I’m a late comer to the genius of Nick Drake, but I’m making up for lost time. I guess when the body of work released during your lifetime consists of three peerless, 10/10 albums and just 31 songs, catching up is relatively straightforward, but Drake was a major, major talent who departed too soon, and deserves to be much more widely known. Not heard of him? Then try out his three albums, Five Leaves Left, Bryter Later and Pink Moon, and you will thank me, I promise. Drake’s record sales during his lifetime have been eclipsed by posthumous sales, particularly in the USA as a result of Volkswagen using his song Pink Moon in the promo advert for their VW Cabrio in September 2000. He has a stellar range of celebrity fans including Paul Weller, REM’s Peter Buck, Elton John, not to mention Brad Pitt, who fronted a BBC radio documentary on Drake in early 2005. 

I Saw Nick Drake: photographs by Keith Morris is the second ultra large format limited edition book by our publishing arm Ormond Yard Press. We have been working with the estate of Keith Morris to create what will be the definitive book of photographs from the late photographer’s outstanding Nick Drake archives. Nick Drake was an enigma. He has never been the focus of a specific photographic study before now. Couple that with the the fact that Keith Morris, a superb photographer, has the definitive Nick Drake photographic archive, and you have a pretty heady cocktail.

I Saw Nick Drake is going to be a different kind of project to our first book, Born To Run Revisited by Eric Meola. It will be on the same epic physical scale as Born To Run Revisited – with a mammoth 24 x 36 inch spread size when the book is open. However, because we need to include, at the last count, 200+ photographs within the confines of a 96 page book, the logistics prevent us from including everything over double page spreads (an important feature in Born To Run Revisited.) So parts of the book will be more traditional, if anything can be called traditional within the confines of that huge page size. It is an incredibly exciting project to be working on, and I feel a real privilege as I review hundreds of previously unpublished photographs.

We have a book launch event scheduled at the gallery in London – dates to be advised. Will superstar Nick Drake fan Brad Pitt be at the opening party? Who can say….. but plenty of news on this indispensable book will follow in the coming weeks.

This is a ‘heads up’ to save your pennies in a big jar, and to let you know that this book is coming. 

If you would like us to contact you as soon as we start to take pre-orders, we can do that – click anywhere on this sentence.

 You can read some more news about I Saw Nick Drake here