River Man

Nick Drake's music has been orbiting me recently. Sometimes the only way to deal with melancholy is to accept melancholy and Nick's music deals in that beautifully. River Man from his first album, 1969's Five Leaves Left, is a masterpiece, a sign that Nick Drake was a young man with many talents. The song is in 5/4 time, possibly the influence of Joao Gilberto. The lyrics- I'm not sure I fully get them but they're poetic and full of meaning maybe only to Nick, concerning Betty and some sadness she endures, autumn and the running out of time ('Said she hadn't heard the news/ Hadn't the time to choose/ A way to lose/ But she believes'). The river man is someone who the narrator is going to speak to, 'about the plan for lilac time' and 'about the ban on feeling free'. Mystery and enigma. 

At the end Nick switches it around and suggests the river man might answer and tell him 'all he knows/ about the way his river flows/ I don't suppose it's meant for me'. The river man could be time, could be God, could be nature. He (Nick) is searching for something. 

Musically its sublime, Joe Boyd's production and the playing both first rate. The moment the strings enter, one minute in, is superbly done, Boyd's production utterly sympathetic to the song and the performance...

This version is the Cambridge version, a demo from spring 1968, just Nick and acoustic guitar. It came out in 2004 for a compilation, Made To Love Magic, an album of outtakes and different versions. 

River Man (Cambridge Version)

In 2010 a diverse cast of singers and musicians paid tribute to Nick at the Barbican, a concert called Way To Blue, with a house band (featuring the recently departed Danny Thonpson on double bass) and a line up of singers including Green Gartside, Teddy Thompson, Vashti Bunyan, Robyn Hitchcock, Scott Matthews and Kate St. John. I watched some of it late last Friday night and found it a mixed bag. Nick's songs, the singing especially, are so him it's difficult for the singers to do something with them and as songs they're not necessarily suited to big rooms and grand gestures. The best one for me was Lisa Hannigan's Black Eyed Dog, Lisa stamping her foot and playing the harmonium- she found a new way to play the song and brought a different energy to it, a real physicality. 

Black Eyed Dog goes beyond melancholy, it's depression. Nick's version drowns in it. 

Black Eyed Dog 

Lisa Hannigan finds I think a defiance in the face of the black dog, she squares up to it, dares it to do its worst. It's a shame Nick Drake never lived to hear Lisa's version of the song.