So Nick must have felt deeply frustrated, especially – as I said earlier – because he had been led to believe that it was going to create ripples. View image in fullscreen Nick Drake in February 1971, a few months before the two sessions that comprised recording Pink Moon. I think there were glimmers, but what Nick tended to do throughout his illness was make a resolution and then not see it through.

But speaking about Nick, I think it’s interesting to speculate, as a fantasy: had he been willing to play a concert in September, October 1974 and a promoter had said, ‘Yeah, sure’, what would the take-up have been? Instead of imposing his own judgements and theories on Nick Drake, his personality, life and songs, he has gathered together the words of his mother and father, his sister, friends he had at school, at Cambridge University, where he studied English literature, and the people he encountered when he started recording his songs in London. It builds on everything that has gone before and adds so much detail it can seem, at times, overwhelming. Heath has lost the election, all this sort of stuff, so it’s interesting simply as an account of an early 70s household. The narrative of the making of Pink Moon, and the 4 final songs recorded in 1974 shortly before his death, are especially poignant.It’s a terrible tragedy, and I think it’s nice to think of ways in which Nick’s life could have turned out differently. Now we’re into the main event, which is Richie Unterberger discussing the new biography of Nick Drake by Richard Morton Jack. Thankfully we now live in more enlightened times where mental health is more fully understood, but this book serves to highlight the impact not only the plight of someone like Nick who was constantly battling an illness, but also the effect it had on those around him. Nick Drake: The Life is the only biography of Nick to be written with the blessing and involvement of his sister and Estate.

The story of his illness in 1972, 1973 and 1974 is also the story of him desperately trying, in lots of different ways, to recapture his creativity.At the same time Bryter Layter was being made, Joe Boyd and John Wood were working on Nico’s Desertshore, where John Cale was the arranger.

I actually think one could almost say it was generous of Nick to give Robert the arrangement credit, because the arrangements were by the two of them. RU: Going to the core of Nick’s musical achievements, his most important musical associate was the producer Joe Boyd. AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: I’m interested in Nick Drake’s classical influences, which you alluded to – you mentioned that he listened to classical music in the last years of his life, and I hear the influence of Debussy in some of the string arrangements on Five Leaves Left, for example. Richard interviewed many of Nick’s surviving friends and associates, some of whom have never been on the record before, and they did a great deal to clarify Nick’s personality and musical achievements. He did occasionally walk a neighbour’s dog, though, so that’s something, and I guess they would go down that path.He wasn’t on the level of someone like Townes Van Zandt, where you might still feel, ‘This is really quite an obscure guy’. Did you find it funny – which is the wrong word – that towards the end of his life he seemed to be on a bit of an up? Three years later, however - having made three well-reviewed but low-selling albums - Nick had been overwhelmed by a mysterious mental illness.