His father remembered: "In one of his reports said that none of us seemed to know him very well. School friends recall Drake as having been confident, often aloof, and "quietly authoritative". He played rugby for the C1 House team and was appointed a House Captain in his last two terms. He developed an interest in sport, becoming an accomplished 100- and 200-yard sprinter, representing the school's Open Team in 1966. Five years later, he went to Marlborough College, a public school in Wiltshire which had also been attended by his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. In 1957, Drake was sent to Eagle House School, a preparatory boarding school near Sandhurst, Berkshire. Encouraged by his mother, Drake learned to play piano at an early age and began to compose songs which he recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder that she kept in the family drawing room. Recordings of Molly's songs, which have come to light since her death, are similar in tone and outlook to the later work of her son they shared a similar fragile vocal delivery, and Gabrielle and biographer Trevor Dann noted a parallel foreboding and fatalism in their music. Nick's older sister, Gabrielle, became a successful screen actress. In 1950 the family returned to England to live in Warwickshire at their home, Far Leys, in Tanworth-in-Arden, south of Birmingham, where Rodney worked from 1952 as the chairman and managing director of Wolseley Engineering. Rodney proposed in 1936, though they had to wait a year until she turned 21 before her family allowed them to marry. In 1934, Rodney met Molly Lloyd (1916–1993), the daughter of a senior member of the Indian Civil Service. His first biography appeared in 1997, followed in 1998 by the documentary film A Stranger Among Us.ĭrake's father, Rodney Shuttleworth Drake (1908–1988), moved to Rangoon, Burma, in the early 1930s as an engineer with the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation. By the early 1990s, he had come to represent a certain type of "doomed romantic" musician in the UK music press and was frequently cited as an influence by artists including Kate Bush, Paul Weller, Aimee Mann, Beck, and The Black Crowes. In 1985, The Dream Academy reached the UK and US charts with " Life in a Northern Town", a song written for and dedicated to Drake. By the mid-1980s, Drake was being credited as an influence by such artists as Robert Smith of The Cure and Peter Buck of R.E.M. Whether his death was an accident or suicide has not been resolved.ĭrake's music remained available through the mid-1970s, but the 1979 release of the retrospective album Fruit Tree allowed his back catalogue to be reassessed. On 25 November 1974, Drake died from an overdose of amitriptyline, a prescribed antidepressant he was 26 years old. On completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. ĭrake suffered from depression, particularly during the latter part of his life, a fact often reflected in his lyrics. There is no known video footage of the adult Drake he was only ever captured in still photographs and in home footage from his childhood. His reluctance to perform live, or be interviewed, contributed to his lack of commercial success. Neither sold more than 5,000 copies on initial release. He recorded two more albums- Bryter Layter (1970) and Pink Moon (1972). He released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20 years old and a student at the University of Cambridge. He did not find a wide audience during his lifetime, but his work has gradually achieved wider notice and recognition. Nicholas Rodney Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician known for his acoustic guitar-based songs.