Although he recorded only three albums, critics and fellow musicians hold his work in very high esteem. Drake failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime and had a strong aversion to performing. Since his death, however, Drake's music has gained a significant cult following.
Drake's father worked as an engineer. Although he was born in Rangoon, Burma, Nick's family moved back to England soon afterward, and Drake was brought up in Tanworth-in-Arden, a small village in the English county of Warwickshire. He went to public school at Marlborough College, where he learned to play the clarinet and piano. As a young adult, Drake enrolled in Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, to study English. His older sister, Gabrielle Drake, is an actress.
Drake was a fan of British and the emerging American folk music scene, including artists Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs. While a university student, Drake began performing in local clubs and coffee houses. He was discovered by Ashley Hutchings, the bass player of the folk rock group Fairport Convention. Hutchings introduced Drake to the other members of Fairport Convention, folk singer John Martyn and producer Joe Boyd.
He delayed attendance to spend six months at the University of Aix-Marseille, France, beginning in February 1967. While in Aix, he began to practice guitar in earnest and to earn money would often busk with friends in the town centre. Drake began to smoke cannabis, and that spring he traveled with friends to Morocco, because, according to traveling companion Richard Charkin, "that was where you got the best pot". Drake's associates convinced Island Records to sign the young singer-songwriter to a three-album contract. Drake began recording his debut album Five Leaves Left later in 1968, with Boyd assuming the role of producer. The sessions took place in Sound Techniques studio, London, with Drake skipping lectures to travel by train to the capital. At the age of twenty, he released his first album Five Leaves Left (1969), which featured a chamber music quartet on several songs and had a light, breezy sound. Drake's second album Bryter Layter (1970) introduced a more upbeat, jazzier sound, with keyboards, horns and several brass instruments. Both albums were produced by Boyd and featured several members of Fairport Convention.
Many accounts of Drake focus on his mythology, but a large part of his enduring popularity is due to his meticulous songwriting, prosody, odd guitar tunings and lyricism.
Drake was pathologically shy and resented touring. The few concerts he did play were usually in support of other British folk acts of the time, such as Fairport Convention or John Martyn and were often brief and awkward. Partially because of this, his work received little attention and sold poorly. Whilst in the recording studio, he was so shy that he'd always play into the wall so as to avoid people's gazes.
Severely depressed and doubting his abilities as a musician, Drake recorded his final album Pink Moon (1972) in two two-hour sessions, both starting at midnight. The songs of Pink Moon were short (the album consists of eleven of them and lasts only 28 minutes) and emotionally bleak. Drake recorded them unaccompanied, in the presence of only a sound engineer (a piano was later overdubbed on the title track). Naked and sincere, it is widely thought to be his best work.
At this point, he considered other careers including the army and computer programming, but more suitably as a songwriter for other artists. However, none of Drake's plans materialized. In the next few months, Drake grew severely depressed and maintained relationships only with close friends such as John Martyn, who wrote the title song of his 1973 album Solid Air for and about Drake and with Sophia Ryde. He was hospitalized several times and lived with Hardy for a few months. Friends from that time have described how much his appearance changed: his nails grown, his hair and frame gaunt and thin.
In 1974, Drake felt well enough to write and record a few new songs. However, on November 25, he died of an overdose of antidepressants. The coroner concluded that the cause of Drake's death was suicide, although this was disputed by friends and relatives. Antidepressants of that time were quite lethal if ingested in any higher dosage than the one prescribed. His mother recounts that he must have had difficulty sleeping and had got up in the night to have a bowl of cornflakes. It's unclear whether he took more pills to help him sleep or to take his own life.
His simple gravestone in the Tanworth churchyard bears the line "And now we rise/And we are everywhere", taken from From the Morning - the last song on the last album Nick lived to complete.
Posthumous popularity
Since Drake’s death, his music has grown steadily in popularity. Several modern musicians, such as Lucinda Williams, Badly Drawn Boy, Matthew Good, Sebadoh's Lou Barlow, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, Blur’s Graham Coxon, and Belle and Sebastian, consider Drake an important influence. In early 1999, BBC2 aired a 40-minute Nick Drake documentary, "A Stranger Among Us — In Search of Nick Drake", as part of its Picture This strand. The following year saw the release of a documentary by Dutch director Jeroen Berkvens, titled A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake and featuring interviews with Joe Boyd, Gabrielle Drake, audio engineer John Wood, and arranger Robert Kirby. Brad Pitt is a fan of Drake and, in 2004, he narrated a BBC radio documentary about the singer.
Island has responded to Drake’s popularity with several new releases including Time of No Reply (1986), an album of unreleased material including four new songs recorded in 1974, Way to Blue: An Introduction to Nick Drake (1994), a "best of" album, remastered HDCD releases of his three studio albums in 2000, and Made to Love Magic (2004), featuring one new track and some newly recorded orchestration for a previously released track. A replacement for Way to Blue called A Treasury was also released in 2004 on Hybrid-SACD.
In 2000, Volkswagen licensed the track Pink Moon, the title track from Nick's third release, for a particularly serene car commercial in the US. The advertisement caused a significant bounce in Drake’s popularity, bolstered by uses of Drake's music on a number of film soundtracks, including 1998's Hideous Kinky and Practical Magic (featuring "Road" from Pink Moon and "Black Eyed Dog" from Time of No Reply, respectively). In 2001, two Bryter Layter tracks appeared in mainstream films: "Northern Sky" in Serendipity, and "Fly" in The Royal Tenenbaums. In the same year, "Cello Song" from Five Leaves Left was featured in Me Without You. In 2004, "One of These Things First" appeared in Garden State and "Northern Sky" was featured again, this time in Fever Pitch.
Drake's "River Man" has become quite popular among Jazz musicians. A piano improvisation based on the melody was released by Brad Mehldau on the album "Progression: Art Of The Trio, Volume 5", and a Jazz vocal version by Claire Martin appears on the album Take My Heart.
Drake's posthumous popularity has made many fans consider the lyrics to "Fruit Tree" a song from Five Leaves Left prophetic: “Fame is but a fruit tree / So very unsound. / It can never flourish / Till its stock is in the ground. / So men of fame / Can never find a way / Till time has flown / Far from their dying day.” In 2004 two of his singles reached low positions in the UK charts - "Magic" and "River Man".
Most recently, Nick Drake has emerged as a key influence in the resurgence of 1960's and 1970's folk traditions, apparent in the works of artists including Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, and Six Organs of Admittance.
In 2005, performer Beck updated his website during Christmas time with covers of three songs from Pink Moon: "Pink Moon", "Which Will" and "Parasite."
Family Tree, the next Bryter Music/Island record was released in July 2007.
Been Smoking
Nick Drake Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Look at my clock
Its way past noon time
Now Im late for work.
Tell me, tell me
What have I done wrong?
Aint nothing go right with me
Well I go to find me some breakfast
But I aint got no food
Take me a shower
But the water dont feel no good.
Tell me
Ive got opium in my chimney
No other life to choose
Nightmare made of hash dreams.
Got the devil in my shoes
Tell me
Well when Im smoking
Put my worries on a shelf
Dont think about nothin
Try not to see myself.
Tell me
Well in this blues Im singin
Theres a lesson to be learned
Dont go around smokin
Unless you want to get burned.
Tell me
The lyrics of Nick Drake's song "Been Smoking Too Long" present a first-person narration of a character's struggles with addiction. The song starts with the singer waking up late for work, blaming his troubles on his smoking habit, which has apparently kept him from functioning adequately. The lyrics then convey how the character cannot find food or enjoy a shower properly, due to the drug use that has taken over his life. The song also brings up the specific substances the character is using, like opium and hash, evoking images of drug dens and addiction-related nightmares.
Line by Line Meaning
Well I wake up in the morning
The singer wakes up in the morning and implies that they should be getting up early enough to be punctual
Look at my clock
The singer checks the time on their clock
Its way past noon time
The singer sees that it is already past noon time, which means they have overslept considerably
Now Im late for work.
The artist realizes that they are already late for work because of oversleeping
Tell me, tell me
The artist asks for guidance, seeking a clear answer to his problem
What have I done wrong?
The singer talks about how everything he does seems to go wrong and wonders what it is he is doing wrong
Aint nothing go right with me
The singer laments that he can't seem to catch a break and that everything he tries to do goes wrong
Must be Ive been smoking too long.
The artist concludes that his addiction to smoking is the chief source of his problems
Well I go to find me some breakfast
The artist talks about how they need to look for something to eat for breakfast
But I aint got no food
The artist is unable to find anything to eat, likely due to his disheveled lifestyle
Take me a shower
The singer talks about how they need to take a shower
But the water dont feel no good.
The artist dislikes how the water feels on his skin, which suggests that his living conditions are less than ideal
Ive got opium in my chimney
The singer is addicted to drugs and has been using them in his home, which is terrible for his health
No other life to choose
The singer sees no other life for himself other than a life of addiction and feels trapped
Nightmare made of hash dreams.
The singer experiences twisted, shocking dreams as a result of his drug use
Got the devil in my shoes
The artist speaks figuratively about having the weight of addiction on his shoulders and feels like he is struggling against a supernatural force.
Well when Im smoking
The artist begins to describe the act of smoking and how it affects him
Put my worries on a shelf
Smoking is cathartic, and the singer puts his worries aside when he smokes
Dont think about nothin
When smoking, the singer tries not to think or worry about anything else
Try not to see myself.
The artist avoids introspection and tries not to think about his situation or self-assessment when smoking
Well in this blues Im singin
The artist is telling a story with the song, saying that it is a blues song about his life and the issues he is facing
Theres a lesson to be learned
The artist concludes that there is a lesson to learn from his mistakes and lamentations
Dont go around smokin
The singer advises listeners not to indulge in smoking as it has been detrimental to his quality of life
Unless you want to get burned.
The artist feels that smoking has caused him to experience consequences that are equivalent to getting burnt and implies that people who smoke will face the same consequences
Lyrics © SONGS ON THE WING
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Wladeyyy _
Lyrics. Well I wake up in the morning
Look at my clock
Its way past noon time
Now Im late for work.
Tell me, tell me
What have I done wrong?
Aint nothing go right with me
Must be Ive been smoking too long.
Well I go to find me some breakfast
But I aint got no food
Take me a shower
But the water dont feel no good.
Tell me
Ive got opium in my chimney
No other life to choose
Nightmare made of hash dreams.
Got the devil in my shoes
Tell me
Well when Im smoking
Put my worries on a shelf
Dont think about nothin
Try not to see myself.
Tell me
Well in this blues Im singin
Theres a lesson to be learned
Dont go around smokin
Unless you want to get burned.
Tell me
DOKE
This guy is amazing, try to hear all the versions and covers of this song and they dont have this magic. Drake is singing with so much swing
Texas Chainsaw
Do listen, Arthur Gunn Performs with joe Henry. (cover of this song)
Ryan Elliott
Listen to Dax Riggs version!
packt
@Ryan Elliott I second this. Amazing cover (pretty much everything Dax Riggs does is amazing though to be fair).
SaveState
Cause his version was from his eyes. Nick Drake told his mom “I’m all out of songs” while talking with his mother right before his death. That should sum it up
Stoker Films
Bless you Nick. An artist way too intelligent and sensitive to exist on this plain. For as long as you breathed air in this mortal coil you left a legacy of song and haunted melody that transcends like a “spiritual sound”. You went home my friend, thank you for your song and and may you rest in peace.
❤️🙏.x
Thomas Whelan-Murray
So this is one of the greatest works of music/poetry ever made. What a dude.
Wladeyyy _
Lyrics. Well I wake up in the morning
Look at my clock
Its way past noon time
Now Im late for work.
Tell me, tell me
What have I done wrong?
Aint nothing go right with me
Must be Ive been smoking too long.
Well I go to find me some breakfast
But I aint got no food
Take me a shower
But the water dont feel no good.
Tell me
Ive got opium in my chimney
No other life to choose
Nightmare made of hash dreams.
Got the devil in my shoes
Tell me
Well when Im smoking
Put my worries on a shelf
Dont think about nothin
Try not to see myself.
Tell me
Well in this blues Im singin
Theres a lesson to be learned
Dont go around smokin
Unless you want to get burned.
Tell me
Lawrence Seiji Abbott
Wow, dude, this is seriously so fucking good!!... Nick Drake man...
Such good melodies and lyrics!!! I swear this totally surprised me, so original compared to his other works, or should I say stand-outish
Jolene DeLilys
xXBlinDXx12 Nick did not write this song. "Been Smokin' Too Long" is by Robin Frederick.