Nicholas Rodney Drake was born in Rangoon (Burma) in 1948, was the son of a merchant often forced to make long trips, one of them was Nick, when he was four years, Drake, a wealthy British family, were definitely in Tanworth-in-Arden, a small town near Oxford.
The education he received during his childhood Nick Drake was really careful, was the best colleges and soon he instilled a taste for poetry, painting and music, school started playing the clarinet, saxophone and acoustic guitar .
His friends describe him as the time a young shy but cheerful and friendly, great athlete and good student, Nick loved poetry (especially William Blake) and classical music.
Nick performs with 17 years together with his 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 has composed several songs. And called attention to his powerful style environment fluid, agile, perfect for playing the guitar and his voice, sweet and bitter, while reciting and singing. By then he had already discovered Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Tim Buckley to a Van Morrison.
In 1968, Nick Drake works in a charity concert in London against the war, there was discovered by Ashley Hutchings, Fairport Convention bassist remains impressed by the talent of young Nick Hutchings talk to Joe Boyd, producer of the Convention and of many 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, following a message that went out in the cases of cigarette paper warning were only five papers.
Five Leaves left, produced by Joe Boyd covers all the songs that Nick had been composing in their teenage years, heartfelt songs, full of hope and doubt, like pages of a secret diary where Nick is shown as is, without hide nothing, "Time has told me" tells of the quest for love, about finding oneself through another, "way to blue" on the pursuit of happiness, in "Fruit Tree" on the doubts generating fame.
Surprised at the incredible performance of all issues, without any support that point of string arrangements and piano notes, Drake together a masterful sequence of songs, from folk and jazz, from pop and rock, with touches of blues and soul, gems of the caliber of "Cello Song," "River Man" or "Day is done."
Five Leaves Left got good reviews but the album is not sold well, motivated in part because the disc was introduced only in direct, Nick Drake did not feel comfortable playing live and offered lifetime few concerts are the few documented legendary performances, Nick sitting in a chair, looking at the floor, continually asking apology, insecure and shy.
After his first record, 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 denied that any financial help, Nick feels somewhat bewildered in the environment of the city, far from the support of her friends and family, new music and poetry, their livelihoods are at this time.
Joe Boyd clear choice Nick Drake, and decides not to repair costs for its next album, contacting all sorts of leading musicians, including John Cale, who are fighting even The Velvet Underground.
While Nick was very happy with the project and began to show a particular retracted, always walked bent, old clothes and spent a term in the distant gaze, who knew him described him as a very smart person, a young tall, handsome , with a special aura that made him seem tired, as if they bear a great burden on his shoulders.
In 1970, after more than nine months of work is published "Bryter Layter" without doubt the most ambitious album of Nick Drake, also the most diverse and the most optimistic, the disc contains three wonderful instrumental "Introduction" that opens the disc "Bryter Layter" and "Sunday" that closes it, including songs like "Hazy Jane II," "At the chimes of the clock city" or "Fly", fables about love, about life, full of a thousand shades , Drake delivered his best lyrics here, authentic poems laden with symbolism and magic. Highlights on "Northern Sky", undoubtedly the most beautiful love song ever written by a human being, the joy of meeting, love as the ultimate goal of existence, the final destination of a road marked by misfortune.
In Bryter Layter Drake extends its records, addresses a large number of styles, and not based on his guitar, makes use of string sections, electric guitars, wind to deliver their second masterpiece, perhaps the most emphatic.
Bryter Layter also got good reviews but not sold as expected, though its majesty and elegance that were more obvious, perhaps a record was too complex, too perfect for the era.
From here the data are unclear and confusing, Nick Drake finally fell into a deep depression, was a time in psychiatric treatment but there was no improvement, made several trips, some of them driven by Boyd in an attempt to free themselves from pressure to bear, in those days was said that Nick Drake left the composition, perhaps to devote to producing other musicians, long periods away and what really did in those periods 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 their third album, "Pink Moon", recorded in just two days and the only presence of his voice and his guitar acoustics.
Pink Moon, we are in a man who speaks directly with death, a person completely buried, abandoned to their fate, a desgranando is a painful emptiness and desolation of prints, which was once hope becomes 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," "parasites" and "Harvest Breed" are tormented confession aloud from a man who is coming to an end.
Technically "Pink Moon" is once more perfect guitar arrangements and melodies build a really thrilling, full of sadness but a beauty hardly describable, Nick's voice sounds better than ever, suffer with every word that comes from his lips.
Once the album was Drake who gave himself the master on the record, in fact left it on a tray at the front desk and spend three days there without anyone repair it.
Followed more dark days, Nick Drake tried several things, first wanted to enlist in the army where he was admitted and then even working as a computer programmer, in recent years lived long periods in Paris, there comes the sound of their relationship with Françoise Hardy is a fact that they met and they both professed mutual admiration, but do not know until you get the point.
Drake ends up back in her parents' home in Tanworth-in-Arden, writes songs for a sporadic theoretical fourth album that never saw the light of these latest songs (compiled in the essential "Time of no reply") highlights the shocking " Black Eyed Dog. "
One morning his mother, surprised that Nick was not yet decided to climb up to his room at the bedside was a book of poems in the concert player Brandenburg in bed and her son died, was just 26 years.
Nick Drake formally committed suicide, the autopsy found traces of Tryptisol, an antidepressant that Nick used to combine with sleeping pills, his death might well have happened by accident, by an inadvertent overdose, his family insists that those days Nick was happy with a lot of projects in the head.
The fact is that the death of Nick Drake helped create the myth, the legend, closing a cycle perfect. Drake is the tombstone in the small cemetery Tanworth-in-Arden, offering faithful testimony that Nick really existed. Since then his music was installed in bedrooms and attics sobering poets of bohemianism of dreamers.
Although his music has never achieved remarkable levels of popularity has been regularly reviewed and the myth has been edited several posthumous albums, the best is called "Time of no reply" that in addition to their latest songs, it contains items such as beautiful "Clothes of Sand" or the "Time of No Reply."
Also released were different "Bootlegs" compositions collected their first home, very influenced by Bob Dylan and the blues are "Tanworth-in-Arden 1967-68" and "Second Grace."
All the work of Nick Drake is absolutely crucial and essential, rare, very seldom have had the opportunity to discover a man in his songs in the way that Nick is on his own, rarely have felt so close to love, despair and beauty, the unfathomable beauty of the songs of Nick Drake.
