Strange Face – Adventures With a Lost Nick Drake Recording

Nick Drake is one of those artists who inspire more than just affection or admiration. Obsession is closer to the truth. Michael Burdett worked for the record label that had signed Nick Drake. While looking through a skip for old tapes he could record his own music over, Burdett found a demo of Drake’s Cello Song, the side B opener on the album Five Leaves Left. 

This set him off on an adventure, touring the country with the recording in his bag, stopping people in the street and asking them to listen to it while he photographed them (using a camera he borrowed from his brother). The listeners range from the famous—Tom Stoppard, Martin Freeman—to complete strangers, like a dry-stone waller from the Highlands.

We don’t hear the recording—Drake’s estate is protective of his legacy—but we hear the music in a different way, through the drifting, introspective expressions of the people in these photographs. 

Burdett puts Drake’s work into context, explaining that his fame was entirely posthumous. When he was alive Drake’s three albums collectively sold around 9,000 copies, compared to the millions that have been sold since his death.

The precariousness of history is apparent as Burdett reveals that he taped over recordings by Traffic and Roxy Music—it’s a minor miracle that this tiny fragment of Nick Drake was saved. It’s a deeply personal story and Burdett is a likeable, cheerful raconteur who has clearly been touched by finding out about strangers’ lives from the snapshot moments he’s spent with them. 

The way it ranges between different media—photography, music, theatre—makes it apparent that it doesn’t matter what form art takes. It always has the power to move.