Flawed Genius, Flawed Account

Nick Drake: The Biography by Patrick Humphries

A very interesting book I devoured in a couple of days which touches a fair bit on Drake's Island label mates John Martyn, The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention. Producer and mentor Joe Boyd features prominently although, along with some family members, apparently refused to contribute to this project - I don't think this is particularly evident (incidentally I would recommend Boyd's excellent White Bicycles memoirs as a companion piece to this account).

However the book does suffer a bit from being repetitive in places and consequently a bit overlong - for example the middle section labours many examples of Drake's discomfort on stage, and is sometimes disjointed giving the impression that different sections were written at different times out of order and then joined together without an overall edit. For instance established characters are (re)introduced later in the book as if for the first time, and vice versa.

These criticisms aside the book did encourage me to dust off my Nick Drake CDs and listen to them again with renewed insight.

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