Nicholas Rodney Drake was born in Rangoon (Burma) in 1948, was the son of a major trader often forced to make long trips, one of them was born Nick, when he had four years, Drake, a wealthy British family, settled permanently in Tanworth-in-Arden, a small town near Oxford.
The education he received Nick Drake during his childhood was really painstaking, was the best colleges and soon he instilled a taste for poetry, painting and music, at school started playing the clarinet, saxophone and acoustic guitar .
His friends from the time described him as a young shy but cheerful and friendly, great athlete and good student, Nick liked much poetry (especially William Blake) and classical music.
With 17 years Nick performed alongside their peers a trip to Morocco, where drugs and discovers there are credited his first serious compositions, with 19 years, when you start studying English literature at Cambridge Nick Drake had already composed quite a few songs. And called attention powerfully in their style fluid, agile, perfect for playing guitar, and his voice, sweet and bitter, reciting and singing at the time. By then he had already discovered Bob Dylan, the Beatles, with Tim Buckley, a Van Morrison.
In 1968, Nick Drake acts in a benefit concert in London against the war, there was discovered by Ashley Hutchings, Fairport Convention bassist who was impressed by the talent of the young, Nick Hutchings speak to Joe Boyd, producer of the Convention and a multitude of British folk groups. 
A year later, at the age of 21 years, Nick Drake enters the studio for the first time, his first record the name of Five Leaves Left, the name suggested in the wake of a message that came out in the cases of cigarette paper warning that only five papers.
Five Leaves left, produced by Joe Boyd collects all the songs that Nick had been composing in his teenage years, heartfelt songs, full of hope and of doubt, like pages from a secret diary where Nick is shown as it is, without hide nothing, "Time has told me" speaks to us from the pursuit of love, about finding oneself through another, "way to blue" on the pursuit of happiness, in "Fruit Tree" on doubts that generates fame.
Surprised at the incredible performance of all issues, without more support that point arrangements of strings and piano notes, Drake chaining a masterful succession of songs, from folk and jazz, from Pop and Rock, with touches of blues and soul, with jewels of the caliber of "Cello Song," "River Man" or "Day is done."
Five Leaves Left won good reviews but the disc sold well, motivated in part because the disc was introduced only in direct, Nick Drake did not feel comfortable playing live and gave throughout his life very few concerts are the few documented legendary performances, Nick sat in a chair, staring at the floor, continually asking for an apology, insecure and shy.
After his first album, and despite the commercial failure, Nick Drake decides to devote himself entirely to music, and left the university and established definitively in London, against the advice of their parents who denied any financial help, Nick feels a bit bewildered in the environment of the big city, far from the sustenance of their friends and family, new music and poetry will be their livelihoods in this era.
Joe Boyd bet decisively by Nick Drake, and decides not to repair costs for its next album, contacting all sorts of musicians from the first row, including John Cale, who still an active member in The Velvet Underground.
While Nick was very happy with the project already started to show an especially retracted, always walked stooped, worn with old costumes and a distant expression in the eyes, those who knew him described him as a very smart person, a young tall, handsome , With a special aura to it made her look tired, as if they bear a great burden on his shoulders.
In 1970, after more than nine months' work is published "Bryter Layter," undoubtedly the most ambitious album of Nick Drake, also the most diverse and the most optimistic, the disc contains three instrumentals wonderful, "Introduction" which opens the disc "Bryter Layter" and "Sunday" that closes it, including topics such as "Hazy Jane II," "At the chimes of the clock city" or "Fly", fables about love, about life, filled with a thousand shades , Drake delivers his best lyrics here, authentic poems loaded with symbolism and magic. Stresses on "Northern Sky", undoubtedly the most beautiful love song ever written by a human being, the joy of the encounter, love as the ultimate goal of existence, as the final destination of a journey marked by misfortune.
In Bryter Layter Drake extends its records, addresses lot of styles, and not based so much on his guitar, makes use of string sections, electric guitars, wind to deliver his second masterpiece, perhaps the most emphatic.
Bryter Layter also earned good reviews but not sold as expected, although his majesty and elegance that were more obvious, perhaps it was a record too complex, too perfect for the season.
From here the data are unclear and confusing, Nick Drake finally fell into a deep depression, was a time in psychiatric treatment but did not notice any improvement, made several trips, some of them favored by Boyd in an attempt to release the pressure to bear, in those days were comments that Nick Drake has left the composition, perhaps to devote himself to producing other musicians, long periods away and what really did in this period is still a secret that nobody has been able to uncover.
In 1972, suddenly, almost in secret, Nick Drake meets with his friend John Wood to record what would be his third album, "Pink Moon", recorded in just two days and with the sole presence of his voice and his guitar acoustics.
In Pink Moon we are a man who speaks directly with death, a person completely sunken, abandoned to their fate, a husking is a painful emptiness and desolation of prints, what was once hope turns into cynicism and despair, pink moon is the night, death, as opposed to the sun, a day to life. "Place to be", "Road", "Know," "Free Ride", "Parasite" or "Harvest Breed" is a tormented confession aloud from a man who sees his upcoming final.
Technically "Pink Moon" is once more perfect guitar arrangements and melodies build a truly shocking, full of sadness but a beauty hardly descriptive, Nick's voice sounds better than ever, suffer with every word that comes from his lips.
Once the album was Drake who handed himself in the master record, actually left it on a tray at the front desk and move there three days without anyone to repair it.
They followed more dark days, Nick Drake tried several things, first wanted to enlist in the army where he was admitted and then not even work as a computer programmer, in these last years he lived long periods in Paris, there comes the rumor of his relationship with Françoise Hardy, is a fact that they met and they both professed mutual admiration, but it was not known until that point came the relationship.
Drake ends up returning to his parents' house in Tanworth-In-Arden, sporadic writes songs for a theoretical fourth album that never saw the light, among the latter songs (Acquired in the essential "Time of no reply") highlights the shocking " Black Eyed Dog. "
One morning his mother, missed that Nick had not been lifted yet decided to climb to his room at the side table had a book of poems, in the player's concert Brandenburg in bed and her son died, had just 26 years.
Nick Drake officially committed suicide in the autopsy found traces of Tryptisol, an antidepressant that Nick used to combine with their sleeping pills, his death might well have happened by accident, by an inadvertent overdose, his family insists that in those days Nick was cheerful and with a lot of projects on the head.
The fact is that the death of Nick Drake helped create the myth, the legend, closing a cycle perfect. The tombstone of Drake is in the small cemetery Tanworth-In-Arden, offering faithful testimony that Nick really existed. Since then, his music was installed in bedrooms and attics of poets desconsolados of bohemians, dreamers.
While his music has never reached remarkable heights of popularity has been periodically reviewing the myth and have been posthumous editing different disks, the better the comments "Time of no reply" that also contain their latest songs, contains items such as beautiful "Clothes of Sand" or the "Time of No Reply."
There have also been edited different "Bootlegs" by collecting his first compositions homemade, highly influenced by Bob Dylan and the blues, highlighting "Tanworth-In-Arden 1967/68" and "Second Grace."
All the work of Nick Drake is absolutely crucial and indispensable, rare, very rare times we have had the opportunity to discover a man in his songs in the way that Nick is presented in theirs, they rarely have felt so close to love, despair and beauty, the unfathomable beauty of the songs of Nick Drake.
