You may be able to hold back for 44 minutes but the last 4 minutes are enough to make you cry! I remember how sad I was when I read he died. I was on the bus to school and it was announced in the New Musical Express.
The stoicism of his parents and sister is incredible. Underneath it all they must have been devastated. Thank you for the everlasting gift of the music the Drake family as it was clear where his talent and passion for music came from.
How do you miss someone you never knew? I don't know, but I do. Thank goodness he left a legacy of hauntingly beautiful masterpieces for us to enjoy. Fly high Nick.❤
Great documentary here. Nick Drake is almost the Vincent Van Gogh of the music world. What wonderful songs he's left for us to enjoy. Thank You Nick Drake and family :)
I've just read a new book about Nick and was amazed to discover that he was booked for the Old Grey Whistle Test and didn't bother turning up. That could have changed everything for him.
That song "from the morning" is really a jaunty and joyous song. Now, Nick Drake of course wrote and performed a lot of bleakly beautiful songs but this one in particular (I'd be hard pressed to name others but I'd say there are at least a handful....Saturday Sun for one) speaks of an understanding that things beyond our grasp are not as bleak as they may seem and that there are some luminous reasons to be, ephemeral and fleeting as they can appear to us in this life. 39:13
On behalf of humanity I’m sorry Nick that we weren’t listening then But we’re listening now and you’ve reached more people then you can imagine. Thank you for 3 of the greatest albums of all time, and we are better for you laying em down before you left us. Your music is a constant comfort to me and mine. Thank you Nick
Beauty will out. Love in that family shines through. I love his sister. Would love to meet her. E. M. Forster: “death kills a man, but the idea of death can save him.” Death does not kill music.
My lord... this documentary can be quite depressive at times, so I suppose it captures Nick Drake's feelings perfectly. I think it was made that way on purpose, it's always raining and the spoken words are so few...
Yes, I think it pretty much shows Nick's mood most of the time. I've had a small taste of depression and it is a very lonely and sad place to be because no one around you understands the pain that you feel. I pray that he is at peace now. 🥀
You know how his Cambridge friend mentions Nick just starting at the wall? I can’t help but think that he was probably meditating. He said somewhere else that he had been meditating when he lived at the Hampstead flat and became interested in Buddhism.
23:28 Some people do that when they're meditating, they just stare at the wall. Also John Fogerty used to do this when he was writing songs for some reason.
Why is this great video about this great artist out of print? I tried to special order it from a store and was told I can't. Why can't I also buy it to give his estate some royalty? After all these years, fans are still forbidden from being as big fans as we want to be?
I wish someone would remix and release Bryter Layter without all the instrumentation bullshit. I can't stand the sound of that record but the songs by themselves are amazing. Also is nobody going to talk about how much pot he was smoking at this point? This is a glaring omission from the documentary and extremely important when talking about his mental state.
Thank you for uploading! Could somebody maybe write down the lyrics of the poem called "The Shell" by Nicks mother for me please? I´d be very thankful, because my english is not good enough to understand every word of it, although his sister speaks very clearly. Again, thanks for uploading! Only a few People are able to touch my soul in the way Nick does.
@@mikekatz6024 I am sorry for your loss. My apologies also for the snarky comment and flippant tone. And you are correct that depression and anxiety, even after all this time, are not well understood by humankind.
They commented that Nick's state during the last recording session (s) was not good. Maybe the negative side effects of the medication (his father said 36:37 "triptazole"?) wasn't so well known then, and taking it 3 times a day. Perhaps he was having "brain fog", or difficult to focus, and like Joe said... can't sing and play guitar at the same time anymore... something like what I think, just my amateur perspective, ritalin does. Combine that with his music not taking hold, his parents hiding certain medications like aspirin. I don't think his death was an accident. His artistry remains ever profound! Thanks for a great documentary. I watched it for the second time since I first heard of Nick a couple of years ago after 3 different people told me I sound like him... but no way am I that talented, a real genius he was! .
Yes, amitryptiline; before the days of SSRIs like Prozac etc it was the go-to antidepressant. I took it around the same time (1968-9) for a couple of months, I can't say anything extreme about it, either good or bad, I don't remember experiencing any lack of concentration or 'brain fog'. Perhaps it was more to do with the despair he felt.
@@jugjugette5188 Hi! Thanks for your first hand input! I wonder too that all drugs, prescribed or recreational, have their own side effects for different people. Maybe it was depression alone that effected his ability to play guitar and sing. His parents wouldn't have known the recreational drugs he might have also been taking. I liked the hippie movement in principle but the sad part of it all was the drugs and peer group pressure to take them, what I felt to be the oxymoronic side to it all, and the irony or double standard to conform. Youth can be a more trying time, and they were divisive times back then compounding his depressions. Thanks again for your insight!
I used to have depression, and they prescribed amitriptyline for some time. I did feel the "brain fog" and lack of concentration. In fact I described the issue to my therapist with the same words: that I was constant and permanently surrounded by fog around my head. I play guitar too, and I wasn't able to do so for a long time. It also made feel me very sad. Besides, I had anhedonia for months, which made things worse. I couldn't play guitar, couldn't read (I am an avid reader), couldn't listen to audiobooks, some of my favourite songs made me feel terribly sad... the only thing I could do was to play videogames. I also wrote some poetry. I am so glad I am fully recovered from it... they were very hard times. I think Nick may have felt that way because of his depression, and the amitriptyline may have something to do as well. Sometimes I have the feeling that therapy might have helped him, who knows. Sorry if I made mistakes, English isn't my mother language 😅
@@Lalairu Hi Lalairu! Your English to me is excellent! I'm from the USA and my English is mediocre ha! I think you're very right that it probably is a combination of things with Nick and backed by your first hand experience. His use of recreational drugs, prescribed drugs, and his ongoing depression are all inhibitors to functioning at one's best. Writing and performing music takes a lot of one's full mental capacity. I'm 69 and appreciated the "hippy" movement in principle but also rejected it. The sad thing is and was how drugs impacted all of that as they had some very good principles. I don't mean to say that with society today drugs has a major impact. I observe it every time I'm passing in the streets of my city. I never took any drugs and was rejected as at parties when marijuana was being pass around a circle I always quietly didn't smoke any. The key word was "nark", if you were on the perimeter not getting "high" some might call you a nark meaning a narcotics agent etc. I did for about a 9 month period smoke some if someone was passing it around although I didn't want to buy any as I felt I'd be supporting the Mafia and didn't want to smoke that much. Really though I feel if someone wants to put some mind altering substance in them that it is a tragedy, but I don't ever make any issue about it as I feel no one has a right to tell someone what they decide to put in their body. I wish they wouldn't have this "war on drugs" as evil president george bush sr. termed it and the legions of politicians and presidents since who followed suit, a "war" that has killed and imprisoned hundreds of thousands since. I feel the "war" remains politically popular, wins votes, and supports a whole major enforcement community. I'm sure the illegal drug industry involves major people in society as it remains a multi-billion dollar industry. I feel the drug industry remains so especially because drugs remain illegal and thus supports organized crime, vote-winning politicians, our now privately owned prison system, the vast enforcement community... a redundant evil spiral. Peer group pressure has a major impact. It seemed Nick was aloof from that, a loner, but maybe not and among his college and traveling friends he started taking drugs. Thanks for your cogent and lucid input as you write in English very well and have a profound sense of observation, as well as the others here too.
@@mwj5368 hi Michael, thanks for your kind words :) living those years must have been amazing, despite the issues with the drug use and some people's unfriendliness (does this word exist? 😅) I can see why drugs (marihuana and LSD) might have been used as inspirational or for recreational use, I am not fan of them though. The Beat Generation used them, and wrote interesting stories for sure, but not my cup of tea either 🤣 it was an amazing time musically, I wish I could have seen those live performances... Every generation has it wonders fortunatelly. I wish I could have seen Hendrix, Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Dylan, Baez, Joni Mitchell and more live! I saw Patti Smith live last year, I know she began some years later but it was biblical. I can't believe she could stay singing for almost 2h, and she is 75! Thanks for sharing your stories with me. Regarding Bush and Co, I hope we can live in a fairer world someday. Hugs from Spain ;))
You know, I hope I don't sound harsh or cold, but I think that part of Nick's struggles were just that "imature" feeling of being an young boy who could have almost anything (a home, a family, money enough and parents that understand him) and somehow, inside his inner thoughts, he saw that there was something's missing and he had nothing in life. This "missing piece" probably could be diminushed and solved by therapy or just by growing up and focusing his energy on solving his problems and then write his songs, having a more realistic point of view about what a musician carrer is made of, because it's not easy. I say this because, watching this documentary, I can more or less relate to his story and if I wasn't guided by some friends and people who cared about me, I could probably become depressive as well. It's a shame that he didn't lived enough to reach, sooner or later, this point of view that almost anything don't happen in our own desired ways.
Dude, put yourself in his shoes, immense talent and musical genius that nobody gets. It's partially circumstance yet this pattern of posthumous success and tragic deaths of artists is not uncommon in the history books
You’re on the outside looking in. If you listen to his songs…his own voice…the man had an incredible sensitivity and many internal struggles. I wouldn’t minimize these struggles as the typical coming of age existential dread we all feel, as the man had what ended up becoming fatal mental health problems.
I agree with you partially, there was a certain level of maturity that Nick wasn't able to get. However, I do wanna point out that Nick was complimented his entire life. And I can understand this because I can relate to him: people always felt proud about my grades, about my intelligence, about how I viewed the world, and I couldn't help but think "I must become someone great, I must become someone that everyone can look up to" and I think something similar happened with Nick. Like it was said on the documentary, he felt like everyone recognized himself as a genius musician, yet he didn't achieve fame, and that was very heart breaking for him, all that discrepancy. All that we can do is appreciate that Nick tried his best and also we can learn from it: folks, if you ever feel obligated to be someone just because you happen to be recognized as someone clever, you don't need to be anyone, you just need to be yourself and do the things you like. Spare your soul of the unnecessary stress of being noticed by people, specially on this day and age. Enjoy life at your own pace, and things will eventually blossom and come within reach.
