A Pink Moon tale

 

Nick Drake’s Pink Moon is - for yours truly and countless others - a Desert Island disc, music which soothes soul, a world of beauty and perfection.

A few days ago I was visiting a cool studio in the countryside near Garda lake, between Milan and Verona and after appreciating the landscape, I was inside the control-room where a majestic, imposing SSL 72 channel mixer was towering… a Studer 810 and an MCI JH110 master-tapes machines weren’t there as relics but on daily use 🥇

I was chatting with Stefano Castagna, the landlord and owner of the superb Studio and after talking about our common passion, aehm, more : obsession 😏 about analog recording, he proudly showed some recent productions: a double reel-to-reel box of Tony Levin’s Stickmen and other elegant jazz productions… on cassette!!! 

Chatting, chatting… Stefano showed to me a Joe Boyd-signed book, the White Bicycles autobiography and… well, the highlight of the day, a cool story I’ll be sharing about our beloved Pink Moon.

A few years ago, Stefano found on eBay a collection of matchboxes about conquest of space by Americans’ Apollo and Russians’ Soyuz.

The small boxes,  bought in Sardinia, arrived but - Stefano remembers - looked quite humble and unassuming and remained in a closet for a while.

One day, while listening to Nick Drake’s masterpiece and handling Pink Moon’s cover like several times before, something clicked in Stefano’s mind: he recollected the matchboxes collection and, after carefully checking all the drawings on them, he recognized the familiar subject!

One of these matchboxes was used on Pink Moon cover artwork, a collage suggestion to recent (at Pink Moon’s release) Moon landing.

From this sort of gestalt matchboxes purchase to being carefully and fondly framed to be appreciated on a studio wall, the matchboxes are still there… for us, lunatics and lovers of chance and Nick Drake’s music and world.

Thanks to Stefano for the nice, nice afternoon at his premium studio 🥇🥂🥇🙏🙏🙏🎶🎶🎶