MEMOIRS
PAUL WHEELER, JOHN MARTYN AND NICK DRAKE, 1968 - 1969
I first met John Martyn at an Incredible String Band gig at the Vineyard Hanging Lamp club in Richmond, near Surbiton where he was staying in a flat with his mother. It was early in 1968, and I was a student at Ravensbourne Art College, doing a course in TV and film. I had won a scholarship to Caius in the autumn of 1967, which for me as a wordsmith seemed like a validation in the same way John felt validated as a musician by his record deal with Island.
Neither John nor I were performing at the gig - we just met and chatted at the bar. My first impression of John was a mixture of endearing bumbling cherub - I recall him swilling and spilling his beer - and acutely perceptive worldly warrior: these were elements I tried to evoke subsequently in my poem for the cover of 'The Tumbler'.
We discussed exactly what it was we loved about the Incredible String Band, and my own opinion at that time that they were the next step after the Beatles. In early 1968 we had a feeling that the '60s had already peaked, somewhere in 1967. I know that in France and America, the political implications of the '60s were only just getting into their stride in 1968, but in little England, we were more convinced by the "All You Need is Love" mindset.
John spoke about having already made an album, and I spoke about the life around south London - "Suburbiton", as we referred to it - where I was a native, and John a relatively recent visitor. As well as discussing local folk clubs, I told John about jazz venues I'd frequented as a schoolboy, like the Bull's Head in Barnes, where I had heard musicians like Harold MacNair, who I later recommended as someone to bring in to the musical mix of 'The Tumbler' when The Management said we were allowed to book a session musician (although MacNair had already made an appearance on John's first album, on the track 'Rolling Home', so John knew who he was).
John and I realised we had more to exchange with each other, swappped telephone numbers, and subsequently met very regularly: I would stay at his mother's flat, and he would visit me at my parents' house in Purley, which I think John regarded as deepest darkest Suburbiton.
We played together at various gigs, including a residency at Les Cousins, and also went on a lot of jaunts including a memorable one to Rye - a quintessential quaint English town on the south coast. I recall driving down with Nick Drake to Rye for a jaunt a year or two later.
John and I wrote songs both together and individually which directly wove together experiences, thoughts and adventures we were having: "The River" was like a diary extract from John's life at the flat with his mother; "Fly On Home" was specifically about John's then girlfriend Linda, who would take the train from Scotland to London to visit and join me and my then girlfriend Diana - there are some photos of the four of us at Camber sands which reflect the happy, playful ambience of that time.
Both the Beatles and the Incredible String Band reflected, in some of their work, on the innocence of childhood, not as naivete but as clarity, and the vision of 'The Tumbler' shared this. Our lyrics were influenced by, amongst others, John Lennon's wordplay, which subverted the Queen's English, and the astonishing originality of Ivor Cutler - I recalled listening with glee to the radio programmes Ivor Cutler made when I was a schoolboy.
It's only now that I realise that the time I spent at Ravensbourne and with John was in parallel with Nick's work on 5LL: curiously, it's possible that our paths crossed during that period.
In the summer of 1968, John and I heard Joni Mitchell's album "Songs to a Seagull", and it seemed to herald a new wave of songwriting, more articulate, deeper. I think Nick Drake had the same feeling: he was particularly enthusiastic about Joni Mitchell's "Blue" album a few years later: I recall him talking about it while walking with him around the arboretum at Tittenhurst Park.
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In the autumn of 1968, I arrived at Caius, and was almost immediately disillusioned. After the very practical and professional approach to creativity at Ravensbourne and with John Martyn, Cambridge seemed to be full of schoolboys more concerned with amateurism and criticism.
My main teacher at Caius was Jeremy Prynne, who was very sympathetic about my first impressions. Here was a poet, not just a teacher. He published 'Kitchen Poems' in 1968, the beginning of his own creative career. He introduced me, both physically and through books, to very stimulating writers and writing from far and wide, past and present, tailored to my taste, without ever obliging me to comment unless I wished to. Contemporary poets he introduced me to included Barry MacSweeney in person and John Ashberry in print, and I expect I shared these treasures with Nick Drake when my friendship with him began.
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Me at Cambridge - Harvey Court, Gonville & Caius college 1968
I was officially introduced to Robert Kirby at some sherry party in Caius because I had listed 'songwriting' as an interest on my application form, and Robert was working with Nick Drake. Robert introduced me to Nick a day or so later, and Nick and I subsequently spent an afternoon together in his room at Carlyle Road, on the outskirts of town, speedily going through our respective record collections and a check list of shared musical interests, particularly guitarists, and finding an almost 100% similarity. There were clusters of guitarists and songwriters around various people we considered as key figures - Davey Graham, Robert Johnson, Dave Van Ronk. There were some gems which we were able to add to each others knowledge. For example, I had a copy of the Elektra compilation called 'The Blues Project' , which later evolved into the band of the same name - a record which I don't think Nick had heard before, and which I later noticed amongst John Lennon's collection. We also shared the same tastes in Jazz, Latin American music, Classical music, Flamenco and many other genres.
I was a big fan of 'Pet Sounds', and also the lesser known 'Friends' by the Beach Boys; "Busy Doing Nothing" was my favourite song. I can't remember if Nick was already a fan, or if I encouraged him to be.
We discussed the integrity of English singers who sang in their 'natural' accents - Colin Blunstone, for example, whose hit song 'Time of the Season' was recorded in 1968; we admired the wry musical minimalism of Mose Alison - both of those influences maybe slipped into the mix of 'Riverman'.
We didn't comment so much on the English Literature we were studying, except to nod at the Romantics, Medieval troubadors, and an overwhelming love of Shakespeare's work. Then there were the books by the likes of Alan Watts, and Kerouac - required extra-curricular reading for our generation.
Nick was always enthusiastic, quietly and precisely perceptive, graceful and agile, with a warm, wry sense of humour. We laughed a lot during our times together.
Nick was the sort of person I had hoped to meet at Cambridge.
Another was Mark Lancaster, who had arrived, at the same time as me, as artist in residence at King's College. Mark had a spectacular room overlooking King's Parade. He was charming , a professional artist, not an academic, and had a wide range of experience and contacts: he had been at Andy Warhol's factory; introduced me to Duncan Grant, David Hockney and Christopher Isherwood.
I introduced Nick to Mark, and in turn, Mark introduced both of us to E.M.Forster: the three of us had a very pleasant teatime together in almost total silence, looking down on Cambridge through the huge semicircular window of Mark's room. I think I asked the only question, trying to find common ground, about what E.M.F. thought about Indian music, to which he gave one of his classic laconic replies: "I'm sure they were up to something".
Nick and I played our songs to each other. The first I heard of his was "Time Has Told Me" which I think he had designed to be his signature introductory song, in the same way that John Martyn had written "May You Never". My own signature song was 'Give Us a Ring', a song I had written before going to Cambridge, and which John Martyn later recorded, in 1970, for his 'Road to Ruin' album in the same studios where Nick had recorded 5LL.
Another of my songs, which I had written in the summer of 1968, was "Julie Was Saying Goodbye", which Nick liked. It uses a C tuning which I shared with him; In the summer of 1969, Nick showed me how he had changed one note of the tuning, and used it for "Hazy Jane". Narrative songs featuring names of people - characters blending fact and fiction - were fashionable - from "Eleanor Rigby" to "Betty" in "Riverman".
I expect I heard Nick play most of the songs for 5LL; I remember them being presented more as a 'back catalogue', elegiac, and I responded in kind. Nick shared my sense that such songs had their centre of gravity in that golden period around 1967: we compared notes of our experiences in France that year - he in Aix and me in Paris; Nick's encounter with the Rolling Stones as fellow travellers, my similar experience with encountering The Who in Paris - during that period when there had been a sense that "we are all in this together" - whether on stage or off it - "although she feels as if she's in a play, she is anyway" as Paul McCartney sang in 'Penny Lane'.
We spoke of the musical and cultural influences which had travelled up and down the hippy trails to Morocco and India and beyond. The Master of Caius college at the time was Joseph Needham, who had a great interest in China which he shared with me and I passed on to Nick.
It was a common ritual to sit around record players in student rooms exchanging favourites and discoveries: I remember Mark Lancaster introducing us to Randy Newman's "I think it's going to rain today", and also the album 'Roots' by the Everly Brothers - both released in 1968.
I met Ian MacCormick, who under his pen name 'Ian MacDonald' many years later wrote about Nick in the academic style which Nick and I had both had found so stultifying. Ian had some connection with Robert Wyatt, so "soft Machine" and other 'avant garde' music came into the mix of what we listened to. I met Fred Frith, another experimentalist, who formed the band "Henry Cow". I quite possibly introduced him to Nick during the social rounds which are a central feature of any student life.
I remember Nick playing me Tim Buckley's haunting "Morning Glory", and the Steve Miller Band's "Song for our ancestors", which explored the possibility of soundscapes created in the studio - a fairly new concept at the time.
The most continuous musical inspiration for Nick and I came from nights with Mike Weissman at Caius, an ancient college in the centre of town, which I think was more what Nick had imagined Cambridge to be like than his experience of Fitzwilliam college. I was introduced to Mike by Robert Kirby, who said that Mike had a copy of the elusive Beach Boys 'Smile' album, although I never got to hear it.
Mike's collection of records was astounding and eclectic: he would move seamlessly and without discussion from playing Smokey Robinson to Gustav Leonhardt on his magnificent "Quad" speakers, as we sat in his rooms entranced. There would be unusual jazz like Jaki Byard, and a lot of English Tudor music like Byrd and Tallis: regular visits to the gallery of Caius' chapel to hear evensong were a delight, touching the heart and soul of the Cambridge Experience. I had been a chorister as a boy, and sung at Canterbury Cathedral and for the BBC, so choral music from Britten's "Ceremony of Carols" to the Beach Boys had always been at the top of my musical preferences, and the cautious, hushed optimism of evensong is a ritual I have savoured all my life.
Mike was in his 3rd year; Nick and Robert in their 2nd year, and I was in my first year. Two other regulars at Mike Weissman's rooms were Peter Russell, a brilliant scientist and enthusiastic meditator with whom I resumed contact in my professional career a decade later, and Chris Jones, a refreshingly cheerful and incisive Liverpudlian who told me that it was he who had suggested the title for "Five Leaves Left" when Nick had presented a test pressing of some of the songs just as Chris extracted the "only five leaves left" message which was always inserted into packets of Rizla cigarette papers. That would have been earlier in 1968, before I arrived at Caius.
Mike revived an ancient Caius club called 'The Loungers', to which we all belonged, and whose only commitment was "to lounge by ye gate at mid day and observe what straunge creatures god hath made", and to have a large "loungers' breakfast" together on alternate Sundays. The club rules allowed for the presence of one person who was not from Caius, to be known as "The Oddefellowe" - Nick Drake.
Other activities which the Loungers enjoyed included punting at night - a far more serene experience than by day - "Riverman" mood, indeed!. Also various outings, for example to see Gustav Leonhardt in London, after a meal at 'L'Artiste Affamme' - Mike was a connoisseur of many delights.
Nick, Mike, Mark Lancaster and me all had access to cars, and we would spend a lot of time driving around just for fun - Nick loved driving, and was very good at it. I recall driving with him to the coast somewhere north of Cambridge, just to get away from the town and walk on a beach in the evening. All four of us would make regular visits to London, and it was during one of these that I introduced Nick to John Martyn, who was curious about my new life and friends in Cambridge. For me it was a joining of two worlds; I guess it was for Nick as well.
I expect Nick mentioned his recording sessions for 5LL to me, but for me recording sessions were familiar from my days at Ravensbourne and in studios in London with John Martyn and friends, so they were not particularly remarkable. I do remember calling in at the session with Robert Kirby in April 1969, and noting the contrast between Nick and John in the studio: Nick's session felt like a school orchestra project: very focussed and serious; John's sessions were like parties. The orderliness of Nick's performance was also evident at the one gig he did that I remember - at 'The Pitt Club' for somebody's 21st birthday party, I think - very posh, with silver spoons!
Nick and I also played at Caius' May Ball in 1969.
Pete Russell introduced us to the habit of listening to music on headphones while walking or driving - this was a long time before the "Walkman" and we were all enthusiastic, especially Nick. It ushered in a whole new way of listening to music, not just sitting in rooms or at concerts.
At that time, Cambridge was still dominated by men, and many of them had been to schools which were also exclusively male - "Alma Pater" as Chris Jones put it. Robert, Chris and I had girlfriends - mine was the same as during the 'Tumbler' times, and she was still living in London, so I often went to stay there with her for refuge. I don't recall Nick having a particular girlfriend at Cambridge, although, as is often mentioned, he could have taken his pick. His main attraction, so I was told, was that he didn't seem to know he had an attraction!
In the summer of 1969, I stayed in Cambridge for an extra term - "The Long Vac Term". There were two symbolic events that dominated that summer for me: The Moon Walking, and The Manson Murders. It was also the summer of Woodstock, which felt to me more like the ending of an era than a beginning.
Nick was not at Cambridge during that summer, although we were still in touch. I used the C tuning as tweaked by Nick for part of the music I wrote for a play about Jan Palach which I performed with a theatre group at the Edinburgh Festival. A documentary was made about the play, and one of the crew was an old friend from Ravensbourne, who was very contemptuous about the privileged world of Cambridge students.
Around the same time, Nick recorded songs for the John Peel show, a show I remember attending back in 1968 with John Martyn. I saw Nick and John on the same bill at the Royal Festival Hall in September 1969, where I was first introduced to his sister Gabrielle.
In November 1969, I have a vivid memory of Nick Drake being very shaken by John Lennon's song 'Cold Turkey' - he said that it was such a raw topic for a song; so far from the idylls of 1967. Soon afterwards, my girlfriend Diana, subsequently my wife, got a job as secretary to John Lennon, and her first task was to type up John's letter returning his MBE : "I am returning this MBE in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against Cold Turkey slipping down the charts.”
Soon after, Lennon was singing "...the dream is over..."