Mojo - The Music Magazine

Island Records boss Chris Blackwell reflects on his label's lost soul...

"When I had my office in Oxford St in '66 to '68, Nick Drake came to see me. He was a very jovial character, he was funny, very outgoing. He played me some music that I liked a lot, but very different from the music I was marketing. At that time, I was doing rock stuff, grooves, R&B-ish stuff like Spencer Davis. I'd already signed John Martyn, because I thought he was more like a jazz musician.

"I didn't think I could do anything to help him, because it was so outside what we did. So I told Nick to come back in six months, maybe things would be different. So he came back six months later and I put him with Joe Boyd and let them get on with it.

"I got to know him in the later stage, after Joe Boyd had left Witchseason and we got him back in-house. Nick by then had become very introverted. The last time I saw him was at Basing Street studio, in the reception. He was sitting hunched up on a chair with a small reel-to-reel. The deal that we had with him was that whatever the album cost, we paid him. I asked how much it cost and he told me.

"What made him change? I don't know. I don't know. I hate to say anything against smoking spliff, but I think sometimes with some people it can make them much more inward. It makes you more introverted; he ceased to be an extrovert, but there may have been other reasons.

"Out of the records he made, I like Five Leaves Left the best. It has a sensitivity, a vulnerability. It's so soft and gentle. It's the opposite of pushy. It pulls you in, you have to sink into it, it doesn't come out and grab you."

As told to: Pat Gilbert

Nick Drake appears on the cover of this month's issue of MOJO magazine, on sale now. Read Mat Snow's exclusive cover story with contributions from the Drake family and his associates, and marvel at a trove of previously unpublished photographs by the late Keith Morris.