Nick Drake
Family tree

"The eagle that flies, leaves no trace in the sky," where did I read this? Boh... maybe it's a line from a zen poem.

Or “look at the sun, look at that cloud.”

If we really have to talk, it's better to start from scratch... from the sun, from the cloud...

“How beautiful it is, dad...” says my son in the little streets of Siena, which perhaps is a cloud too...

“How beautiful it is!!!” and then we stay silent for a while... elusive, isn't it, countess?

And “how beautiful it is!!!” I say it too, even if I'm not a little kid...

I'm rambling a bit, I realize, but there is a song by Nick, which isn't his, it's called “milk and honey” and we're in the little room (another cloud?), yes in the little room of home recordings.

And there's a true master, an obscure American folk singer, or if you prefer his ghost, his name is Jackson c, Frank...

Not to mention that the original song is also beautiful, Nick manages to make it so much his own that it seems more Drake than Drake and above all, it seems really like my only Nick, the secret one, the one from the mythical and real dimension, which is the melancholy behind every hymn to life...

Because here "autumn is of gold and silver and yes and no are the answers written in the eyes of true love"... because here the singer moves with the seasons and says he has to leave... because here in five or six archetypes and in five or six phrases there is everything, including an idea of the final death... because here it seems you almost hear that guitar by chance... because here like the poet says "I no longer know if I'm dying or being born", which I always thought is the feeling you have when you're at the center of the center of things... and to be there, the first guitar riff and how the voice enters are essential... at least that's what the vampire says... and I agree...

Then there's the dust, of course... the quality of the recording is certainly not perfect... but a touch of dust doesn't clash at all with Nick's voice... a voice that if it had a flaw, it was being too perfect... oh, it’s certainly not the case with “milk and honey”, but there are Nick's songs, especially the somewhat pompous ones, that make me and the vampire want musical trinkets (luna park stuff, limping pianos, suspended organs, music boxes), instead of damn strings and saxophones... so here the dust plays the same role... and jangles like a small scar in perfection... and we're back to that cloud we started from... or no, we started from an eagle...

And then there's old Joe, who more than an eagle is a teddy bear... oh how well he enunciates words (those zero-degree words, the essential, basic, archetypal ones and so on) this sweet and strumming drake-covering singer... sure, he can't be as old England as Nick, but he really enunciates well...

”Oh teddy bear that's how you do it!!!” the vampire once told him with all the tenderness he could muster... and, believe me, you can't even imagine the tenderness of the vampire...

Then there's “Here come the blues” again by Jackson c. Frank, who incidentally was one of the most unfortunate human beings of all time.

"In the world that's the usual old comedy, on a bright Monday that already knows the rain of Tuesday,” the blues arrives.

“On those who don’t want to age because of old plans gone awry and also on those wandering towards the midnight run when the sun has gone to hide,” the blues arrives.

And it arrives to stay long. With a voice of honey and covered in dust.

You may have noticed that I often talk about honey and dust: after all, the explorer's handbook says that if you start paying attention to one thing, you eventually see it everywhere, as if you're no longer seeking it, but it is seeking you. And that thing is the blues.

The blues which in Nick is indeed honey and dust, especially in the home recordings...

Then I’ve formed a strange idea: Nick's voice is born adult, has an interlude of refinement and then, then returns home and if at the beginning it was adult/child, in the end, it's adult adult, that the blues apprenticeship is over:

Besides, who knows when the vampire became the vampire?

Perhaps he too started listening to old records at breakfast, chewing and rechewing them, he must have had an adult/child voice too and maybe that's why he loves "home recordings" so much...

Then this is truly a sad song...

And “where midnight runs, there are only that jester Charlie and suicide.”

And "Monday is dry, Tuesday the same" and “on the sad Wednesday that's coming, on days that crash down like a southbound train you have to grab the brake again.”

But it's not just covers...

There’s a song by Nick of which the flower girl on the corner (who knows which corner) says it ruffles her soul...” And this isn’t elusive, is it countess?

"The wanderer passes at the end of the street, I hear the echo of his nailed steps," so begins "They're leaving me behind" and, again, it seems the start of a blues...

Or rather a lowdown blues, “an expression that in the language of African Americans, indicates that very particular music that gives voice to emotional despondency.” When I read these words in the beautiful book “Mississippi Lost Angels” by Fabrizio Poggi I couldn’t help but think of this song, which is indeed lowdown (quiet, sad, mysterious) and talks about how the opportunities that come are actually already lost. and that, sure, success can be achieved, but at too high a price (the same theme as “Day is done”).

And to win like that is worse than losing, someone would say...

This song is one of the vampire's favorites (like almost all those of the home recordings), for the voice especially, which in its urgency, for once seems to almost cover the music, rather than take it under the arm and it really goes deeper, more than usual even, creating a strange contrast between the typical stammering of the young artist (which if you want is also a re-chewing of styles) and a way of singing that seems incredibly adult (so much that re-chewing matches one's experience).

We’ve already seen it in “Strange meeting II”, that dream encounter with the sand princess, here, moreover, we are at the psychological abc, at the primary lack...

“They're leaving me behind,” they're leaving me behind.

The words must be simple, as in "Parasite" "give a look and you’ll find me on the ground" or in "chime" "you stay indoors, beneath the floors", with this last phrase in English reads “Stay indoors beneath the floors” which reminds of that “to be down on the killing floor” which means having hit rock bottom.

“Killing floor” is an expression made famous for being the title of one of Howlin' Wolf's most known songs.

According to some scholars, the killing floor was nothing but the physical place where animals were killed in the enormous slaughterhouses of the great cities that between the twenties and fifties mainly employed black labor.

What has a well-off white boy to do with the blues? It fits, because as Paola De Angelis rightly says, the blues is the music of outsiders, thus also of Nick Drake and not only of the wanderer passing at the end of the street at the beginning of the song.

In the end, that wanderer is opposed by the wind and the rain, that once again Nick can’t refrain from putting a reference to nature, always with simple words, even if the words count relatively, what counts is the lowdown ("that best expresses that tense and haunting but also sensual atmosphere that often lingers in the most heartfelt blues performances"- again Fabrizio Poggi-).

Sensual? Ask the maidens if you don't believe it, not necessarily the magical ones of the vampire (like Big Mama Winter, who once said Nick’s voice always gets caught on one of her handles...). You will be surprised by the answers...

But the vampire's magical maidens deserve a little mention.

The moon girl, for example...

The moon girls, it must be said, are very often drakian, sometimes even without knowing it... but this one knew very well... and once while she was listening to “Pink Moon”, a child sat on her lap... they listened in silence... then the child, looking intently at Nick’s photo, asked “is he dead?”... and she answered yes...

”It was a kind of magical moment- said later the moon girl to the vampire- as if I were talking about something sacred, like taking out and sticking a thorn in me at the same time, as if that child understood music and death better than me”...

After all, “pain and cure of the same” is said of the blues and therefore taking out and sticking a thorn... and listening to Nick aren’t we the children who understand music and death a little better?

You know the vampire often talks about these and other magical maidens, pity he never let me meet one... sometimes I suspect that he invented them... preferring to use distracted and light doubles to talk about himself...

But maybe I've exaggerated and see that the hands of the anti-rhetoricum are spinning wildly, which means at least half of this writing should be thrown away.

But oh well...

Anyway, “Family tree” is the notebook of a genius. There are the first original compositions, so sweet and magically raw, and covers of classic folk and blues songwriters from the sixties (Bob Dylan, Bert Jansch, Dave Van Ronk and again Jackson c. Frank with two more tracks). There are also two songs performed (and written!!!) by the mother that perhaps might not have been included. And “All my trials” (beautiful) is sung with the sister Gabrielle.

It's a wonderful album (“how beautiful it is, dad!!!)

But I've already written too much and I limit myself only to mention “Winter is gone”, a traditional of which Nick might have heard the version by John Rembourn, and “Bird flew by”, the simplest and touching of his early cries. The reason? I love them to death and, together with the ones I’ve already talked about, are my favorites.

Ah, another fun thing is his way of singing the old blues...

Stop.