Nick Drake Owes Posthumous Success to Parents

Nick Drake has increasingly sold more and more records in the years since his tragic death in 1974 at the age of 26, thanks in part to a late '90s Volkswagen commercial that featured the iconic folksinger's song 'Pink Moon.' But while the ad didn't hurt, Drake's posthumous success is largely owed to his parents.

According to producer Joe Boyd, who recorded two of Drake's three studio albums, Drake's parents were so moved by fan pilgrimages to their house, following their son's death, they would often invite them inside -- sometimes even letting them stay in his room. "His dad had home tapes that Nick had done," Boyd tells Spinner, "so they'd let people copy these tapes sometimes and, of course, years later they started coming out as bootlegs."

The estate decided to officially package the best of this material, along with other rarities, in a collection called 'Family Tree,' released this past summer. Two of the tracks are actually from his mother, a piano player. "When you hear that, you understand the way he retuned his guitar and the strange chord shapes of Nick Drake -- it's all about his mother, because that's what her piano playing sounds like," Boyd says. "He had to retune his guitar in order to get the structures of the chords and the harmonies that he heard growing up. It's really extraordinary."

A Nick Drake box set, 'Fruit Tree,' which bundles the three studio albums with a new DVD, is slated for release on November 6.