By 1980, the English folk singer Nick Drake's profile had reduced down to a permanent display of his three LP record covers behind plastic sleeves on a high display rail in a small, one room record shop, diagonally opposite the tube station of London's Camden High Street. The LP that this song came from, 'Pink moon', had been released 9 years earlier and, as with his two earlier LP releases, sales had been in the very low thousands: there simply were not many of his records in circulation. Nick Drake died tragically in 1974 and five years after his death, a box set was issued that included some haunting extra tracks. Too expensive for many - and once again a limited release - you could stand by the desk in the record shop and the owner would play you these rarest of melodies... The box set was reissued in 1986, with the extra tracks now on their own vinyl: slowly but steadily, Nick Drake's name became a regular feature of the style press (so prevalent in the 1980s), and new pressings found their ways into life and lives.
Nick Drake's relationship with Camden started when the American producer Joe Boyd rented him an apartment further up the hill, out towards the heath in a residential area now known as being the last resting place of Sigmund Freud, for Cecil Sharp's archive collection of traditional British folk music and dance moves, and, further over in St John's Wood, for Pentangle's shared house.
In the days prior to digital reproduction, you could hear a song on the radio, as a taped recording, as a record or in a live performance. Nick Drake had very few records pressed, very few live performances (or interviews), very little radio play, but did appear on a few C60 Chrome mix tapes - often greatly appreciated but rarely owned. Before computers, the act of ordering a record could take weeks of frustrating and expensive return visits, and the record shop up the steps of Camden's High Street became known as a sort of embassy for the memory of Nick Drake. His record covers had some nice photography, but were OK at best, and (at the time) the records could sound over-orchestrated; but tracks like 'Parasite', 'River Man', 'Pink Moon' and 'Hazey Jane II' were uniquely arresting. By 1999 the long process of realisation had reach the point where his voice was adorning a car commercial, with the 'Pink Moon' bolted to a future carrier of defeat devices. Today he is perhaps the best known English folk artist and certainly the second best known 'Drake' of Island records.
The influence of American music on British music is often measured in records and acts: the influence of Buddy Holly on The Beatles; The Beatles on the Beach Boys and vice-versa in tos and fros. There are two Americans whose impact on British music was great, even if the method was a little more oblique. New Yorker Tony Visconti worked in London refining the soundscape of song, with both an early and intriguing Orchestra and a later boldness and detail that liberated the works of David Bowie and T-Rex. Perhaps less known is Joe Boyd who came from further up the coast in Boston. Implicated in the 'Newark folk festival', and present when Dylan went electric: when in London, Boyd set up a the seminal 'UFO' psychedelic club - just after gardens to the side of the British Museum. Whilst his production would go on to include Bulgarian polyphony, a cover of 'Chelsea Morning' by Joni Mitchell, a first pop song by Pink Floyd and an early LP by Fellini's walk-on starlet 'Nico', it is perhaps Boyd's early work between Nick Drake and another British folk act - 'Fairport Convention' that will centre thoughts. In the late sixties, George Martin was proving that the recording studio could be used as an instrument of musical form, and it can be argued that Joe Boyd took this spirit of potential to British folk, working in and out of the studio with the two folk acts at times blending: two or three years with singers so different in measure - Fairport Convention's Sandy Dennis being expansive for every shade of reserve that Nick Drake could analyse. The result included 'Five leaves left' and 'Unhalf Bricking' in 1969, and “Bryter Layter” and “What we did on our holidays” from 1970 ('Unhalf Bricking' with perhaps the most radical LP artwork of the epoch). Adding to the immortal melodies of Nick Drake were musical measures from Fairport Convention's that included “Tale in hard time”, “A sailors life” and “Who knows where the time goes” (here, Boyd's produced version being voted favourite track in Britain by a BBC radio poll). Joe Boyd's tree of songs were all from fine seeds quite apart from him, but as a good gardener, he let one of the most important fruit trees of British music find maturity.
The footage uses layers of 360 turns from a Tair 3 off the top of the breast-like "Puech de Mariette" aside the Cham des Bondons, which is the second largest cluster of standing stones in France. Every now and then you see a Neolithic standing stone or two pass in the distance - 'ancestor memories'. I had a Gitzo Sport tripod, which is lightweight and perfect for most shots, but a Tair 3 on a Gitzo Sport is like an elephant in a shopping caddy, and the footage jerks like silent film. Playing with syncs turned this quality into form.
AJM 10.2.20
Press play and then 'L' and even f11. Escape and f11 a second time to return.
