Nick Drake's Pink Moon

Amanda Petrusich

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781441190413
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Historia y crítica de la música

Pink Moon explores how Nick Drake's third and final album has puttered and purred its way into a new millennium. Features interviews with producer Joe Boyd, string arranger Robert Kirby, and even the marketing team behind the VW Cabrio commercial that launched the album to platinum status more than thirty years after its release.

V. Pink Moon Gonna Get You All

On Monday, November 15, 2000, Volkswagen of America posted a sixty-second television commercial—the latest advertisement for the company’s new Cabrio convertible—on its website. That same day, an email blast was dispatched to over 250,000 consumers (VW leasers, subscribers to VW’s e-newsletter, and people who had previously requested information from VWcom, specifically); meanwhile, USA Today ran a full-page announcement directing readers to Volkswagen’s website and, subsequently, the ad. Since watching a video on the web was still a relatively foreign endeavor for most casual computers, the email also contained Apple’s QuickTime video player software, which allowed users who had never watched videos on the Internet to successfully stream the spot. This was the first time Volkswagen had ever launched an advertising campaign online.

The commercial, entitled “Milky Way,” is quiet, muted, soft. The spot opens with a brief aerial shot of a river before the camera, coasting high and even, swings up, shooting toward an empty bridge. A white Cabrio convertible, roof down, whizzes from right to left, rolling hard over dark water. It’s night, and the screen fades to face: a young, scruffy-looking kid in a roll-neck sweater, his hand wrapped loosely around the steering wheel. In the back seat, a sweet-faced blonde and a boy in a hooded sweatshirt lean into each other; in the passenger seat, a pretty, almond-eyed girl stretches, body languid and lean, grabbing the puffs of milk weed somersaulting overhead. Images flash and recede to black: Quick shots of the car, a snapshot of the full moon (as savored from inside the vehicle), teenaged faces swathed in soft, gauzy white light. Everyone’s hair is blowing around, all whimsy and shine. The camera spins.

The Cabrio inches up to a bash. The screen is crowded with classic house-party detritus: haphazardly strung Christmas lights, red plastic cups, someone’s sneaker, warm beer, cigarette butts, crushed aluminum cans. We hear whoops and hollers, lunging bodies crashing into each other, woos. The kids in the car shoot vaguely skeptical glances. No one speaks. The Cabrio’s reverse lights flash, and the car swings around another curve of empty road, the full moon hanging low in the sky, bright and bloated. The camera lingers on the blonde, her face half-obscured in darkness, before the screen fades to the blue and white Volkswagen logo, rendered over a backdrop of twinkling stars.

Aside from the whirr of wind over the car, the crinkling of gravel as the vehicle approaches the house, and, eventually, the dim clamor of the party, Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” is the commercial’s lone aural accompaniment. Drake’s vocals seem to taunt, egging the teens toward some kind of cosmic fruition, as if his voice was pouring out from the face of the moon itself, disembodied and ethereal, tugging the Cabrio— and its inhabitants—toward a big, lunar epiphany.

Regardless of how one feels about Drake’s music or Volkswagen’s products, it’s hard not to acknowledge that “Milky Way” is impeccably soundtracked: there is a synergy to song and image that’s both literal and atmospheric. The commercial’s narrative arc is supported as much by Drake’s lyrics as it is by the track’s tone and mood. “Pink Moon” is wistful and contemplative, working in direct opposition to the brashness of the party’s cacophony. The song—and the car— becomes an antidote, an alternative, a panacea. No matter how immune you may consider yourself to mass marketing, “Milky Way” is an undeniably seductive bit of filmmaking, powered by an undeniably seductive song.

In a press release circulated four days prior to the commercial’s online debut, Ron Lawner, Chief Communications Officer for Arnold Communications, the Boston-based creative agency behind “Milky Way,” wrote: “The song is very special. It’s an old song by a guy named Nick Drake. It’s called ‘Pink Moon’ and is actually a very good introduction to Nick Drake if you’re not familiar with him. It’s very transporting.” Liz Vanzura, then VW’s Director of Marketing and Advertising, called the song “Another great piece of music that captures the emotion of the spot perfectly. It’s one of those songs that can bring you into a very specific mood very quickly and keep you there for a long, long time.” It wasn’t the first time VW and Arnold had conspired to employ a lesser-known track to sell cars. By the end of the 1990s, Volkswagen, aided by Arnold, had developed a reputation for quirky, inventive advertising backed by unusual or long-forgotten music, having already highlighted songs from relatively obscure artists like Spiritualized, Luna, Stereolab, and Velocity Girl. After reviewing the treatment and story-boards, Gabrielle Drake, along with estate manager Cally, approved “Pink Moon” for commercial use.

In a curious display of foresight, a link from the Volkswagen site to Amazon.com allowed visitors to order Pink Moon immediately after viewing the spot. A week later, on November 22, the commercial began airing on television. Curious viewers could type bits of information about “Milky Way” into online search engines and be directed to Volks-wagen’s website, where they could then order the record from Amazon.

Within days of the commercial’s debut, Amazon’s sales of Pink Moon rocketed. Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks record sales at most large North American retailers (many independent shops do not subscribe to the service, and several online retailers—including Amazon.com—are not included in the final tallies), saw Pink Moon’s sales figures double (and eventually nearly quadruple), in the weeks following the commercial’s airing. According to Nielsen, sales of Drake’s album increased nearly 500 percent during the first ten weeks of 2000, when Drake shifted more than 4,700 copies of Pink Moon, compared to 815 in the same period in 1999. With album sales further bolstered by the addition of tiny “AS FEATURED IN THE VW AD” stickers to the front of CDs, annual sales (as reported by The New York Times in 2001) jumped from about 6,000 copies a year to over 74,000.

As a narrative, “Milky Way” is very much about making a specific (and loaded) lifestyle choice: tumble out of the car, reciprocate high-fives, say “dude,” get drunk, maybe kiss someone stupid, maybe vomit on your new striped shirt. Or: stay strapped in the car with three good-looking pals, top curled down, all poetry and romance, whooshing through night, basking in moonglow, swatting at milk weed, listening to a gorgeous, thirty-year-old folk song. “Milky Way” allows its characters to pick fancy and freedom over conformity and noise—there might be a healthy bit of self-righteousness inherent to their choice, but the kids in the Cabrio also represent (a slightly idealized, infinitely better-looking version of) the outcast, the thinker, the dreamer, the loner. Their decision to keep driving is a method of self-substantiation, a quiet way of saying, “I am different, I am better than this.”

“Milky Way” is groundbreaking advertising in many ways—it was one of the first car commercials to feature a complex narrative, with distinct, relatable characters and more atmosphere than many full-length feature films—but the manner in which it captured and sold the notion (however subtle, however muted) of the outsider as socially and morally superior made it undeniably brilliant advertising. In sixty seconds, Arnold Communications managed to get viewers to define the Cabrio driver (creative, different, independent, free), envy the Cabrio driver, and, accordingly, aspire to become a Cabrio driver. The Cabrio was no longer just a motor vehicle—it was a way of life, a defining principle, a bold, concise declaration of self. Volkswagen and Arnold both recognized that the VW demographic valued identity over engine stats, magic over numbers. Suddenly, what you drive says something specific and undeniable about who, precisely, you are.

Unsurprisingly, “Milky Way” was instantly celebrated within the advertising industry. Every year since 1992, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (a trade organization representing, exclusively, “the interests of United States companies that specialize in producing commercials in various media—film, video, computer—for advertisers and agencies”) has organized the Art & Technique of the American Television Commercial, an art exhibit/awards show produced in association with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and intended to celebrate contemporary television commercials as tiny bits of art (or, as the MoMA coyly spins, “small films of persuasion”). In 2000, “Milky Way” was honored for its Art Direction, Advertising Excellence/Single Commercial, and Advertising Excellence/Campaign (in concordance with two other VW spots, “Chase” and “The Great Escape”), added to the MoMA Department of Film and Video’s permanent archive, and included in a global tour.

“Clearly, it was looked at, overall, as the best commercial [from that year],” nods Matt Miller, CEO and national manager of the AICP. “It got awards everywhere. At that time, Volkswagen was doing lifestyle commercials—it was different advertising. The car was there, but it was more a story about relationships, about the life inside the car. They pull up to the party, and they think, ‘We don’t wanna go there, we’d rather be here, in this car. Let’s drive.' And it’s a beautiful night, and the kids look so beautiful and happy, and yet because they made a decision to not go to that party, they seem more mature and self-assured. You don’t need dialogue to get who these characters are. You get this whole vibe from them. And then the moonlight gives them a certain type of glow. And it’s all in the car. As you get older, it becomes a nostalgic moment, where you think back to the great times you had cruising around with your friends. Or, if you’re that age, it’s aspirational. It can be connected to on so many levels,” Miller explains.

“There are lots of different ad types,” notes ad critic Seth Stevenson, who contributes an advertising column, “Ad Report Card,” to Slate. “The ‘demo,’ where you show the product in action, [or] the ‘celebrity presenter,’ [which is] self-explanatory. The Nick Drake VW ad is a type of ad that some people refer to as ‘associated user imagery,’ meaning the consumer is expected to associate him/herself with the people in the ad. Ads using this technique often feature sexy, cool, and funny people, for obvious reasons. But sometimes the people in an ad will be goofy or geeky, to match a certain target market.”

“In the case [of ‘Milky Way’], what do the featured users tell us about the target market?” Stevenson asks. “It seems like they’re young, well-bred, attractive-but-not-too-attractive, thoughtful, hiply quirky, and think they’re better than the masses. Seems like that was the brand image VW was gunning for all through that era,” Stevenson continues. “The Nick Drake song helps cement the identity of the people in the ad, and of the brand itself. They’re not listening to Led Zeppelin, or Celine Dion, or A Tribe Called Quest. Nick Drake is who VW drivers listen to. If you like this song, you’ll like VW, and you’ll have wistful summer nights like this.”

“Nick Drake’s music wasn’t known by the masses,” Miller adds. “And for many people, they thought of ‘Pink Moon’ as the Volkswagen song.” He pauses. “You know, wow, Volkswagen wrote a really cool song.”

***

“Initially, what I remember the most clearly, are hate emails,” shrugs former Arnold Communications copywriter Shane Hutton, who, along with partners Tim Vaccarino and Lance Jensen, wrote and proposed the concept for “Milky Way.” It was Hutton—then twenty-six years old—who single-handedly chose “Pink Moon” to serve as the commercial’s soundtrack. It’s Saturday morning, and we’re sitting in Hutton’s serene, Zen-styled Boston living room, on opposite ends of a soft beige sofa. “I remember one distinctly. This dude said, ‘How could you rub your corporate testicles all over Nick Drake when he’s not even alive to defend himself?’” Hutton sighs. “At first there was a lot of anger. Real anger, venom, from the Nick Drake loyalists. We’d burned a sacred cow. People were very upset. I felt horrible. Defensive. VW received several livid emails daily—probably forty or fifty in the first couple of weeks.”

“So I was like, fuck this shit. I’m writing this dude back. Which I’m not supposed to do, because of lawsuits or whatever. But I was like fuck it, I’m writing this guy,” Hutton continues. “So I write him back, and I’m like here’s the situation from my point of view. The person who okayed everything was Nick Drake’s sister—so this isn’t a situation where some corporation [acted as] barbarians at the gate, kicking it in, invading a sacred palace, pillaging, violating the princess. We talked to his sister,” Hutton emphasizes. “You may know Nick Drake’s wants and desires better than her, but I doubt it. So let’s just give her the benefit of the doubt. She agreed to it. She said no to everyone else but us. It’s not as if she’s whoring him out. Furthermore, think about it from her point of view,” Hutton continues. “You have this beautiful brother who writes beautiful music, beautiful songs. And all he ever wanted was to have someone hear them. And really, no one does. And he’s really bummed out, for a collection of reasons. And he handles that in a way that you, as his sister, wish he didn’t. Wouldn’t you want an opportunity to get those songs out there? Especially posthumously? Wouldn’t there be some sort of satisfaction in that, to be able to say, ‘I did it for you, Nick, I got you out there, buddy’?”

Hutton looks up. “Don’t think of it as us breaching the walls and storming your sacred palace. Think of it as 'One of us has made it into the ivory tower, and has put a flag out the window for the rest of us to see.' We’re inside the machine now, bro, and we can speak from the inside now. So the game has fucking changed, forever, because we fucking made it in there. So don’t look at the castle and be nostalgic for what it used to be. This is Bastille Day, bro! And it’s on now, and we’re inside, looking out, and you should be happy that one of your people got into this position of communicating to the masses. It’s not just the old reptile guard anymore.” Hutton pauses. “And he wrote back and was like, ‘I never thought about it that way.’ That’s still my opinion on anyone who has anything negative to say about it. If you have something negative to say about it, then you don’t have the situational awareness necessary to navigate things of this sort of social complexity. And you should probably reserve your opinions until you’re sure that you do have that kind of perspective.” Hutton shakes his head.

The notion of pop-song-as-jingle might be ubiquitous now, but in 2000, pairing music with a commercial product— while considerably more acceptable than it was in the 1980s— still meant fierce stigmatization and, more often than not, alienation from fans and critics. In the years preceding “Milky Way,” the atmospheric rise of grunge rock—celebrated by bands that appropriated earnest, working-class values, refusing to cut their hair or wear anything besides oily, $3 flannel shirts and scuffed-up Doc Martens—meant newfound disdain for both celebrity and capitalism. Despite being signed to major labels, grunge heroes refused to participate in their own stardom, leaping from the stage and breaking down, quite literally, barriers between artist and fan: Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder routinely nose-dived into his audience, swinging from rafters, denying his fans' idolatry, convincingly ashamed of his own fame.

Over the last decade, the idea of “selling out” has become considerably less poisonous. Precisely how and why is unclear: maybe because it’s increasingly difficult for bands to function, financially, without some degree of external income (the vagaries of record contracts, which often prevent artists from yielding any significant profit off of records alone, have become more and more public), or because, unlike in the 1980s, fewer and fewer independent labels are able to function without some degree of major label backing (even Sub Pop, best known for releasing Nirvana’s scrappy debut, Bleach, is now forty-nine percent controlled by Warner Bros.), thus debunking the myth of Do-It-Yourself entirely. Radio consolidation—a problem since 1,200-station monolith Clear Channel began expanding in the late 1990s—means that it is extraordinarily difficult to actually get a song on the air, further narrowing an artist’s potential avenues for success; around the same time, MTV began concentrating on its original and unscripted programming, significantly reducing the amount of music video airplay. Small, self-built Internet communities were beginning to thrive, but were hardly all-inclusive (according to Census numbers, only 26.2 percent of American homes had Internet access in December 1998). In 2000, bands didn’t have a whole lot of options for exposure.

Likewise, the slow dissolution of grunge and significant changes in the way commercials were produced helped lessen the blow of independent artists “selling out” to corporate America. High production values and creative use of sound made the line between a music video—at base, essentially a commercial for a song or album—and a proper advertisement less clear (the fact that both genres were pulling from the same pool of directors helped). For the first time, a car commercial soundtracked by a new band could, conceivably, sell as many records as minivans. The relationship between advertisers and artists seemed, suddenly, symbiotic.

In a 2001 New York Times article, reporter John Leland noted the sudden viability of commercial licensing as a marketing strategy for independent or underground musicians. “If you want to hear interesting, ambitious, challenging pop music these days, the place to turn is not mainstream radio but television—and not MTV, but commercials for establishment products like banks, phone companies and painkillers,” Leland wrote. “As pop radio has constricted around a handful of slick teen acts, commercials screech and thump with underground dance music and alternative rock, selling products whose reach extends way beyond that of the musicians. Alternative musicians, once shielded by the cocoon of their modest ambitions, suddenly face a new field of opportunity and of ethical quandary.” Michael Azzerad, editor-in-chief of eMusic.com and author of the definitive Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981—1991, elaborates: “The people ...