“Reckless Jane,” a collaboration between Nick Drake and his friend Beverley Martyn (ex-wife of the late British folksinger John Martyn), began months before Drake died, was officially put online today.

Beverley Martyn told The Independent that the two wrote the lyrics together, and then began working on the music at Martyn’s home in Hastings during the spring of 1974, when Martyn was 27 and Drake around the age of 25, shortly before he died from an overdose of anti-depressants.

It remained unfinished until Martyn decided last year to completed it and record it for her new album, The Phoenix and the Turtle, due out April 22, 2014.

“I couldn’t even think about the song for so long because it brought up so much pain,” she told The Independent. “It took a while to finish after that point.”

“The song came out of a bit of fun,” Martyn said. “We tried to think of all the things we could rhyme with Jane, but ‘hear her laughing like a drain’ didn’t make the cut!”

Martyn said the song’s character Jane is partly based on Martyn and other female ‘muses,’ two of which were called Jane.

“One even had six kids by different dads and lived in a bus,” she said.

Completing the song was difficult for Martyn.

“Nick is in my life at all times. Never a day goes by that I don’t think of him, of something funny he said. I wish more people could have seen that side of him, his dry humour.”

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