The Most Beautiful Song I Know

& my short life as a wedding singer

Nick Drake is one of those favorite artists that I rediscover over and over again. The first time I heard his music I was 18, the summer I graduated high school. That summer I was trying to find my voice as a songwriter. I met this woman at a party, a musician ten years older than me. I told her I was a musician, a songwriter. She asked if I’d come to her house a block away and play her my songs.

I didn’t quite understand what I was getting myself into. but when she asked me to sit with her on the futon, I got wise pretty quick. I told her I had a girlfriend, but that didn’t slow her confident seduction routine. I played her a couple songs and my new friend barely seemed to notice. She asked if I minded if she put on some music as she dimmed the lights.

She asked if I’d ever heard of Nick Drake. I hadn’t. She gave me a quick run though of his biography: public (i.e. private) school Brit, connected to Fairport Convention, chronic depression, early death, overdose of prescribed medication, probably suicide. A few songs in I just sat there, mesmerized. I became so focused on the music that I couldn’t pay attention to anything she said. She made a comment about me being too high to talk to (I wasn’t), and she left me alone in her house. I stayed til 3 in the morning, falling in love with the music. Eventually she came home with a guy I knew who’d been at the party, more willing to fill the intended role.. She looked at me wide-eyed and said, “Wait, you’re still here?”

I bought the Hannibal box set and wore it out over the next several years. In fact, I lost it along with most of my LP collection when the roof of my apartment in Union Square Somerville collapsed one rainy night I spent at Freda’s. In those five or six years, much like Big Star, Drake’s music went from being very obscure to a hipster essential.

My first major rediscovery happened a decade later, when I first moved to Birmingham at the end of the 90s. In a bizarre plot twist a friend of mine, a former member of the Boston band Bullet Lavolta who graduated from Harvard and went into advertising, decided to use Pink Moon in a Volkswagen commercial. That commercial played constantly for months with untold thousands being struck dumb by the beauty of the music, seeking out the obscure artist. The artist who never caught a break suddenly became something of a household name.

I recently read Joe Boyd’s excellent memoir, White Bicycles. That’s what got me on my most recent kick. I loved Boyd’s stories, from his soundboard account of Dylan at Newport to the early days of Pink Floyd. He’s an extraordinary record man, incredible ears. I recommend reading it back-to-back, as I did, with Chris Blackwell’s page-turner memoir, The Islander. Their stories intertwine. Blackwell acquired Boyd’s label Witch Season so that Drake recorded for Island Records. I find these stories so inspiring on so many levels. If you’re a music dork like me, please put both of these on your reading list! Island Records, the iconic company Blackwell created that changed culture many times over, is arguably the most successful major label of the moment with Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and a bunch of other amazing acts. But I digress…

Back to Nick. Joe Boyd makes clear in White Bicycles that he is especially proud of his work with Drake. He devotes a substantial portion of White Bicycles to their work together in the studio. I’ve read several first-hand accounts of Drake’s life, though found Boyd’s especially poignant. We all know the mythology around the awkward, brooding, painfully shy, isolated young guy; but you typically don’t hear about the joy and transcendence he experienced working in the recording studio. Boyd somehow knew he was making important, world-changing records, even though nobody much cared at the time. He knew they’d made something deep, beautiful, and timeless, and he marveled that nobody else seemed to notice at the time. It’s a blessing that Boyd has lived to see the full development of Nick Drake’s career and massive influence.

Nick Drake’s final album - by which time Boyd had handed production off to his engineer, John Robert Wood - is his best. The desolate, achingly beautiful Pink Moon (1972) is perfection. That’s the sound that grabbed me at 18 and it’s haunted me ever since. Pink Moon, the album, is a masterpiece, his greatest artistic achievement. It’s also his final statement, since he passed away just a couple years later.

Pink Moon is the masterpiece, but my favorite Nick Drake song, the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard, is on Drake’s second album, Bryter Layter (1971). It’s Northern Sky. Please take a listen. The strummed guitar, celeste, organ, bass, and drums coalesce into a gorgeous wash that supports Drake’s voice, a rich, relaxed instrument with cracks of vulnerability. Then the piano comes in, the magical element. It’s the bridge that gets me every time. Layers upon layers of transcendent beauty, somehow never saccharine. It’s a perfect love song. And from what we know about his life, almost certainly unrequited.

Northern Sky is the penultimate song on my least favorite Nick Drake album, Bryter Layter. Apologies to Joe Boyd, one of my all-time favorite record producers, Bryter Layter gets a little busy, a little over-arranged at times. Horns, strings, group vocals…he and arranger Robert Kirby really went for it. It gets a little bogged down for me, with two exceptions: …Fly, and Northern Sky. It turns out these two tracks have something in common: additional production and performance by another all-time musical hero, John Cale.

I always wondered how John Cale ended up playing the gorgeous Celeste part in Northern Sky and adding production and performance elements to those two tracks, now I know thanks to White Bicycles. Cale just dropped by the studio to say hello to Joe Boyd, who played him some of Drake’s works in progress. Cale demanded to visit the reclusive Drake that afternoon, and marched to his flat. The result is Cale’s touch on those two songs. As an aside, John Cale is the invisible glue that connects so many threads of my musical DNA. Velvets, Stooges, Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, Nick Drake to name a few. His solo albums are consistently great, with Paris 1919 a recurring favorite.

My love for Northern Sky came long after my initial introduction to Drake’s music. Since it’s buried on my least favorite album, I didn’t pay much attention to it. At some point in the early 90s I learned it in standard tuning and played it out a few times. I put it on a mix tape for a girl I eventually married. My older brother Jake must have heard me sing it, because he asked me to sing it at his wedding. That’s when I really connected with that song. That was a powerful moment, when I really lost myself in the beauty of the melody and the words.

My brother’s wedding was 2004 (yes they are still married). To my great surprise, in 2013, one of Heather’s best friends asked me to sing Northern Sky at her wedding. Our friend didn’t know I had a connection with the song, she just loved the song and wanted me to be part of the wedding. It only brought me closer to the song, with more happy associations. My second rendition, on a chilly November day near the French Quarter in New Orleans, I sang with accompaniment from Ross Flournoy of the band Apex Manor. That couple is also still married! It’s a beautiful life.

One thing I’ve thought about a lot is whether I’m attracted to artists who are completely broken, or whether their brokenness is what makes them great. The most beautiful songs I know are so often by tragic people - Alex Chilton, Elliott Smith, Townes Van Zandt, Kurt Cobain, Jason Molina…the list goes on and on. I do enjoy hearing stories about my favorite artists, though I take no pleasure in their struggles or tragic ends. I have mostly, sadly, concluded that it’s often broken people who make world-changing art.

It’s one of those questions we have to face as music lovers. Just as we forgive our favorite artists who turn out to be self-centered assholes, we romanticize the lives of those who suffered terribly for their art, or from their art. I think of Nick Drake finding joy in making those records that have brought so much joy, and it brings comfort. Would the outcome be different had he found the audience he deserved in his lifetime? For the better, or for the worse?

Maybe I’m dwelling on these deep wells of sadness more than usual because there’s so much sadness right now. I’ve two friends to suicide since the holidays, I feel broken by it all. So many people are struggling with mental health issues as the world seems to crumble around us. When I’m doing my Chris Blackwell cosplay trying to find the next great musical act, I’m literally seeking the most devastating expression of profound sadness, the deepest well of grief, I can find. Should I be signing artists or referring much needed mental health services?

No. There are plenty of examples of well-adjusted artists who draw on authentic sadness. Depression isn’t limited to creative people, though we look after the people we are responsible for - including business clients. Believe me, it’s on my mind. Meanwhile, the spine-tingling beauty and the relatable sadness make up a lot of the glue that holds our musical communities together. It’s one of those unanswerable conundrums, whether we overlook the cries for help in an artist’s work because the cry itself is so beautiful and compelling.

I don’t know the answers to these questions. As a fan, it doesn’t really matter. I appreciate the work for what it means to me in my own life. As a music professional and artist advocate, it’s all a reminder that artists are fragile, often broken. It’s how they are able to spin magic as crazy as this, to see moons, know the meaning of the seas, to hold emotion in the palm of their hand. Anyone seeking to communicate in this manner to the entire world is almost certainly on their island, seeking some sort of rescue or reprieve. I’ve spent a lot of time feeling deeply envious of artists who have that gift. I’m grateful to have lived long enough to have the perspective that I would much rather be moved by the beauty of the work than to be the one on that island.

Island Records - clearly not the meaning Blackwell intended.