ARDEN FANS

Five musicians share their love for Nick’s music

PHILIP SELWAY, RADIOHEAD It’s music that speaks to me, with that interplay between his voice, and this virtuosic but incredibly soulful playing on acoustic guitar. There is an innocence, and a transparency. It weaves into my own work. He isn’t really a Radiohead influence, except for “Lozenge Of Love”, which had that syncopated guitar and snaking melody.

STUART BRAITHWAITE, MOGWAI I’d never heard anything like Pink Moon: just Nick Drake, his acoustic and one line of piano, so minimal. There’s something about it that showed me you don’t have to bombard people with music to accomplish something better. It’s really beautiful – sad, but oddly hopeful.

BRIDGET ST JOHN I loved Bryter Layter, which is really well produced, but Pink Moon is more like being in a room listening to him playing again. I can’t read books about his illness written after the fact. I don’t feel the same way about Pink Moon as they do. It’s just very intimate and original. It’s playing from the inside out.

JOE HENRY Pink Moon did something to me sonically, with just his voice and guitar, the tonality of his playing, the intimacy of his singing, the nuanced compositional voice of his melodies, its sparking intimacy and access to Nick Drake’s beating heart. The sound of his guitar on that record is already speaking volumes.

JOHN GRANT I discovered Nick Drake when I first went to England in the late ’90s, and responded to his beauty and melancholy. I responded to his story too, that he wasn’t really celebrated when he was alive, was an introvert and had trouble performing live. I really identified with the type of person that he was. Five Leaves Left gets to me most.