THE ENDLESS COLOURED WAYS The Songs Of Nick Drake 

PUBLISHED BY CHRYSALIS RECORDS

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“We now represent the publishing for Nick Drake and that is our big project for this year, so we’re not looking into more frontline signings for now. It’s the first time he has changed publisher since his death and, honestly, it’s an honour. We are recording versions of his songs completely reimagined by a range of artists, all of whom you’ll have heard of. They have to remain nameless, I’m afraid, but your eyes would be out on stalks. The only thing we told them was not to make it like the original.” 

Sir Robin Miller CEO of Chrysalis Records

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The Endless Coloured Ways

 

It has taken more than 25 years for Nick Drake to get where he is today, from relative obscurity to worldwide acclaim.

 

In his last few years, suffering from a mental illness we are far more aware of today, Nick told his mother - the equally talented Molly Drake - that he thought he had no more songs left. He went on to say that if just one of his songs changed someone’s life then all would have been worthwhile.

 

Over these 25 years it has been hard to separate the character of Nick Drake, the long lost musician, from the songs he wrote, but after a while it was considered a good idea to act on his words - and get people to hear his songs beyond Nick's own recordings.

 

It took the hands-on co-operation of Nick’s new song publishers Blue Raincoat to help gather together and initiate 23 recordings by a variety of new artists all of whom were briefed to leave the song’s author behind, to ignore the reverence and Nick’s technicality, but to make the song as if it was their own.

 

Music has always had an unavoidable visual counterpart from full on pop promos down to the pictures conjured in the listener’s head. Often many demands are made of the viewer to the point where the soundtrack goes unnoticed, the song buried under a distracting rapid flashy visual theme park.

 

I first came across Bill Jackson’s work when watching his 20 minute film opus of merging clouds and found myself listening well beyond merely hearing. I took this to be the key. Initially Bill ‘filmed’ Nick’s own Pink Moon, but then we went on to have each of these new song adoptions reflected by Bill Jackson’s unique eye view, be it via still photography or merged images. Each tableaux is there to take your mind deeper into the song. 

 

One bright spark who works in a major record company described Bill’s film for Pink Moon as ‘the one where nothing happens’ and I took this as high praise indeed.

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Cally Callomon Producer

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