There aren’t any blew-me-away music documentaries that came out in 2023, on the order of, say, Get Back. There are still quite a few worth viewing, often on subjects that would have been deemed impossibly uncommercial or impossible to film not too long ago. I did miss some I know have at least screened at festivals, and should they be easier to access in 2024, I’ll include them on a supplement to that list. There were still almost twenty I found worth writing about, and if they were heavy on well known figures, docs on the likes of Barbara Dane and Peter Case continue to emerge.

1. Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd. When this came out, I was concerned whether this was necessary since there was a pretty good documentary (primarily distributed through the DVD market and not widely screened in theaters) on Barrett almost twenty years ago, The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story. I even wondered whether it was just a retitled or rejigged version of that documentary. It’s not; it’s an entirely different production. And though there’s naturally overlap in what’s covered (and some of the interview subjects), it’s worthwhile, primarily for the amazingly wide assortment of first-hand interviews with people who knew Barrett. That includes Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, but also a host of others. Among them are early Floyd managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King, Barrett’s sister Rosemary, and several of Barrett’s girlfriends. Some who only pop up for brief comments are celebrities in their own right, like Pete Townshend and playwright Tom Stoppard.

Some of these interviews were obviously done quite some time ago, as several have since died, and co-director Storm Thorgerson died ten years ago. I could done without a few sequences in which actors with passing resemblances to Barrett seem to be silently reenacting surreal things Syd could have experienced or imagined. But mostly there are interesting memories and stories, and while the archival footage of Barrett with early Pink Floyd will be familiar to big fans, some of the vintage pictures won’t. It’s probably not giving anything away to readers of this blog that Barrett’s story was tragic in many ways, and his descent into mental difficulties and retreat from the music business isn’t glossed over. His substantial contributions to psychedelic rock are celebrated in detail, however, particularly his songwriting.

2. The Stones and Brian Jones. Known for quite a few movies with rather sensationalistic first-hand investigations by the filmmaker, Nick Broomfield has gotten more straightforward with his recent Leonard Cohen film (Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love) and this documentary about Brian Jones. There’s a lot more to say about Jones than can fit into about 95 minutes, and this doesn’t cover everything about his life and music; Paul Trynka’s biography Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones is the best source for that, and there are plenty of other details in other books. A longtime rock journalist I respect has also criticized this film for not using much for the original Rolling Stones’ compositions on the soundtrack; in a related weakness, not adequately covering the scope of Jones’s contributions to numerous songs by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on unusual instruments; and the image quality of a few interview segments recorded on Zoom.

Fair enough points, especially if you’re looking for the ideal Jones documentary. But even as a longtime Stones/Jones fan, I liked what the movie did cover. A lot of the footage and photos are uncommon, and even if much of it can be uncovered in other various sources, it’s used adroitly to tie together strands of Brian’s story. A good number of soundbites from interviews with Jones’s girlfriends are used that aren’t exactly well-trodden info either, from Linda Lawrence to the less well known ones like Pat Andrews and Dawn Molloy. Bill Wyman has a lot of on-camera comments done recently specifically for this project, and some other lesser-heard-from figures were also interviewed, like film director Volker Schlöndorff, for whose film A Degree of Murder Jones composed the soundtrack. Sure it would have been nice if Jagger, Richards, early Stones manager Andrew Oldham, and some other key figures had been interviewed. But many, also including Marianne Faithfull and Jones’s father, are represented by relevant vintage interview fragments, often in voiceover rather than film (and it’s not always possible to tell what might have been taken from other sources rather than done for the documentary). 

While Jones’s philandering and drug abuse are covered, there’s plenty of attention to his music, Wyman noting his slide guitar work and how Jones and Richards combined their riffs. Brian’s failed attempts at songwriting are discussed, and one particularly noteworthy segment includes a tape recording of a few lines from a tune he’s trying to work out. Unlike some other books and films, this doesn’t dwell on or sensationalize the controversial circumstances behind his 1969 death, though it is of course covered near the film’s conclusion. There are some minor inaccuracies in the chronological sequencing of the events that slightly diminish the film’s value, though they’re of the kind that don’t seem to bug many viewers except fanatics who trainspot these sort of details.

3. San Francisco Sounds: A Place in Time. Streaming on the MGM+ channel, this two-part, two-and-a-half-hour documentary focuses on the San Francisco psychedelic rock scene of the last half of the 1960s, though episode two goes a fair way into the 1970s. This is a decent overview that focuses on the most celebrated acts of the time: Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, Santana, and Sly & the Family Stone, with some attention paid to Country Joe & the Fish, Moby Grape, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Charlatans, Steve Miller, and the Tower of Power. Many of the artists dead and alive are represented by voiceover clips; the only talking heads seen on screen from recent interviews are a few non-musicians, including critic Ben Fong-Torres, radio DJ Dusty Street, light showman Bill Ham, and poster artist Victor Moscoso. There are quite a few (if very brief) archive film clips and photos, some quite rare or at least infrequently seen. Highlights among those are Big Brother in rehearsal, a snippet of Dan Hicks performing informally and solo, and famed radio DJ Tom Donahue.

What this documentary could have benefited from, at least for those who take this scene very seriously, is simply more time and depth. There were many interesting secondary musical acts in the scene who aren’t seen or even mentioned, some of whom were certainly filmed in decent quality, like It’s a Beautiful Day and Cold Blood. Some that barely or never recorded have interesting film clips too, like Ace of Cups. The Beau Brummels’ contribution as the first major ‘60s San Francisco rock group is, as usual in these productions, entirely overlooked, although you actually do hear an instrumental passage from one of their recordings in the background at one point. There’s arguably a little too much attention paid to non-musical aspects of the scene, like posters and light shows. And extending the coverage at the end to the Doobie Brothers and, more particularly, Journey (whose “Lights” plays over the end credits) is extending it too long. 

My expectations might have been too high considering the co-director, Alison Ellwood, did such a good job (as the sole director) of Laurel Canyon, a survey of the 1960s/1970s rock scene in that area of L.A. that was one of the best recent music documentaries. A similar format is employed here, but the subject’s really worth four full hours.

4. Reinventing Elvis: The ’68 Comeback. Debuting as a stream on Paramount Plus, the documentary looks at Elvis Presley’s fabled 1968 comeback network television special. The story is told well in the book Return of the King: Elvis Presley’s Great Comeback, by Gillian G. Gaar, who is interviewed in this film. But this doc also benefits from interviews with some of the program’s dancers, audience members, a choreographer, and most importantly, director Steve Binder, whose extensive comments are the narrative thread of sorts. There are also, of course, numerous clips from the special itself, as well as outtakes not in the original broadcast. Running nearly two hours, it’s padded a bit by commentary on the general sociocultural context of 1968, Elvis’s pre-1968 career (especially his descent into poor movies), and, more problematically, testimonies from current artists as to Presley’s huge enduring influence (as if that’s ever been in doubt).

Binder’s detailed recollections of his interactions with Elvis, and the obstacles Colonel Tom Parker (largely unsuccessfully) threw in the way of doing the show Elvis and Binder’s way, are the key attractions, though the other interviewees have their share of worthwhile stories and insights. The tragic footnote was how Binder and Presley could not sustain their friendship after the special as the director was unable to contact Elvis, one interviewee speculating that had they remained close, Presley’s career would have turned out differently and better.

5. Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis). Technically this first played a film festival in 2022, but didn’t start to circulate too widely until mid-2023, so I think it’s okay to put this in the regular 2023 listings. Hipgnosis was the design studio responsible for many classic rock album covers from the late 1960s through the late 1970s, formed by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, though  Peter Christopherson came in as a third partner in the 1970s. They’re most famous for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, but did several other Floyd covers as well as famous ones by Led Zeppelin, 10cc, Wings, and Peter Gabriel. They’re all discussed in depth in this documentary, directed by noted rock photographer Anton Corbijn. It’s straightforward in format, progressing chronologically with interviews with Powell, Paul McCartney, the surviving members of Pink Floyd, Robert Plant, Graham Gouldman, and Gabriel, as well as lesser known associated and friends. The only arty touch is filming the interviews in black and white, though the album covers and art are shown in full color.

As Thorgerson died about a decade ago, he’s only represented by some archival interviews. There’s vintage footage of Powell too, but he participated more than anyone in the interviews done for the film. Maybe some hardcore fans will lament the absence of coverage on some of their many relatively obscure album designs, whether for String Driven Thing (in which Helen Mirren can be seen) or Toe Fat. And while there are several books by now that tell much of the Hipgnosis story relayed here, it’s a well-paced overview of its highlights, as well as a reflection of a time when much time, art, effort, and money was put into elaborate sleeve designs, to the point of making special trips abroad in deserts and mountains to get the exact shots desired. Although appropriately brief, the time at which the team split in disputes over direction (some wanting to abandon sleeve design for videos) and finances is covered, Powell poignantly  noting that he and Thorgerson—close friends as well as colleagues—didn’t speak for next twelve years.

6. Little Richard: I Am Everything. Little Richard makes a good subject for a documentary, and this is a good one, but with some minor flaws that keep it from being an excellent one. It covers much of his career with a wealth of vintage interview excerpts and performance snippets, along with comments by quite a few peers, associates, musicians he influenced, and (least essentially) academics. The singer is consistently charismatic as a vocalist, pianist, and storyteller, if one that constantly inflates his importance, if usually in a humorous way.

Although much attention’s given to his mid-’50s superstar peak, there’s also some adequate space for his detours into gospel music both in the late 1950s and later decades, as well as his reversions to rock in the early 1960s and later. Various notables, some obviously in interviews dating back many years, testify to Richard’s greatness, including Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Tom Jones, Nona Hendryx, and Nile Rodgers. Some of the less famed people who worked with him get some time too, like “Tutti Frutti” lyricist Dorothy LaBostrie and drummer Tony Newman of Sounds Incorporated, who backed Little Richard on UK shows in the 1960s.

As exciting as it is to watch him perform, the vintage musical clips, though numerous, are frustratingly short — very short, like just a few seconds. Some of the writers and scholars make obvious or redundant comments about his sexuality and the discrimination he suffered. Longer music excerpts would have enhanced the impact considerably, and if those behind the film felt that would have made it too long, that’s underestimating the appetite of the audience. I believe most of them, myself included, would have welcomed extension of the film by about twenty minutes to reach the two-hour mark, if that would fit in more such material. Performance visuals aren’t the only things shortchanged — Jimi Hendrix’s pre-fame mid-’60s stint in Richard’s band is only mentioned, and the sequence of what happened when, as it is in many documentaries, sometimes gets out of order, though few except serious fans will catch these.

7. What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? Blood, Sweat & Tears are never going to be considered among the hipper acts of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But for a couple years or so, they were one of the most popular rock bands in the US. While there’s much about their history in this documentary, it centers on their 1970 tour of Eastern Europe, which included shows in Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland. (For what it’s worth, contrary to a remark in the film, this wasn’t the first time an American rock band played behind the Iron Curtain; the Beach Boys played a few shows in Czechoslovakia in June 1969.) A different documentary of that tour was made at the time, and while much of it is lost, the recent discovery of some of the footage means that a fair amount of it is used in this movie. The director of the tour documentary, Donn Cambern, is interviewed in this new overview, as are several key members of BST, including singer David Clayton-Thomas, Steve Katz, and Bobby Colomby, and Jim Fielder. So are record executive Clive Davis and rock journalist David Felton, who wrote critically about the band at the time.

It wasn’t known by many at the time that BST agreed to the State Department-sponsored tour to keep Canadian native David Clayton-Thomas from being deported. The band had mixed feelings about doing it for other reasons, including embarking on what could have been considered cooperation with the government at a time when there was a lot of opposition to its policies (especially US involvement in the Vietnam War) among their audience. Footage from the tour itself reveals wildly varying reception from the Eastern European audiences, from enthusiastic near-rioting to, if at only one concert discussed, hostile indifference. Upon their return, some of the musicians noted their discomfort at visiting countries where some personal liberties were curtailed and suppressed. This in turn generated some hostility from the counterculture and rock press who viewed them as tools of the US authorities, their hip quotient further diminished by taking gigs in Las Vegas. This is cited by some of those interviewed as a principal factor, perhaps the principal factor, in the band’s diminishing popularity and descent from superstardom.

Although it’s interjected irregularly, the film does also cover some of the group’s general history. It takes a while to get to it, but their origins as an Al Kooper-led group with hipper musical credentials on their debut album is detailed (though Kooper isn’t interviewed), as is his departure and the recruitment of Clayton-Thomas, the band feeling they needed a better lead singer. So is their appearance at Woodstock, including some concert footage, though not much was filmed of them at that festival, their manager at the time getting blamed for asking for money. A subsequent manager was recommended to them despite his being in jail at the time; he was hired, and was the manager during their Eastern European tour. There’s also discussion of their integration of horns into rock arrangements and its influence at the time, though even at that time, it wasn’t as big a hit with critics as with the public.

While very interesting, if a little erratically constructed, the film doesn’t entirely satisfactorily deal with the effect of the tour and the group’s subsequent struggles. The tour might have cost them some credibility with critics (like Felton, who wrote about them in Rolling Stone at the time) and some audiences, but there certainly wasn’t an immediate effect on their popularity. Their third album spent a couple weeks at number one in August 1970, after the tour was finished. The possibility that Clayton-Thomas’s departure (which isn’t mentioned) in the early 1970s, and a drop in quality in their recordings, might have played a significant role are not considered as factors.

8. The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane. Dane has had an interesting life, to say the least, both as a musician and activist. Although most identified with the folk revival, from the 1950s through the 1970s she also recorded some jazz and records that even bordered on pop-rock, as well as doing a mid-’60s album with the Chambers Brothers. Her left-wing activism included membership in the Community Party in her younger years, involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, obstacles her politics threw in her career path during the McCarthy era, and travel to Cuba in the mid-’60s at a time when few American artists went there, which led to appearances throughout the world, including in East Germany. She was married for a long time to Sing Out magazine editor Irwin Silber, and helped run a record label, Paredon, that put out many world music and politically minded discs. She turned down a management offer from Albert Grossman, before, she says in the documentary, he handled more famous clients like Peter, Paul & Mary and Bob Dylan.

All of this is covered in this film, though it can’t go into all this and more as much her recent memoir The Bell Still Rings: My Life of Defiance and Song does. This does offer numerous recent interviews with Dane, still alive as of this writing in her mid-nineties, as well as children and fellow musicians and activists, Jane Fonda and Bonnie Raitt being the most famous. Considering she never became a star or even sold too many records within the folk or jazz communities, there’s a surprising wealth of archive footage, including network TV appearances on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Playboy After Dark. Most amazingly, there’s also footage of her travels and musical appearances in Cuba in the 1960s, and many interesting photos help round out the story. It doesn’t always follow a straight chronological order, though she was doing so many things nearly at once it would be hard to film this in timeline fashion. Her post-1970s years, during which she was largely inactive in music, don’t get much time, though there are quite a few clips of her when she began performing more in her eighties. The narrative intersperses those with her basic history from the 1940s through the 1970s, which actually works better than lumping that in at the end.

9. Psychedelicized: The Electric Circus Story. From 1967 to 1971, the Electric Circus was one of New York’s leading rock clubs, located in the East Village on St. Marks Place. While this 90-minute documentary isn’t extraordinary from a filmmaking point of view, it’s very competent, mixing archive photos and footage with interviews with some of the venue’s main figures, concertgoers, and a couple performers from major bands who played there. Among those interviewed are founders Jerry Brandt and Stan Freeman; Lester Chambers of the Chambers Brothers; and Sly & the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico. There isn’t much film of actual musical performances at the club, those being limited to silent clips of Sly & the Family Stone and the Voices of East Harlem. But there are a good number of bits of the many non-musical circus-like acts who also performed there; shots of the audience grooving; and news clips of the time covering the Electric Circus and interviewing audience members.

Although overshadowed by the Fillmore East, and even some other venues like Steve Paul’s Scene, in coverage of New York’s psychedelic-era rock, this film makes the case (not overtly) that it should get more attention. More than other venues in New York and elsewhere, it was a multimedia experience, not just due to the light shows, but the aforementioned circus-like performers, like mime artist Michael Grando, one of those interviewed for the documentary. The space’s prior history as the Dom (noted for regular Velvet Underground performances in spring 1966) and the Balloon Farm is acknowledged. So is the tragic bombing, for still unknown motivations, in 1970 that injured seventeen and likely increased the damper on things that led to the club’s closure in 1971. So is the bust of Brandt for having a joint in his luggage when entering Canada, which led to him being ousted from the club’s operations, and a split between him and Freeman that was never repaired. I streamed this from a festival and it’s possible it might not screen widely or make it to home video, but it’s worth watching for fans of ‘60s rock. 

10. Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over. This is yet more average than the average music documentary, with plenty of testimonials to Warwick’s talents and character; plenty of snippets from archive clips, most very short, but including many of her numerous hits; and lots of recent interview comments from Dionne herself. As evidence of how widely respected she is among her peers, the interviewees—some of whom must have been filmed a few years before this went into wide release, and not everyone is still alive—include Burt Bacharach, Smokey Robinson, Chuck Jackson, Gladys Knight, Berry Gordy, Elton John, Clive Davis, Barry Gibb, Cissy Houston, Stevie Wonder, and even Bill Clinton. There’s not a great deal that serious fans won’t know, but her style and collaborations with producer/songwriters Bacharach and Hal David are discussed, as is her wide appeal to both black and white soul and pop fans. There’s attention to her activism during the Civil Rights era (which included a risky attempt to change lyrics in “What’d I Say” to refer to integration) and, more extensively, her involvement in AIDS-related causes. Although there aren’t many non-hit songs among the vintage clips, one of the most unusual has her singing in Italian, and there are so many clips sourced that few if any viewers will have seen all of the originals.

This is also like many documentaries in how it loses steam when it passes her musical prime. The last third or so is more about her considerable post-1970s humanitarian activities than her music, which got a lot duller after her association with Bacharach-David ended. How that (and indeed the partnership between Bacharach and David) ended isn’t discussed, and while her controversial involvement with the Psychic Friends Network and bankruptcy are, they’re not examined in much depth. Her sister Dee Dee, who made a lot of records, some very good, without getting big hits isn’t mentioned, although she’s seen in a news clipping. A documentary can’t cover everything, or everything in depth, but some fans, and I’m one, would like to know more. And not necessarily about the negatives—there isn’t anything substantial about her relationship with the Scepter/Wand label, which put out most of her big hits, or Florence Greenberg, who ran the label. Or how she felt about Cilla Black quickly covering and getting a big hit with “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” though that’s been gone over elsewhere. For many subjects, there are supplementary books to fill in a lot of gaps that documentaries can’t address. There hasn’t been a good one by or about Dionne Warwick, and time’s running out to get first-hand comments from those who were there for such a volume.

11. Joan Baez, I Am a Noise. With a lot of participation from Baez in recent interviews and concert footage from shortly before her retirement from touring, this nearly two-hour film has a greater autobiographical feel than many documentaries. That helps lead to pluses and minuses, the pluses being a good deal of archive footage going back to childhood home movies and 1958 live performance (with sound) at Cambridge’s Club 47. There are also lots of photos, rare documents, and letters (principally by Joan herself) going back to her pre-professional years. Other figures represented by interviews both vintage and done for this project include ex-husband and noted antiwar activist David Harris, her son Gabriel, and other family members. Important junctures in her career that are covered include early appearances at the Newport Folk Festival; her musical and professional relationship with Bob Dylan; her mid-‘70s resurgence with the Diamonds & Rust album and touring with the Rolling Thunder Revue (though, oddly, her one big hit single, a cover of the Band’s “The Night They Rode Old Dixie Down,” is not mentioned); and social activism that at times landed her in jail. Some scenes briefly show a huge archive of Baez material, some of which presumably was sourced for this movie.

Baez also spends a good deal of time ruminating over her difficulties with her family, including intimations of abuse on the part of her father, though the particulars aren’t too thoroughly detailed. She also gives a lot of space to discussion of her psychological problems, often referred to in letters that are blown up on the screen, and sometimes illustrated with animation. There are often transitions between her history and recent scenes of her traveling and on tour, and as often occurs, the recent sections are both less interesting and derail some of the momentum of the pre-1980 stories. Much that could have been covered of her purely musical evolution isn’t here, whether how she got acquainted with the traditional folk music that comprised the bulk of her early repertoire; her at times awkward attempts to move from solo folk to fuller arrangements and rock, which included an attempt at an unreleased mid-‘60s rock album produced by her brother-in-law, Richard Fariña; and her longtime relationships with Vanguard Records and manager Manny Greenhill. One of the recordings heard is a presumably teenaged Baez singing “Why Do Fools in Love,” and it might have been interesting to hear her views on rock, why she opted for folk, and how she felt about how the music scene changed as folk and rock mixed.

Some of this is covered in other books (though not very satisfactorily in Baez’s autobiographies) and liner notes, as well as the 2009 American Masters documentary How Sweet the Sound. I had the feeling, however, that Baez was undervaluing her musical career, or at least underestimating viewers’ interest in it. Maybe that says more about what I want in a documentary than what Baez wanted to express in this one. Still, there’s a gap in Baez’s legacy without a memoir, documentary, or biography that gives more space to her music and influence. Doing such a project wouldn’t prevent her from writing books and being in projects outside of music; Judy Collins, for instance, has also written multiple books, but did focus on her musical prime in Sweet Judy Blue Eyes. Baez did have the sense of humor to mock the cover of her Blowin’ Away album as one of the worst of anyone’s, attributing some of the impetus behind deciding upon the strange attire in which she’s dressed to her use of Quaaludes at the time.

Baez’s sometimes strained relationship with her younger sister Mimi Fariña gets a lot of screen time, and something should be noted about its portrayal. It’s presented as a loving but competitive and sometimes fraught one. Viewers might get the impression Mimi— who played guitar and sang in a duo with first husband Richard Fariña on pretty impressive mid-‘60s albums, as well as doing some later far less noteworthy recordings—wanted to have Joan’s stature as a musician, but lacked the talent and spent her adulthood in her sister’s shadow. Musically that might be true to some extent, but it’s not mentioned that Mimi Fariña founded the esteemed (and still operating) organization Bread and Roses. It presents concerts for parts of the population that might have a hard time going to such events otherwise, such as prisoners and people of all ages struggling with disadvantages. That’s as much of a legacy to society as what Joan did in her own highly valuable work for social causes.

12. Peter Case: A Million Miles Away. As a disclaimer, I’ve known singer-songwriter Peter Case for nearly twenty years, and also been friends with his wife, journalist/author Denise Sullivan (who’s interviewed in this film), for longer than that. I’ve known a few other people interviewed in this documentary too. But I do think this film will be of interest to anyone interested in the more adventurous side of the mainstream music business in the past half century or so, and the more mainstream side of the independent/underground world. Case has sort of straddled those worlds, first as part of new wave groups the Nerves and the Plimsouls in the 1970s and 1980s, and since then as a solo act who has blended and flitted between folk and rock. He’s never made it “big,” in part because, as he acknowledges here, he hasn’t been the greatest at working personal relationships with people who work at labels and publicizing musicians.

This doc has archive clips going back to his days as a street singer in San Francisco in the 1970s, interspersed with excerpts from recent performances. Case recounts his breaks and setbacks with wry humor, as laid out in one of his first interview remarks, when he remembers David Geffen asking him “what happened?” after Peter’s career didn’t take off. “I go, ‘You’re David Geffen,’” Case replied. “You tell me what happened.” He also recounts, with no shame, how he got “lower education” in the San Francisco streets while his peers were getting higher education in school, and how he was dropped from a major label because he was too inexpensive (sic) to promote.

Refreshingly, there aren’t interviews with more famous musicians and writers to validate how important he is; instead, we hear from peers from the world of performers that gained critical respect without stardom, like members of the Balancing Act and Lone Justice, Chuck Prophet, and Case’s ex-wife, fellow singer Victoria Williams. Prophet chips in with a witticism of his own when noting how, along the lines of the oft-quoted line that all of the few people who bought Velvet Underground albums formed bands, all of the few people who bought Case records were also inspired to leave their bands and go solo. Case seems happy enough in his cult-ish niche, though the major scare he endured in his fifties when he needed to have a bypass operation without health insurance is also part of the story, as is the rally of fellow musicians and fans to help cover his expenses.

13. Little Richard, American Masters (PBS). This is an entirely different documentary than the theatrically screened film Little Richard: I Am Everything, which was released shortly before this episode in the American Masters series was broadcast on PBS. Inevitably it covers some of the same ground, but it’s certainly less lively. Maybe that’s to be expected from an installment in a long-running series known for a straightforward style, but it’s less interesting than I Am Everything, even though it’s almost as long. It too mixes vintage interview and performance clips with comments from associates, British Invasion stars Ringo Starr and Keith Richards (both of whom played on bills with Little Richard in their bands’ early days), and  writers. Specialty Records chief Art Rupe is represented by audio, at one point noting the company did everything to get the star to record rock’n’roll again after he went gospel, even withholding royalties as part of that effort. Unlike I Am Everything, Pat Boone is among the interviewees, and while his take that he helped break Little Richard to a wider (and whiter) audience is dubious, at least he’s given the chance to offer his two cents.

As in I Am Everything, the performance clips are too brief. As great as Little Richard was, both documentaries make too much of him as an almost singularly titanic figure, boosted of course by many comments from Richard himself. It’s not an issue worth arguing too fiercely about since his importance is undisputed, but it should be noted, and is not in this film, that he wasn’t the only African-American rock’n’roll pioneer crossing over to white audiences in a big way starting in the mid-1950s; Chuck Berry and Fats Domino were just the biggest of those stars. Finer details about how his 1960s and early 1970s rock’n’roll comeback records on various labels didn’t catch on in a big way aren’t discussed, and Jimi Hendrix’s brief but colorful pre-stardom mid-‘60s stint in Richard’s band isn’t mentioned. If such info’s felt too mundane by documentary filmmakers, it’s out there in various books, though there hasn’t been a great one on the singer. If not as good as I Am Everything, this American Masters installment still adds material to documentary coverage of this icon, though it’s more supplementary than as interesting a film in its own right.

14. Max Roach, American Masters (PBS). The American Masters series broadcast episodes on three major African-American musicians in 2023, a welcome contribution to the PBS schedule. This nearly 90-minute overview of jazz drummer Max Roach was the best of the three as far as how well made a film it was, and would rank higher on this list if I was more of a jazz fan and thus more interested in the subject matter. It offered a lot of interest for me nonetheless, covering his journey from bebop (especially in the lineup he led with Clifford Brown) to Civil Rights-oriented music with then-wife Abbey Lincoln and later projects that focused on solo drumming and percussion ensembles.

With a guy whose career spanned more than half a century and had a discography of well over fifty albums (not counting the many he played on for other bandleaders), it’s not possible to do such a program without leaving a lot out. That might annoy some serious jazz aficionados, but what’s covered is covered well, with some excellent performance footage of his bebop days, excerpts from his Freedom Now Suite (his most well known and arguably most important work, with vocals by Lincoln), his M’Boom percussion orchestra, and even a clip of him and Lincoln performing in Iran in the late 1960s. There are also interviews with several musicians who worked with Roach, and several of his children.

15. Roberta Flack, American Masters (PBS). Like all American Masters episodes on musicians, this mixes archival clips with interviews, some vintage, some recent. It’s artier in its format than most installments in the series, though, using voiceovers instead of talking heads for the interviews. These include not just a lot of comments from Flack, but also from associates like producer Joel Dorn, ex-husband and jazz musician Steve Novosel, some musicians who played with her, and more contemporary journalists and musicians. There’s a lot of detail on her big hits “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” and (with Donny Hathaway) “Where Is the Love.” These include comments by Lori Lieberman, who did the original version of “Killing Me Softly,” and Clint Eastwood, whose use of “First Time” in Play Misty for Me revived interest in Flack’s cover and propelled it to #1 three years after its release on her debut LP. Attention’s also paid to the origination of her pop-jazz-soul in front of club audiences in Washington, DC; the prejudice she endured as a result of her interracial marriage; and a few lesser known songs, including a few of her more socially conscious ones from her early recordings.

It might not have been the intention of those making the film, but this wouldn’t make a big case for her being a major artist, certainly not to those not very familiar with her work. As noted, not too many of her songs are discussed aside from the three big hits, and there’s not much of a sense of how many records she did and what others might have been significant. Maybe room, for instance, could have been made at least for the Janis Ian-penned “Jesse,” her Top Thirty (just) 1973 follow-up to “Killing Me Softly.” The documentary also adheres to the cliché of getting much less interesting after an hour or so, with a lot of space for her association with Peabo Bryson and some general comments from more contemporary artists.

16. Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between. A singer-songwriter who never broke through to large-scale commercial success despite a lot of critical acclaim, Jeffreys was also hard to classify owing to his mix of rock, soul, reggae, and more. Hence the “in between” of the title, also referring to his mixed-race background. This 70-minute documentary is as modest in scale as his impact on the music scene was, even at his 1970s height, and is standard in format, blending interviews and archive clips. Those interviewed include Jeffreys himself, his wife and daughter, some brief bits of praise from contemporaries like Bruce Springsteen, and colleagues like guitarist Alan Freeman and producer Michael Cuscuna.

Such was the rather subtle and sometimes low-key nature of his work that it’s hard to imagine newcomers being blown away from exposure to it, but the movie, like his music, is reasonably interesting. His volatile relationship with the record industry, which saw him bounce between several labels, had something to do with his failure to make more commercial headway, though this could be said of many artists. There are a good number of brief clips of him in action from the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the strange juncture in which he blackened his face with minstrel-like getup for performance is covered. So is his sole hit of sorts, “Matador” (though then only in a few European countries), whose release as a single was suggested by Gene Simmons. His albums grew sporadic after the early 1980s, and his last few decades are covered lightly, ending with conveying the sentiment that he came to appreciate the devoted following he had rather than ruminate over his lack of greater recognition.

17. The War on Disco (PBS). A polarizing musical and cultural force, disco was both phenomenally popular and widely hated, culminating in a Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey’s Chicago Park in which records were burned and a major league baseball game forfeited. That event is also the key culmination of this hour-long episode of PBS’s American Experience series, which looks at how disco both rose in the 1970s and generated fierce antipathy among many music listeners. This doesn’t have much examination of the music itself and how it evolved out of soul and was produced in the studio, though some key records like “Soul Makossa” and “I Will Survive” are highlighted. The dominant viewpoint in this doc, expressed by some cultural commentators and a few disco performers, is that disco largely grew out of the black and gay communities, and the backlash was from white males who both felt threatened by its cultural expression and disliked the perceived elitism of clubs like Studio 54. Some other viewpoints are expressed, some feeling that the Chicago DJ (Steve Dahl) who spearheaded the Comiskey Park event wasn’t racist, but bitter over getting fired when his station changed format from rock to disco (though he quickly landed a job at another station). The archive footage and photos feature clips of dancers and clubs rather than performers, and naturally the Comiskey Park event where the record blowup grew into beer-fueled chaos.

The following films came out in 2022, but I didn’t see them until 2023:

1. In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50. This first screened at very select outlets in 2022, and didn’t get its first San Francisco screening—or, apparently, much screening in commercial theaters—until November 2023. So it could have gone into the main section of this list, though it wouldn’t have been too highly ranked. This alternates between interviews with/footage of King Crimson in 2019 and some attention paid to their lengthy history, including interviews with some of their numerous past members and some (and certainly not a ton) of archive clips. If anything, this favors the 2019/recent footage, almost to the extent that it’s as much a documentary of that iteration of the band as it is of King Crimson as a whole. This is a fairly common approach in music documentaries, and not one I usually endorse, especially for a band with a career as lengthy and complex as King Crimson’s. Maybe the filmmaker wouldn’t have had as much access—including a lot of recent interviews with King Crimson mainstay Robert Fripp—as he did without giving the then-current (and still fairly recent) lineup as much weight.

There’s some history here, but in bits that are more tantalizing than satisfying. From the band’s first and still most famous (if short-lived) iteration, Michael Giles, Ian McDonald, and lyricist Pete Sinfield are all interviewed, but without much insight into how the group came up with their highly distinctive brand of progressive rock, or the musical (rather than personal) specifics as to why it quickly collapsed. There are also interviews with important subsequent members like Bill Bruford, Jamie Muir, Mel Collins (who rejoined in the 2010s), and Adrian Belew, but no substantial discussion of how and why the group’s style changed so often (and, sometimes, radically) over the decades. Clips from as early as 1969 (though in crude black and white for that year) and the ‘70s and ‘80s are cool, but very brief. A brief homage in the credits to all the members who aren’t heard from (and, in some cases, not mentioned) fills up an entire screen, including such key names as Greg Lake, David Cross, Boz Burrell, and John Wetton. It could be argued that the main audiences for the film are King Crimson fans who know a lot of that stuff anyway, but then again some of that audience wants to learn more of that stuff, or at least hear and see some surprising and fresh content.

If you want to concentrate on what’s here rather than what’s missing, Robert Fripp lives up to his image as a curmudgeon with stuffy and reasonably amusing comments. These both attest to his musical perfectionism and make clear his disdain for being analyzed, as well as the time such interviews take away from practicing and concentrating on his work. Various fanatical fans testify to the strength of Crimson’s cult—a predominantly male one, it’s fair to say, especially judging from the audience shots from various 2019 concerts. One subplot of the recent coverage is of special note for being poignant without getting maudlin. Multi-instrumentalist Bill Rieflin was part of the group for most of the 2010s though he’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness, spending his final years playing with the band in an effort to do as much as he could before dying in 2020.

2. The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s American Pie (Paramount Plus). At around the fiftieth anniversary of this massively popular song, this hour and a half documentary looks at its genesis and realization. It’s stretched out a bit more than it should be to get to its length, but on the whole it’s pretty interesting, even if you’re not a huge fan of the song or McLean. Crucially, it’s not just about the song, also devoting some time to McLean’s early years and recording career. It also goes over the circumstances behind the plane crash that took Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper’s lives, and inspired, if that’s right word, the composition. McLean himself is interviewed a lot, as are some other relevant figures, like producer Ed Freeman, session musician Rob Stoner, and a sister of Valens. Some short segments with contemporary artists performing and discussing “American Pie” aren’t necessary, but they don’t take a lot of screen time.

There are some sides to the story that are interesting and not so well known, like the influence of Tim Hardin’s “Bird on a Wire” on McLean; the crucial role session pianist Paul Griffin played in the hit recording; and a 1971 radio broadcast in which Pete Seeger, with whom McLean had played, hails “American Pie.” McLean also goes through the lyrics and construction of the song in detail (verse by verse at one point), and there’s recent footage from the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, where Holly, Valens, and the Big Bopper played their last show before their deaths.

3. Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC (MVD). This focuses on just two clubs, Max’s Kansas City and CBGB, mostly during the 1970s, when they were both vital to the birth of punk and new wave. There’s considerably more coverage of Max’s than CBGB, although the latter isn’t neglected. It’s a rather modest documentary, without much in the way of star power or amazing vintage footage. But a good number of people from the scene are featured in the interviews, some of them famous or pretty well known, like Alice Cooper, Lenny Kaye, Syl Sylvain of the New York Dolls, and Billy Idol, along with somewhat lesser knowns like Jayne County, Elliott Murphy, and (briefly) Suicide’s Alan Vega. And there are quite a few contributions with more cult or behind-the-scenes figures like photographer Bob Gruen, Max’s booker Peter Crowley, New York Dolls manager Marty Thau, and members of Ruby and the Rednecks and the Testors. 

While you can find out plenty more about Max’s, CBGB, and New York punk/new wave from many other books and documentaries, this still has a lot of decent stories and perspectives that will interest aficionados. Some of them verge on more details that you might want to know (particularly the anatomical ones of County), but insightful points are made about the peculiar attractions and repulsions of each space; how some bands were more interested in getting record deals than making artistic or political statements; and Max’s struggles to simply survive with changes in ownership and financial/legal troubles, which according to some accounts here included counterfeiting money. There isn’t as much performance footage with full audiovideo as there should be, much of the non-talking head visuals filled in by silent clip excerpts and photos. There are, however, a few actual vintage live clips of Murphy, Ruby and the Rednecks, Sid Vicious, and the Testors to evoke the atmosphere of seeing the acts on small stages in the era.

Although this story was commissioned and written a few years before I posted this on my blog in 2023, it didn’t run at the time. Here it’s presented for the first time, with some updated information.

A few years ago, El Cerrito, California rock archivist Alec Palao was visiting Shel Talmy, producer of classic early hits by the Who, the Kinks, and others. “After I inquired as to whether he had any copies of his old records, his wife mentioned, ‘There are some here in the closet,’” Palao remembers. “I pulled out a blank acetate and it said ‘Davy Jones’ on it. Naturally, I was very, very excited.”

This wasn’t the Davy Jones who sang in the Monkees. Before he changed his name to David Bowie in the mid-’60s, a young British mod named David Jones cut several flop singles in London—including a couple produced by Talmy. “I got home and played it, lo and behold, there’s five completely unknown, undocumented David Bowie songs,” enthuses Alec. “Subsequently I found another four, looking through the rest of his archive. To come across fresh Bowie—and for it to be really great garage-y, the most snotty, punky Bowie you’ll ever hear—was really exciting.”

It wasn’t exactly another day on the job for Palao, even after a quarter century of digging up buried treasure from a mountain of ‘60s garage rock, psychedelic, British Invasion, and soul performers from around the globe. And there was more where that came from, as the US-born Talmy (now back in California) produced a wealth of great hits and misses in ‘60s London, including the decade’s best Australian rockers, the Easybeats; boundary-stretching folk-rockers Roy Harper and Pentangle; and cult mods the Creation, who like the Who pioneered the use of feedback and innovative guitar distortion. “He had unreleased stuff by all the major artists he worked with,” marvels Palao. 

Some of the first fruits of those finds are on the Palao-assembled Ace Records compilation Making Time: A Shel Talmy Production, including a different version of Davy Jones/Bowie’s third single, “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving.” It features one of the most shuddering, noise-ridden mid-’60s guitar solos this side of Pete Townshend. Other unissued Talmy productions are also starting to see the light of day via Palao, like an entire unreleased mid-’60s LP by folk guitar virtuoso Jon-Mark that neither Alec nor anyone else knew existed. These are just the latest projects in a career that’s seen him assemble and write liner notes for hundreds of reissues, largely though not exclusively of artists from the ‘60s, from superstars to obscure cult acts that never got to issue an album.

Born and raised in London, but a resident of the East Bay for over three decades, Palao knows it takes more than blind luck to stumble upon closets full of such riches. “I started off being a consumer and fan myself,” he explains while juggling the tapes, discs, and sound files from his usual multitude of simultaneous projects in his El Cerrito home office, a couple miles or so north of Berkeley. “I had started working in retail selling reissues, in my case with mail order. I did that for many years, until I began to realize I’d rather create records than sell them.”

A la producers from the early days of the music business who’d travel to or set up shop in New Orleans, Texas, or New Mexico to record musicians, “I frequently would travel around the country, often with a tape machine in the back of the car, which I found was the best way to gain access to off-limit catalogs. A great example is Frank Werber, who managed the Kingston Trio. I spoke to him on the phone a few times, and he was a little bit circumspect at first. But we got to know each other, and finally he said, ‘Well, come on down.’

“So my wife Cindy and I loaded up the car with tape machines, drove down to New Mexico, [and] set up next to the bank vault of the town’s old post office, which Frank owned. We opened it up, and there were all these master tapes. I knew he’d produced certain groups [for his Trident Productions company], like Sons of Champlin, Mystery Trend, Blackburn & Snow, so I was anxious to see that he’d kept that. But not only had he kept that, he had all these tapes by other people—Sly Stone, Quicksilver, the Grateful Dead, you name it. Because he’d owned a recording studio too.

“That was one of my earliest revelations—you’ve gotta get a hold of the guys that actually made this stuff, whether it be studios, producers, or label owners. Because they’re gonna have the real gold. No one told me to go and talk to Shel Talmy. I just went and visited him, and he revealed he still had a lot of his vintage material. So we started working together, and eventually he told me, ‘Have at it.’”

While Palao has worked on projects from musicians hailing from everywhere from Iceland to Uruguay, from major acts like The Zombies to esoterica the like of little-known early 70s songstress Laurie Styvers, he’s also retrieved a goldmine of ‘60s Bay Area rock from obscurity. Such notable acts as psychedelic pioneers the Charlatans, Frumious Bandersnatch, and unheralded folk-rock duo Blackburn & Snow, who barely eked out a single or two during their heydays (or, like all-women band Ace of Cups, didn’t manage to release anything at all), literally owe nearly their entire discographies to his rescue missions from their tape vaults. He oversaw expanded editions of Country Joe & the Fish’s first two albums, featuring his usual mini-book-length liner notes. He also compiled the definitive ‘60s San Francisco psychedelic box (Love Is But the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets), and recently added another chapter to Rhino Records’ sporadic Nuggets series with another volume of overlooked ‘60s rock, the vinyl-only double album Transparent Days: West Coast Nuggets.

Divided into LP sides for folk rock, garage rock, pop-rock, and psychedelia, it’s unlikely anyone (except maybe Palao himself) has all thirty of the 1965-68 off-the-beaten tracks on Transparent Days in their original form. The Bay Area (the roaring Marin County garage rock on the Front Line’s “Got Love” is a highlight) is but the midpoint of a collection spanning Vancouver to San Diego. Even the relatively well known groups like Love and the Electric Prunes are represented by non-LP singles fans of those bands might have yet to come across, and hitmakers the Association by the downright bonkers psychedelic outing “Pandora’s Golden Heebie Jeebies.”

Observes Alec, “If you’re a fan of ‘60s pop, you’re familiar with ‘Cherish’ and ‘Never My Love.’ So if you see the name ‘the Association,’ you’re gonna assume it’s gonna be that sort of a sound. Instead you get this very existential piece of music with a koto, odd lyrics, and odd harmonies. So hopefully this will open ears.”

The first San Francisco group to successfully respond to the British Invasion is represented too, but it’s certain that no one would have heard Ron Elliott’s “Candlestickmaker” (later reworked on the title track of his 1970 solo album), as this October 1966 demo by the Beau Brummels’ lead guitarist and chief songwriter makes its first appearance on Transparent Days. It’s an example not only of Elliott’s idiosyncratically moody folk-rock, but also of how Palao uncovers gems by turning every stone he can.

“I came across it on a tape that was from the recording studio where it was done, [San Francisco’s] Golden State Recorders,” he says. “It wasn’t identified as the song ‘Candlestick Maker,’ or as Ron Elliott. But when I heard it, it’s like, ‘I think I know what this is.’ I sort of triangulated with memorabilia and paperwork that I have from the studio, and discovered that yes, Ron Elliott did a demo session in October 1966, and went and played it to him. He said, ‘Oh yeah…’”

Some legends even leave forgotten tapes at the recording studio, and they’d likely disintegrate if historians like Palao weren’t around to discover them. “Original Sound in Hollywood was what they call a ‘dark’ studio, non-union,” he says by way of illustration. “So people could go there and just experiment, and not have to worry about paying big union fees to musicians. A lot of publishers liked that. Plus [the recording equipment] was in a unique format, 10-track, so it was like [a] big deal. A lot of tapes were left there because there was only one machine that could play them, and that was at this studio. I found tapes by Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Lowell George, Mike Nesmith, Captain Beefheart—all these people would go there and record. It’s been a really magical stash to go through.”

A veteran musician of numerous bands (including the Sneetches and Sting-Rays) going back to the ‘80s, Palao’s also played in reunited versions of ‘60s groups like the Beau Brummels, Chocolate Watchband, and the Seeds, as well as currently pursuing his own muse in Strangers In A Strange Land. You sense he’ll never lack time, however, for more archival projects, like two large multi-disc sets he’s planning “to document performances done at the Avalon Ballroom and the Matrix Nightclub in the ‘60s. These are holy grail tapes. I knew about them many years ago, but it’s taken this long to finally be able to get the access to them. It’s an incredible history of how the San Francisco music scene evolved. It confirms some myths, and dispels a lot of others. There’s a lot of mediocre music as well as a lot of transcendental stuff”—not just by scene kingpins like Big Brother & the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service, but also superb lesser-knowns like the Great Society, whose singer was a pre-Jefferson Airplane Grace Slick.

Another project he’s particularly excited about working on is the new four-CD box set for RPM Records of the Action. The mid-‘60s British mod band were produced by George Martin, and have generated a large cult following with singles somewhat akin to a more soul-oriented spin on the sound of fellow mods like the Small Faces. However, they never landed a hit in their native UK, made no impression in the US at the time, and didn’t manage to release a LP before breaking up in the late 1960s.

Titled Shadows And Reflections: The Complete Recordings 1964-1968, Palao says it will prove to be the last word on this frequently-reissued cult act. In addition to their five Parlophone singles, it features BBC sessions, demos and audition material, and a whole disc of previously unissued stereo mixes and studio outtakes, culled from the band’s sessions with George Martin at Abbey Road. “That’s about as close as I’ll get to mixing the Beatles!” he laughs.

“A lot of people might ask me, ‘Aren’t you scraping the barrel?’ And I’ll always tell them, ‘No.’ I know there’s probably great unreleased albums by all manner of artists in all genres out there. You just gotta go do the hunting and sifting to find them.”

On July 8, 2023, I interviewed Richard Morton Jack about his new outstanding biography Nick Drake: The Life at Blackwell’s book shop in Oxford, England. This is a transcript of our conversation.

JAMES ORTON (Blackwell’s): Thank you for joining us this afternoon, and a huge thank you to our musicians. Now we’re into the main event, which is Richie Unterberger discussing the new biography of Nick Drake by Richard Morton Jack. I spent the whole of yesterday reading it. It’s so thoroughly researched, and the love and respect you can feel Richard giving Nick throughout it is incredible – but obviously I’ll let Richard tell you about it. So please join me in giving a very warm welcome to Richie Unterberger and to Richard Morton Jack.  

RU: I’m very happy to present this event with Richard, whom I’ve known for about twenty years. We’ve become good friends because of our mutual interest in the era of music in which Nick Drake operated, and I had the pleasure of reading the manuscript of his biography quite a bit before publication. I know some of you have read it already, and I urge those of you who haven’t to get a signed copy today. 

I’ll be asking Richard how he came to conceive of a work that’s not just deeply researched, but also, I think just as importantly, has proper perspective on Nick Drake that demythologises a lot of the misperceptions that have arisen around this very talented but troubled artist. The amount of research that went into documenting this figure who, when he was alive, not much was known about, and who didn’t make himself known well to the public, is just amazing. Just a couple of examples. It has so frequently been reported that Nick Drake did just one interview. That is not true: Richard found the other one. 

RMJ: Another one!

RU: Another one – which appeared in the most unlikely place, a teen-oriented magazine, and contained some useful information. Another example: contrary to what you might see online, there were many reviews of Nick Drake’s records when he was around, and Richard found one of Pink Moon in Penthouse magazine. Would you have ever thought to look in Penthouse? 

Richard interviewed many of Nick’s surviving friends and associates, some of whom have never been on the record before, and they did a great deal to clarify Nick’s personality and musical achievements. My first question is, what did you most want to find out when you decided to do this pretty long biography, and what surprised you the most about what you found? 

RMJ: First, thank you very much for that generous introduction. I respect Richie’s work very much, and he is currently in the middle of researching his own enormous biography of the Velvet Underground, so I hope we’ll be able to talk about points of crossover in our work and the careers of the two artists. 

But to answer the question, I set out to be as thorough as possible. I knew that I wanted to look through and read absolutely everything that was available, and to speak to everyone. But I didn’t have specific expectations of extraordinary revelations or smoking guns. I knew that Nick’s life was, broadly speaking, accurately represented already, so what I found the most revealing and useful was the consensus that I was able to gather from his friends, his family, his school reports and so on. There wasn’t much departure from that consensus. Most people’s memories of Nick match up uncannily, even if they’d never heard of each other and never met him together. After interviewing them all I didn’t have to work out who to believe and how to navigate different versions of events.

The privilege of being able to speak to his cousins, and musicians, and Chris Blackwell, all sorts of interesting people who don’t usually speak about Nick and haven’t much in the past, is that I was able to put this jigsaw together and get a coherent whole. I think some people were perhaps hoping I’d find evidence that he was a heroin addict, that he was gay, whatever the big stories would be. But I was neither looking for those nor found them. The strength of the consensus is what really gave me confidence in describing his personality and certain aspects of his work. So, in the way that circumstantial evidence can be more compelling [than a smoking gun] in a criminal investigation, that consensus, to me, was more powerful than any amazing single revelation would have been.

RU: Although I will say, even though I had read as much as I could about Nick Drake before Richard’s book, there were quite a few unearthings of significant information that I was not aware of – and not just bits of trivia. For instance, his musical influences. The book illuminates notable under-appreciated influences  on his work, not all of them musical. Maybe unfairly, he is thought of as a ‘folk’ or ‘folk-rock’ musician, but I’ll read out some of the influences from when he was starting his professional career: Astrud Gilberto, Jimmy Smith, Segovia, Odetta, John Hammond, Bob Dylan, Booker T & the MGs, Miles Davis, John Coltrane… And he was able to see in person some of the great British blues-rock bands of the 1960s: John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, the Graham Bond Organization, Cream… 

Do you think this wide range, the eclecticism of his influences, has been overlooked and underestimated, and is maybe part of what set him apart from so many other singer-songwriters in the folk-rock bag during that time? 

RMJ: I think there’s an element of truth in that. I mean, the word ‘folk’ is unhelpful as relates to Nick. It’s used nowadays simply to mean ‘people with acoustic guitars’, not actual ‘folk music’. Almost the only sort of music that I can pretty confidently say I’ve never heard anyone suggesting Nick ever liked or listened to was folk! I mean, proper English trad folk, or indeed traditional American folk (not blues, but Appalachian or whatever). 

But, as you rightly say, Nick did have a broad taste in music, which reflected his generation’s exploratory interest in contemporary culture and what was coming over from America and so on. And at boarding school, of course, boys would bring back records and share them and obsess over them. So there was an informal lending library going on, which was helpful to him. And Nick loved pop, he loved rock’n’roll, he loved West Coast rock – the Doors, the Byrds, Love. And why wouldn’t he? He was excellent, and he loved excellent music. 

But I think what’s fundamentally important to remember about Nick’s own musical taste is that he came from a classical place as a child, and classical music was very much his companion in his illness – more, I infer (I don’t know for sure) than pop or rock. I mean, we all know that he was listening to classical music shortly before he took his own life that night. And I think classical music informed his sensibility easily as much as pop or rock or folk and so on.

RU: One influence that I always thought was underestimated on him is Donovan. I’m a big fan of his, but until relatively recently he has often been put down by ‘serious’ rock critics. But I’ve always heard – and it’s a compliment – his influence in Nick Drake. And you documented some specific instances: he had a poster of Donovan on his wall, a friend remembered him learning songs off Donovan’s two best albums, Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, and Joe Boyd – the main producer of Nick Drake, who was interviewed extensively by Richard – enjoyed both those albums when working on what I would consider Nick’s best record, Bryter Layter. Do you agree that Donovan’s an underestimated influence? 

RMJ: Yes. I think Donovan was a huge influence on other British songwriters in that era, maybe second only to the Beatles among British artists – more so than the Stones, I would say. But I think his influence is often overlooked, partly because he perhaps hasn’t helped himself with the way he has spoken about that era in recent years. But he’s a very fine guitarist, it goes without saying, and probably put just as much work into his style as Nick did. Donovan’s lyrics depart from Nick’s in obvious ways, but I think they’re similar in terms of the structure of their songs and their approach to the guitar. To me, it’s obvious that Nick was listening closely to Donovan’s fingerpicking, especially on the acoustic second record in A Gift From A Flower To A Garden. So it doesn’t seem at all a stretch to me to call Donovan a vital influence on Nick, from 1965 (when Donovan started releasing records) onwards. I think Nick was listening to him right away.

RU: Going back to Nick Drake’s early years, which you document extensively, I think a key point is that not just his parents but other people, like teachers, were almost trying to herd him onto a specific track: going to Cambridge, probably training to be a professional of some sorts. And you wrote that the one thing that nobody seemed to be taking into account in trying to get this mediocre student into an elite school, was: ‘What does Nick want to do?’ Do you think that fuelled his desire to make his own statement, his own career, outside of what was expected of him? 

RMJ: I’m sure that dynamic existed. I also think it’s easy to look on Nick’s non-musical life with hindsight and say, ‘Well, people didn’t understand him, people didn’t realise this or should have done that’. But I think Nick was probably quite a maddening person to be involved with as a young… well, he was always young, sadly, but as a teenager, because he obviously had talents, he obviously had abilities, he was charismatic and younger people respected him at school, this was recognised, he was a good leader and so on. He had qualities that were obviously likely to make him into a useful and helpful member of society as an adult. 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. 

As a result, I think his parents thought, ‘We need to get him into Cambridge by hook or by crook, because his school has said this is a possible outcome for him. So let’s just keep going, because if we don’t he might end up just being at home without much idea of what to do with his future next summer’, or whatever the timeframe was when they started worrying about this. 

To an extent – maybe tacitly – Nick’s parents have been criticised for not having recognised that they had a genius in their midst, but that’s not how life works. I don’t think any parent would say, ‘Our teenage son seems to like playing the guitar quite a lot, so let’s assume that he’s going to create a wonderful career for himself doing that’. I mean, it’s just not realistic. But I’ve never inferred the opposite extreme – that Nick’s parents wanted him to be a ‘career man’ and have letters after his name in a patrician, pompous, Empire-building way – and I don’t think that view is supported by any evidence, easy though it is to assume because of his social background and because there was a degree of tension between him and his parents about his not particularly wanting to go to Cambridge in the first place, and then wanting to leave it quite quickly. 

I think his parents were actually rather liberal and permissive, within parameters that were normal for that time, and they did allow Nick a lot more freedom than he might have expected or than some of his friends might have had. As I describe in the book, when he went to Cambridge – slightly against his will, but not kicking and screaming – his father worked out a careful and loving, really, arrangement on paper concerning Nick’s finances, and how he would fund Nick in order to allow him to proceed with his music during the university vacations without having to get jobs or think about income. Because the Drakes, contrary to popular belief, weren’t made of money. 

So Nick’s parents were supportive of his musical aspirations while he was at Cambridge. There’s a sweet letter from October 1967 where his father says, ‘We opened a bottle of wine to celebrate’ when they heard some good news about one of his early demo tapes making a mark, and so on. But I think it’s unrealistic for us to assume that they should have recognised that he was a great talent earlier than they did. 

RU: Before his musical career, in the school reports, the image of Nick is of someone very reticent and almost passive, so it was surprising to me in the book to learn that he had a fierce streak of ambition. He made demos and was shopping them around in London before he had a recording contract, and he was making contacts in music publishing and the record business. And when he was making records, his producer, Joe Boyd, and sound engineer, John Wood, have remembered how forceful he was and how he wanted the records to be made exactly as he wished, he wanted his songs to be represented just as he envisaged them. Is that something you wanted to bring out? 

RMJ: Yes. 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. I think that was a particularly important  year in Nick’s life because he had ten months to fill between getting into Cambridge and actually going there, so he went to University in France in February, he travelled around Morocco, he came back to England in May, then he went back to Paris for a few weeks on his own, and then he was in London for August and September. And over those few months, starting probably around February, he became a songwriter. 

And I think in that time a lot of things made sense to him in a way they hadn’t previously. One of the few utterances that we actually have from Nick about his songwriting is that it was only when he went to France that he had the time and space to think about his own personal reaction to the world around him, and how he wanted to frame it. And that’s when he became a songwriter. So I think by the time he got back from France, and before he went to Cambridge, he was committed to a future in songwriting. 

And he hustled! He knew that that the way forward was to find a publisher, sell the songs, find a record company, find a producer, and perform. Performing didn’t come naturally to him, or at least wasn’t something that he enthusiastically aspired to, but he understood the need for it – and did it. The first thing he did when he got back to London that summer was to make a recording and shop it. And, lo and behold, almost immediately a major pop song publisher called Hansa wanted to buy some of his songs. They didn’t want to record him, they wanted to buy the songs and sell them to others – which Nick had the confidence, arrogance, whatever you want to call it, to reject. 

But I think he knew that he was good, and that he had to fight to be heard. There are some tantalising glimpses that I wasn’t able to pin down. There’s a rather mysterious figure called Calvin Mark Lee, a Chinese-American research chemist based in London. He was one of the signatories to the famous Times advert against the criminalisation of pot, which the Beatles funded, and he was working on the fringes of the record business. David Bowie was his great discovery, and the person whose name his is connected with for posterity, rather than Nick’s, but somehow he connected with Nick in 1967 and was supporting and encouraging him too. [I did speak to him, but sadly he was suffering from dementia and couldn’t remember Nick.] 

What I mean is, Nick was out there making contacts, hoping to find a foothold in the music business rather than just waiting around like the entitled upper-class cliché that some sources have suggested he was, thinking, ‘Well, everyone will just recognise my brilliance…’ That wasn’t how he was.

RU: Before we get into the core of Nick’s career – his albums, the songs that he’s so well known for – what are the most important qualities to you in this biography, and in rock biographies in general? What were you trying to bring to this biography that’s lacking in so many popular music biographies?

RMJ: I’m really interested to discuss this, so thank you for raising it. I think that for too long readers have been tolerant of shoddy research in popular music biographies. I think that’s partially because they want to believe in mythology about rock stars. They want to believe that Keith Moon drove a car into a swimming pool, even though that didn’t happen. They don’t necessarily want to read a book about Keith Moon that says, ‘This is just not true’. 

But for me certain popular musicians, Nick being one, deserve sober, sensible treatment, because I think posterity deserves eyewitness accounts that are reliable and properly verified. So I wanted to apply the same standards of research and clarity to his life that I would if I were writing a book about Charles Darwin. I’m not comparing their lives, but I don’t think anyone reading a biography of Darwin would be tolerant of half-baked mistruths, blatantly wrong dates and so on. It’s just not the way that biography should work. But I often read pop books and think, ‘That’s just back-to-front, that record wasn’t out then, and this isn’t possible…’ 

I think that writers like you and Mark Lewison have already shown that it’s possible to approach rock and pop music with a scholarly, but not dry, eye. There’s plenty of amusing facts and details that can be brought into play without having to repeat myths and glorify bad behaviour and so on. So I wanted this book to stand as a serious biography, irrespective of the fact that it was about a ‘pop’ musician. 

I also feel that my book almost turns into something else, because Nick stopped making music in 1971, meaning that the last three full years of his life were not spent doing the thing that has fundamentally made people interested in his life. Instead, it pivots into a story about mental health and a family, a dynamic in a family, which doesn’t lend itself to mythologising and to funny anecdotes, for obvious reasons. So from a writer’s perspective I was quite lucky to have two separate stories to tell, really. And the second was obviously a much more sober and upsetting story to balance and to get right. 

RU: And I should add that, to try and get that difficult part of the story right, the Nick Drake Estate made Nick’s father’s diaries available. 

RMJ: Absolutely. Nick’s father wrote the diary about Nick. 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). He realised that the movement of Nick’s illness needed to be watched, so that he and Molly could start recognising ‘the last time he did this, such and such happened…’, or to record when he was or wasn’t taking his pills, and what the effect on his behaviour was and so on. So the diary is really about Nick. 

And it’s a brutal document, it’s got little levity in it – but it did give me the huge benefit of knowing where Nick was most of the time, because he was at home most of the time. So I was able to anchor those last years in detail. I knew exactly what Nick was doing for much of the time – what he was watching on TV, what he was eating. The challenge, really, was not making that tedious to read, because of course there are fans of Nick – of whom I’m one – who do find tiny details interesting and revealing, but you can cross a line into pointlessly repeating information that doesn’t have any wider value. So cherry-picking the most salient bits of the diary was one of the most difficult tasks for me, because it would have been easy just to turn the whole thing into prose. 

RU: Going to the core of Nick’s musical achievements, his most important musical associate was the producer Joe Boyd. One of the many things I learned in the book that I was not fully aware of was that, besides producing Nick Drake’s first two albums, he thought Nick’s songs could be covered by other prominent artists, some of whom I didn’t suspect. He sent Nick Drake’s songs to Roberta Flack for consideration, although she didn’t record any, but Millie Small, the pioneering ska / reggae singer most known for My Boy Lollipop, did record one of his songs. And Joe also thought that Nick could have written for films. Do you think he overestimated Nick’s potential, or was he just ahead of his time in seeing it? 

RMJ: The latter. I do think that Nick’s songs are difficult to cover, but perfectly possible to do justice to. I think Joe felt an immediate sense of discovery when he first heard Nick [in January 1968]. He was convinced straight away that this was a rare talent, and has openly said that he doesn’t understand why others didn’t feel the same way. I wouldn’t say it’s as crude as him having seen dollar signs, I think he just thought, ‘This guy is obviously going to be hugely successful, and I’m lucky enough to have had the opportunity to be his discoverer, to sign him and to work with him’. 

So one of the things that Joe immediately anticipated was that other people would form an orderly queue in order to sing his songs, in the way that was happening with Dylan and Donovan and Leonard Cohen and… you name it. Nick’s songs sounded like standards to Joe. So he was paying Nick a publishing advance every week because he was convinced that this was going to be where Nick was going to have his best shot at earning a decent amount of money.

And one of the many puzzles about Nick’s recording career is why so few people did record his songs. There were five or so covers during his lifetime – very few, and none that would have brought in any money. So yes, I think Joe was absolutely prescient, as has been borne out. Obviously, it’s a tragedy for him, as he says, that the success didn’t come when Nick was around to enjoy it. 

RU: Although Boyd and Drake worked really well together, it was like most producer-artist relationships, they had some disagreements which might have led to better results. One is still controversial among some Nick Drake fans. I like the instrumental pieces on his second album, Bryter Layter, very much, but not everybody does, and Boyd wanted more songs with vocals instead. This is an example of how, although Nick Drake’s image is of somebody who barely said anything and didn’t assert himself, he stood his ground and insisted that the instrumentals were on there. Do you think that’s an interesting part of how they could spur each other on, and work together productively even when they didn’t initially have the same end goal in mind?

RMJ: I think it speaks well for Joe that, although he strongly disagreed with Nick on the subject of the instrumentals, he ultimately did what Nick wanted, not what he wanted. Joe’s memory is that Nick’s vision for Bryter Layter was that both sides should be bookended by instrumentals (although what the fourth one would have been is a mystery – there’s no evidence that one was ever either written or recorded). But I think Joe’s vision was, ‘He’s a songwriter, he sings, he’s not a writer of instrumentals that you could hear on bread commercials’ (or whatever) – and to him, that’s what those instrumentals sounded like. So I think he found it frustrating. 

But the most fundamental problem for Joe on that specific subject was that Nick had inadvertently, and slightly uncharacteristically, revealed by playing an encore at a concert in September 1969 that he had another song that was good and that was finished, that Joe otherwise wouldn’t have known of. And that was Things Behind The Sun. And Joe’s ears pricked up, obviously, and he said, ‘Well, obviously that’s going on Bryter Layter, right?’ And Nick said, ‘No, it’s not ready, it’s not finished’. Which was a white lie – Joe had heard it, he knew it was finished. Nick didn’t perform songs that weren’t finished, it’s just not how he operated, he never shared anything that wasn’t finished. 

So I think Nick was squirreling away songs for Pink Moon as of 1969. I think he always knew that Pink Moonwas what he wanted to do – not as a reaction to Bryter Layter, as is often assumed, but just as the next step he wanted to take. He knew he wanted to do a guitar-and-voice album as a creative experiment. It was one of the avenues he wanted to explore. And he knew that Things Behind The Sun belonged on that, not on Bryter Layter, with strings and drums and so on. So I think that was a more specific area of conflict for Joe: ‘Why are these instrumentals on here when I know you’ve got another good song?’ 

RU: For someone with such a brief career, who only did two known interviews, there are so many rumours and myths around Nick Drake, many of which are unfounded and unfortunately circulate online and in other places. Here’s one that the book clarifies and refutes. It was reported for many years that when Pink Moon, Nick’s third and final album, was done, he went to Island Records and, without telling anybody, just put the tape at the reception and left. Well, the truth might not be as colourful, but it’s the truth and that’s what’s important: he actually delivered it personally to Chris Blackwell, who ran Island Records. What do you think the book does most to set straight about Nick and his career, whether it’s incidents or his character? 

RMJ: I think the most important assumption or rumour about Nick that I wanted to clarify is the extent to which he took drugs. It has been said that he smoked dope morning, noon and night, that he was almost addicted to it. The assumption has been that smoking dope defined his days, and probably didn’t help when it came to his descent into mental illness. But most of his friends don’t recall Nick smoking any more of the rest than the rest of them did – which was a fair amount, but socially, and it’s a non-addictive substance. 

Now, of course, Nick probably smoked it on his own as well, which didn’t help when he wasn’t in great shape mentally, and I’m not trying to dismiss its possible contribution to his difficulties – but that was an area where I was able to say with confidence: Nick didn’t smoke nearly as much as has been assumed. 

In addition, I can find no evidence that he ever took LSD. I mean, it’s perfectly possible, because it was widely around in 1967 and some of the imagery in his songs from that year seem to suggest hallucinatory experiences – but equally, maybe he didn’t. He was a sensible guy, he knew it was a Pandora’s box that not everyone should open. None of his friends remember him taking acid – and they remember taking it themselves, where they were and who they were with. And it was never with Nick. 

And then the suggestion that he was a heroin addict, which has often been repeated, including in one or two books, is simply not borne out by anyone’s recollections. So that was something I was glad to be able to set straight. 

I suppose the other major area that really came through strongly for me, from all people I spoke to, is that until late 1969 – so, shall we say, for the first 21 full years of Nick’s life – he was a happy, outgoing, productive, popular, forward-facing person. So that’s why I wanted, and everyone agreed, to have a picture of him smiling on the front of the book, because that describes how a lot of his friends remember him: first and foremost as an ambitious, cheerful sort of person who wasn’t doomy or gloomy or bad company. Not a flamboyant extrovert, but a good guy to have in a room. So it was gratifying for me to be able to contextualise Nick’s illness with the first, large part of his life and say that really the illness came down like a shutter on him, and doesn’t define how he always was. 

RU: There’s a seeming contradiction in Nick’s career. He didn’t do much to publicise himself, although he did play more concerts than is usually reported, about forty. He did a couple of interviews, but rather reluctantly, and didn’t say much. Yet he seemed disturbed that he didn’t have more success and recognition, especially maybe after the second album, which is in some ways a step forward from Five Leaves Left but didn’t get significantly more acclaim. Do you think that lack of recognition helped spark his mental difficulties, or contributed to them? 

RMJ: I can’t speak for the psychiatry involved, but approaching his state of mind as if he weren’t ill, I think the sense that he might as well not be bothering was very hurtful. I don’t think he wanted to have gold records on the wall and drive a fast car and have girls screaming at him, but I do think he wanted to feel validated by some sort of audience, a small but loyal audience, and to know that he wasn’t wasting his time, as would anyone who writes or paints or whatever it may be, yet has barely anyone validate them. 

In Nick’s case, there are two things to remember. Firstly, he had been led to believe by all of those on the inside of his career, and with all the right motives, that he was going to be very successful. There was no suggestion by anyone that he was marginal, that he should have low expectations of his sales and the take-up of his work. He was therefore quite confident in leaving Cambridge that this was what he needed to do in order to have the success that everyone had led him to expect. 

Secondly, to put it crudely, I think Bryter Layter had been his degree. He knew that he couldn’t make Bryter Layter whilst at Cambridge, especially in his third year when he had finals and would have to do a bit of work: he couldn’t just keep coasting and expect to get through his finals. So Bryter Layter was, in a sense, what he did instead of his degree, in the expectation that it would be released in the summer of 1970. The first published, advertised release date for it was that May, which would have dovetailed with when his friends were sitting their finals, and he could have neatly substituted that achievement for his degree. 

But there were problems, John Cale was brought in to do a couple of arrangements in June and the release date started being pushed back. Joe Boyd went back to America, there were postal strikes, Island decided to have a major rebranding exercise which held up a lot of releases, then they decided on a campaign called ‘El Pea’ (which involved circulating giant inflatable peas to record shops), and Bryter Layter was postponed and postponed. 

None of this had anything to do with Nick, but his record was clearly not a priority for Island. A Cat Stevens or a King Crimson album would have come out straight away, but I think Nick slowly began to realise that he simply wasn’t a priority for Island. That’s not even much of a criticism of Island, it’s just the reality. Five Leaves Left had barely caused a ripple, so Bryter Layter got put on the back-burner. 

And that was upsetting for him, because he had left Cambridge in the teeth of fairly strenuous advice from his parents and others whom he respected in order to do something which then wasn’t happening. And then when it did happen, it was released to indifference. So I think those two factors combined to accelerate his low self-esteem and questioning of what he was doing with his life. 

RU: This is hindsight, but – especially because I’m from the United States – it seems like barely anything was done to get him an international audience, especially in North America, which might have helped with his desire for some sort of validation, some sort of recognition. When they did put out a record, Capitol Records clumsily combined material from the first two albums instead of, say, putting out Bryter Layter and then, if it had sold well, putting out Five Leaves Left. Do you think that, had Nick gotten more recognition, even if he had been unable to tour in the States, that might have helped with his career and his general perception of the worth of what he was doing? 

RMJ: I’m sure it would have – but I think you’ve identified the problem with that in your question, because in those days you didn’t get recognition without touring. It was too much of a shuffle, there was too much competition, and it was so easy to get lost. And, of course, America is a vast territory. You have to be out there visiting the local radio stations, playing second on the bill to Black Oak Arkansas or whoever. That’s what you did. You see these bizarre bills from those days, with obscure English acts supporting American rock acts, because you had to be out there doing that, getting the catcalls. John Martyn did it relentlessly, and he never ‘broke’ America – but he did build up a certain following there. 

But by the summer of 1971, when that compilation album came out, Nick wasn’t in a position to perform, or even to travel, really. But I do think Bryter Layter could have done well in America. There’s enough material on it with a sunny, radio-friendly quality for it plausibly to have broken through and made an impact. But again, he just wasn’t a priority for Capitol. They just had too much else going on, and who’s this English guy who no one can get on the phone? It was just hopeless, unfortunately.

RU: You mentioned John Cale playing on Bryter Layter. Especially because I’m writing a book on the Velvet Underground, it’s an interesting connection to me – when the 1970s start you have these areas of rock which seem separate, but there were these unusual collaborations. At the same time Bryter Layter was being made, Joe Boyd and John Wood were working on Nico’s Desertshore, where John Cale was the arranger. Do you think it’s a reflection of the open-mindedness of that time that producers and artists were willing to bring in ingredients that might not have seemed sensible or logical on paper? 

RMJ: Yes, absolutely. I don’t think anyone ever anticipated John Cale being a good fit for Nick, it was just an inspired coincidence that he heard some of Nick’s recordings without adornments and thought, ‘I want to adorn them!’, and therefore did. Joe recalls him hopping into a cab that very day, and just going and hammering on Nick’s door. 

Joe has open ears and a broad-minded approach to music. Over the course of 1970, the year that Bryter Layter was recorded, he completed, I think, sixteen albums – an awful lot. And the span of those albums is quite remarkable. There’s folk music (what we call ‘folk’, anyway) – Vashti Bunyan, the Incredible String band. There’s jazz, including some quite avant-garde jazz, there’s rock, there’s Nico, who’s maybe called ‘art-song’ now, but I don’t know how she was categorised at the time, if at all… And I don’t think anyone thought that mixture was strange. I think the mixture was what it was all about. 

Bringing together musicians from different traditions and backgrounds in order to see what happened was a joyous part of what was going on at the time, and was taken for granted. I think it’s only in hindsight that we think how remarkable it was to have had avant-garde jazz musicians combining with pop musicians and so on and so forth. These endless collaborations, sessions that were full of seemingly unlikely or disparate people making coherent music together, were taken as read then, I think, and Joe was all about the collaborations, that was the essence of Witchseason. He understood that putting musicians together could create magical results, and John Wood regards that as one of Joe’s greatest strengths as a producer: knowing who to bring onto which session to create the best result. 

RU: To bring in another Velvet Underground connection, another surprise to me was that a record Nick listened to toward the end of his life, when he was staying with his parents and having a lot of problems, was by Nico. It’s not specified which, but I’m guessing it was Desertshore.

RMJ: Yes – that was in December 1973, and it’s wonderful that Rodney even mentioned Nico by name. There are several frustrating bits in his diary when, completely understandably, he writes things like, ‘Nick came back from Birmingham with three new records today’. And I’m thinking, ‘What were they?’ There’s an entry from July 1974 that says something like, ‘Nick went to a rock concert in London this evening but left early and came home’. What was the concert? It would be fascinating to know. Was it Roxy Music? Who was it? So yes, it’s great that Rodney did mention Nico, because normally he didn’t name names. 

RU: I’m a Nico fan, but it seems to me that if you’re having struggles with depression, Desertshore or The Marble Index are maybe not what you want to hear to lift yourself out of that. So that was a big surprise to me. 

RMJ: I imagine that he was interested in it because Joe had done it. There’s another bit in Nick’s father’s diary, from September 1974, where he writes ‘Nick went out and bought Melody Maker’. And these things were worth recording for Rodney, because Nick didn’t always have the energy or confidence to face the world, even in terms of a small transaction like that. I got them out and had a look at which issue it would have been – and it had Nico and John Cale on the cover [with Brian Eno and Kevin Ayers]. So I suspect Nick did keep abreast of the other artists Joe was working with, and of course had it in mind that he wanted to work with Joe again himself. So there was a certain logic to his listening to Nico, I think. 

RU: Some musicians of great quality – the Beatles or the Beach Boys – reach an audience immediately. Unfortunately for Nick Drake and the Velvet Underground, it took decades. Do you see that as part of the great frustration that Nick experienced?

RMJ: Yes, absolutely. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to see obviously inferior artists, as you might perceive them, doing a great deal better than you are, attracting that attention. It seems bizarre to me that Five Leaves Left made so little impact. I can’t explain it, no one can. I can understand it not being a number one, or a number ten or a number twenty. But why wasn’t it number 30? I think it could and should have done a lot better than it did. No one has come up with a plausible explanation for that. 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, of course, the story of art is of cream rising – Van Gogh and so on. There are so many examples to illustrate the fact that it takes time for it all to settle, and for some of the things that do the best in their day to be forgotten and the artists no one gave any thought to to rise. It’s interesting looking at the charts and reading through the newspapers in those days – there are just so many popular artists from that era that I doubt anyone listens to now. For example, famously – well, famously within Nick Drake’s biographical circles! – one of the only reviews of Five Leaves Left compared it unfavourably to Peter Sarstedt. Now, with all respect to Peter Sarstedt, Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) might be on the radio every now and then, but who sits down and listens to As If It Were A Movie, or another  of his albums? They’re not rubbish – far from it – but because he’d had a hit they were widely reviewed. And, inevitably, Nick was compared to whoever was successful in a broadly comparable field, and I think that must have been irritating. 

But this process happens, of course, and we end up with the things that resonate the most and that people identify with the most strongly. 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. But, partly because I’ve got Rodney’s diary, partly because of the amount of people I’ve been able to speak to and so on, I feel that Nick is more known now than they are: his personality and the detail, what he liked doing, what he watched on TV. Because of the access I’ve had and the material his sister has already shared, there’s an awful lot of forensic information that you normally wouldn’t come close to with a major artist. 

RU: The first time I spoke to Joe Boyd he was specifically talking about Bryter Layter, and he said, ‘That’s one of the very few records I’ve made where I would not change a thing’. And Joe Boyd has made many records, many really good records. Even at the time, it was inexplicable to him that this achievement was not recognised as such. It wasn’t as bad for him, because he got so much recognition with Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band, later REM, there are many examples. But to be the originator of Bryter Layter and not get that feedback immediately must have been tough. I mean, even the Velvet Underground got a lot more positive response when they were active than has generally been acknowledged. A lot more, I think it’s fair to say, than Nick Drake did. So in some ways it was easier for them than for him.

My last question, which is another hindsight question, is: had Nick experienced enough success, even if it was on a cult level or making number thirty, as you say, do you think that might have offset his growing psychological difficulties enough for him to produce more music? 

RMJ: It’s a lovely thought, but the answer is ‘no’, as far as I’m aware. Not only did Nick’s illness rob him of certain aspects of his sanity, it also robbed him of his creativity. Bit by bit, his ability to generate material, which he had done prolifically for about three or four years, dwindled until he was simply not able to play the guitar and sing simultaneously, or write lyrics. The story of his illness in 1972, 1973 and 1974 is also the story of him desperately trying, in lots of different ways, to recapture his creativity.

And I don’t see his illness as being related to anything else, really. I just think it was sheer bad luck. It’s not because he went to boarding school, it’s not because he smoked too much dope, it’s not because his records didn’t sell. It just came upon him. It happens to people. It’s a terrible tragedy, and I think it’s nice to think of ways in which Nick’s life could have turned out differently. But I fear his outcome was inevitable, based on his illness: it was eating away at him to the point where he couldn’t see any plausible future. I think it would have gratified him if his records had sold better, but I don’t think it would have helped him be creative in his illness. 

RU: If anyone else wants to ask anything, please do. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: To understand Nick’s mind – thinking of when he first went to France, and then the book that was on his bedside table that fateful night – did you have to read a lot of Albert Camus? And secondly, his family’s house, Far Leys, is at some sort of end of a corner of a shady lane. Is it fair to assume, because Nick was there for three years after the last album, he went walking there, and if I walked there, I’d be sort of walking in his spirit? 

RMJ: Firstly, I didn’t immerse myself in Camus. That’s the kind of thing I tried to avoid in writing the book – trying to think myself into Nick’s head and read all the books and Romantic poems and reverse-engineer theories about where his songs came from. I interpreted my role as his biographer quite literally, and that was just to describe his life and try to contextualise his work with it, rather than write pages and pages speculating about which Romantic poets might have informed which lines in which songs. I think that’s a separate and perfectly valid exercise, but for someone to do from a different perspective. 

By the way, Le Mythe de Sisyphe wasn’t on his bedside table, so that’s a myth. He bought it in Paris as a birthday present to his mother in November 1974 and posted it to her, but sadly it didn’t arrive because of postal strikes. Instead, rather nicely for her, for obvious reasons, it arrived in around February 1975. So it was ultimately a gift from beyond the grave. 

As for walking in Tanworth, I don’t think Nick did much exercise at all in his last years, but of course he knew the village back-to-front. He did occasionally walk a neighbour’s dog, though, so that’s something, and I guess they would go down that path. But if you’re going to walk around Tanworth with the idea in mind that you’re following in Nick’s latter-day footsteps, I would probably say ‘maybe’ but not ‘definitely’. He tended to stay indoors or drive to places.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Do you think the cover of Bryter Layter served him well or not?

RMJ: Your guess is as good as mine! Nick poured so much interest and energy and passion into the creation of his records, not only in writing the songs but also, as Richie was saying, being assertive in the studio – not in a dogmatic, unpleasant way, but he dug his heels in, he knew what he wanted and he got what he wanted – that I find it perplexing that he was so casual about their artwork. He just wasn’t involved in how his albums looked. He didn’t seem to have strong views either way. 

Bryter Layter’s cover was photographed by Nigel Waymouth, a friend of Joe Boyd’s. The guitar Nick’s holding belonged to Nigel, the shoes that are in front of Nick belonged to Nigel, as did the chair he’s sitting in. Nick just turned up, then one of the pictures was chosen (by Nigel, not by him), then the artwork was generated. There was a meeting at which it was presented and one of the Island execs present told me that he remembers Nick neither expressing pleasure or displeasure, just not saying anything – and that was that.

But Nick did materialise by Nigel’s side in a crowded room the following year and said, ‘I just want to say that I now understand what you were trying to do with that album cover, and I really like it’. Nigel had no idea what he was on about, but clearly Nick had reverse-engineered some sort of meaning to it and was grateful for it. Nigel remembers the encounter because it was baffling. 

I think the picture on the back cover, of Nick watching a car zooming past him on the Westway, speaks more of him in a symbolic sense than a picture of him holding a guitar does. But for me personally, Bryter Layter is so closely tied up with the image of him on the front that I find it impossible to unpick that and imagine it with a different cover. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: My father-in-law was at school with Nick at Marlborough and doesn’t remember a single thing about him. He’s even got a photo of them, but he doesn’t remember him. It’s very irritating! Did you find it funny – which is the wrong word – that towards the end of his life he seemed to be on a bit of an up? Also, I found the diary stuff amazing, just so revealing about his character. Looking through the diary, was there anything which surprised you? 

RMJ: Are you basing your feeling that Nick was on the up towards end of his life on what I wrote? 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: The hanging out in Paris, yeah. 

RMJ: Nick was very depressed at the end of his life. I think there were glimmers, but what Nick tended to do throughout his illness was make a resolution and then not see it through. And often his parents thought, ‘Well, maybe now something’s changing, he’s becoming positive again, he’s actually going to see something through…’ And then he would crash back into indecision and inability. And that’s basically what happened in Paris. He came back determined to make a new album and get on with life, but unfortunately it was beyond him. 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. 

But I fear that was wishful thinking, and that they were allowing themselves to concoct a narrative that wasn’t supported by what had actually happened. There were glimmers of positive action from Nick towards the end, but many more of him being at his worst, really. In his last fortnight and on his last day or two he was absolutely as bad as he ever was.

As for Rodney’s diary, of course, it contains lots of valuable material relating about Nick. I think Richie was the first person who read a draft of the book, about a year ago, more or less as soon as I finished it. It was around double the length of the published version, and eliminating material from it was, I thought, going to be impossible because it was so intertwined. Everything seemed so relevant to me. But the realisation that a lot of it was actually repetitive and that, whilst different anecdotes have slightly different weight, ultimately you only need one of them to give the picture, was liberating. 

And his illness was the most challenging bit to whittle down, because I wanted to convey its relentlessness and hopelessness, and I was worried that if I cut out too much of the doom and gloom, quite honestly, I might create a false idea that Nick was better than he was – because he was very, very ill. And in the last quarter or so of the book I wanted, without being depressingly grim myself, to convey a sense that the outcome was, in a sense, inevitable, and that the counter-narrative that has arisen that there could have been a different outcome, that Nick’s overdose was possibly accidental and so on, just wasn’t the case. It’s not borne out by anything that I saw. 

But the hardest task in writing the book was trying to streamline the last part, because there is just a lot of relentless material in Nick’s father’s diary. It’s not an easy read and I don’t think much would be gained from it being published in full, really. It’s a heartbreaking document. 

That said, if you strip out the awful tragedy at its heart, there’s a lot of mundane information, most of it relating to Nick, but it’s what they were eating and what they were watching on telly, and Mr. Heath has lost the election, all this sort of stuff, so it’s interesting simply as an account of an early 70s household.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: A bit of an impossible question. How long does it take between someone dying an unknown, then getting known, and then becoming this incredible figure? 

RMJ: I think that’s a really interesting question – and of course, it’s case-by-case. How many are we still waiting to hear of? But speaking about Nick, I think it’s interesting to speculate, as a fantasy: had he been willing to play a concert in September, October 1974 and a promoter had said, ‘Yeah, sure’, what would the take-up have been? I suspect larger than Nick might have anticipated. I think he was better known than he realised, and perhaps better known than posterity has acknowledged. 

We all know that he had tracks on Island sampler albums in his lifetime, which sold huge numbers, so there was that. But I also think his albums had cumulatively reached a larger audience than has been acknowledged. You see these made-up figures – ‘a combined total of 5000 sales during his lifetime’ – but no one knows what his records sold in his lifetime. The earliest source I have that gives a number is that, at the time of Nick’s death Bryter Layter had sold 15,000. Now, that’s not a large number, that’s not enough to get you into the charts – but it’s not nothing. 

So I do think he had a larger fanbase than he realised – because it’s really good music. People picked up on it and said, ‘You should listen to this’ in student halls and so on, and word had spread. But no one knew who he was, no one knew how to contact him, no one could see him live. There was no visibility. So I think Nick was isolated from his audience to the extent that maybe he didn’t even realise there was an audience. 

At time of his death, Nick was trying to get an accounting for the last few years. 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. But Nick’s arrangement had been that, after recording costs had been met on his albums, he would get 50% and Witchseason would get 50%. Of course, Pink Moon cost barely anything to record, so that was almost immediately profitable. But what Nick wanted to know at the end of his life was, ‘Am I owed any money? What’s the situation?’

Well, I’ve seen the royalty figures for the years immediately following his death. At the end of 1974, shortly after his death, his royalty statement for 1972-1974 was finally organised. That was about £1800, which is about £16,000 now. The figure for 1975 was lower, because it was only for 1975. But for 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, the figure got bigger each year. So there was a growing interest straight away – and this was before he was being revered as a James Dean-type figure. 

So I think, whether or not Nick had died, his records were picking up momentum. But then, of course, the whole cult surrounding his death contributed towards his mythology and status, and that process has never stopped. 

RU: I want to add that I think it’s been overemphasised that the use of one of his songs in a commercial was responsible for elevating him out of obscurity, because – as Richard notes – the ‘cult of Nick Drake’, if you want to call it that, was building and building way before that. In some ways it’s similar to the artist I’m working on now, the Velvet Underground. 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. It’s the music that’s done it, it’s not because of the fluke that it was selected for a commercial. 

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. That made sure that awareness could continue to build (unlike with some artists, like Skip Spence, where you couldn’t get the record for many years). And I think it will continue to build indefinitely, for generations beyond us. 

RMJ: I agree with that. The suggestion that the Pink Moon advert is where Nick’s story suddenly changed is, as far as I’m concerned, inaccurate because his records were freely available all over England in the 1990s when I was a teenager. Listening to Neil Young, listening to Bob Dylan, listening to Joni Mitchell, listening to Nick Drake, it was all the same by then, in the UK at least. He wasn’t on the level of someone like Townes Van Zandt, where you might still feel, ‘This is really quite an obscure guy’. I mean, Nick was well-known in the 90s, as far as I was concerned, getting to grips with my own musical tastes.

And the sense that his reputation will continue to build was really the main motor for getting my book done. 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 therefore the facts need to be straight, because too many misapprehensions have been taken as fact in the absence of a sober inspection of everything that there is in her possession, and in the memories of those who knew him but hadn’t necessarily spoken about him publicly. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: I’m interested in Nick Drake’s classical influences, which you alluded to – you mentioned that he listened to classical music in the last years of his life, and I hear the influence of Debussy in some of the string arrangements on Five Leaves Left, for example. What have you been able to find about the kind of classical music he listened to?

RMJ: Frustratingly, Nick’s record collection – although really it was more of an accumulation, as he wasn’t a ‘collector’ in any serious way, and I understand he treated his records quite casually – has been dispersed, partly given away by his parents, or pinched by fans, left lying around and eventually chucked, I don’t know. So there isn’t a sort of block of ‘Nick Drake’s record collection’. There are a few which have been kept, including copies of his own albums and one or two John Martyn albums and the Brandenburg Concertos and so on. So I don’t have a clear answer to what classical recordings he most liked. 

But I would say, on a tangent of sorts, that another myth about Nick is that ‘Robert Kirby wrote the arrangements’, that the arrangements were just grafted onto Nick’s songs. I actually think one could almost say it was generous of Nick to give Robert the arrangement credit, because the arrangements were by the two of them. Nick was sitting at the piano or with a guitar, making suggestions, and Robert was sitting over there, writing, and Robert would say: ‘Well, how about this instead of that?’ It was absolutely collaborative all the way through those two albums. Nick knew what he wanted, and the arrangements were written very much with him. Robert was much more than an amanuensis, but it was certainly a collaborative effort. 

Robert’s main reference points were classical. but he loved the Beatles and George Martin, and understood the difference between writing classical music and pop arrangements, and that you had to have a pop sensibility. So I think the influences on Nick’s arrangements were towards the more pop end of classical, shall we say? Robert referred to the artists or the composers that he and Nick had in mind – Fauré, Debussy, Delius, Vaughan Williams. And I don’t mean to sound insulting to these composers, I just mean the more overtly melodic parts of their work. 

In terms of Nick’s private passions within classical music, I don’t know. But I can say his tastes were catholic and he liked symphonic music, he liked solo piano, he had a broad understanding and enjoyment of the canon. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: I just want to challenge you. I’m wondering whether you are yourself mythologising a little bit when you talk about the inevitability of his death because he was so ill. I’m just wondering, have you yourself been through a period of acute mental illness for two years or longer? 

RMJ: No, not in the least. It’s absolutely fair to take me to task on that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: It’s more a point about mental illness than Nick Drake himself: who knows whether he would have come out of it or not? If you’re in that state for a long time, what happens is there is atrophy generally. You can’t think, you can’t move, it’s difficult to have ideas, it’s difficult to be creative. You feel like you’ll never come back from it and you’re on the brink – and I’ve been through this, I’ve been on the brink – but often there is a return from that. And when you begin to return from it, things come back. 

So I think your narrative, that there is no return, is a kind of mythologising and needs to be challenged. It’s a general point about mental illness. I think it’s dangerous to say, ‘There can be no return’. If Nick Drake was at a point where he could take his own life, I think one would have to say that may have been a situation which could have been turned around, just by chance. Someone could have come back who may have had what he needed at the time, and the next day there would perhaps have been onward movement. So I want to challenge you on that point. That’s all I’m saying. 

RMJ: I’m happy for you to have done so, and I apologise if what I was saying seemed glib. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: I’m not saying that you’re glib. I just want to make that point. 

RMJ: I take it on board, and I’m delighted that your experience has been different to Nick’s. And I don’t say he was never going to get better with any levity. What I think I was – perhaps clumsily – trying to express was the fact that the counter-narrative that he was ‘getting better’ towards the end of his life is not borne out by evidence. 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. 

And for me, revisiting his last weeks or months and trying to construct an accurate version of how he was, day-by-day and week-by-week, left less room than I think has been widely understood for thinking that he was in a more positive frame of mind at the end of his life and therefore that the outcome might have been more positive. But you’re absolutely right, of course. One should never write off anyone psychologically, and I didn’t mean to. 

RU: Thanks, everybody, for coming today. And I hope, again, if you have not bought a copy of the book, you will get a signed copy on your way out. 

RMJ: Thank you. 

There are so many music history sites in New York that you could easily fill several books with photos and descriptions of them. In my first visit to New York in six-and-a-half years this spring, I saw a few I hadn’t checked before. While very famous ones like the Strawberry Fields memorial space to John Lennon in Central Park are well worth checking out, this post presents a few of the more offbeat ones I saw on my trip.

Many and perhaps all of these sites are far from striking in the visual sense. Most visitors would shrug and wonder why anything is special about them. It’s what took place there, not how they look, that’s of note, even if some of the interest might be largely limited to fanatics. Yet the first image, however bland it might seem, was where many classic hit records were born.

At 1619 Broadway, the Brill Building was where many songwriters, and often producers and record label owners, worked or at least visited in the early 1960s. They came to be so identified with the inventively produced and arranged fusion of early rock’n’roll and melodic pop—especially, but not always, heard on hits by girl groups—that the Brill Building has long been used as a label for this sound as a whole. Brill Building hits were often written by composers—often Jewish, and often, though not always, married couples—like Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. The Brill Building itself, however, is just one of countless large office buildings in mid-Manhattan:

As unremarkable as it is to look at, this structure really deserves a plaque noting how many hits were written here or nearby. I add “nearby” because this wasn’t the only building in the area where songwriters and their associates worked. In particular, 1650 Broadway, just a few doors up the block, housed Aldon Music, the major publishing company co-founded by Don Kirshner. That large building is even less interesting to look at than the Brill Building, whose ground floor is occupied by a branch of the CVS chain.

Both the Brill Building and 1650 Broadway are just a few blocks north from Times Square, New York’s heart of the beast:

Moving south to 23rd Street, between mid-city and Greenwich Village, the famous Chelsea Hotel is still in business, though it’s had some rocky times in recent years. Plenty of artistic figures stayed or lived there, and in rock history, some of the most famous of those are Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Nico, Leonard Cohen, and Sid Vicious:

You could fill a whole block of plaques honoring famous residents, but there are just a few at the hotel’s interest. Leonard Cohen does get one of those, which was put up fairly recently:

Going way uptown to the north end of Harlem, there really seems nothing special about this building on 138th Street. Yet, as a friend pointed out, it was home to the first record label—first “widely distributed label,” according to Wikipedia”—owned and operated by African Americans, Black Swan Records. Ethel Waters and Alberta Hunter were its most famous artists. In the early-to-mid twentieth century numerous black artists lived on the street or nearby, including Fletcher Henderson, Billie Holiday, and Eubie Blake.

Going way downtown to the Lower East Side, this building at 56 Ludlow Street occupies a huge place in Velvet Underground history. Here more than anywhere else the group got its sound together in 1965, with Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and original VU drummer Angus MacLise all living and/or working on their music in the building as the Velvet Underground got off the ground:

The first photographs of the group, taken before MacLise left and was replaced by Maureen Tucker, were taken around here around mid-1965, including on a nearby stoop, a rooftop, and a bench a couple of blocks or so away in Seward Park. The building looks very much like it did in mid-1965, though the neighborhood’s changed enormously.

When I stayed with a friend a few blocks away in 1986, it was still a fairly rough’n’tumble area with lots of noise and business/industrial deliveries, and few cultural hotspots. In 1965, it must have been a lot more so. Yet in 2023, surrounding blocks feature many hipster-oriented shops and places to eat. There’s even a significant difference since I last walked around there almost fifteen years ago. One cultural (rather than consumer) attraction worth visiting is the Tenement Museum, although an admission only gives you a tour with access to one part of the museum/building (reconstructing circa-1900 tenements) at a time. It will take quite a bit of time and money to go through all the various tours.

There are more Velvets-related sites, of interest to an even more limited circle of fanatics, almost thirty miles away in Long Island. You’ve got to be dedicated to make the trip, which you’ll need to do on the Long Island Railroad line, or with a car, which fortunately I could get a ride with via friends. Lou Reed grew up in one of Long Island’s towns, Freeport, which he longed to escape for a less suburban life, yet occasionally honored in his songs and career. Here’s Freeport High School, from which he graduated in 1959:

This is where Reed, as he sang in “Coney Island Baby,” “wanted to play football for the coach.” While here he was already playing in rock groups, including the Shades, who as the Jades released a single that Reed played guitar on, co-writing one side and writing the other. Again this building isn’t much to look at, but is much the same as it was back in the late 1950s.

Freeport itself isn’t much to look at, with traffic-filled main drags clogged with plenty of suburban industrial businesses and retail outlets. Not far from those boulevards, however, are well-to-do suburban homes, like this neighborhood where Reed lived, within walking distance of the high school:

Four other members of the Velvets also grew up in Long Island, including guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker, who went to Division High School in Levittown, about ten miles away. That building’s even less to look at than Freeport High School. If you’re wondering why I wrote “four other members,” Doug Yule, who replaced Welshman John Cale in 1968, grew up in Great Neck, as did his younger brother Billy, who drummed with the Velvets in summer 1970 at Max’s Kansas City while Maureen Tucker was on a leave of absence owing to the birth of her first child.

It’s back to the big city, however, for a Reed tribute worth checking out even if you’re not a fan. The last stop going north on the Q subway line at 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, which only opened about five years ago, features portraits on the tiled walls by Chuck Close, including this one of Reed:

Maybe some people who’ve read my work are interested in some of the more everyday basic details of how I work. Maybe not, but at least one person was. That’s Todd L. Burns, who runs the Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. This interview recently appeared on the site, and with his permission, I’m reprinting it here.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I started listening to rock music at the age of five in 1967, after I and the brother I shared a room with got a radio as a holiday gift. I’ve been a big fan of rock since then, starting like so many people did with the Beatles. From there I got into other groups like the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, and by the time I was in high school, into great but somewhat lesser exposed vintage acts like the Kinks and the Yardbirds. In college I got into more cult acts like the Velvet Underground, and like so many future rock journalists, got a lot of experience listening to and playing records at my college radio station, WXPN in Philadelphia, which had a huge vinyl library.

The more I heard from rock history (and affiliated genres like soul, blues, reggae, and folk), the more I wanted to hear, and wanted to know. I began writing reviews right after college for a magazine specializing in independent/underground music, Op, and from 1985-1991 was managing editor of a similar magazine, OPtion. After working on some All Music Guides in the mid-1990s, the publisher, Miller Freeman, asked if I had ideas for books of my own. That led to my first book, 1998’s Unknown Legends of Rock’n’Roll, which covered sixty cult acts from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Since then I’ve written about fifteen books, including titles on the Velvet Underground, the Who, and 1960s folk-rock. My biggest focus and enthusiasm is for uncovering little known music history, whether it’s little known material by big acts (as in my book The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film) or many interesting artists who never got the attention they should have, some of them much more obscure even than cult groups like the Velvet Underground. I’ve never been able to support myself solely through books, which are actually sources of some of the lowest-paying work I’ve done, so I’ve done magazine stories, online stories, liner notes, editing, and other free-lance work all the while. I’ve also presented music history events for about twenty years, and taught full non-credit/adult/community education music history courses in Bay Area colleges for about a dozen years.

But to address the question of how I got to where I am more than what I actually did, some people find the answer boring, but it was perseverance. There’s not a lot of demand for music historians. I pursued every opportunity I could, seldom turning any reasonably interesting work down, and have had to constantly propose book/story/other ideas, many of which have been turned down. I also developed an expertise that not many others have, which has accumulated over a long time, and remains an ongoing process.

Did you have any mentors along the way? What did they teach you?

This might sound pompous, but it’s the truth, although I’m a pretty modest person. I had no specific mentors. I had three older brothers, which gave me more exposure to music history than most people my age, but soon I knew much more about it than any of my siblings. Most of my musical knowledge has come through self-education. There have been people since college that gave me useful professional advice, but usually it’s amounted to “you’re on your own, you have to make your own breaks.”

If there were any figures who taught me things of more specific use, it was from reading the work of people I mostly hadn’t met—the rock writers I liked to read, like Lenny Kaye, Peter Doggett, Johnny Rogan, and numerous others (I did eventually meet all of those guys). I aimed to combine deep research and entertaining prose, as those and many other writers have.

Walk me through a typical day-to-day for you right now.

You might get this answer from a number of people you ask, but there is no typical day. If you’re a self-employed freelancer, as I have been for 26 years, you have to juggle many projects to keep on going. Some days I might have to teach all day. Some days I might have to do and transcribe interviews all day. Some days I might have to write a magazine piece with a deadline. Many days I have to combine all those things. I have to spend more time on rather dull business/financial/organizational stuff—chasing money I’m owed, making sure my taxes are done right, maintaining my computer so I have enough disk space—than most people seem to think.

Generally, a week involves some combination of research, writing, teaching, event presentation (sometimes on Zoom the last few years), and dealing with business stuff as necessary. But there’s not even a typical week, or month. Sometimes I’ve spent weeks at a time traveling to do research. In recent months I’ve had more classes to teach than ever, sometimes every weekday. I can say that generally I get up between 6am-7am (earlier than most writers, it seems) and usually work eight to ten hours from that point. That’s if I’m working at home. Sometimes I need to teach/present in late afternoon or evening, which makes for more like ten-fourteen-hour days. And I have to work on projects from home almost every Saturday and Sunday, often for full weekend days.

What does your media diet look like?

The only rock history magazines I read regularly are a couple to which I contribute: the UK monthly Record Collector, and the ‘60s-oriented rockzine Ugly Things. I usually read parts of the New York Times, Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle most days. I don’t watch much TV, and it’s usually public television when I do, though I watch a lot of films of all kinds. Except for baseball and basketball games, I only listen to noncommercial public/college radio, actually more for public affairs than music.

How has your approach to your work changed over the past few years?

The big change was a long time ago, in 1996, when I for the first time became a full-time self-employed free-lancer, working from home except when I was doing research/interviews, or (although not until the 21st century) presenting events and teaching. It’s really always been a jumble of managing multiple projects all along.

How do you organize your work?

I don’t have any special methods, other than labeling my writing and contacts lists on my computer files clearly and backing up what I write every day. I know where to find everything I’ve written on my computers, and where to find the records/books/magazines I regularly consult, though that’s gotten more difficult with my limited space as my collections have grown very big over the years.

Where do you see music journalism headed?

I think any predictions I make would be wrong. There have been a lot of doomsday proclamations about the death of music (and indeed all print) journalism over the last few years, but although there are alarming trends, I don’t think it’s quite that bad. This is hardly an original observation, but there will continue to be a shift toward online platforms rather than print journalism, though I don’t think print journalism will entirely die. I think there will generally be more respect given to music history and non-star artists, though not hugely, and not generally by major publishers.

What would you like to see more of in music journalism right now?

This is pretty selfish, but as a reader and author, I want to see more books on lesser known and cult artists. I’m a big fan of many superstars like the Beatles and Rolling Stones, but I only want books on them if they tell me something new, which is getting harder and harder for such exhaustively covered artists. As many books as I’ve done, I’ve had a hard time getting deals for my books unless they’re on big stars. Hearteningly, there are more and more books on cult artists, but the money involved is so small (as it is, frankly, for many books on more renowned artists) that they’re not worthwhile to do unless authors have other streams of income. Or they can commit to doing one or two such books if they’re really obsessed with the subject, but it’s difficult to do on an ongoing basis.

What’s one tip that you’d give a music journalist starting out right now?

I’m sure you hear snarky answers to this along the lines of: “Don’t do it.” But here’s my one tip, and one that I see given surprisingly infrequently. Write about what you like the most. Tips like “don’t call the main editor, call the managing editor,” “go to the office to pitch in person so they know who you are,” or “study the publications/trends to see what they want/need the most” might be useful for some writers. But I don’t think they’ll make for a very satisfying career if that’s the focus, or if the concentration is more on getting work of any kind than the work you want.

Maybe more importantly, if you write about what you like the most, that enthusiasm and passion will carry through to your writing, and make readers and editors want to read your work more. Also, if you have a thirst for knowing more about and writing about what you like the most, you should develop expertise that will hopefully also help you stand out to editors and publishers if you can write well.

What’s your favorite part of all this?

It’s interviewing the artists and their associates, to get stories and perspectives that haven’t yet been given. Not too far behind is doing research, especially if it’s in sources that few or no one have consulted or yet discovered. I like doing the actual writing too, but finding out new stories and information is what excites me the most.

What was the best track / video or film / book you’ve consumed in the past 12 months?

This is going back a little more than twelve months, and not an offbeat choice, but the Get Back documentary on what the Beatles did in January 1969 had amazing footage that actually unearthed a lot of interesting unknown information in an enjoyable way. If you want something more off the beaten track, the 2022 coffee table book The Byrds: 1964-1967, by Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman & David Crosby, had a lot of good and mostly little known or unknown photos, but more importantly interesting first-hand memories from all three of those Byrds.

If you had to point folks to one piece of yours, what would it be and why?

The book I’m most proud of actually ended up being two books, my 1960s folk-rock history Turn! Turn! Turn!: The Folk-Rock Revolution and its sequel Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock’s Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock (now combined into one ebook with extra material, titled Jingle Jangle Morning). This is because I was able to weave together many stories and careers into one overview of a major musical movement that had never been covered with one book (or two books, as it ended up), integrating some social history. 

For checking out just one piece, I wrote many for the music history website pleasekillme.com, and while they’re not adding new work, the past articles are still up. Several dozen come up if you type my name in the search field. If you want a sample, one of my most comprehensive stories, on a Van Morrison 1968 tape made shortly before he recorded Astral Weeks is here.

Anything you want to plug?

My next book, Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground, is tentatively scheduled for publication by Omnibus Press in London in spring 2025. I wrote a book on the Velvet Underground published in 2009, but it’s been out of print for quite a few years, and it was a day-by-day reference book. This book will be a standard narrative history, which allows me to present the information for wide circulation again, in a more conventionally readable format. I can also incorporate a lot of new information that came to light after my previous book was published about fifteen years ago.