Nick Drake, who died on 25 November, 1974, at the age of 26, was one of the finest and yet most unappreciated musicians Britain has ever produced.

A self-taught guitar player, he was also proficient at piano, clarinet, and saxophone.

Posthumously, Mr Drake's music has finally begun to gain recognition. In
recent years his tracks have featured in numerous film and television
soundtracks, as well as advertising commercials, making him more
popular at start of the 21st century than at any other time.

Nicholas Rodney Drake was born on 19 June, 1948, in Rangoon, Burma, to Molly and Rodney Drake, a middle class English couple working in the colonial lumber trade. Within two years the Drake family returned to England to live in Tamworth-in-Arden, near Birmingham.

He had a great love of music from an early age, learning to play the piano before moving to Marlborough public school, where he was given his first guitar. The lack of a guitar teacher did not stop his musical development, he merely taught himself, experimenting with strange tunings which would define his style in later years.

A scholarship to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, to study English literature followed, where he developed a reputation on the Cambridge folk music circuit, meeting a fellow Cambridge student, Robert Kirby, in the process.

After being spotted in 1968, he was approached by manager and producer Joe Boyd, who was willing to fund a debut album, and with the assistance of his friend Kirby, who went on to orchestrate many of the string and wood arrangements for his first two albums.

Mr Drake dropped out of university with only a year left, deciding to move to London to record Tthe second album, 'Bryter Layter'. This brought out the perfectionist in him and he rejected countless songs, delaying the album’s release twice, until it was finally completed in 1970.

Only 15,000 copies of the album sold, yet he was offered the opportunity to record a third album by 'Island Records', and in a session that is rumoured to have lasted anything from two hours to two days, he recorded 'Pink Moon' straight onto tape. Sadly the album was even less successful than his previous works.

By 1972 Mr Drake had checked himself into a psychiatric hospital for further treatment, though he left after five months, still haunted by a lack of achievement that had left him empty and unable to write.

Mr Drake was found dead in his bed by his mother early one morning at the family home. He had died from an overdose of an anti-depressant.