I found it quite sad that his parents – latterly, after his death – repeatedly said (and perhaps came to believe) that towards the end of his life Nick had been happier than they’d ever seen him and so on. I think this sense that Nick was always passive, that he didn’t make anything happen, everything happened to him, is not supported by evidence, especially from the summer of 1967. But then, of course, the whole cult surrounding his death contributed towards his mythology and status, and that process has never stopped. On the second aspect – what advantages unconnected with your career may you be throwing away – there is not a great deal to say except that it is a rounded personality which is most likely to lead its owner on a happy and full road though life.

If that Volkswagen commercial had not appeared, I think his following now would be about as big, or only slightly less, than if it had not appeared. And I feel there’s an irony about my book, which is that there’s now more knowledge about Nick available than there is about absolute megastars, Jimmy Page or Mick Jagger, say, whose private worlds remain a mystery because they keep them that way, meaning their public face and books are drawn from pretty superficial interviews and so on.I think a lot of Nick’s admirers – with the best of motives and goodwill towards him – want the outcome to have been different, and have therefore seized on small glimpses that have entered the history books, as it were, of him having been happier and much better, and of having taken far fewer pills on his last night on Earth than he did. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Gabrielle understood that – although it slightly stuck in her craw to reopen the wound, as it were – interest in Nick is not going away. And I think classical music informed his sensibility easily as much as pop or rock or folk and so on.

And a final thing: Joe Boyd deserves an enormous amount of credit for making sure that Nick’s records were still in print, and that a boxed set was still in print.It wasn’t a diary that he was writing of old – he started it in March 1972 because he recognised that Nick’s illness was severe and that it was, as he put it in one of his entries, ‘going to be a long job’ (which I used as one of the chapter titles). We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Allow me to assure you it is not – but it is a terribly important time in the development of you as a person into something that you are going to start to be at about the age of 23.

Here, in the late 1970s you could set your alarm clock radio to WHFS at night, in the Maryland suburbs or anywhere in the DMV, and wake around 6 am to gentle sounds of Bryter Layter (instrumental), or expect to hear it within the hour, getting ready for high school. His own clear, flowing prose acts as a link between the many quotes from Nick Drake's family, and others he knew during his life. There were five or so covers during his lifetime – very few, and none that would have brought in any money. Obviously it is a step which we have to consider carefully, because it is an irrevocable one,” he began, going on to pose two vital questions: “Are you more or less likely to succeed at your chosen career if you leave now?But he was passive – and there was no suggestion that Nick was mentally unwell as a teenager, that there was something larger militating against his future success.

The family’s housekeeper, Naw Ma Naw, died in 1988 and so could not have been consulted by Morton Jack. So Nick must have felt deeply frustrated, especially – as I said earlier – because he had been led to believe that it was going to create ripples. But he’s a very fine guitarist, it goes without saying, and probably put just as much work into his style as Nick did. In fact, though always quiet and introverted, he was funny, intelligent, seriously cool, deeply loved by a wide circle of often talented and eclectic friends and his wonderful and compassionate parents and sister.and talk about the songs and the surreal cover like they’re a puzzle they can solve, but Pink Moon is like the Book of Revelation. It was like a scene from The Decameron, with food everywhere, which they invited us to help ourselves to. Island hadn’t accounted him properly, and I don’t blame them particularly for that – there was a degree of chaos between Witchseason and Joe Boyd and Island, and it was all being sorted out.