Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One Half of the Balance, 1 May 2006
This book is as relevant and as interesting to read as the Patrick Humphries version and if both are read, the two together will probably provide the closest interpretation there will ever be on the life and recorded works of the enigmatic Drake. Dann does take a different slant to Humphries it wouldn't be worth the effort if it wasn't - perhaps it's a more clinical interpretation, warts and all. Dann (in much the same way that Humphries did) traces Drakes life and recording history based on interviews (and reference to other written records) with contempories of Drake but it's best remembered that the recall of individuals can change a lot over 30 years (for better or worse). Dann's view that Drake had a schizophrenic form illness that may or may not have been a substance abuse psychosis is interesting based on what a modern day psychiatric diagnosis of the symptoms would conclude - but again the truth can never be known, lots of questions are left unanswered and are perhaps unaswerable. A biography of this type can never be totally accurate - but it's still worth reading!
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34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
This came as such a disappointment..., 26 Mar 2006
After the flawed Humphries biog, the time was ripe to redress the balance and write a definitive account of the life and music of Nick Drake. Given Trevor Dann's excellent credentials, this is what I had hoped for in this book. Sadly, for me, it draws too much on sources already well familiar to most Drake fans, tries to 'sex up' established facts, and maddeningly, seems to throw away major opportunities for new insight, such as the first interview with Sophia Ryde.
Did Nick Drake suffer from schizophrenia? I've read nothing that would point to that so far and Dann doesn't convince me here either. The symptoms he lists are classics of depression and it is widely acknowledged that this was Nick's condition. Use of such an outdated term as 'split personality' really grates and typifies a seeming desire by the author (or publishers?) to take us on a trip to Daily Mail Land. Ditto the sub-tenuous 'evidence' that Drake was a heroin user (he worked with John Cale, so apparently....) and the clunky smoking-dope-causes-mental-illness angle (how very 'now'!) Nick Drake's story is far from the typical sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll one and all the more interesting for it. Why is Dann taking us down that tired old road?
As for wasted opportunities... it transpires that Nick wrote a letter to "best (girl)friend" Sophia Ryde on the day he died. Dann speaks to her "about Nick on the record for the first time." What did the letter say? We are none the wiser. Dann may have valid reasons for demurring on this score - the content of what could be construed as The Suicide Note may have been so delicate that he balked at including it. He doesn't say. On the other hand, this is a biography and delicate material (respectfully handled, of course) is the nature of biography.
There is an evident demand for, yet a finite supply of material concerning Nick Drake. Articles in the music press, myriad CD compilations, bootlegs on e-bay, biographies: each promising something new, but rarely delivering (Dann himself rightly calls the ethics of this in to question). I don't want to think badly of Trevor Dann, his superlative selection for the Way to Blue compilation shows a deep respect for Nick Drake and his music. So why, after reading this book, am I left with the feeling that, once again, the same old material is being rehashed and rearranged to cash in? What went wrong?
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The (Continuing) Search for Nick Drake, 6 Mar 2006
For fans and others who have read Patrick Humphries's biography (Nick Drake, Bloomsbury, 1977) Trevor Dann's book may come as something of a disappointment. Although an enjoyable read, to the casual reader it adds little to Humphries's work. What it does have that Humphries's lacks, is permission (I assume) to quote lines from Drake's songs, which makes interpretation of the songwriter's increasingly fragile mental state a much easier task. Dann's book also suggests that Drake's drug use was far greater than is suggested in the Humphries book and as a result the reason for Drake's rapid spiral into despair appears much more clear cut. In a sense, although this "another late-60s/early 70s artist destroyed by drugs" theory may well be the case, for me it detracted from my mental image of Drake the tortured, sensitive and possibly spoilt artist who, like others before him, was simply destined never to find a comfortable fit with society nor to be accepted by it during his lifetime.
The book contains a useful discography, extensive references and mini-reviews of all Drake's songs, which I enjoyed.
Darker than the Deeper Sea does move the story on in that it attempts to explain the rise in popularity of Drake's music in the 1990s and into this century; what it fails to capture, in my humble opinion, is the bleak, frightening intensity of Drake's implosion in the way that Humphries captured it. But that may simply be because I read the latter's book first.
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