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.light, happy vs.sad, healthy vs.sick.“You can say the sun is shining if youreally want to,” Drake challenges, voice steady and clear.“Ican see the moon and it seems so clear,” he shrugs.Clocking in at eighty-three seconds, “Horn” is the shortesttrack on Pink Moon and the lone instrumental; nauseatingly spare, it is also one of the records’ most emotional.Themelody is played only on the second and third strings, withthe bass thumped out on the fourth string, in C Major—thesong feels funereal, symbolic, angry, with each note strikingquick and hard.“Horn” is followed by “Things Behind theSun,” the record’s longest and most lyrically complextrack—plenty have speculated that the song is about drug use,although considering all of its allusions to the ground (“Lookaround, you find the ground / Is not so far from where you are… say a prayer for people there”), it seems more likely that“Things Behind the Sun” is actually very much about death.Drake’s guitar is tuned to a standard tuning, and his playing is anxious and quick.The two-and-a-half-minute “Know” is as stark as “Horn,” andalmost as angry.Played on the fifth and sixth strings at thetwelfth fret, “Know” features four lines of lyrics, totalingeighteen words (“Know that I love you / Know I don’t care /60Know that I see you / Know I’m not there”) and loads of moaning disguised as hum.The song is frequently comparedto the Doors’ boisterous “Roadhouse Blues” (from 1970’sMorrison Hotel), and while the melodies are vaguely similar, it’s hard to equate Drake’s flat, desperate vocals toMorrison’s overly sexualized yowls: both singers may havesputtered out young (both died of questionable causes), butwhen Morrison bellows about having a real good time, it’shard not to believe him.Plenty have retroactively questioned the nature of Drake’ssexuality (by all accounts, he was more asexual thananything), but Drake was seeing a woman named SophiaRyde for several years—as Dann explains, she preferred theterm “best (girl)friend” to “girlfriend” proper.Rydeeventually ended the relationship, telling Dann “I couldn’tcope with [Drake’s depression].I asked him for some time.Inever saw him again.” The afternoon of his death, Drakeperched at his desk and composed a letter to Sophia, which hefolded and placed in a sealed envelope by his bed.“FreeRide” is widely considered to be about Ryde (check the cleverplay on her surname!) and Drake’s dissatisfaction with theway their relationship ended.Like many cuts on Pink Moon,“Free Ride” is anxious and sharp, with Drake opining “Iknow / What you do / When you’re through.”“Parasite” was most likely composed in the late 1960s, whenDrake was living in the Belsize Park flat Joe Boyd paidand arranged for.The song is riddled with images of urbandisillusionment—the song’s narrator appears dissatisfied withcity life and the ways he functions within it; Drake mewsabout “sailing downstairs to the Northern Line” (a referenceto the Chalk Farm tube station, not far from his apartment)61and declares, “I am the parasite of this town.” Unsurprisingly, by the time the song was recorded, Drake had already ditchedLondonfortheconsiderablyquieterclimesofTanworth-in-Arden.Interestingly,Callyclaimsthat“Parasite” is, to date, probably Nick Drake’s mostmisunderstood song: “If one takes into account Nick’s deepunderstanding and studies of English Literature, when lookedat in the third person, Nick seemed to be commenting aboutparasites, not [on] him feeling like a parasite,” Cally insists.“Harvest Breed” and “From the Morning” close out PinkMoon; both tracks are less famed for their instrumentation than their lyrics, which are frequently quoted in discussions of Drake’s death (“Harvest Breed” gives us “Falling fast andfalling free / This could just be the end,” while “From theMorning” features “And now we rise / And we areeverywhere”—the couplet carved into Drake’s tombstone).Although Drake’s first two LPs were bolstered by elaboratearrangements and guest players, they were still relativelyspare affairs, complete with despondent lyrics and strangeacoustic flourishes.For Pink Moon, Drake famously ditched the extra players, but the most striking difference betweenDrake’s earlier work and his final LP is the unmistakable shiftin vocal style: the transformation in Drake’s timbre andpronunciation is astounding, far more chilling than hisretroactively foreboding lyrics.On “River Man,” arguablyone of Five Leaves Left’s darkest tracks, Drake’s voice sounds self-assuredand animated, turning up at the ends, theatrical and strong.Drake was never known for vocal somersaults or elaboratemelisma, but by the Pink Moon sessions, he was barelycoughing out his own words.Mostly, Drake sounds resigned.62There are three tracks on Pink Moon that were written at least three years earlier, in 1969: “Place to Be” and “Parasite” canboth be heard on Drake’s practice tapes from 1969, and Drakeperformed “Things Behind the Sun” at Queen Elizabeth Hallthat same year, although the track was probably composed in1968, if not earlier (Boyd tried to convince Drake to includethe song on both Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter, but Drake ultimately deferred to his instrumentals).Butregardless of when each individual track was composed, thereis a uniformity of sound and sentiment to Pink Moon that’s striking: the album plays like a coherent, cohesive whole.Shortly after Drake deposited the master tapes at Island,photographer Keith Morris, who snapped Drake for the frontof Bryter Layter, was booked to shoot the cover of Pink Moon.According to Dann, the session began in an alleybetween numbers 94 and 96 South Hill Park in Hampstead;eventually, Morris shifted Drake to a park bench a few yardsaway, overlooking Hampstead Ponds.Drake was wearing anovercoat and a heather-gray turtleneck sweater; his lightbrown hair fell in greasy waves, grazing his shoulders.Hislips were pursed, shut.As Dann writes, “His hunched figureand blank expression told their own story.” Morris wasconcerned by the depth of Drake’s withdrawal, tellingHumphries, “He wouldn’t even look at me, let alone doanything.It was just ‘stand there, stand there, look overthere [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]