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Pink Moon is the third and final studio album by the English folk musician Nick Drake, released by Island Records in February 1972. Pink Moon differs from Drake’s previous albums, in that it was recorded without a backing band, featuring only Nick Drake on vocals, acoustic guitar and a small piano riff on the title track.

Released two years before Drake’s death in November, 1974, at the age of twenty-six, the lyrical content of Pink Moon has often been attributed to Drake’s ongoing battle with depression . The songs are shorter than on his previous albums, with a total album running time of just over twenty-eight minutes.

Pink Moon, like Drake’s previous studio albums, did not sell well while he was still living but has since gained in notoriety, critical acclaim and record sales. Stephen Holden, in a 1972 review of Pink Moon for Rolling Stone magazine said, "The beauty of Drake's voice is it's own justification. May it become familiar to us all".

Background

Nick Drake’s first two albums with Island Records, Bryter Layter (1970) and Five Leaves Left (1969), sold poorly, and combined with Drake’s reluctance to perform live or engage in album promotion, Island was not confident of another album from Drake. Additionally, Drake had isolated himself in his London apartment and was suffering from depression. In 1971 he saw a psychiatrist and was prescribed antidepressants which he was reluctant to take due to the stigma associated with depression and his fears concerning the medication’s interaction with marijuana, which he smoked regularly. Although critics often associate Drake’s music, and especially the perceived melancholy of Pink Moon, with his depression, Cally Calloman of Bryter Music, which manages Drakes's estate, remembers it differently, “Nick was incapable of writing and recording while he was suffering from periods of depression. He was not depressed during the writing or recording of Pink Moon and was immensely proud of the album”. After facing disappointment with various aspects of his first two albums, Drake sought a more organic sound with Pink Moon.

Recording

After a brief hiatus in Spain spent at a villa belonging to Island Records' head, Chris Blackwell, Drake returned to London refreshed, and in October of 1971 approached record engineer and producer, John Wood. Wood had worked with Drake on his previous two albums and was one of the few people Drake felt he could trust. Wood has worked with other artists such as Fairport Convention, Cat Stevens, and Pink Floyd, and he often worked in partnership with record producer Joe Boyd. Boyd produced Drake’s first two albums with Wood acting as sound engineer. Although Wood primarily focused on the engineering of an album, he often contributed as a producer.

When Drake reached out to Wood in 1971 expressing his interest in recording another album, the ensuing process was significantly pared down compared to Drake’s other two albums. The album was recorded at Sound Techniques studio in London in late 1971 with just Drake and Wood present. The studio was booked during the day, so Drake and Wood arrived around 11:00 p.m. and simply and quietly recorded half the songs. The next night, they did the same. In only two late night sessions, with just his voice and acoustic guitar, Drake created what is considered by many to be one of the "most influential folk albums of all time". Contrary to a popular legend that Drake dropped the album off in a plastic bag, anonymously, in the reception area of the record label, Drake delivered the master tapes of Pink Moon to Chris Blackwell at Island. The tapes of the Pink Moon session also included Drake’s recording of "Plaisir d'amour" (translated from French as “The Pleasure of Love”), a classical French love song written in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini. Although "Plaisir d'amour" was on the track listing of the Pink Moon master tape box as the first track of Side Two, when the tapes were presented they included a note in reference to the song which read, "Spare title-Do not use”, so the song didn’t make it onto the album. The recording was less than a minute long, featured guitar with no vocals, and it was eventually included as a hidden track on UK editions of the Nick Drake compilation, A Treasury (2004). Had “Plaisir d’amour” been included on the Pink Moon album, it would have been the only song on any of his albums that Nick Drake did not write himself.

Artwork, packaging

 Keith Morris was the photographer who took Nick Drake's photo for the cover of Bryter Layter (1970) and he was commissioned to photograph Drake for the cover of Pink Moon. However, the photos were not used as Drake's hastily deteriorating appearance, hunched figure and blank expression were not considered good selling points. Island Record's Creative Director Annie Sullivan, who oversaw the shoot, recalls the difficulty in making a decision around the cover of the LP, "I remember going to talk to him, and he just sat there, hunched up, and even though he didn't speak, I knew the album was called Pink Moon, and I can't remembered how he conveyed it, whether he wrote it down. ...he wanted a pink moon. He couldn't tell me what he wanted, but I had pink moon to go on." Island picked a piece of surrealist Dali-esque art by Michael Trevithick, who was incidentally a friend of Drake's sister." Although Drake was not outspoken in his opinion on the cover art of Pink Moon, many close to him felt that he approved.