Saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get ye all
And it's a pink moon
Hey, it's a pink moon
Pink, pink, pink, pink, pink moon
Pink, pink, pink, pink, pink moon
The guy at the label made an agreement that you could record for them forever. You had tenure at Island Records. But that didn’t mean that they had to know who you were. They stopped paying attention a long time ago. Your music was a dream. If it woke up, it would have to acknowledge some things that would break the spell. Your songs were an uninterrupted spell.
You were a handsome chap. You matriculated at Cambridge and excelled at sport. Your mum wrote melancholic ditties at the piano and you began brooding at the guitar. A family duende. A mellifluous curse.
And changing a rope for a size too small
People all get hung.
Take a look and see me coming through
For I am the parasite who travels two by two.
You think you are a parasite. You are a vessel. People need to be lifted and you lift, but you can’t lift yourself. We hear your breath and it resuscitates us.
And we'll never deny
It's really too hard for the fly
You will be anointed or swatted away. There is nothing in the middle.
There is this thing called the game and you are supposed to play it, but you don’t want to. You are performing in a club and can hear people talking and you want to bolt. Someone from the Melody Faker wants to talk to you, but you have nothing to say. The songs say what you want to say. That’s why you wrote them.
You have a baritone voice in a land of Peter Pans. Robert Plant says he’s a golden god, but he sounds like a castrato compared to you. You go deep.
Oh poor boy
So sorry for himself
Oh poor boy
So worried for his health
You may say every day
Where will he stay tonight
They put Richard Thompson on Five Leaves Left. your first record, then, for Bryter Layter, string arrangements that could have been goopy if they weren’t also perfect. For Pink Moon, your third record, you were on your own. You essentially put out a demo. At a moment of glam rock and Ziggy playing guitar, you put out something stark. It got some reviews, but it was too late. You were 24. If it was going to happen by now, it would have. You delivered the tapes to the label yourself. Nobody knew who you were. You left the tapes with the girl at the desk and walked out. “Pink Moon” would become a Volkswagen commercial in the future. This would not be a comforting thought. Back to mum’s basement. There was a jar of antidepressants. You were very depressed, so you took all of them.
Heath Ledger was set to play you in a movie. He had previously played an incarnation of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, and he was so freaked out that he stopped sleeping. For a long time. His next project was to play you. There was a script about you lying near him when he was getting a massage and died of an overdose of sleeping pills. You were both 26. Will anyone else ever make the movie of you? Could you have made it through the movie of your life just a little longer? Just to wait for the world? Thanks a lot, world.
But then those songs have a way of existing on their own. They don’t need anyone’s approval. The person who made them should be compensated and have a life, but the songs already have a life. Oh, poor boy.
The person who is writing this was, for a time, a devoted and impassioned exegete of the theatre artist Richard Foreman. This person brought his students to see him. He told them how Lou Reed and David Bowie saw his shows in that black box theatre at St. Mark’s Church. Paul Simon came through, and asked Richard Foreman, “What’s your dream?” He was ready to produce something. He said, “There are only a few people alive who I really respect. If they were to come here and like my work, that would be my dream.”
The people you respect are here now.
I could have been a sailor, could have been a cook
A real live lover, could have been a book
I could have been a signpost, could have been a clock
As simple as a kettle, steady as a rock
I could be
Here and now
I would be, I should be
But how?
I could have been
One of these things first
I could have been
One of these things first
You could have been. And that longing is what we keep coming back to. Every year you get deader and deader, but time has told me you’re a rare, rare find. Even your mum’s private recordings are available, along with your Dylan cover, your “Cocaine Blues.” It is all a balm, a treasure. You had this beauty and you didn’t have it in you to play the game. The Nick Drake feeling is a dream. It is transporting. It is music you can share with your beloved as the hours go by. You left this earth about a year after I got on it. I will succeed, I will fail, I will dream. I will try to earn the respect of the people I respect. I will be less principled than you, but I will endure until I expire from within.
Saturday sun came early one morning
In a sky so clear and blue
Saturday sun came without warning
So no-one knew what to do
Saturday sun brought people and faces
That didn't seem much in their day
But when I remembered those people and places
They were really too good in their way
In their way
In their way
Saturday sun won't come and see me today
We cling to Nick Drake, harder than he clung to himself. We are moving too fast. We are missing the moment. It is delicious, and we can't taste it. It is healing, but we still feel ill. It is soft, but we can’t be caressed by it. It is all that you were and all that you are, coming out of my speakers. We are desperate, and we think you will cure our desperation, when you couldn’t cure your own.
I wouldn’t change a thing about your records. This world, and all that led you to leave it, is another matter. Saw it written and I saw it say. Pink Moon is on its way. That pink moon was a warning. It wasn’t a car ad. He saw the end times were nigh, and here we are.
When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done
You are a Wes Anderson soundtrack. You are a message sent between friends that could become lovers. A new listener has yet to be born. And that listener will be delicate, romantic, a druid, a loser, a poor boy, a fly, an angel, or one of these things first. Someone will hit send, just waiting for someone else to be transported, to a world way better than this one.
Joe Boyd just had his 80th birthday on August 5.
David, Thank you for this appreciation of Nick Drake. He is someone who I know little about who I feel I would benefit by listening to.