The high-performance motor drive system requires fast dynamic response, as well as good anti-disturbance capabilities. Permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is a strongly coupled nonlinear system, which has time-varying variables. For high-precision tracking control, the time of the current response is relatively close to the time of the speed response, which poses a major challenge of using vector control based on field orientation. Therefore nonlinear control approaches are good alternatives. In this paper, we propose a direct feedback linearization control method with nonlinear disturbance observer to achieve high control performance. The nonlinear disturbance observer is designed to estimate various disturbances, such as parameter variations, modeling errors and external disturbances. The estimated value is then used to construct a feedforward compensator added to the control input. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of this control method.