Nick Drake: Why the mysterious British music icon who died young is misunderstood

And now, almost half a century after his death, Drake is being rediscovered all over again. The Endless Coloured Ways, a collection of 23 of his songs by artists such as David Gray, Fontaines DC, Self Esteem and John Grant, is released this Friday, and a definitive new biography, Nick Drake: The Life, by Richard Morton Jack, has just been published.

The biography contains no shocking new revelation, no discovery that turns on its head everything we thought we knew about Drake, but rather provides an absorbing portrait of the man and his milieu through the accumulation of fascinating detail. It also serves to correct many misconceptions.

The myths about him

“Quite a lot of assumptions have arisen because people tend to mythologise these iconic entertainment figures who die young,” Morton Jack tells BBC Culture. “And actually, peeling that back and getting a really good consensus from a large spread of people who knew him in different ways was very satisfying.”

The author interviewed 200 people from all areas of Drake’s life and was given access to his family’s private papers. His research suggests that, contrary to what some believe, the musician was not a heroin addict; he was not gay; he had not been abused at school; and conflict with his father was not at the root of his problems.

“There was quite a lot of small detail that I was able to fill in,” says Morton Jack, who recently visited the Wikipedia page on Drake and gave up counting the factual errors when he reached 50. “Speaking to everyone, it wasn’t as if some people had one impression and other people had another. There was quite a strong consensus, not just about his personality but also about his behaviour. So, for example, one of the absolute givens about him has been that he smoked a quite unbelievable amount of dope and was completely damaged by drugs. Well, no one who knew him says that.”