40 Fun Facts About Nick Drake

Which car maker's 1999 Milky Way advert used Nick Drake's Pink Moon and sent his American sales soaring?

Volkswagen set a night-time convertible drive to the song, and Drake's American sales jumped more than tenfold within a year. Buyers of the car were later given a CD that opened with the track.

Which Hollywood actor narrated Lost Boy, a 2004 BBC radio documentary about his idol Nick Drake?

Brad Pitt recorded his narration in Los Angeles shortly before filming Ocean's Twelve, having discovered Drake's music about five years earlier.

Which Dark Knight star made and acted in a music video for Nick Drake's Black Eyed Dog in 2007?

Heath Ledger also told the 2007 Venice Film Festival that he hoped to make a documentary about Drake. His short film was screened publicly only twice in his lifetime.

Which future pop star was turned away from Nick Drake's school band for being too poppy?

Chris de Burgh was in the year below Drake at school and wanted to join the group, which played R&B covers and jazz standards. The band was called the Perfumed Gardeners.

Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left takes its title from a warning inside packets of which product?

Cigarette papers sold by Rizla once carried a slip near the end of each packet telling smokers that only five remained. The album includes River Man and The Thoughts of Mary Jane.

Nick Drake, the quintessentially English folk singer, was born in 1948 in which Asian city?

Rangoon, in newly independent Burma, was home because his father worked there as an engineer. The family settled in rural Warwickshire in the early 1950s.

Which Wes Anderson film features Nick Drake's Bryter Layter song Fly on its soundtrack?

The Royal Tenenbaums arrived in 2001, three decades after the song was recorded with viola and harpsichord backing. Another track from the album, Northern Sky, turned up in Serendipity that same year.

Which band dedicated their 1985 hit Life in a Northern Town to the late Nick Drake?

The Dream Academy's singer Nick Laird-Clowes wrote the song on the very guitar Drake holds on the cover of Bryter Layter. It reached the American top ten.

Why did Nick Drake often pause awkwardly between songs at his rare and poorly attended concerts?

To retune his guitar was a necessity, because many of his songs used different tunings. He rarely addressed the audience, and folk-club crowds wanted songs with choruses.

Nick Drake's Pink Moon has only his voice, guitar and one overdub of which instrument on the title track?

Piano appears for a single short melody. Everything else was recorded over two late-night sessions with nobody but an engineer in the studio.

Which instrument does Lyn Dobson play on Nick Drake's The Thoughts of Mary Jane?

Flute from Lyn Dobson floats over the strings on the seventh track of Five Leaves Left. Dobson also played the solo on Manfred Mann's Pretty Flamingo.

Which guitarist plays on the alternate take of The Thoughts of Mary Jane on Nick Drake's Time of No Reply?

Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention plays on the December 1968 take, which stayed in the vaults for nearly two decades. The compilation gathered outtakes and home recordings from across his short career.

Which Cambridge friend of Nick Drake arranged the strings on The Thoughts of Mary Jane and Day Is Done?

Robert Kirby had never worked in a recording studio, but Drake insisted on him after rejecting an established arranger's charts. Kirby gave up his own degree to do the album.

Which American producer signed Nick Drake to Witchseason Productions and produced his first two albums?

Joe Boyd had already produced Pink Floyd's first single, Arnold Layne, and offered Drake a contract after hearing a four-track demo taped in his student room.

Which former Velvet Underground member added celeste and organ to Nick Drake's love song Northern Sky?

John Cale heard Drake's demos, demanded to meet him at once and recorded his parts the next day. NME later called the track the greatest English love song of modern times.

Nick Drake's One of These Things First appears on the Grammy-winning soundtrack of which 2004 indie film?

Garden State had its soundtrack compiled by its director and star, Zach Braff, who collected the Grammy for it. The song comes from Bryter Layter.

Which folk musician wrote the title song of his 1973 album Solid Air about his close friend Nick Drake?

John Martyn often had Drake to stay and described him as the most withdrawn person he had ever met. The album came out the year before Drake died.

Nick Drake's ashes lie in a Warwickshire village churchyard beneath which kind of tree?

Oak shelters the grave he shares with his parents, and the churchyard has become a place of pilgrimage for fans. An annual gathering is held in the village.

Which subject was Nick Drake studying at Cambridge when he left nine months short of graduating?

English literature lost out to music: when his father urged him to stay for the safety net of a degree, Drake replied that a safety net was the one thing he did not want.

Gabrielle Drake, sister of Nick Drake, played Nicola Freeman in which long-running British soap opera?

Crossroads filmed its village scenes in the very Warwickshire village where the Drake children grew up. Gabrielle also starred in the science-fiction series UFO.

Nick Drake grew up and is buried in which Warwickshire village, now a place of pilgrimage for his fans?

Tanworth-in-Arden became home in the early 1950s, when the Drakes moved into a house called Far Leys. His gravestone carries a line from From the Morning, the closing song of his last album.

At which English boarding school, also attended by his father, was Nick Drake an accomplished sprinter?

Marlborough College saw Drake run the 100 and 200 yards for the school team and captain his house, though music soon pushed his studies aside.

Before Cambridge, Nick Drake spent months busking and practising guitar in which French university town?

Aix-en-Provence was where he began to practise guitar in earnest, playing in the town centre with friends to earn money. He also travelled on to Morocco from there.

Which record label, co-founded by Chris Blackwell, released all three of Nick Drake's studio albums?

Island Records paid Drake a £20-a-week retainer and kept his albums in its catalogue despite very poor sales. Drake handed the tapes of his last album to Blackwell himself.

In August 1969 Nick Drake recorded four songs for Night Ride, a BBC radio show presented by which DJ?

John Peel aired the session after midnight, and it was finally released as an EP in 2014. Drake's debut got little radio play beyond a handful of progressive BBC shows.

Nick Drake's producer modelled the vocal sound of Five Leaves Left on the debut by which Canadian songwriter?

Leonard Cohen's 1967 debut had been produced by John Simon, and Drake's producer wanted the same intimacy, with no shiny pop reverb on the voice.

The arrangements on Nick Drake's Bryter Layter were meant to evoke which Beach Boys album?

Pet Sounds was the model, and two Beach Boys session men, Mike Kowalski and Ed Carter, even play on the record.

Heaven in a Wild Flower, a 1985 Nick Drake compilation, takes its title from a poem by which English poet?

William Blake used the phrase in Auguries of Innocence, and Drake was drawn to his work. The compilation includes River Man and The Thoughts of Mary Jane.

Sound Techniques, the Chelsea studio where Nick Drake made his albums, was housed in a former what?

Dairy premises on Old Church Street were converted in the mid-1960s by two engineers who designed and built most of the equipment themselves.

Which composer's concertos was Nick Drake listening to at home on the night he died in November 1974?

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos were his choice that night, and writers have noted similarities between the composer's work and Drake's own compositions.

Nick Drake's River Man, the centrepiece of Five Leaves Left, is written in which unusual time signature?

5/4 gives the song its swaying pulse, and critic Ian MacDonald suggested the rhythm grew out of Dave Brubeck's Take Five. It is also one of the few songs Drake wrote for standard tuning.

For River Man, Nick Drake asked for a string arrangement that sounded like which English composer?

Frederick Delius was the model given to veteran composer Harry Robertson, who was brought in specially because the song's metre was beyond Drake's usual arranger.

Which engineer was the only other person in the studio when Nick Drake recorded Pink Moon over two nights?

John Wood had engineered both earlier albums and was one of the few people Drake trusted. He judged the 28-minute record to be just about the right length.

After Pink Moon, a disheartened Nick Drake retired from music and considered which very different career?

The army was one idea he toyed with after convincing himself he would never write again. He went back to live with his parents instead.

Which title did Nick Drake use twice on Bryter Layter, for two songs numbered I and II?

Hazey Jane II is the second track on side one, while Hazey Jane I closes the side, so the sequel plays before the original.

Which 18th-century French song did Nick Drake record at the Pink Moon sessions but leave off the album?

Plaisir d'amour, under a minute of solo guitar, would have been the only song on any of his albums that he did not write. It surfaced in 2004 as a hidden track.

Before recording Pink Moon, Nick Drake took a short break at his label boss's villa in which country?

Spain did him good: he returned to London refreshed and, in October 1971, asked to make what became his final album.

Which American singer-songwriter covered Nick Drake's Which Will on her 1992 album Sweet Old World?

Lucinda Williams recorded it years before a car advert made Drake widely known in America. The song comes from Pink Moon, his final album.

Which 1979 box set, named after a song on Five Leaves Left, first gathered Nick Drake's three albums?

Fruit Tree was commissioned by a newly arrived press officer at his label and came with a long biography by the American journalist Arthur Lubow.

Which relative of Nick Drake wrote and sings two songs on his 2007 home-recordings album Family Tree?

His mother, Molly, wrote songs privately and never published them, and an album of her own 1950s home recordings followed in 2011.