Nick Drake died in 1974 at 26. But his brief life had a lasting and profound impact. It took a television commercial to rescue his music from cultdom and introduce it to an international audience.
In A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, a haunting tribute to Drake and his music, his sister Gabrielle takes us through the Drake family history as director Jeroen Berkven’s camera meditates on the almost mystical landscapes of the English village of Tanworht-in-Arden where Drake was born and lived.
I was introduced to Nick Drake’s music while he was still alive. A poet friend of mine who suffered from depression (as did Drake) turned me on to “Five Leaves Left” and I was immediately enchanted. My friend was obsessed with Nick’s music and found solace in its sweet sadness and a kind of kinship that tempered his loneliness. When Nick died it was a huge loss for all of us who were just beginning to discover and appreciate his work. I had felt this same sense of loss before when Tim Buckley died and would feel it again when Tim’s son Jeff drowned in the Mississippi River. Musical geniuses who died much too young.
Safe in the womb
Of an everlasting night
You find the darkness can
Give the brightest light
Safe in your place deep in the earth
That’s when they’ll know what you’re really worth
Forgotten while you’re here”
Lyrics from “Fruit Tree.”
Other than a few childhood home movies, no film footage of Nick Drake exists. So director Berkven had to create a sense of Drake through other means. That he succeeds is quite remarkable. He is enormously helped by Nick’s mother Molly. Her own music uncannily evokes her son’s and creates a deeply emotional dimension to A Skin Too Few.
Here’s A Skin Too Few in its entirety. Pour yourself a glass of wine or a cup of tea and enjoy this 48 minute tone poem. The quality is good enough that you can watch it in full screen.
