Over the past week, I’ve been listening to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon.
It bears repeating that, aside from the apparent outward simplicity of this music, this is a difficult album to appreciate and assimilate. It is not music designed to be consumed and discarded, but, rather, it is music that is built for the long term, a cohesive, deliberately structured, self-contained song-cycle to be listened through in a single sitting over and over again. It is music to last you a lifetime. It is a dark album of dark thoughts, lacerating in its self-honesty, but it is not bleak listening, and there is a suggestion of calm reserve at the close, a coming to terms and acceptance of one’s fate. It is a collective recoil in horror from society without and, most importantly, society within, and, specifically, the forces from within that simultaneously fed him and fed on him parasitically. This is music created and played for an audience of one, and that one person was Drake alone, who was increasingly becoming crowded out by the many voices in his head. At the time of this recording, these voices had reached a crescendo of a deafening roar - sometimes accusatory, and at other times belittling, and then demeaning - but always ever present. He needed to make this music, to put down on record his deepest thoughts, to articulate his frustrations at the world around and his fear of the voices within. (He might well have been reading Keats on this matter: “Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”) Despite the mental anguish that this song writing process caused him, I believe that the alternative of not channelling these emotions would have had a more destructive impact on him. And so, over two late night sessions, in the company of engineer John Wood, and unbeknownst to anybody else, he set down what was to be Pink Moon, and what he envisioned to be his final album. (To recall Keats: “Let me be thy choir and make a moan upon the midnight hours”.) Aside from a piano overdub on the title track, there were to be no later additions to what was recorded over those two nights. It stands in stark contrast to the preceding album, Bryter Layter, with its finely crafted musical arrangements.
Pink Moon
The album begins with an intimation of Drake’s mortality: “Pink moon is on its way”. This may well be an ominous portent but, the moon is pink, I believe, because it is rose tinted with refractions of memories of childhood. It’s worth recalling Wordsworth’s great line, “the child is the father of the man”, and indeed, Drake the man is overcome by recollections of happier times in his youth. “None of you stand so tall” reminds us that in the face of death, all of life’s affectations - pride, envy, wrath, greed, avarice - fall away and we are forced to our knees regardless of social standing or monetary wealth. The tone is one of calm acceptance.
Place to be
Drake looks back to his childhood (when he was young, innocent and physically strong), a time of happiness before the burden of knowledge and expectation was heaped on his shoulders (a time of Housman’s “blue remembered hills”, perhaps?) “where flowers grew and sun shone still”. And now he yearns for a release, to be “handed down”, to be relieved of his burden, to be given a “place to be”. This is no mere place of quietude, at peace from the world; in order to still the thundering voices in his head, he yearns for the ultimate peace of death. Now that he sees the truth before him, he feels compelled to “clean the place”. He is obliged to put his house in order. That, I believe, is a compulsion to put his thoughts into songs, despite how painful this may be. The indirect reference to two earlier songs, Way to Blue and Day is Done, is significant and indicates just how far he has travelled since he wrote those songs. The latter song is suffused with sadness that “the game’s been fought” [and] “lost much sooner than you would have thought”. There is a sense of loss that “the party’s through” [and] “you didn’t do the things you meant to do”. The reference to Way to Blue is especially poignant because that song imagines a conversation between the young Drake and a more elderly man (perhaps the River Man?). “Tell me all that you may know/Show me what you have to show”. The young man wants guidance, needs to be shown the right path. He sees himself “hoping like the blind”, scrabbling for direction, but the old man never answers and Drake is left fumbling for direction. To return to Place to be, his mind has now become “darker than the deepest sea” and his body is “weaker than the palest blue”. (Is this the terrible wisdom that the old man refused to pass on to the younger man, “the truth hanging from the door”?) With all his body and soul, he yearns for a release from this life. And yet, the tone is not at all despondent; on the contrary, he is charged with the plans he is making for a new life.
Road
A short, simple song, addressing his abject and pressing concern to preserve what remains of his sanity - “I can take a road that’ll see me through”. He is deaf to the voices of optimism around him - those of his parents or Joe Boyd, perhaps - a early precursor of Black-Eyed Dog’s more succinct “I don’t wanna know”, perhaps?. The sun does not shine for him and his path does not lead to the stars but through the darkness.
Which Will
This song consists of a series of questions directed at the people in the world around him and considers how they will respond to his passing. After what he perceived as the wholesale rejection of Drake the man and Drake the music, he wonders who the world will choose in his place and will receive the critical adulation that he believed he deserved. I believe that this is a question that he desperately wants to be answered. What did he do so wrong that caused the world to shun him and his music? What could he have done differently that would have made people love him and his music?
Things behind the sun
Away from the heat and the noise of everyday life, when the voices in his head have died momentarily, this is a reflection on the things which Drake considers to be of lasting value and which he holds dear to his life. "Please beware of them that stare" indicate the external world's inability to understand Drake's attempts to articulate himself and also his inability to make himself heard or understood by those around him. He sees in their puzzled looks only disdain and contempt, and Drake, in his way, looks at the things that these people have accomplished, and, indeed, what represents "success" in the world around him appears to be alien to him. The line, "Who'll hear what I'll say?", is directed towards those that may hear his songs after his passing. Fly’s “I just need your star for a day” is far behind him now. At this stage of his life, he has turned inward into his mind, has consciously blotted out the world around him and is concerned only with preserving his sanity as a means to channelling the songs in his head. "Say a prayer for people there who live on the floor" could refer to the people around him with blank looks and puzzled stares or it could well look ahead to Parasite - "take a look you may see me on the ground" / "take a look you may see me in the dirt" - and could indicate a heartfelt plea for compassion. The lines, "Open up the broken cup/Let goodly sin and sunshine in", offer a clue as to why Drake tormented himself for his art. Despite his uncomprehending view of humanity, I believe that, deep down, he had real compassion for the world around him, and that is why he found it worthwhile to battle the demons in his mind in an attempt to articulate what was brewing inside him. To paraphrase Judee Sill’s Dreams Come True, he envisioned a world where the darkness of the world around him was redeemed by the spark of his music. "The people round your head/Who say everything's been said" represent these hectoring voices cluttering his mind casting doubts on his songwriting ambitions and belittling what he found worthy to put down on record. When "this movement in the brain" became too much for him, he craved the cleansing of a rainstorm to expunge these voices from his head.
Know
This song is key to understanding Drake's state of mind when recording this album. It is the most minimalist of all the songs on this most minimalist of albums. Everything is pared away and reduced to its essentials. One simple repetitive, bluesy guitar line forms the backbone of this song that is joined by Drake's anguished humming. The effect is mantra-like and mesmerising, and strikes me as a way for Drake to still the voices in his head so that he can concentrate his mind on what he has to say. Four simple lines that say so much in a way that is akin to the American blues singers bewailing their fate. It strongly prefigures the terrifying Black-Eyed Dog, which, itself, is an echo of Robert Johnson's Hellhound on my Trail, and which represents the apotheosis of the emotional arc that was traced during his brief life.
I had wanted to avoid discussion of Black-Eyed Dog because it is such a painful listen, a veritable essay in fear and trembling and dread that reminds me of Judee Sill’s chilling The Donor, but it is unavoidable, especially in the context of Know. Recorded 16 months after the Pink Moon sessions, when the dramatic deterioration of his mind was echoed in his wasted physical appearance, the sight of which shocked and deeply traumatised Joe Boyd who, realising that Drake was incapable of putting down a vocal track at the same time as playing his guitar, insisted on a separate session to record the guitar part. His guitar, which he formerly treasured (contemporary reports of his infrequent concerts speak of him gingerly handling his guitar with reverence and respect), was now a battered three-stringed barely-tuned instrument. As much as the recording session pained him, he obviously felt compelled from within to lay down his final thoughts. The black-eyed dog is a fearsome creation emerging from the Stygian depths of Drake’s subconscious, a creature with a veracious temper and a voracious appetite salivating for its prey, and whose appetite would only be quenched by devouring Drake’s soul. And yet, Drake, battered and weary and old before his time, begs for this spiritual release. The chilling implication is that the black-eyed dog, which represents the blackness of his mind which has been utterly absorbed by the voices at this stage, knows Drake’s mind intimately because he is a part of him - “he knew my name”. “I don’t wanna know” (anything of life) is the bleat of his human soul at his plight. All that’s left is a desperate wish to go home. Like Know, the accompanying guitar is pared-down and repetitive (to suggest the voraciousness of the dog who keeps returning for more and a pain that will never end) and the vocals are fragile and barely-there. Like much of the Pink Moon album, the guitar echoes the lyrics and musically expresses by implication what is in Drake’s mind, the explication of which in words would severely dilute its impact. Listen to how the guitar picking slows to a faltering heartbeat as Drake sings, and then it picks up the pace to reflect the eagerness with which Drake rushes to meet his destiny.
Know, I believe, can be interpreted, in one of two ways. First of all, it may be seen as a message to his family who loved him, and yet found themselves unable to communicate to him in any meaningful way and were compelled to watch him drift away before their eyes. And yet, "I love you" and "I see you" are qualified by "I don't care" and "I'm not there". This signals a blankness of mind, an awareness that something within him has withered and died, an absenting of his mental presence from his physical situation, a conscious retreat from view, a fear of the horror on their faces, and, ultimately, a realisation of a betrayal of himself, his family and his music. An alternative interpretation would be that "Know that I love you" and "Know that I see you" represent the strongest and most powerful voice from within, a conflation of the different authority figures he has encountered in his life, and that "Know I don't care" and "Know I'm not there", alternately represent Drake's responses to these challenges. Indeed, "Know I'm not there", could easily be read as "I want to disappear". It could be an indication of just how invisible Drake felt when trying to communicate with others. In his own mind, he may well have been a ghost. To recall Elvis Costello’s I Want To Vanish: “This is my last request/I’ve given you the awful truth/Now give me my rest”.
Parasite
This is a song fed by the nagging voices in Drake’s head, which appeared to belittle and demean his songwriting aspirations. Drake was frightened by a general perception that he was living parasitically on others, and making a living by observing others and using these observations as the inspiration for a song. There is a real sense of shame and self-disgust in this song. The line, “falling so far on a silver spoon”, appears to hint at his rumoured heroin addiction. He evidently felt little pride in his accomplishments, or maybe the little pride he did feel was diluted by what he saw as the constant jibes and belittling remarks of others. And yet, when he refers to “travelling two by two”, I believe he is referring to his constant companion, his fellow traveller, the chorus of dissenting voices in his head parasitically feeding off him as he, in turn, fed off others. Contemporary reports of those who crossed Drake’s path with no understanding of the music or the man suggest a general belief that he was simply approximating the misery of others in a vicarious way and adopting a persona that suited the purposes of his music. In this song, he appears to see himself as something slug-like, slithering in the dirt, grabbing at people’s skirts to attract their attention, something that is beneath people’s contempt. Think back to “One of these things first” where Drake appears to crave social respect that comes with more “respectable” jobs than a singer-songwriter: “I could have been one of these things first” [...] “I could be/Here and now/I would be, I should be/But how?” He simply did not have a choice in the matter. However “easier” his life would have appeared outwardly, he would have seen himself as living a life of “controlled schizophrenia”, living a hollow lie. The realisation of this fact would prove to be of little comfort to him, however.
Free Ride
A weariness of the facade of life pervades this song. It encapsulates the emotional schism that had erupted between his family, friends and himself. In his mind, he imagines his family in the wake of his passing. They attempt to memorialise him with family snapshots (perhaps representing a younger, happier Nick that they would prefer to remember in place of the shambolic, morose, uncommunicative latterday Drake) that they “keep on the wall”. But his cynicism prevents him from feeling any kind of human attachment. He “sees through” the family pictures and the mourners that attend his funeral (“the ball”), which are seen as cattle shuffling through the family home. The reference to “keeping a carpet that’s so thick on the floor” indicates Drake’s belief that his family only care about preserving their reputation and family name, and, indeed, Drake sees this carpet as being thick with dust (family secrets?). And yet, against this backdrop, he begs them to allow him pass peacefully from their lives (“won’t you give me a free ride?”).
Harvest Breed
The penultimate song represents Drake’s eagerness to be released from this life to a place of safety. Listening to this song, one recalls Fruit Tree’s “safe in the womb of an everlasting night” and “safe in your place deep in the earth”. The line, “falling fast and falling free” strongly suggest an opium haze. Rumours have continued to circulate since Drake’s death over whether or not he used heroin. There is no hard evidence to support this theory (however, it has been speculated that the reason that Drake’s family requested a cremation was to avoid an autopsy which would have detected the presence of heroin in his body), although the marked deterioration in his appearance during the last 2 years of his life certainly hint at this.
From the Morning
To conclude the album, Drake gives us this glorious and uplifting song, an envisioning of what he dearly hopes for in the hereafter. He sees his spirit ascending from the ground in a state of grace and returning to the Saturday Sun which came early one morning of his youth and revelling in “endless summer nights”. But the Saturday Sun of his youth has been replaced by Sunday’s rain of his present predicament, which sees him weeping for “a day gone by”. The darkness of his life can only be redeemed by the hope of a better life to come. (What I hear in this song is the “crazy magic” of Northern Sky, perhaps the most sheerly beautiful of his songs. The one moon that “knew the meaning of the sea” happened to be a pink one. “It’s been a long time that I’ve been waiting” [...] “It’s been a long time that I’ve wandered through the people I have known”, he sings in the earlier song, and he desperately aches for a return to the simple joys of his youth, which look ahead to the simple pleasures of From the Morning: “I never held emotion in the palm of my hand/Or felt sweet breezes the top of the tree”.) The joy in his voice is matched by some of his most effusive guitar playing. It is dearly hoped that in his tragic passing, he did indeed find the peaceful ease that his heart clearly craved.
When all is said and done, what remains is the album that you hold in your hands which has touched your heart profoundly. But, after the record stops playing and when you have decoded the last of these elliptical lyrics, you put it back on the shelf and carry on with your life. The privilege of the sane is the ability to compartmentalise their emotions. But, let us never forget the human side behind the music. It may be appear to be a long time ago and so very far away, but this is a memento of a damaged mind, a mind fractured from within by derision, division and delusion, and it was the unhappy lot of his family to witness the disintegration of somebody they loved. There is a tendency, I think, for people to fetishize the broken moments of a sensitive soul like Drake, but let us not forget that, whilst for us he may exist as music to be enjoyed at will, once upon a time he was born into his body, lived his life as he saw fit and endured as much as he could mentally withstand. For that reason, he deserves our closest listening and our undying respect. To recall Yeats: “I, being poor, have only my dreams;/I have spread my dreams under your feet;/Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
