Molly Drake - Molly Drake - 'Poor Mum'
Nick Drake's father [Rodney] recorded Nick's mother singing and playing her cleverly wrought songs on a home tape recorder in their sitting room. Nick's sister has now allowed them to be released. This song particularly got to me as it is a theme I have commented on in a song or two of my own: that so many women of her generation had little chance to be seen or heard as anything but dutiful wives and mothers, and had to forget their dreaming. I wonder if this song was a reply to Nick's 'Poor Boy'. The part that always affects me is the end of the last verse - "go out and grab at your life and forget you are poor, poor… mu-u-um" the last word spoken as if by her child.