Day Is Done | A song by Nick Drake, 1969
Keith Morris, Nick Drake, 1969
When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done
When the day is done
Hope so much your race will be all run
Then you find you jumped the gun
Have to go back where you begun
When the day is done
When the night is cold
Some get by but some get old
Just to show life’s not made of gold
When the night is cold
When the bird has flown
Got no-one to call your own
Got no place to call your home
When the bird has flown
[When the night is cold
weren’t you ever told it’s the time
when fear is bought and sold
when the night is cold]*
When the game’s been fought
Newspaper blown accross the court
Lost much sooner than you would have thought
Now the game’s been fought
When the party’s through
Seems so very sad for you
Didn’t do the things you meant to do
Now there’s no time to start anew
Now the party’s through
[When they’ve sung this song
Maybe you won’t feel quite so strong
You’re hopes won’t last quite so long
When they’ve sung this song
When they’ve sung this song
Won’t be so sure what’s right what’s wrong
Not so sure where you belong
When they’ve sung this song]*
When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done
[When the day is done
Hope so much your race will be all run
Then you find that you jumped the gun
You have to go back where you began
When the day is done]*
Nick Drake
Nick Drake – Day Is Done, 1968 – early version / home recording *
Nick Drake – Day Is Done, 1969 – with string quartet
Nick Drake – Day Is Done – take 7, 3 April 1969 – instrumental
Keith Morris, Nick Drake, 1969
The first strong memory I have of Nick was at the second or third session for Five Leaves Left. Richard Hewson, a well known arranger, and a fifteen piece orchestra had been brought in to arrange Nick’s songs. Nick started getting hotter and hotter under the collar. He was very young and he had struck me as a person you could push about – some people in a recording session will do whatever you tell them – but he was getting quietly more and more aggravated, and in the end he dug his heels in and dismissed the arrangements. He said he’d get this friend at Cambridge, Robert Kirby, he thought would be much more sympathetic to what he was doing. Robert had never before done anything in his life in a recording studio. But two weeks later we booked him together with a bunch of musicians – a smaller bunch than the first time, I remember… We were flabbergasted. He was so good.
John Wood, sound engineer on Five Leaves Left album
After the album’s completion, Drake and Kirby performed together live twice in June 1969 as part of a chamber group, at Caius College and the Pitt Club in Cambridge.
