Snobbery and posthumous recognition

I first heard of Nick Drake some years ago whilst listening to a cover CD from Mixmag (August 2001 issue, if you're interested), which was part of a series called The Bedroom Sessions. Essentially, these CD's were mixes done by various artists from the world of dance which comprised a selection of their influences and this particular one covered the British house/pop crossover outfit Faithless. There were a number of worthy old-skool hard hitters such as Nu Yorican Soul, Dillinger and A Man Called Adam, some contemporaries like Bent and MJ Cole, and plenty of stuff I'd never heard of, including the last track which was called Riverman by some bloke called Nick Drake.

I fell in love with this track immediately. It has a dreamy end-of-summer feel to it due in no small part to Drake's incredibly soulful voice and an unusual rhythm (5/4 for all you music nerds out there). I listened to it a lot but never quite got round to finding out more until recently. Just a few weeks ago I got hold of two of Drake's three studio albums, Five Leaves Left and Pink Moon. Both albums are filled with fantastically evocative folk tunes, in the case of Pink Moon they are largely unaccompanied save for Drakes voice and it is absolutely timeless; I just don't tire of it.

For those of you who have never heard Nick drake, you can read more here, but in a nutshell, he was a self taught folk guitarist (but also played piano, clarinet and saxophone very well by all accounts). He dropped out of a Cambridge University scholarship just 9 months before graduating but was sorely under-appreciated at the time and he constantly struggled with depression and insomnia. He , like most musical children of the sixties, smoked cannabis and occasionally took heroin, LSD and magic mushrooms, none of which would have helped the depression, but tragically he died at his parents home aged just 26 from an apparent overdose of antidepressants, although some of his friends believe it may have been accidental as he was beginning to be positive about his life and music after a bleak few years and that he took more antidepressants in an effort to increase this feeling of positivity rather than kill himself.

Whatever the reason, he left behind a small musical legacy which sold very, very little at the time. But a strange thing happened: After his death, his popularity and fame slowly increased and now he is cited as one of the most important songwriters of the 20th century with artists such as Jose Gonzalez, Badly Drawn Boy, Peter Buck (REM) and Robert Smith (The Cure) citing him as a major influence. Drake was very keen on unusual open tunings on the guitar (whereby if the strings are played with no fingers on the fretboard, you get a chord) as well as some unusual cadences which makes it hard to try and copy his work, as I have found out in trying, with some success and a little help from other web sites, to play Pink Moon.

It's tragic that such a talented artist should die so young and that he should not get the recognition that he deserves whilst alive, although he is not unusual in this. But the biggest tragedy, to my mind, is the utter snobbery he encountered in the folk music world in particular and the music industry in general. He did get some favourable reviews but he got far more which were indifferent or even disparaging. The music press was more interested in rock at the time as the lo-fi 60's sound gave way to the rock influences which grew up in the same decade and morphed into prog rock and eventually punk, glam and a host of other sub genres. The reviewers evidently figured that if it wasn't rock, then it wasn't any cop (although music journalism is generally so far up it's own arse even today that the same still applies).

But what grates most of all is the folkies and their reaction. Folk is generally a fiercely traditional genre and there's nothing wrong with that in itself, but sadly it became obsessed with its own dogma and was (and in many ways still is) personified by a paunchy middle aged bloke in a chunky cable knit sweater with a beard you could hide in. Although this character undoubtedly still exists today, I have no doubt that if Drake had been releasing those albums exactly as they are but in the here and now, he would have been immeasurably more successful commercially as the folk genre has loosened up and recognised that there is such a thing as contemporary folk music. Folk was the music of the people and it was ever changing. It is not until recent times that followers attempted to nail down their definition of what was and wasn't folk music, but these 'traditionalists' shunned Drake, it seems, for his non-adherence to their assumed norms of the genre.

This is something noted by the ever witty Mark Radcliffe in his autobiography, Showbusiness, The Diary of a Rock And Roll Nobody:

"They are the kind of imbeciles who will walk out in disgust if you have the audacity to miss out verse sixteen of 'Sir John a'Gaunt's Lament'...He'd had a bellyful of sweating buckets over his Martin acoustic only for some grizzly, bespectacled barmpot in corduroy plus-fours to come over and say, 'Not bad, but I think you'll find that "The Merry Milkmaid of Wessex, she did meet a ewe inseminator, oh" should be performed unaccompanied.' It was impossible to sate their appetite for historical accuracy"

Narrow minded people like this dismissed Drake and that would be a knock for anyone but he took it particularly hard which is a shame because it no doubt contributed to the circumstances which led to his death. Musical snobbery is still rife today, but at least listening audiences are more willing to judge music on it's merits and appreciate it for what it is.

So, the moral of todays story, kids, is not to dismiss a new way of doing something because 'new' doesn't mean 'bad' in most things. I didn't actually mean for this post to go on so long but there you are. Since it would appear I do actually have some readers (yay!) it would be quite nice to get feedback on whether or not you enjoy my ramblings, so leave a comment if you've enjoyed it and leave one too if you thought it was just a load of old cobblers.

Listening to: Slam - Alien Radio