“Perfect”: Is Nick Drake the most overlooked guitarist ever?
The unknowable Nick Drake—intoxicatingly intimate and permanently out of reach—has been the subject of reams of analysis since his death. He remains an elusive enigma, as floaty and ethereal as his music. In amongst the magic that he left behind, there is a fair amount of mythmaking, too.
With no surviving footage of any of his live performances and only a single (very odd) audio recording of his speaking voice, the man is perhaps the single most mysterious figure of his musical generation. And yet, for those who actually knew him and worked with him, Drake was no wispy spirit drifting wistfully across the English countryside. He was a young, shy, sometimes awkward guy who—aside from having a clear talent as a singer and songwriter—was also a skilled musician who’d obviously spent countless hours honing his craft.
Joe Boyd, the famed producer who worked with Drake on his first two albums, Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter, has often talked about Drake’s technical skill as a guitarist, in particular. This is a profound asset that is sometimes overlooked as a result of listeners’ immediate emotional connection to Drake’s voice in combination with John Wood’s string arrangements.
“His guitar technique was so clean, it took a while to realise how complex it was,” Boyd wrote in his 2006 memoir White Bicycles. “Influences were detectable here and there, but the heart of the music was mysteriously original.” His strumming was so unique that it often doesn’t even sound like a guitar.
Upon first meeting Drake ahead of the Five Leaves Left sessions, Boyd was struck by the young man’s hands. “They were huge and stained with nicotine; the fingers strong and articulate, with long evenly trimmed nails caked with grime,“ he recalled.
But he was so moved by what they produced that he can still recall the first time he heard him play very clearly. “One evening,“ he writes, “Nick played me all his songs. Up close the power of his fingers was astonishing. With each note ringing out loud, almost painfully so, and clear in the small room. I had listened closely to Robin Williamson, John Martyn, Bert Jansch, and John Renbourn.“
Boyd continues, “Half-struck strings and blurred hammerings-on were an accepted part of their sound. None could match Nick’s mastery of the instrument. After finishing one song he would re-tune the guitar and proceed to play something equally complex in a totally different chord shape.”
Once the Five Leaves Left recording sessions were underway, Boyd only became increasingly impressed with Drake’s incredible consistency and borderline infallibility as a guitarist. Given the chance, he’d happily declare him one of the most overlooked guitarists of all time.
“He was amazing,” Boyd recalled in a 2014 discussion at a Klipsch Audio Classic Album Sunday event. “John Wood and I got in the habit of shutting off Nick’s monitors in the control room and just listening to the other musicians that were on the session. We didn’t have to listen to Nick. He was always perfect. He would never make a mistake.”
Boyd wasn’t the only one impressed with Drake’s musicianship on his debut record. Guest musicians were also quickly taken aback. Even Richard Thompson, then the emerging folk guitar god of Fairport Convention, sat listening to the Fives Leaves Left recordings, “furrowing his brow,” according to Boyd, and “just trying to figure it out, like, ‘Who is this? Where did this come from?!’”
In the same interview, Boyd was asked about the fascination new generations of fans continue to have with Drake and his music. While acknowledging the appeal of Drake’s “mystery,” though, Boyd—having known Nick as a flesh-and-blood human—was more inclined to credit something else for his lasting popularity.
He concludes, “People ask me, ‘what do you think is the reason his music lasts?’ Well, because it’s very good. That’s the reason. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that. If something is really good, it will eventually find its logical audience.”
