For an album released 40 years ago, Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left has aged well- so well in fact that it is difficult to comprehend that it was released in the sixties at all. It is not so much that the music on the record is ahead of its time but rather that Drake himself was removed from his own time.
The cult which has grown about his achingly short career has seemingly taken on a life its own, imbued with its own fantasy and myth that it is hard to distinguish between legend and reality. Scant biographical information, an unwillingness to perform in front of audiences or interviewees, his struggle with depression and tragic death from an overdose of anti-depressants has turned Drake into an iconic figure, a representation of the doomed Romantic, a Coleridge of our times.
This coupled with the fact that his music defies the categorisation of his contemporaries has helped shape the enigma around this most talented of artists. Though labelled as a folk singer, Drake’s albums stand separate from the other musicians in that genre, holding a distinctive air of Classical poeticism and intellectualism that reminds of Evelyn Waugh’s Sebastian rather than the Dylan archetype of a down at heels troubadour.
Nick Drake and Island Records
Drake signed for Island when he was just 20 and still a student at Cambridge, after being spotted by Fairport Convention bassist Ashley Hutchings, who introduced him to the legendary producer Joe Boyd. Island Records was the indie record label of the sixties and seventies. Producers like Boyd, who owned Witchseason a subsidiary of Island, championed some of the main protagonists of the second wave of the folk revival; acts such as the Incredible String Band, John Martyn, and Sandy Denny.
Given Boyd’s standing in the alternative folk scene it is no surprise the calibre of guest musicians on this album, with veteran session player Paul Harris contributing piano, Rocki Dzidzornu on Congas, Clare Lowther on Cello, Danny Thompson on bass and Richard Thompson supplying some lyrical electric guitar touches on opener “Time Has Told Me”.
Robert Kirby
Enlisting Kirby as an arranger was a masterstroke. Having been unhappy about the original arrangements supplied by Richard Hewson Drake called upon Kirby, his Cambridge friend and an untried music student, to take over the task of scoring orchestral parts to his compositions, much to the scepticism of Boyd.
Kirby stuck to the remit of capturing a similar baroque orchestral sound akin to Leonard Cohen’s debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen. However instead of aping that albums sometimes florid accompaniment, Kirby and engineer John Wood opted for a more organic and sparse sound that accentuated rather than dominated Drake vocals.
Echoing composers like Ravel and Delius, the sensitive arrangements and counter melodies which glide above and below Drake’s own masterful guitar playing makes for the success of this record. The swathes of strings which appear part way through “Thoughts of Mary Jane” suddenly transform the track from one of fey psychedelic musings to something more grandiose and heavy with yearning. Similarly the insightful arrangement to “Fruit Tree” gives extra gravitas to Drake’s poignant, and in their way prophetic, words.
Kirby though was not confident to supply the arrangement to the album centrepiece “River Man”- veteran composer Harry Robinson stepped in and supplied some glorious touches, perfectly conjuring up an idyllic image of the English Countryside. With the strings building to a subtle tension over the chorus before breaking softly over Drake’s metronomic guitar line and the transitions between major 7ths and minor chords, create a sense of melancholic foreboding.
And though the mood conveyed in this album is often seen as more hopeful than hopeless, one cannot help feeling that throughout these gorgeous pastoral songs that there runs an undercurrent of the darker side of Drake’s personality. The themes of insecurity, isolation and regret which colour the lyrics of his later albums are certainly in evidence here. However there is more sunlight than shadows on this LP, and neither on Bryter Layter nor Pink Moon will you find such a complete realisation of Drake’s poetic romanticism of English music. Five Leaves Left serves as a remarkably assured debut from a remarkable artist.
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