Source:(Google.com.pk)
Nick First Hand - his Life and Music in Quotes
During my research at university for a book and dissertation, I had the privilege of talking to several friends and aquaintenses of Nick from school and university. Though I didn't discover anything new, it was always interesting to hear another perspective on Nick (I particularly like the C. G Reynold quote). I also spoke with Dave Barber who was researching a film documentary about Nick. He told me how difficult the project had been as firstly, there was little or no footage of Nick himself, but secondly because his life "just wasn't that interesting". This at first sounded a little harsh. Though his music was rarely less than remarkable, his life was in many senses unremarkable.He hadn't taken the cliched path of drug fuelled excess that many contemporaries had been taking at the time. He had had a privileged and comfortable upbringing, going from public school to Cambridge. However, despite being a shy and introspective individual, he rarely failed to leave a lasting impression on people.
Your first impression of Nick was of incredible elegance. Only later would you notice his shabby lace-up shoes and ill-fitting jacket.
Paul Wheeler, a friend of Nick
"Nick was in some strange way out of time. When you were with him, you always had a sad feeling of him being born in the wrong century. If he would have lived in the 17th Century, at the Elizabethan Court, together with composers like Dowland or William Byrd, he would have been alright. Nick was elegant, honest, a lost romantic - and at the same time so cool. In brief: the perfect Elizabethan."
Robert Kirby, a Cambridge friend of Nick's who orchestrated his first 2 albums
School
His set of friends were a year or so older than me, and generally from a slightly 'smart' social background as I recall. I seem to remember that he was one of the pleasanter people among them, and was quite relaxed about life at school - laid back as it is now termed.
He was a swift runner and in the school athletics team - 100 yards / 200 yards I think (he smoked a bit so should have been better). Marlborough College had a good tradition, including one or two national team members, plus good facilities...
...I remember him playing the guitar, at a School Open Day Fair, during which boys were encouraged to man stalls and mini exhibitions. Nick donned a denim jacket and jeans, and lounged against the pillars at the entrance of the grandest school building - C House, playing the harmonica slung around his neck, and singing Dylan, Guthrie and some early Donovon songs, I think; whether there were any of his I do not know. I had no idea whether he had obtained permission to perform like this - one presumes so.
This was mildly scandalising to a fairly conventionally minded boy like me - I was 20 feet away filling balloons for children with hydrogen, and attaching labels to them for charity."
C.G.Reynold., an acquaintance from school
[public school is a place] "where the sensitive experience a horrified dissociation from reality that can sometimes never fade away."
Nick Drake
University
...I was at Fitzwilliam, Cambridge at the same time as Nick Drake and we were supervision partners in the second year. He was always a somewhat mysterious figure and spent no time at all socializing with his year or the college. He came from his school (Marlborough, i think) and spent his time with friends either from there or musical friends. He did play quite a bit in Cambridge, and I heard him play on several occasions, including a May Ball at Cains. I shared supervisions with a don who used his wife's rooms in an old house in West Road, in the attics. The remarkable thing was that however early I arrived for supervisions Nick was always there before me, standing waiting on the stairs gazing out of the window. I once got there 3/4 of an hour in advance and he was there ahead of me! The cover of Five Leaves Left bears an astonishing resemblance to his appearance. He would never say much, and he had never done the work for the supervisions, he was simply going through the motions.
J Venning
Music
Of all the albums I ever made, the two I produced by Nick are the ones I'm most proud of. I listen to them often because he was extraordinarily good - nothing he ever did was less than striking, and he had the gift of writing melodies of incredible beauty.
Joe Boyd, producer of Nick's first two albums
Five Leaves Left
"The first strong memory I have of Nick was at the second or third session for 'Five Leaves Left'". Richard Hewson, a well known arranger, and a fifteen piece orchestra had been brought in to arrange Nick's songs. "Nick started getting hotter and hotter under the collar. He was very young and he had struck me as a person you could push about. Some people in a recording session will do whatever you tell them. But he was getting quietly more and more aggravated, and in the end he dug his heels in and dismissed the arrangements. He said he'd get this friend at Cambridge, Robert Kirby, he thought would be much more sympathetic to what he was doing. Robert had never before done anything in his life in a recording studio. But two weeks later we booked him together with a bunch of musicians- a smaller bunch than the fist time, I remember... We were flabbergasted. He was so good"
John Wood, sound engineer for Five Leaves Left
Bryter Layter
"It's very rare that you wouldn't want to change an album, but it's the only one I wouldn't change, or feel I could have done better"
John Wood, sound engineer for Bryter Layter
Depression
When Bryter Layter didn't give Nick the success that everyone had expected, selling just 3-4000 copies at the time, Nick, who was already shy and introspective, began to show signs of depression and confusion and became increasingly uncommunicative.
He had this way of answering the telephone as if he just happened to have this thing in his hand and he was surprised to hear a voice come out of it. We talked for a while and he said he was very unhappy and I told him he should see a psychiatrist, there was nothing wrong with it, maybe it would help him.
Joe Boyd
"He would be staying at my flat and we would be talking, and he'd say: 'Do you mind if I go into the kitchen and take my pills [anti-depressants] . I'm frightfully sorry, frightfully sorry.'
Sophia Ryde, a friend of Nick's
When he did take them he was a bit better, but then he would stop taking them and say: 'I'm going to get through this my own way'
Rodney Drake, Nick's father
Music 2
Pink Moon
"He arrived at midnight and we started. It was done very quickly. After we had finished I asked him what I should keep, and he said all of it, which was a complete contrast to his former stance. He came in for another evening and that was it. It took hardly any time to mix, since it was only his voice and guitar, with one overdub only. Nick was adamant about what he wanted. He wanted it to be spare and stark, and he wanted it to be spontaneously recorded."
John Wood, sound engineer for Pink Moon
"He didn't want any more songs. He had no more material, and he thought that was part of the deal. And he was right. I wouldn't want to hear anymore before turning it over. If something is that intense, it can't really be measured in minutes
John Wood, on the album that clocked in at just under half an hour
The final years
After the release of Pink Moon, Nick became increasingly depressed and moved back in with his parents. In April 1972, he suffered a nervous breakdown and checked himself into a local psychiatric hospital for five weeks.
"I can't cope, all the defences are gone. All the nerves are exposed."
Nick Drake
"I can't think of words. I feel no emotion about anything. I don't want to laugh or cry. I'm numb-dead inside."
Nick Drake, in conversation with John Wood
If you're so unhappy Nick, why haven't you killed yourself?"
Sheila Wood (John Wood's wife)
"It's too cowardly, and besides, I don't have the courage"
Nick (in response to Sheila Wood)
Nick decided to try taking up something other than music. He tried working in a recording studio. He even visited an army recruitment officer, but didn't get past the first interview.
"He came up with this idea of being a computer programmer, I didn't know much about it, but I dashed down to my firm to talk to the fellow who ran the computer. So, old Nick went down there and passed the intelligence test, and one of the companies in the group took him on."
Rodney Drake, Nick's father
"He started on Monday, and the Monday afterwards they sent him to London, and he had to live alone in a hotel and go off by himself. And he walked right off it."
Molly Drake, Nick's mother
After receiving a bit of a 'pep talk' from Joe Boyd in late 1973 about the talent he was wasting, Nick eventually picked up his guitar again and penned lyrics to four guitar parts he had put down nearly a year before. Things were beginning to look up for Nick, he was writing songs again, the 4 tracks they recorded were considered 'absolutely wonderful' by Boyd and Wood, and Nick even had a steady girlfriend.
"We were so absolutely thrilled to think that Nick was happy because there hadn't been any happiness in Nick's life for years"
Molly Drake, Nick's mother
However, Nick's gradual process of withdrawal over the years had taken its toll, and so his moods were still unpredictable and his mother said he had to fight hard against his 'illness'. On the evening of November 24th, 1974, Nick was in his bedroom in his family home in Tamworth in Arden working on new songs and putting them down on his home recorder. No one knows exactly what happened in those final hours following up to his death at 6am the following morning, but the verdict of suicide seems questionable. Nick had died of an overdose of Tryptizol, the anti-depressant he had been prescribed that he often used to help him sleep. He was unaware that even a small overdose could be lethal.
I personally prefer to think Nick committed suicide, in the sense that I'd rather he died because he wanted to end it than it to be the result of a tragic mistake. That would seem to me to be terrible: for it to be a plea for help that nobody hears.
Gabrielle Drake, Nick's sister
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Quotes About Music
Quotes tagged as "music" (showing 1-30 of 2,211)
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize With the Hammer
tags: inspirational, music, philosophy 44081 likes like
Bob Marley
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
― Bob Marley
tags: music 19232 likes like
Victor Hugo
“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo
tags: literature, music, poetry 7811 likes like
George Carlin
“Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.”
― George Carlin
tags: dance, dancing, music 7572 likes like
William Shakespeare
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet
tags: food, love, music 5503 likes like
Paul McCartney
“And, in the end
The love you take
is equal to the love you make.”
― Paul McCartney, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics
tags: beatles, inspirational, live, love, music 4913 likes like
Friedrich Nietzsche
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: dance, music 4611 likes like
Taylor Swift
“People haven't always been there for me but music always has.”
― Taylor Swift
tags: music 4589 likes like
Bob Marley
“None but ourselves can free our minds.”
― Bob Marley
tags: bob-marley, inspirational, music, reggae 4481 likes like
William Shakespeare
“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
tags: music, romance, unrequited-love 4192 likes like
Albert Einstein
“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”
― Albert Einstein
tags: music 3874 likes like
Maya Angelou
“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
― Maya Angelou
tags: loneliness, music, refuge 3565 likes like
Langston Hughes
“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”
― Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems
tags: death, life, music 3337 likes like
Frank Zappa
“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
― Frank Zappa
tags: music, philosophy, progress 3290 likes like
Nicholas Sparks
“Life, he realize, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song
tags: life, love, music, simile, song 3266 likes like
John Green
“Some people have lives; some people have music.”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
tags: humor, life, music 3093 likes like
Aldous Huxley
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
― Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays
tags: music 2962 likes like
Victor Hugo
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
― Victor Hugo, Hugo's Works: William Shakespeare
tags: music 2928 likes like
Kurt Vonnegut
“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC”
― Kurt Vonnegut
tags: blues, god, life, music 2882 likes like
Plato
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination
and life to everything.”
― Plato
tags: music 2841 likes like
Nick Hornby
“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
tags: music, sad 2751 likes like
Friedrich Nietzsche
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: dance, dancing, music 2619 likes like
Stephen Chbosky
“And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
tags: music, songs 2601 likes like
“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”
― Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Poems of Arthur O'Shaughnessy
tags: dreams, music 2593 likes like
Nick Hornby
“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.”
― Nick Hornby
tags: films, music, relationships 2416 likes like
Heinrich Heine
“Where words leave off, music begins.”
― Heinrich Heine
tags: music, power-of-music 2291 likes like
Charles Darwin
“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”
― Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82
tags: arts, life, music, poetry 2083 likes like
Jack Kerouac
“The only truth is music.”
― Jack Kerouac
tags: music, truth 1814 likes like
Jonathan Safran Foer
“Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
tags: beauty, music, sadness 1800 likes like
Taylor Swift
“Everybody has that point in their life where you hit a crossroads and you've had a bunch of bad days and there's different ways you can deal with it and the way I dealt with it was I just turned completely to music.”
― Taylor Swift.
Quotes About Music And Life Quotes Life Tumblr Lessons Goes on Is Short and Love God is Too Short is LIke a Camera is good .
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