Heath Ledger Was 'Obsessed' With... Nick Drake

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books and now writer/director of award-winning films. He was also a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy.

We can mock Rolling Stone’s “500 Best All-Time Greatest No Doubt For Sure Albums” rankings (and we have) but it’s somewhat notable that Nick Drake recorded only three albums—and they all made the list. I wonder how many other artists batted 1000 with three or more lps? Anyway, long before a Nick cult developed after that VW “Pink Moon” commercial and all those movie soundtrack excerpts, I was a huge fan dating back to the early 1970s (he would die at the age of 26 in 1974).

With my return-to-vinyl in recent weeks I have dug out or replaced those three lps and they have not lost a thing. And he remains one of the finest guitarists (and with odd tunings) of our era. You can find several docs on YouTube or streaming although there’s still no video of Nick playing live, which he did rarely outside his bedroom in the house he grew up in. (A ten-second glimpse of a mystery man, allegedly Nick in his trademark velvet jacket, at a folk festival—mind you, just walking through a crowd, alone, not even playing—became known as the Bigfoot Video.)

Speaking of home, I’ve found fascinating in recent years the discovery and release of his mum’s home recordings, in which she sounds so much like her son, who obviously adapted some of her vocal and writing style.

New to me in the past week, however, is this Heath Ledger connection. Apparently the actor loved his music, in fact was “obsessed” with him, and hoped to make a movie about him, see short interview clip below. Heath went so far as shoot a video for one of Nick’s very last and bleakest songs, “Black-Eyed Dog,” which ended with a shot of Heath drowning in a bath tub. A little later, Ledger, like Nick, would OD and die young. His “Black-Eyed Dog” film would air at a festival or two but then disappear from screenings and even the internet.

Then there’s this: In his final weeks, Heath announced plans to open a bar/restaurant near his home in Brooklyn. This did happen after his death, and its name—to this day—is Five Leaves, which comes from Drake’s stunning debut album, Five Leaves Left. It became a a hipster paradise and is still much appreciated today.

Below, a few tunes mainly from Five Leaves Left and then Nick’s final statement on his depression, “Black-Eyed Dog.” Plus our daily political cartoon. Enjoy, if you can, then subscribe—it’s still free but I need to be encouraged to keep this going!

Here’s Heath at Venice Festival briefly on Nick.

From Nick’s debut, the indelible “Cello Song.”

The oft-covered “Time Will Tell Me.”

One of the most gorgeous songs ever, “Way to Blue.” He knew the way.

Also from the first album, “River Man.” Nick was sui generis.

One of Nick’s few upbeat tunes, “Hazy Jane II,” from his second album, got me out the door at Barrow St. and on the way to Crawdaddy many a morning in mid-1970s.

And finally, one of his last songs, after his third and final album and unreleased for years, the aforementioned Heath Ledger obsession, “Black-Eyed Dog.” Apparently it was no less than Winston Churchill who gave this name to severe depression.

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s atomic bomb movie twisted by the White House and Pentagon), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His 2021 film, Atomic Cover-up, won four awards, and his current one, The First Attack Ads, aired over hundreds of PBS stations this past fall. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.