Nick Drake, Through Elton’s Voice

Nick Drake photographed by Keith Morris in 1969 on Wimbledon Common, during the sessions for his debut album, "Five Leaves Left."

Before Elton John became a household name and Nick Drake drifted into cult immortality, their journeys briefly overlapped, quietly, and almost by accident.

In 1968, while still known as Reginald Kenneth Dwight, Elton was hired to record a series of demo tracks for a publishing company named Warlock Music. The songs weren’t his own, they belonged to a shy, mysterious singer-songwriter named Nick Drake, who had just released his debut album to little fanfare. The two never met. Drake didn’t even know it was happening. But somewhere in a London studio, Elton John sat at a piano and sang Nick Drake’s words, songs like “Time Has Told Me” and “Day Is Done”, with a confident tone that couldn’t have been more different from Drake’s hushed melancholy. The recordings were shelved, forgotten, and eventually leaked decades later. And yet, in those strange, liminal demos lies a rare kind of magic: a moment when two artists, heading in opposite directions, briefly occupied the same space, even if only on tape.

Before Elton John became a household name and Nick Drake drifted into cult immortality, their stories briefly overlapped, quietly, and almost by accident. In 1970, while still known as Reginald Kenneth Dwight, Elton was hired to record a set of demo tracks for a publishing company called Warlock Music. The songs weren’t his own, they belonged to a shy, painfully introverted singer-songwriter named Nick Drake, who had just released Five Leaves Left to near-total silence.

The two never met. Drake didn’t even know it was happening. But somewhere in a London studio, Elton sat at a piano and sang Nick Drake’s words, songs like “River Man,” “Day Is Done,” and “Time Has Told Me”, with a clarity and theatricality that couldn’t have been more different from Drake’s hushed, brittle delivery. Elton’s version was clean, professional, accessible. It was meant to pitch the songs to other artists, not to honor their ghostly intimacy.

The session was routine. The demos were shelved. And for decades, the tapes were forgotten. Nick Drake died in 1974, just 26 years old, virtually unknown and commercially overlooked. His music wouldn’t find its audience until decades later, through a slow-burn cult following and, most dramatically, a 1999 Volkswagen Super Bowl commercial that featured his song “Pink Moon.” That 60-second ad did what no label could in his lifetime: it introduced Nick Drake’s music to millions, and sparked a posthumous career his living self never experienced.

By then, Elton John had already become one of the most famous musicians on earth. And the demo session, an obscure footnote from a time when both men were still figuring out who they were in the industry, suddenly felt like a ghost story. A brief, strange alignment between two artists heading in opposite directions: one toward global stardom, the other into myth.

It’s a story without a meeting, a collaboration without consent, and yet, somehow, it remains one of the most haunting intersections in British music history.

Elton John - Mr. Reginald Sings Nick Drake - 1999 (Full Album Streaming) courtesy of "@o2digitale"