"Nick started composing at the age of four, when his passions were limited to cowboys and food. His first composition was called 'Cowboy Small.' Another early work was an exposition on the texture of celery and tomatoes.
At age eight, Nick went off to school at Sandhurst. Reports from the Eagle House School indicated that Nick was of strong character. He was a leading member of the Chapel Choir, and was eventually made Head of School. The Headmaster, however, noted that “Nobody knew him very well.”
In 1962, at age fourteen, Nick entered Marlborough, a fine British boarding school that usually sent its graduates on to Oxford or Cambridge. There, he was universally remembered as shy but happy and convivial. Michael Maclaran, a friend from those days, remembers him as: tall and stooped forward, holding his head quite low in his shoulders, as if there was always a cold wind blowing. He had a friendly smiling face and a Beatle haircut.
Nick blossomed at Marlborough, sharing a love of rock music, cigarettes, beer -- and a disregard for school regulations -- with a fairly large group of good natured, rebellious friends.
Further confounding the notion of Drake as a silent, doomed soul, he was something of an athlete at Marlborough. Motivated and competitive, he ran track and was captain of the Rugby team. Photographs taken of him during this period show a shyly smiling, chubby-faced teenager, invariably in the center of a group of similar looking young men. No solitary photos. No indication of the deep depression that would eventually overcome him. No tragic portents of the future.
His musical development continued. Nick had already learned the clarinet and the alto sax, and quite probably brought a knowledge of piano from his homelife at Far Leys. But Marlborough was where he picked up the guitar.
Still, the first student band he joined, a forgettable Marlborough combo called The Perfumed Gardeners, did not use him as lead guitar. (That job was reserved for Randal Keynes, grandson of the economist, Maynard Keynes.)
In a musical world that was then getting more guitar-crazed by the day, for the time being Nick stuck with his clarinet, saxophone and piano. But nevertheless, Nick quickly became the unofficial musical director of the band. And since he was the only one of The Perfumed Gardeners who could sing, he also became lead vocalist.
London was within easy hitchhiking distance of Marlborough, and the city's rock scene proved an irresistible lure. Nick and his friends started a long tradition of sleep deprivation by hitching down to London, catching Steve Winwood, the Spencer Davis Group, or the Moody Blues at the Flamingo Club in Soho, and then making it back to Marlborough in time for morning chapel.
As the group got older, their adventures went further afield. In August 1965, Nick and his friends hitched around France, Germany, and Belgium for three weeks. France would be where Nick spent many of his happiest days.
He became familiar with chanson, the French singing tradition that conveys both the charm and despair of wistful love, sometimes in the same breath. It was the chanson, combined with Nick's fondness for folk and the blues, that formed the basis for his mature works."
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