Wednesday, 10 June 2026

RUSH-mania as Anika Assumes Control

Anika Nilles - a powerhouse performance
It's quite a week for fans of Canadian prog-rockers RUSH. Social media is alive with comment and footage from the first shows of their 'Fifty Something' world tour. 

As a long-time fan - I first saw Rush at Hammersmith Odeon in 1978 - it's been emotional seeing them rejuvenated like this.

The excitement is all around their new drummer, Anika Nilles. Replacing the seemingly irreplaceable Neil Peart, Anika has proved the many doubters wrong with a phenomenal display. 

And the most heart-warming aspect of it is the great cheers that have gone up in the audience every time she nails one of Peart's iconic drum fills. 

If you have seen the clips on youtube, you will already know how amazing it is to see someone other than Neil Peart pulling off those amazing drum patterns and fills. 

For those that haven't - feast your eyes on this.
Locked in and having fun

Opening song - Xanadu 





Any way you look at it, Anika is just phenomenal in the way she not only plays those iconic drum fills, but how she captures the feel and spirit of the songs. And then to lock in with two guys who have been playing this stuff for 50 years! That's special and it's why there has been such an emotional response from fans around the world.

Peart, who tragically died six years ago, was an inspiration to drummers and wannabe drummers, who were drawn to the music of Rush for its anthemic qualities. This was especially true in Rush's early career in the late 1970s, when their music was epic in its scope.

Spirit Of Radio...The Trees...Xanadu...YYZ...Tom Sawyer...Closer To The Heart...2112 - all classics

Neil's drumming provided every teenage fan's dream of what a drummer could be. He showed you didn't have to sit back there and just keep the beat. His musicality on the kit meant that Rush songs became known as much for the drum fills as the guitar licks. Moreso, in fact. 

Which makes this new incarnation of Rush so intriguing. Anika Nilles had already gained a reputation as a jazz fusion drummer - here she is with Jeff Beck. But most mainstream rock fans would not have heard of her until Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson announced they were reconvening Rush for a world tour. 
Rush in their 1970s pomp

As a trio, Rush were the perfect blend and showed how, in the rock idiom, a three-piece band is often the most dynamic and cohesive musical unit.

Back in the day, as a Rush fan you were definitely outside of the mainstream. None of my friends were remotely interested, but I was a fan of their first live album All The World's A Stage, which featured excerpts from their recent breakthrough album 2112, as well as earlier songs like Fly By Night and Lakeside Park.

So I took the opportunity to see them live at Hammersmith in 1978, in their full prog rock pomp, playing their early classics. The show was later released as part of the Different Stages CD package.

It was the glam-prog era of silk kimonos and their extended pieces like Xanadu - "To seek the sacred river Alph, to walk the caves of ice" - and 2112
My ticket for Rush live in 1978
"Attention all planets of the solar federation! 
We have assumed control". 

This interview sheds some light on the recording of A Farewell To Kings, Rush's studio follow up to the breakthrough album 2112.  

The second live album, Exit...Stage Left, reflected their evolution from the 1970s to the early 80s (shorter hair, no more silk kimonos) and is probably the best of the early live recordings.

Later on in their career, the Rush In Rio DVD showed how much their music meant to people all over the world. And South Park's send-up was so good that Rush incorporated it into their live shows as the intro to Tom Sawyer. They are using it for this tour too. 

A perfect example of how much Rush meant to their fans, is the Foo Fighters doing 2112 at the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.

If you haven't seen it and you're a fan, check out the documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage for the full story of how Rush defied expectations and became one of the biggest bands in the world.

The Professor hits the road
Neil had an uncomfortable relationship with fame, and the pressures of being on the road and away from loved ones. He once said, “I don’t like to puncture illusions. I know I represent some kind of fantasy to a lot of people. But there is no fantasy.”

His way of dealing with the isolation and distractions of life on the road was to ride the back roads on his motorcycle. 

“Every day when I’m on tour and travelling between cities on my motorcycle, I have half-a-dozen pleasant encounters with people. I’ve spent a lot of time in truck stops and diners and cafes, very casual, low-grade places, and those are the encounters I have: stranger to stranger, I guess you could say. I love the anonymity of my travels.”

Here's a rare televised interview with the Professor himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=311&v=q_mKr28G7og&feature=emb_logo

If Neil was looking down now, he would surely see millions of people of all ages still air drumming to his songs - and mesmerised by Anika's skill at helping to recreate the Rush magic.

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Tuesday, 28 April 2026

Inspired Use of Music in Movies

Where is everybody?

I can vouch for the fact that at 7am on a Sunday morning, Times Square is deserted.

Radiohead fans will be aware that director Cameron Crowe used the song Everything In Its Right Place at the beginning of the movie Vanilla Sky.

It instantly brings the film to life and is a perfect example of a scene you can't imagine could have been presented better with any other piece of music. 

Maybe not as spine-tingling as the start of Apocalypse Now, when the The End by The Doors rises from the jungle, but it's inspired nonetheless. 

Soon after seeing Vanilla Sky, I was in New York City and staying just off Times Square. I wanted to see if I could replicate the scene where Tom Cruise drives his Ferrari 250 GTO through the deserted streets of midtown Manhattan and stops in the middle of Times Square. 

OK, well I didn't have the Ferrari, but I did have the location. It's an eerie feeling, wandering out onto a stretch of road that is normally packed with people. The silence is quite surreal.

Shooting that sequence for Vanilla Sky is reputed to have cost the studio $1 million to shut off the surrounding streets for three hours on a Sunday morning.

Transcendent sounds

It's no surprise Cameron Crowe has impeccable taste when it comes to movie music. He was a reporter for Rolling Stone in its classic 1970s heyday, as depicted in his love letter to the era, Almost Famous. His attention to period detail on that movie was painstaking. The incidental music was faultless and contains some unusual choices.

Including:

It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference by Todd Rundgren
Easy To Slip by Little Feat
The Wind by Cat Stevens
Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters by Elton John
Feel Flows by The Beach Boys plays as the credits roll

And, of course, Elton's Tiny Dancer is one of the key moments in the movie. 

Here are some more of my personal favourites - movie scenes where the choice of music was truly inspired. 

Low Rider by War in Cheech & Chong's Up In Smoke

Woody Allen's ode to Manhattan, to the tune of Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue

The final scenes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are perfectly matched with Beck’s version of the Korgis classic Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime

As someone commented on this clip, "Is there any better “I just got laid” scene in film history?" It's Joseph Gordon-Levitt walking on air to the tune of Daryl Hall & John Oates in the film 500 Days of Summer.

In Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia, the drama builds to an inspired movie moment as the various actors in different locations sing to Aimee Mann's Wise Up

The Three Degrees giving it their best in the nightclub scene in The French Connection

Ewan McGregor's heroin OD and trip to the ER in Trainspotting, to Lou Reed's Perfect Day.

Of course, there's a whole other story to be written about original movie soundtracks. Later.

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Monday, 30 March 2026

Rickie Lee Jones Takes Off Like A Rocket

Rickie at home in New Orleans
Rickie Lee Jones was penniless and often homeless pretty much right up to the time, in 1978, when she was signed by Warner Brothers and given a $50,000 advance.

Even then, she had to borrow some cash because she didn’t have a bank account and was behind on her rent.

Her instant success with the single Chuck E's In Love gave Rickie no time to adjust to such a massive shift in circumstances. No surprise then that she struggled to find any equilibrium in that first flush of her career.

Live in London, 1979
It is said that nothing in the world can take the place of persistence, especially if you have an innate talent. Rickie Lee Jones the performer was, in retrospect, bound to succeed, such was her irrepressible persona and innate musical and lyrical genius.

Her early music was a rich melee of cocktail jazz and showtunes, with a tinge of influence from Laura Nyro and Dory Previn. Her words were like beat poetry, full of street vernacular, influences from West Side Story and Runyon-esque characters, with names such as Kid Sinister, Bragger and Junior Lee. 

You can't break the rules
Until you know how to play the game
But if you just want to have a little fun
You can mention my name
Keep your feet in the street
Your toes in the lawn
But keep your Business in your pocket
That's where it belongs

In 1976, based in and around Venice Beach in California, she had begun writing her first songs, the likes of Easy Money and Weasel and the White Boys Cool, and arguably her greatest song, The Last Chance Texaco.   

Being a street urchin, working menial jobs and singing in local bands to pay the rent, it was the maverick souls she met along the way that fed her stories. Her persona, with the beret and the boho styling, was an act. But equally, as she says in her memoir, Last Chance Texaco, it was who she was then. 

At the heart of her book is the doomed love affair with her fellow boho bum, Tom Waits. It seemed they were cut from the same raggedy cloth. They belonged together. 

“Tom and I were beautiful beyond compare, and so nourished and inspired by each other's hearts that for a very short time, we nearly consumed each other. Love, they used to call it.”

Waits had his bachelor pad at the Tropicana Motel in Los Angeles, with his pal Chuck E. Weiss. "Tom had two tattoos on his bicep. He liked to don the vintage accoutrements of masculinity; sailor hats and Bernardo's (from West Side Story) pointed shoes."

"We always needed to touch each other"
Of Rickie, Waits said at the time, “We drank together. You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her. 

"I remember her getting her first pair of high heels and coming by one night to holler in my window to take her out celebrating. There she was, walking down Santa Monica Boulevard, drunk and falling off her shoes.”

Even then, Waits was wary: "I love her madly in my own way - but she scares me to death. She is much older than I am in terms of street wisdom; sometimes she seems as ancient as dirt, and yet other times she's so like a little girl."

They danced around each other for a long while. Waits, already semi-famous, was scared of commitment, but Rickie knew how to catch a man. One night at the Troubadour club, already cultivating the RLJ persona in her beret and elbow-length fuchsia gloves, she had him on the hook.  

"A guy I know, Ivan Ulz, was performing at the Troubadour one evening and he asked me to come over and sing a couple of songs. This fella Chuck E. was working back in the kitchen of the club, and that's how I met him."

Waits, Chuck E., RLJ and Dr. John
“Tom came out of the kitchen and stood behind the bar. He pretended he didn't come out to see me.

"'Hey', was all we said to each other. He sat down by me, ordered a scotch. We drank and talked at length and laughed until it was closing time. 

"He walked with me to my car. There, under the streetlight, Tom took me in his arms, and we danced. All the love in the world was there that night.”

The following morning he told her to go home, he had a lot to do. “I was still standing on the step when he closed the door. I was wearing high heels. I was doing the walk of shame that so many others had walked. I may have hidden behind a bush.”

After a brief fling with Lowell George - who gave her a huge leg-up by covering Easy Money, but then tried to steal the publishing rights to it - she started reeling in Tom Waits once again.

“Each time I put a dime in the phone, Tom and I got a little closer. He answered the phone with, 'What?' But when he heard my voice, he'd grow a little sweeter. 'Ah, hey you'. 

"By the time my phone was installed, we had become lovers again. We inhabited black holes where we floated upward and down again. We were jellyfish floating from day to night. Only poetry evokes the long undulating time of our lying in each other's arms.”

The buzz about Rickie gained momentum and a formal showcase at the Troubadour created a bidding war among record companies eager for Rickie's signature. She went with Warner Brothers largely because she had befriended their head of A&R, Lenny Waronker, who she trusted to guide her through the recording of a debut album. 

Warner Brothers put the best session players to work on the album. Steve Gadd, Victor Feldman, Tom Scott, Buzz Feiten, Dr. John et al, with Waronker and Russ Titelman as co-producers. They treated her not as a newcomer, but as someone who was giving her all to put across music of subtlety and character.

Russ Titelman said "Rickie Lee was fairly wild, but you knew you were in the presence of something special.

"The sessions were spontaneous, explosive. She'd never done this before. She was just a kid with a guitar, but she knew exactly what she wanted. At the end of the session, we played through the album and Rickie sat there and asked, "Is that me?".

She recalled, "I think the musicians, Lenny, Russ and the people at the record company recognised the magic I was trying so hard to create. So they cheered me on."

Saturday Night Live, 1979

But no one expected the record to take off the way it did. Once Chuck E's In Love was a hit, Rickie was swept up by the sudden demands of fame, starting with an elaborately staged set for the TV show Saturday Night Live. 

"There was no time to build a stable home. I was launched like a rocket and the rocket went much further than the expected trajectory."

The Rickie Lee Jones album became a multi-platinum seller and Rickie won the 1979 Grammy award for Best New Artist.

She told Uncut magazine, "When I look back at the films of that first tour. I'm a very sexy and wild girl onstage. It's an act, but I really am that girl. But I did not know how to put it down. It was a hard way to be."

Tom travelled to Europe to support Rickie when she became homesick on the first European tour, but he shied away from the camera. “He wanted no part of my celebrity, just as he did not want to share his own. Tom felt the business of Tom Waits must stay uncorrupted by our affection."

Nonetheless, she said his affection was constant and very physical. "We always needed to touch each other. I cannot remember anyone else holding me so completely that I felt safe to go outward. 

"I could not conceive that this would ever end, and yet I had conceived of it with Coolsville. I knew very well that it was likely one day I and Bragger and Junior Lee (that's her, Tom and Chuck) would be a past tense."

Waits' Blue Valentines album cover shoot.
"Tom said, come closer. I leaned myself against
him. I slid down his body and he raised his arms.
There is the enigma of our very private love
 and passion caught in that photo."

I and Bragger and Junior Lee
That's the way we always thought it would be
In the Winston lips of September
How we met
Decked out like aces
We'd beat anybody's bet
Cuz we were Coolsville

Chuck Weiss told Uncut magazine, "Things were never really normal again after that. She just couldn't handle it. The record company were making such a fuss over her. 

"They more or less chose to ignore some of the heavy drug use that was going on. I thought that was bullshit, that they wouldn't pay attention to that. As long as she kept producing the songs, it didn't matter to them. It was a harsh lesson."

An earlier romance with Dr. John - in between a break from Waits - had given Rickie a taste for smoking heroin – chasing the dragon. Her mistake was thinking she could function as an addict with no consequences. 

“I didn't feel heroin was taking from me. I thought it was giving so much that I was becoming a new and improved Rickie.”

Her biggest mistake was thinking Tom Waits would understand, when she hid it from him for a year.  

I did a foolish thing
A real, real foolish thing

"Tom wanted to make a stop at the humble little house he'd seen for rent in Echo Park. We watched the lights of the city and dreamed about a life together in that house with our kids. I would make dinner and he'd mow the lawn."

Rickie was suffering withdrawal from the drug and she thought if she confided in him, he would be sympathetic.  

But you ran out of gas
Down the road apiece
Then the battery went dead
And now the cable won't reach

"I walked around the park thinking about us. If he loves me, then I can tell him. I think I can tell him. I need to tell him, now.

"I walked back to the motel and he was standing outside the door. His body was taut.

"I thought you left."

"What a thing to think. I just went for a walk, bub."

"But some part of me was disconnected. Perhaps I had a premonition of what was about to happen to us.

"I have something to tell you.
There was no going back. I was appealing for sympathy, but there would be none.

"You take dope?"

"This was like when Tony told Maria he had killed Bernardo. I was already dead to him. I raised my eyebrows. Yes.

"Junk? Heroin? He almost buckled like he had been hit in the stomach.

"For how long?
For almost a year. The outer edges of my safe space were closing in.

"That time I came to meet you on Avenue B?

 "I should really lie. Yes.

"When we went to the Carnaman in Little Italy?

"He was deconstructing our romance and building something else, a darker, unloving relationship where dope had tricked him. 

"I was thinking, didn't I look different when I was high? And how come no one knew?

"Silence. He had stopped talking. I was alone now, watching my baby fall because of me. Because of me. He seemed so weak and unmade by disappointment. I could not find a path forward. Tom's rejection of my holler for help precipitated a complete and utter break from him.

"All night long, Tom cried like a baby. I began to recede to a faraway place, for I knew there was no going back. In the morning, he rose, picked up his wallet and keys, and drove away.

"A day later, I went to see Tom at his studio where he was rehearsing for his tour. I was thinking, okay, we had a fight and that's enough of that, right?

"Instead, a doppelganger had taken Tom's place and my boyfriend was not there anymore."

And that was that. 

Rickie lost her man through the carelessness with drugs that cost so many music biz types their lives in the 1970s, Lowell George among them.

Chrissie Hynde's recent memoir, Reckless, is another tale where the drugs are everywhere, and ultimately they ruin everything. 

Part of the way through Hynde's book, I was getting a little tired of all the drug stories. A few pages later, obviously aware that it wasn't a good look, she wrote that she wasn't proud of how all this was coming across, but she couldn't sugar-coat it; that was how it was. 

So anyway, Rickie cleaned up after a couple more years of that, and in the meantime she channeled some of the pain of the break-up with Tom through her music, notably on her second album, Pirates.

And now Johnny the King walks these streets without her in the rain
Lookin' for a leather jacket and a girl who wrote her name forever
And a promise that
We belong together
Yeah, we belong together

She told Mojo magazine she still has a store of prose to write about her love affair with Waits: “That will never go away. Some people love people forever, and I’m one of them. I really feel like writing the book is as close as I can ever come to shoving that thing into the now and letting it be."

I remember you too clearly
But I'll survive another day
Conversations to share
When there's no one there
I'll imagine what you'd say

I'll see you in another life now, baby
I'll free you in my dreams
But when I reach across the galaxy
I will miss your company.

One of the unexpected joys of the Covid lockdown was having your favourite artists play for you from their living rooms. Of course, for them it was driven by the need to keep in touch with their audience and to maintain some kind of a living. It was a tough time to be a songwriter and performer.

I willingly paid to spend time with Rickie Lee Jones. It was a total pleasure. From her home in New Orleans she would sing and tell the stories behind her most popular songs; stories that fed into her memoir, Last Chance Texaco.

I miss those days, in some ways. 

Some clips worth a look
Rickie Lee Jones live in London 1979 (BBC)

Live At The Howard Theatre, 2024

Live at Montreux Jazz Festival, 1982

Singing Steely Dan's Showbiz Kids, 2023

Rickie's Criterion Movie collection picks

Weasel and the White Boys Cool, Paris 1985

The Real End - promo video, 1984

Rickie's homepage

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Saturday, 24 January 2026

'The Making of Five Leaves Left' - A worthy Grammy nominee

photo by Keith Morris
If awards mean anything for a musician, then a Grammy is something to aspire to. Nick Drake, a relatively obscure English songwriter and guitarist who died over 50 years ago, was never going to win one in his lifetime. Like Vincent Van Gogh, his genius was only recognised long after he died. 

And now, 56 years after it was released, a specially curated collection documenting the making of his first album, is nominated for a Grammy award for Best Historical Album. It would be some kind of poetic justice were it to win. 

The boxset 'The Making of Five Leaves Left' is a lovingly detailed account of how a shy young university student came to make a richly melodic and timeless album. 

As a historical record, it is pretty much faultless and a credit to the various people involved, from the Island Records archivists, to producer Joe Boyd and engineer John Wood, and the Nick Drake estate who are keepers of the flame. It's certainly worthy of the Grammy Award. 

Will it win? Well, it's up against Queen Joni - nominated for the Joni Mitchell Archives - Volume 4: The Asylum Years (1976-1980) - so probably not. Joni can seemingly do no wrong right now, and she deserves the acclaim. But if you know his story, it would be tremendously fitting to see Nick Drake get a Grammy.

{Post-awards note: As I thought, the award went to Joni Mitchell}

Nick Drake died in 1974, having made three albums that failed commercially. But the quality of his music would not be denied. Today there is considerable demand for 'new' Nick Drake material. Hence this box set, which documents the making of Nick’s first album from 1969, Five Leaves Left, starting with the two earliest semi-formal recording sessions where Nick showcased his material. 

The Making of Five Leaves Left

Albums were not generally done as slowly as this. Nick was still at Cambridge during the making of Five Leaves Left, and so the album was recorded over 14 months' of sessions in London. That would have been an age in this period of musical revolution. By way of comparison, in a 14-month period in the mid-60s the Beatles recorded Rubber Soul, Revolver and half of Sgt. Pepper.

On The Making of Five Leaves Left, we hear the evolution, from March 1968 to April 1969, of Nick Drake’s musical vision, guided by producer Joe Boyd and engineer John Wood, with the support of his university friend and string arranger, Robert Kirby.

Any work of musical archaeology will only be as successful as the treasure unearthed in the process. In this case, the almost miraculous retrieval of two early reel-to-reel tapes that pre-date the first formal recording sessions, are the holy grail items.

The so-called Beverley Martyn tape, which was the first showcase for Joe Boyd, kept safe by Nick’s friend (and John Martyn's wife) Bev, helps fill in the picture of how Five Leaves Left came to be commissioned in the first place.

The second key piece of the jigsaw that makes this package such a compelling collection, is the nine-song tape of Nick playing and talking, recorded at Cambridge in early 1968 by another university acquaintance, Paul de Rivas and incredibly, preserved by him. Strangely, despite the tremendous interest in Nick Drake's music in the past 25 years, de Rivas had kept it to himself, until recently.

What these tapes show is that as early as March 1968, many of the songs that would appear on the final album in May 1969 were almost fully formed. The guitar parts were more or less worked out. 

The assurance displayed in his singing and playing from the earliest tapes is striking. Here was someone with immense confidence in his material and determined to show it. 

I've listened through to the four record/disc set a few times now, and there are many aspects worth highlighting. Here are some of the things that have jumped out to me.

  • There’s a piano line on Strange Face (Cello Song) from the first proper studio session in September 1968 (volume 1, track 7). It doesn’t really work, but it’s still an excellent accompaniment. Who is playing that piano is not clear from the session notes. It is possible Paul Wheeler was present at the session.

  • It's interesting to see how Day Is Done progresses between the April and November ’68 sessions at Sound Techniques. Nick’s guitar playing during this period is so clear and well articulated, you can hear his confidence, and understand how Joe and John were so impressed with him. I think I almost prefer Day Is Done without the string quartet, because it makes Nick's guitar much more prominent.

    In the garden at Belsize Park
  • The jaunty early versions of Time Has Told Me - on the Beverley and de Rivas tapes - with great assurance in the guitar playing, contrast with the relatively sluggish final album version. It’s a different dynamic at play, and quite effective.

    One of my long-held views is that not enough prominence was given to Nick Drake the guitar player. Why, for example, does the album version of Time Has Told Me place Richard Thompson as the main accompanist?

Thompson - who also played electric guitar on an unused version of Thoughts of Mary Jane, that later appeared on the album Time of No Reply - regarded Nick as “quite extraordinary’ in his guitar playing.

“He played immaculately and uniquely on acoustic guitar, which isn’t an easy instrument to play in a flawless way. You get buzzes, you get fret noise. Not with Nick. He’d really worked at it very hard.”

Nick’s time in France and Morocco in 1967 intensified the focus on his guitar playing and would have broadened his musical vocabulary, resulting in the different rhythmic and tonal ideas, alternate tunings and the relative exoticism on display in Three Hours. 

  • Hearing Nick explain his ideas for the arrangement of the unused song My Love Left With The Rain from the Cambridge tape, is one of the delightful surprises of this boxed set. Nick tells Kirby and de Rivas “This is the one I want to have as expansive a sound as possible”, which makes it all the more curious why the song was never taken further. 

  • Another of the May 1968 Cambridge tape curios, Blossom is a pleasant but unremarkable tune, notable for the work tape section at the end, where Nick shows the bass part, again demonstrating how prepared and assured he was in presenting his songs.  

The instrumental that follows this on the Cambridge tape is similarly illuminating in that it brings us closer to his compositional process, while also showing, as John Wood observed, his solid understanding of music theory.

“The most striking thing about Nick to me was how musically literate he was,” Wood told biographer Richard Morton Jack. “I’ve never worked with anyone else of that age who had that level of musical understanding and ability, as well as such a wide taste and knowledge of music.”

  • On Thoughts of Mary Jane (Vol 2, track 5), Nick sings and plays the flute melody. Similarly, he knows that Day Is Done will have a string quartet accompaniment well before it is recorded.

  • Nick talks about his ideas for I Was Made To Love Magic (Vol 2, track 3). Since this was only a matter of weeks after he had played the song at The Roundhouse, on the fateful day he met Ashley Hutchings, the version of Magic we hear on this tape must be close to what he played at the gig. Richard Hewson gets a bad rap generally for his arrangement work with Nick, but I've always liked what he did on Magic as it appeared on the Time Of No Reply album.

On the Cambridge tape, Nick apologises, “so badly played” (by his high standards) and then talks about his ideas for a different rhythm on Magic, with a latin-esque bass pattern.

Another Jobim-esque song (though possibly inspired by The Pentangle) follows. This is Mickey’s Tune, which was known only for its lyrics before the Cambridge tape was unearthed. And in the studio session on November 12 ’68 (Vol 2, track 12) it sounds like Nick is trying for almost a flamenco feel at the very beginning of Fruit Tree.

Alternative track order noted
I have always felt - going right back 40 years ago when I first took note of Fruit Tree as the opening track on the Heaven In A Wild Flower collection - that it might have made a better opening track for Five Leaves Left. And it nearly did, as the original master tape box for FLL has a suggested alternative numbering for the tracks.

That slightly hesitant, exploratory guitar line at the beginning of Fruit Tree is a more beguiling introduction to Nick’s world, and I feel it's rather hidden away on side two of Five Leaves Left.

  • On the final series of sessions, on album 3, the version of Time Of No Reply is, to my ears, the same as the one that appeared on the 1980s album of the same name. 

  • Along with Time Of No Reply, Mayfair was the other early song still being tried out at this late stage for inclusion on FLL. Both were ultimately discarded and never considered again for inclusion on a subsequent album. 

Richard Morton Jack wrote that it was striking that Nick remained loyal to Mayfair, in particular. “Perhaps he was fond of it as an echo of his mother’s style… although there’s a consensus that by 1969 it didn’t fit comfortably alongside his other material.”

Joey, a favourite of mine, and Clothes of Sand were likewise omitted in the final analysis and again, despite being an excellent showcase for Nick’s elegant guitar melodies, they were never considered for his following albums. They were all included on the posthumous Fruit Tree box set as part of a fourth album, Time Of No Reply. 

  • Another musical snippet that was discarded by the final studio sessions is Nick’s lead into River Man, from the January 1969 session (Vol 3, track 4).

  • Way To Blue, with just Nick on piano, is another revelation from the 1968 Cambridge tape (Vol 3, track 5). You might think it actually sounds good like this, but when Robert Kirby came to Sound Techniques for the first time in April 1969, to conduct the strings, he blew Joe and John away.

photo by Keith Morris
The sessions with the string ensemble were all done live, with Nick playing guitar. The first song Nick and Robert tackled was Way To Blue, which Joe and John had never heard. 

According to Richard Morton Jack, "Nick had initially written it for his own piano accompaniment, but he and Robert had since agreed – perhaps owing to the influence of Randy Newman’s I Think It’s Going To Rain Today – that its impact would be greater if he simply sang to the strings.”

Joe and John were sceptical. Having set up levels for each instrument, John gave Robert the nod. “Suddenly, John pushed up all the faders. We heard this string part and we were both knocked back in our seats,” remembers Joe. “We thought, this is exquisite, just amazing.”

For anyone who knows and loves the original album, The Making of Five Leaves Left is a fascinating glimpse at the inner workings of an emerging talent. The weaving together of the varied source material, and the meticulous detail contained in the accompanying book, are truly a credit to the production team.

Credit is also due to Michael Burdett, for his role in bringing the Paul de Rivas Cambridge tape to the attention of this album's compilers. Burdett will be familiar to anyone who saw his one-man show, the 'Strange Face Project' about travelling the UK talking to random folk and a handful of celebs, while playing them a discarded early recording of Nick's Cello Song.

At the conclusion of one of these shows, Paul de Rivas approached Burdett and explained that he had known Nick Drake. What's more, he had a recording of him. 

Not just any old recording, it turned out.

ALSO ON THIS BLOG:

A Visit To The Annual Nick Drake Gathering





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Saturday, 10 January 2026

The Day David Bowie Died - 10 years gone.

I was in my office in Hong Kong on the day Bowie died, surrounded by people mostly much younger than me, who didn't seem at all interested when I blurted out 'Oh no, David Bowie died!'

The first tweets were coming through (news guy wept and told us…) with the shocking truth. Faced with a room full of 150 people who couldn’t give a toss, I had to take a walk outside.

Top Of The Pops, 1972
It can’t be wrong to feel so deeply the loss of someone you didn’t know personally, when that someone has been such a powerful figure in your life.

It’s a story well-told, that for anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 80s, Bowie played a pivotal, crucial role in our youthful fantasies.

Hard to imagine now but on the 6th of July 1972, when Bowie appeared on Top Of The Pops and sang, “I had to phone someone, so I picked on you…” and pointed straight at the camera, he sparked a cultural change for a whole generation. 

Such was the power of television at that time. Everyone who saw it, remembers Bowie putting his arm around Mick Ronson as they sang the Starman chorus in harmony. Men didn't do that kind of thing, but these guys were clearly different. I mean, look at them! "Bunch of poofs", our Dads would have said.

Ciggie stardust
His carefully cultivated image of otherness - from Major Tom to Ziggy to the Thin White Duke and on, to the many and various characters he embodied - gave young people the licence to think outside of the norms of society, with no apologies.

His intellect and imagination was fed by a diet of the most diverse writing he could find, some of which, like The Divided Self by R. D. Laing or The Stranger by Albert Camus and The Outsider by Colin Wilson, inspired his music directly.

At Live Aid in 1985, it was Bowie’s performance at Wembley, rather than Queen’s, that had people grabbing their phones to donate. His selfless decision to set aside time in his set to show the awful images of the Ethiopian famine, was a true measure of the man and his humanity, capturing the mood of that amazing day perfectly.

I could make the transformation as a rock and roll star

He was well ahead of the game in seeing the potential of the internet and his early bowienet platform allowed him to see at close quarters how online communities might develop.  

We were all richer for having David Bowie in our lives.

That evening in Hong Kong, I went back to my flat, opened the windows wide and played 'Life On Mars' at full volume. It never sounded better.

Something happened on the day he died

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL. THANKS

Also On This Blog:

David Bowie interview with the NME, 1974

February 1970 - with Bowie in obscurity, Mick Ronson joinsMichael Chapman

My old David Bowie RCA CDs - the only ones of value

1971 - At home with Marc Bolan

A Tribute to David Sanborn, the sax player on Young Americans



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Wednesday, 31 December 2025

My visit to Abbey Road Studios

Abbey Road has a special significance for me, as it was where I met my wife. We shared a flat at Neville Court, the red brick mansion block directly across from the famous recording studios. 

<= Yes, I lived here. That was back in the early 1990s. We would sometimes see tourists ‘doing the crossing’ as we left for work, but nothing like the crowds you get there today.

And though I lived right across the road, it wasn’t until 2022 that I got to see inside Abbey Road Studios. 

It was the day the Queen died, 8 September 2022 and I was staying at my mother's place while on a visit to the UK. 

I have a friend who’s a sound engineer and does occasional sessions at Abbey Road. I'd asked him if there was ever an opportunity to come and see inside the studio, to let me know. He called me up that evening and just as I'm on the phone to him, my mum comes in and tells me "she's gone". 

The SSL 96-channel console in Studio 3
I felt a bit bad leaving my mum to grieve for the old Queen on her own, but she understood this was a unique opportunity for me. 

An hour later, I entered the courtyard of Abbey Road Studios and made my way up the steps to the studio reception. My mate Simon came to greet me and took me first of all to Studio Three, or 'Number 3' as AR insiders say. 

This is the smaller (relatively) performing space where most famously, Pink Floyd recorded their classic albums, including Dark Side Of The Moon, as seen in this clip from 1972.

Although the Beatles are most closely associated with Number 2 studio, they recorded several of their classic songs in Number 3, including Eleanor Rigby. Penny Lane, Let It Be and, from the Abbey Road album, Come Together, Something, I Want You (She’s So Heavy), You Never Give Me Your Money and Here Comes the Sun.

Elgar on the podium of Number 1,
George Bernard Shaw on the stairs
Back in 1966, Studio Three also hosted the famous tape-looping session for the Revolver album track Tomorrow Never Knows. I wrote about it here. There is also footage of them in Studio 3 used in the promo videos for Lady Madonna and Hey Bulldog.

Moving on, we went to Studio 1, the orchestral chamber where Sir Edward Elgar made many of his most famous recordings. It's a cavernous room. 

Elgar actually conducted the first-ever recording session at Abbey Road (then known as EMI Studios) in 1931, leading the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Pomp and Circumstance,  familiar to anyone who has watched the Last Night Of The Proms, as it includes Land of Hope and Glory.

Gilmour recording the Shine On riff in Number 1

Although Pink Floyd recorded mostly in Studio 3, for the track Shine On You Crazy Diamond, the band and engineers wanted to gain maximum ambience for the song's iconic guitar figure. So, the men in white coats placed David Gilmour's amps in Studio 1. I wrote about that here.

At the height of 1967's Summer Of Love, a few days after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles recorded backing tracks at Olympic Studios for a new song by John, All You Need Is Love. This was premiered on 25 June in a television show, Our World, the first live global television link, broadcast via satellite and seen by an audience of over 400 million in 25 countries.

All You Need Is Love, filmed in Number 1
Filmed in Studio One at Abbey Road, the Beatles were accompanied by a thirteen-piece orchestra and surrounded by friends and acquaintances seated on the floor, including Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Keith Moon.

Engineering the session and the live link was Geoff Emerick, who recalled the experience as "horrendous". 

"To attempt to record what he did, even without a link up, was ridiculous."

George Martin had the band record a basic track for them to play along to on the live feed. Nonetheless, the vocals, bass guitar, George's lead solo, the drums and the orchestra were all done live. 

Studio One today
The pre-taped rhythm track went onto track one of the four-track tape. On to track two went the bass, lead guitar and drums; track three the orchestra and track four the vocals. 

While all this was going on, George Martin and Geoff Emerick did an instantaneous remix that was fed directly to the BBC and then to the world.

The market for new orchestral works stagnated somewhat in the 1970s and Studio One was utilised so little that it became an indoor sports venue for the musicians. 

Its fortunes were revived in the 1980s with the growth of orchestral recordings for films. Raiders of the Lost Ark being the first major film soundtrack recorded in Studio 1.

Number 2, from the stairs to the control room
Studio 3 has been updated and modernised over the years, but the larger recording rooms have retained many of their period features, in large part because of the historical significance attached to the music that has been made there.

Number Two, the most renowned recording space, perhaps in the world, is similarly intact from its heyday, when The Beatles created many of their greatest songs.

Sixty years ago, they would record on four-track machines, often bouncing down four tracks onto one and sometimes using two four-track machines in sync. Today in Number Two, Abbey Road has a 60-track desk, while Number Three has a 96-track console. 

Amongst the vintage instruments still on the studio floor is the old Steinway Vertegrand upright piano that Paul McCartney would have used for Lady Madonna (actually recorded in Number 3) and the filming of Hey Jude. 
Lab coats were standard
for technical staff 

The piano has seen better days and has some keys missing, but has been kept entirely because of its Beatle associations. 

In the 1950s, Abbey Road was a very traditional classical music and light entertainment studio. The men in white coats kept everything tickety-boo and the recording engineers wouldn't dream of seeing the volume meters edging into the red. 

Recording engineers will tell you the key to a successful session is the correct use of microphones. Abbey Road retains one of the greatest collections of vintage and modern microphones in the world; all still fitted with their original valves and regularly maintained.

Another unique aspect of the Studio One facility was the 'ambiophonics' speaker system, whereby 100 speakers were fitted symmetrically to all four walls, artificially tailoring the acoustics by feeding signals delayed at different intervals. 

A new era began in the late 1950s, when Studio 2 was remodeled; the control room was moved upstairs and the now-famous staircase was installed descending onto the studio floor. 

The 60-channel Neve console
upstairs in Studio 2
At that point, no one would have foreseen the pioneering musical explorations that would follow in the Sixties. The Beatles pushed at the boundaries of acceptable studio practice, encouraging others like The Pink Floyd, to express themselves fully, using psychedelics and the avant-garde as their inspiration. 

As a new generation of engineers came through the ranks, people like Geoff Emerick, Ken Scott and Alan Parsons, Abbey Road became a rock and roll studio, and the Beatles were the ground-breakers.

Given free-rein at Abbey Road, and having quit touring by 1966 to concentrate on studio work, the Beatles were way ahead of other groups at the time, in terms of composition and studio innovation.

While Tomorrow Never Knows, the final track on 1966's Revolver, had been a major leap in how bands could use primitive studio trickery, the final track on the 1967 follow-up album still stands as one of the most successful and iconic musical experiments.

Not only was A Day In The Life compositionally unconventional, joining two distinct songs into one cycle, it has a number of peaks and troughs, culminating in a final chaotic crescendo. The middle section is particularly inspired, with fairly obvious allusions to marijuana and LSD: "found my way upstairs and had a smoke; and somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."

John listening to a Sgt. Pepper play-back
John had already recorded his dream sequence vocal that follows, and since they were recording on the same track, Paul was under pressure to follow his guide vocal exactly, or risk erasing part of John's bit. 

The dream sequence that follows, with John singing the euphoric melody line (ahhh, ah-ah-ah, etc) drenched in reverb is, I would contend, the high point of progressive popular music in the 1960s; a breakout moment for a generation held back by parental conformity and conservatism. It's exactly why Sgt Pepper was so revered at the time and for years afterwards, though nowadays its immense influence has tended to be forgotten.

The orchestral session for A Day In The Life confirms their influence by the avant-garde composers. They left 15 bars at the end of the song blank, telling the orchestra to start on their lowest note and be at their highest by the end of the 15 bars.

Paul recalls, "It was interesting, because the trumpet players - always fond of a drink - didn't care, so they'd be up there at the note ahead of everyone. The strings all watched each other like sheep  'Are you going up?' 'Yes', 'So Am I'. 'A little more?' Yes. All very delicate and cosy. You listen to those trumpets. They're just freaking out."

Paul with the orchestra in Number One
It was the largest number of musicians ever heard on a Beatles track. According to Derek Taylor, the big orchestral session was "a riot of festive props, false noses, upside down glasses and imitation bald heads". Erich Gruenberg, the lead violinist, wore a gorilla's paw on his bowing hand.

The recording of the orchestra for A Day In The Life was engineered by Geoff Emerick. He said, "It was only by careful fader manipulation that I was able to get the crescendo of the orchestra at the right time. 

"I was gradually bringing it up, and then slightly fading it back in without the listener being able to discern this was happening. Then I'd have about 4 dB's in hand at the end. It wouldn't have worked if I'd just shoved the level up to start with."

Mark Lewisohn's book, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, reveals how, at the end of the orchestra's tremendous crescendo, everyone in the studio broke into a spontaneous barrage of applause. 

This youtube clip includes rough footage of the orchestral sessions for A Day In The Life, in the typically psychedelic style of the times, with candid shots of the various band members and friends. 

Yours truly in Studio 2
The final 'eternal chord' on A Day In The Life came from all four Beatles and George Martin in the studio playing three pianos. All of them hit the chords simultaneously, as hard as possible, with the engineer pushing the volume input faders down on the moment of impact.

Then, as the sound gradually diminished, the faders were pushed slowly up to the top. It took 45 seconds and it was done three or four times, piling sound upon sound. 

George Martin said of the Day In The Life sessions, "One part of me thought, we're being a bit self-indulgent here.

"The other part of me said, It's bloody marvellous".

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