Nick Drake is featured in a BBC 2 documentary tonight, part of the Picture This series. A Stranger Among Us – Searching For Nick Drake was made by film-maker Tim Clements and attempts to sketch out the life of the enigmatic singer songwriter.
As with all attempts to make films about Drake, A Stranger… is hampered by the fact that there is no TV or film footage of him performing.
There has been a great deal of interest in Drake in recent years partly because of his enduring influence on songwriters as diverse as Damon Albarn and Kate Bush and partly inspired by the 1994 compilation album Way To Blue. The Guardian recently featured him on the cover of their Friday section calling him Britain’s great overlooked genius, though features in virtually every major music title – he was recently on the cover of Mojo – and several biographies make him far from overlooked. At the height of his career, however, NME was the only magazine or music paper to have him on the cover.
Nick Drake only made three albums, ‘Five Leaves Left’, ‘Bryter Later’ and ‘Pink Moon’, though producer Joe Boyd’s Rykodisc label released ‘Time Of No Reply’ in 1986, an album of demos and unreleased songs, including the last four that he recorded. He died in 1974; his family and in particular his sister Gabrielle, an actress best known for her roles in UFO and ’70s soap Crossroads, have been outspoken in contesting any conclusions that his death was suicide.
A Stranger Among Us – Searching For Nick Drake is on tonight, Monday February 1 at 11.15 pm GMT. The videoplus code is 774081.