Nick Drake Five Leaves Left
A Study of his First Album Recorded in 1969
It has been suggested that Drake took the title of his first album from O. Henry’s The Last Leaf, where a painter dying of pneumonia watches ivy leaves growing outside her window, and says “There are only five left now… when the last one falls I must go too”. There is a poignancy about this as five years after the album was released, Drake was dead.
Time Has Told Me
The album begins with Time Has Told Me. Time is a recurring theme in Drake’s lyrics, with it’s similarity to the seasons, it is a power that cannot be stopped. The song is of his ideal woman, a woman who is similar to him in that she is troubled also. She is as uncertain as he is.
Boyd explains in White Bicycles that “He assumes the role of onlooker in his songs, yearningly observing girls from a distance, begging them to pay him some attention”. The two characters are both distanced from reality.
There is a Hindu logic in his words, especially: “For someday our Ocean will find its shore”. Here we have the idea of reincarnation through the idea that the rain falls into the sea, is evaporated by the sun and falls again as rain. The sea is impermanent and ever changing, it too has no authority over time. To “find its shore” is to find permanence and a steady hold on life.
River Man
This idea of time continues in River Man. It is a reflection of the concerns of the counterculture of the 60’s. The river flow is like the flow of life. In this case, the river constitutes the consumerist society, taking people’s lives along with it. The song suggests that Drake sees a gap of difference between his views on life and those of others. “Summer rain” brings sadness as the source of the problem of life’s impermanence.
Thoughts of Mary Jane
The Thoughts of Mary Jane is a song with an obvious drug reference to marijuana. This ties in with the album name Five Leaves Left which would be familiar to smokers as the warning note towards the end of a pack of Rizla cigarette papers. The song is contemplative and mentions a “strange world”, which is how Drake saw the world he lived in.
Fruit Tree
Fruit Tree prophesises that fame will not be until after his death. Fame “can never flourish ‘til its stock is in the ground” – fame cannot be achieved until you are gone. Looking back on life it is a “theatre full of sadness”, an unhappy life on show – which is what Drake's life was. He has achieved much more since his death than when he was alive.
Way To Blue
Way to Blue shows a sad loneliness and a desire for the “blue” - enlightenment. Boyd describes it as “The release into joyous emptiness from the illusion of separate identity”. Drake is yearning for someone to show him how to achieve this. It is a plea for guidance.
The whole of Five Leaves Left has a sadness about it. It is an album of isolation from others and melancholy solitude. Patrick Humphries writes in Nick Drake: The Biography that the album was “a remarkable debut, but its real significance at the time was as a signpost to what could be, rather than what was”.
Other Albums:
Five Leaves Left
|
What do you think about this article?
Latest Articles