Nick Drake

Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician, known for his acoustic guitar-based songs. He failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime but his work has gradually achieved wider notice and recognition. Drake suffered from depression, particularly during the latter part of his young life. This was often reflected in his lyrics. On completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. On 25 November 1974, Drake died from an overdose of amitriptyline, a prescribed antidepressant; he was 26 years old. Whether his death was an accident or suicide has never been resolved. (Read more at Wikipedia)

Links to Peel
Nick Drake did one Peel session in 1969. Although, as of 2014 we do have two fragments of that session, no complete tape of it seems to have surfaced so far, and the BBC doesn't have the master tape anymore on their archives. That session was always one of the most sought ones and many listeners asked Peel for a repeat. On 06 July 1999 Peel replied to one of those inquiries:


 * "It's a difficult question. It was supposed to be an expiry date of I think about three or four months on sessions. Of course, it was very much the BBC's way at the time that there was no provision made for keeping popular music sessions because they were held to be pretty much valueless, and for a long time they just existed in boxes alongside of the corridor, and (John) Walters and myself gradually found places where we could hide them and keep them away from the people who wanted to destroy them, but it didn't go very well to begin with. It's one of those things where the BBC at the time, very much something like, Gardener's Question Time, episodes of that would be kept in a lead-lined case at the bottom of a mineshaft somewhere in the Home Counties for all of recorded time if possible, but something like a Pink Floyd session would be erased within weeks. You know, very strange business altogether. So I'm not sure whether that Nick Drake session still exists. cos a lot of sessions from that time, maybe one or two tracks are still around, the others have just disappeared over the years".

Festive Fifty Entries

 * 2000 Festive Fifty: Northern Sky (LP-Bryter Layter)' (Island) #43

Sessions
One session. No commercial release.

1. Recording date: 1969-08-05. First broadcast: 06 August 1969
 * Time of No Reply / Cello Song / River Man / Three Hours

Other Shows Played
(Please add more information if known)
 * 05 January 2000: Northern Sky (LP-Bryter Layter)' (Island) Festive Fifty '#43 '(JP: 'And I often wonder what poor Nick would make of the respect in which his music's held now)
 * 21 October 2004: Time Has Told Me (Robert Smith)