Nick Drake essentially in love (4)
I believe the answer is:
nail
'nick' is the definition.
(both can mean to apprehend or arrest)
'drake essentially in love' is the wordplay.
'essentially' means to look at the middle letters.
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'love' becomes 'nil' (love and nil mean zero in cricket and football).
The centre of 'drake' is 'a'.
'a' placed within 'nil' is 'NAIL'.
(Other definitions for nail that I've seen before include "Metal pin, hit it on the head" , "Spike, tack" , "for the carpenter?" , "Thin pointed fastener" , "Growth on digit" .)