On the trail of Nick Drake

The year 1972 was an interesting one for me – I met my future wife, got my first job in The Irish Times, had my first drink in Bowe’s pub (courtesy of this paper’s John Butler) and first heard Nick Drake.

Music wasn’t always just a click away. I was 15 at the end of 1970 and the future decade was a great one for a variety of artists – all the way from Dory Previn and Joni Mitchell to the Sex Pistols and punk. It was all vinyl back then and it was interesting to see recently that vinyl sales are making something of a comeback.

What brought it all to mind was a book left recently in my postbox at work: Darker than the Deepest Sea – The Search for Nick Drake, written by former BBC producer Trevor Dann. It was sent in by a former football colleague from that decade, John O’Flaherty.

Sunday football then was the perfect antidote to Saturday night and among those involved was Dublin footballer Brian Mullins’s brothers Robbie and Mick. There were other sets of brothers playing too which gave things an extra edge. Everyone got a kick out of our Sunday football.

I first heard Nick Drake in my mate Johnny Little’s house in 1972. Johnny went on to be Toni Le Pierre and wrote horoscopes for the Sunday World but Drake was far from a star at the time. The album Pink Moon had an arresting cover and the opening title track I thought a classic.

In 1974 I bought a Bush stereo at Studio 50 on O’Connell Street in Dublin. It was a gem with slide controls and a great sound. I was working for the summer in the work study department of the housing maintenance section in Dublin Corporation. The cash enabled me to start my record collection and one of the first albums I bought was Pink Moon.

You heard about music by word of mouth and what you might hear on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Finding a particular album meant scouring record shops, and little-known artists like Drake would often end up filed under “Miscellaneous”, if at all. It could take a lot of time to find the sought-after album and you were up against the “flickers”. These aficionados were the industrial mining machines of the record shop and could flick through 100 records while you might manage 10.

One of the lads I worked with that summer in the corporation, John Donovan, lived in a basement flat on Synge Street, and it was here I discovered the existence of a second Drake album. He had an Island Records sampler which included the classic Time Has Told Me, a great track for the temporarily broken hearted. This meant there had to be another Drake album and I eventually found it in Pat Egan’s Sound Cellar on Nassau Street.

Whereas Pink Moon was sparse, with Drake on his guitar heading towards despair, Five Leaves Left, his first album, was luxuriant and totally different in tone, laid back, almost upbeat, as reflected in his Man in a Shed.

The following summer saw me go further afield to London, where I ended up living in a bedsit with a college friend, Gerry Leonard. We both got jobs with Watneys Brewery in Mortlake working in the loading bay stacking kegs.

This was fine on the bottom rung but having to stack a second layer was a different prospect indeed. They were rolling at you at some speed and it required a knack to flick the keg so gravity carried it to the second layer. Gerry lasted a day and I told the foreman after three I couldn’t take it as my legs were raw. They transferred me to the racking section where I stuck labels on the passing kegs as they went to be filled. I was later moved to the end of the line where we steam-gunned the full kegs and hammered on a cap.

The great advantage that hot summer of working with the rackers who filled the kegs was that we had our own bar between the lines. Gerry, meanwhile, found real bar work and would arrive at the flat most nights near one in the morning, the worse for wear, wake me up and have me shout a number of expletives at him regarding the light and sleep.

Then at 5.30am it was my turn to wake him up as I hit the road for the brewery. It’s a wonder we survived.

Coming home one day in Acton, I dropped into a newsagent on the High Street and, waiting my turn, I noticed a carousel of records, mostly remainders and compilations. Going through them I came across Nick Drake’s album Bryter Later.

It was Nick Drake as never seen before, with bright lights and sitting beside a pair of loafer shoes. It was his second album and again very different from the other two as it had some backing vocals.

The fact of where I found it said a lot about his status at the time. He had failed to make it, and his albums, of which there were only three, sold a few thousand. Even a piece in the NME , “Requiem for a solitary man”, after his death failed to engender interest. The piece was kept for me by another mate, John O’Sullivan, who knew his music and I placed it carefully with his final album Pink Moon.

And so I was the proud owner of all his work, but life’s not like that and all three were nicked in a burglary on our house on the Howth Road, Killester, in 1977. If you have them you could return them, it’s been a long time.

Nick Drake died at 26, 40 years ago this month. He was a dead cert for cult status and apparently now counts among his many fans Brad Pitt, but I at 16 was there first.