On This Day in 1974, the World Lost the Folk Icon Whose Most Beloved Album Became Popular Posthumously (And Almost Got Him Fired When He Was Alive)

Music tends to take on a new meaning after the artist who created it dies, and the death of English singer-songwriter Nick Drake on November 25, 1974, and the subsequent effects his passing had on his third and final album, Pink Moon, are certainly no exceptions to this rule. Drake’s previous two records didn’t do exceptionally well, thanks in no small part to the fact that Drake refused to engage in any album promotion and his reluctance to perform live.

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As A&R manager at Island Records, Muff Winwood, recalled in Darker Than the Deepest Sea: The Search for Nick Drake, “[Island Records founder] Chris Blackwell loved him and was always talking about what a great talent he was. But the rest of us would have given him the boot.” In the same book, journalist Jerry Gilbert recalled Drake as a “well-spoken” but “mumbling” young man. “There was nothing expressive about him,” he said. “I don’t think he made eye contact with me once.”

Nevertheless, still waters tend to run deep. Drake’s final album, Pink Moon, seemed to clue listeners in on the breadth of his being. Even considering that Pink Moon is the one album that Drake opted to keep stark and bare with just himself on vocals, acoustic guitar, and piano, it is an impressive feat of creative profundity.

It just took the public a while (and the grief of Drake’s passing) to see it.

Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’ Never Got Its Due When He Was Alive

Death has an uncanny way of adding new meaning to virtually any piece of art, including Nick Drake’s third and final album, Pink Moon. Two years after Drake released the album, Drake overdosed on amitriptyline, an antidepressant, in an apparent suicide. A tragic end to a long battle against his mental illness, Drake’s death imbued a new sense of melancholy into his album. As publications and critics increasingly began lauding Pink Moon as a seminal album ahead of its time in songwriting and production styles, more conversations sprang up about Pink Moon and its supposed connection to Drake’s depression.

Cally, the former creative director at Island Records, disagreed. Speaking to biographer Amanda Petrusich, the single-named source said, “Nick was incapable of writing and recording whilst he was suffering from periods of depression. He was not depressed during the writing or recording of Pink Moon and was immensely proud of the album, as letters to his fathers testify. Some journalists and book writers have found this fact disappointing, as it doesn’t reflect their own impression of the album. Nick confounded these impressions often. I think all of Nick’s albums are understood and misunderstood to the same degree. In that lies their great beauty and welcomed mystery.”

The creative director’s stance on Drake’s final album makes its posthumous elevation to cult-worthy status all the more heartbreaking. After two unsuccessful albums and a third that promised not to do much better, Drake would’ve had no way of knowing just how influential he would become in folk songwriting circles decades later. Nearly three decades after Drake’s death—more time than he was ever alive—Rolling Stone ranked Pink Moon among the greatest albums of all time.

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