.
So he went round...

the back of the house and looked through
the window and there was Nick.

Just looking at the wall.
He was just looking at the wall.

He didn't want to tap on the window
and disturb him, but...

He just left.

He said: "you know, he's a really
strange guy, sometimes. "

Nick just seemed to become more
isolated, you'd go and see him and...

the conversation would become
uncomfortable, and I would leave.

And then he wound up going back
to his parents' place where...

I think he felt quite embarrassed
about that, quite ashamed that...

he hadn't been able to cope in
London and pay the rent and...

do all the stuff that we
all have to do and...

wound up in his parents' place.
And he did go into hospital...

while he was there and he was treated
with anti-depressant drugs.

I don't think the psychiatrist
could have done anything else.

If you're presented with somebody like
this, from a privileged background...

done well at school, got to Cambridge,
what else are you going to diagnose?

Doctors think in terms of diagnosis...

I see it more as an existential thing,
that the world was becoming...

a rather heartless and
a rather futile place.

Home Again

He said once: "I don't like it at home,
but I can't bear it anywhere else. "

I think he felt it was a kind of refuge.
He had to come back here.

He tried many times to go away.

Often. He used to stay away for several
nights. We never knew where he was.

We used to ring up his friends and
wonder if they'd seen Nick.

In case he was in trouble, you know.

I think he had rejected the world.

Nothing made him happy.

Well, I never really did begin
to see a change...

none of us did. It was something
that sort of crept up... on Nick.

And the great difficulty
for my parents...

who were extraordinarily...

tried so hard, you know...
As understanding as they could be.

They tried to get to grips with his
illness and tried to understand it,

but it was very difficult, because they
felt that everything they did was wrong.

And in a funny way, everything
everybody did was wrong.

But they were much more
there and present.

He sort of retreated into
his home environment.

But he so wanted to
break away from it, and...

felt separate from it, I think.

I don't believe that he really felt
a part of his home background.

But he couldn't escape from it,
towards the end.

He saw more.

And that is expressed in his songs
and almost nowhere else.

I think he became more silent...
as he saw more.

He said to me once: "I have failed
in everything I have tried to do. "

I said: "Oh, Nick, how can you? "
And then I...

I elaborated all the things
he had so patently done.

That didn't make any difference.
He felt that he had failed...

to get through to the people
he wanted to talk to.

His mother called me, and she said they
wanted him to see a psychiatrist.

And that he... felt people
would judge him.

But that was a kind of
a sign of weakness.

Typical English point of view about it.

And... would I speak to him?

So I talked to him and just said:
nobody's going to think any...

worse of you for getting
help if you need help.

It's normal.

But he did sound bad.

He came to see me, looking very bad...
very dirty, etc, etc.

In a way, what he said to me there,
he had this outburst...

of anger about everything.

"Everybody tells me I'm great
but I'm broke. "

"Why? "

In a way it was a manifestation
in the conversation...

of the lyrics of "Hanging on a Star".

"If you deem me so high,
why am I so low? "

"What is the story?
Why don't I understand it? "

"Everybody says I'm a genius. "

"And I don't have any money,
I don't have a career...

"It's all a mess. "

You have to remember that although
I saw Nick occasionally socially...

mainly I saw him when he had
an album to work, so...

by the time the last album came out,
the last one of the three...

Then he was seriously withdrawn.

It was quite dramatic,
everyone will tell you this.

Everyone that saw him then will
tell you it was a dramatic departure...

of the Nick that we knew.

He didn't speak much,
the odd muttered word.

He had quite a down appearance.

His sister once said that the pictures
down on the house in Heath...

which was this particular album,
where the most honest she'd seen.

I'm not sure I buy that entirely
but I know what she means.

It did reflect what he
was like at that time.

You will meet people that tell you
he was depressed at other times...

I was there at the times,
the session times and...

nothing was quite like
that final session.

Whereas before you bounced ideas
and you talked and made things work...

there he just basically sat or stood
and I ran around and eventually...

I ran out of things to say. I just
clicked. It was like doing a still life.

I always say that Nick was born
with a skin too few.

But I think it's better summed up by
a poem that my mother wrote.

And it's a poem that's
called "The Shell".

Which goes...

"Living grows round us like a skin.

"To shut away the outer desolation.

"For if we clearly mark
the furthest deep.

"We should be dead long years
before the grave.

"But turning around within
the homely shell...

of worry, discontent, and narrow joy...

we grow and flourish and rarely see...

"the outside dark that
would confound our eyes.

"Some break the shell;

"I think that there are those who push
their fingers through the brittle walls

"And make a hole,
and through this cruel slit...

"stare out across the cinders
of the world with naked eyes.

"They look both out and in.

"Knowing themselves,
and too much else beside. "

John Wood and I did the final
recording session.

He was in such a state...

that he couldn't sing and play
the guitar at the same time.

Those last four tracks...

"Black-eyed Dog" and all those...

are recorded with the guitar and
then voice singing over the guitar.

Because he was just too...

nervous... I don't know how
to describe the way he was...

but it was very agonizing seeing him
trying to do those recordings...

They were extraordinary recordings,
but they were the combination...

the lyric and the music and the
state of Nick at the time of doing it...

was a very... distressing experience.

He went up to bed rather early.

I remember him standing by that door,
and I said: "You off to bed, Nick? "

I can just see him now.

Apparently he'd been down, he'd been
downstairs during the night.

I heard some corn flakes
or something like that.

And he often did that...
when he couldn't sleep.

More often than not,
Molly would hear him.

Goodness knows how many
nights this happened.

She would hear him passing
our bedroom door...

and she'd get up, put her dressing
gown on, go down and talk to him.

This occasion she didn't hear him.

But he'd obviously had been down.

Then he went back and he took
this extra strong dose of these...

pills that had been prescribed
for him called Tryptizol...

which he thought were anti-depressants.

He told us he was supposed to be
taking three a day or something.

- They were prescribed...
- You were always worried about Nick...

being so depressed, and when
he used to hide away...

the aspirin and the sleeping pills
and things like that.

These particular things we didn't...

think were... in anyway dangerous.

And... that was it. The next morning...

He often didn't get up at all early.

He sometimes had very bad nights.

And I never used to disturb him
at all, but it was about...

It was about twelve o'clock
and I went in...

Because it seemed it was
time he'd got up...

and he was lying across the bed.

The first thing I saw was
his long, long, legs.

I was playing in a comedy at the time,
at the Bristol Old Vic.

It was my opening night.

I rang my parents after the show...

which I always did after the first
night, to tell them how it had gone.

And I remember the phone was engaged.

It was continually engaged,
and I thought...

that it must be out of
order or something.

Of course they'd taken the phone off the
hook, that was the day Nick had died.

And they didn't want to
tell me over the phone...

at that precise moment.

But what happened was that they drove
down to Bristol the next day.

But they sent a telegram
to say they were coming.

And for some extraordinary reason,
I thought it must be...

that they were on their way
to visit my grandmother.

I had no idea why they were coming.
None at all.

And then they turned up,
and they told me.

And although I had no idea
why they were coming...

I remember putting my head
in my hands and saying...

I knew.

And of course they thought that Nick
had sent me a card or something...

It was nothing to do with that.

On one level I didn't know at all.

But on a deep level...

I... knew.

I don't really know for sure whether
Nick wanted to take his life.

My feeling is that what happened was...

that he had all these pills...
it certainly wasn't premeditated.

That he just tipped them out to into his
hand and threw them into his mouth...

and swallowed them and thought:
"What the hell! "

"Either I die or I live and things
will be changed. "

"Something different will happen. "

When you have the very
great good fortune...

to come from a very loving family.

the price you have to pay
for that good fortune...

is the death of the people
in that family.

That's the tragedy which
is always there...

It changes your life forever.

But you grow around it.

I was quite shocked, actually.

People say we must have
seen it coming, but...

as I said, Nick had always
had those... spells.

But it was a shock. I hadn't heard
from him for two or three months.

I was just terribly sad.

I suppose I wasn't surprised.

But it was... it seemed a great loss.

For somebody I'd enjoyed
working with so much.

"I'm afraid that at this stage my voice
began to fail me rather badly. "

"I'll just do one more song. "

Of course the only thing that makes
sense of his death...

is his fame that is now...
coming about.

I think above all it's not his fame...

it's more the fact that
a lot of young people...

have found his music such a help.

That I thing would have pleased
him so very, very much.

He once said to my mother:

"If only I could feel my music had done
anything to help one single person. "

"It would have made it worth it. "

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