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

Next week, we will find out who has won this year's Grammy Awards. While Sabrina Carpenter, Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar contend for the Best Album prize, further down the list of awards, Nick Drake, a relatively obscure English songwriter and guitarist who died over 50 years ago, is nominated for Best Historical Album. 

The boxset 'The Making of Five Leaves Left' is 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. As a record of how a shy young university student came to make such a richly melodic and timeless album, it is pretty much faultless. And 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 maybe she deserves the acclaim. But it would be tremendously fitting to see Nick Drake get a Grammy, wouldn't it?

Any work of musical archaeology will only be as good as the treasure that is unearthed in the process. In the case of ‘The Making of Five Leaves Left’, the almost miraculous retrieval of two early reel-to-reel tapes that pre-date the first formal recording sessions, are the holy grail items.

This box set documents the making of Nick Drake's first album, starting with the two earliest semi-formal sessions where Nick showcased his material. 

The so-called Beverley Martyn tape (Nick's first showcase for Joe Boyd) and the Paul de Rivas (Cambridge University) tape confirm the unique nature of ‘The Making Of…’. Albums were not generally made as slowly as this. Five Leaves Left was recorded over 14 months' of sessions. That would have been an age at this time of musical revolution in the 1960s. By way of comparison, in a 14 month period the Beatles recorded Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper.

And so, on The Making of Five Leaves Left, we hear the evolution, from March 1968 to April 1969, of Nick Drake’s musical vision, with the patient guidance of producer Joe Boyd and engineer John Wood, plus Nick’s secret weapon, his hugely supportive musical partner, Robert Kirby.

The last 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 Paul de Rivaz and incredibly, preserved by him.

What the tapes show is that as early as March 1968, many of the songs that would appear on the final album in May 1969 were fully formed. The guitar parts were more or less worked out. Some of the detailed parts on Fruit Tree and Cello Song were not perfect on these demos, but that's just Nick getting to master the picking. As anyone who has tried to play these songs will readily attest, they take time and practice to get right. 

Nick was still at university during the making of Five Leaves Left, but 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 just 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.
  
  
  
• 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 not accentuate Nick's guitar, instead placing Richard Thompson as the main accompanist?

Richard 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.”

• 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. One can only assume that Boyd and Wood didn’t think much of it.

• There’s another faint possibility, that when the Who released Tommy in 1969, Nick heard their song We’re Not Gonna Take It, which uses a very similar opening guitar riff. Even though Nick’s song pre-dates it, having heard Tommy, he could perhaps have kicked his song into touch.
  
  
• I imagine it must have been emotional for Gabrielle Drake to hear a newly-discovered recording of her brother in his prime, speaking so confidently. 
  
  
• Another of the May 1968 Cambridge tape curios, Blossom is a pleasant but unremarkable tune, notable for the 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 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.

Nick’s time in France and Morocco in 1967 will have broadened his musical vocabulary, hence the different rhythmic ideas, tunings and the relative exoticism of a track like Three Hours. On the Cambridge tape, Nick apologises, “so badly played” (by his high standards, perhaps) 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 along with Blossom 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 a flamenco feel at the very beginning of Fruit Tree.

I have always felt - going right back 40 years ago, to when I first took note of Fruit Tree as the opening track on the Heaven In A Wild Flower collection - that it should have opened Five Leaves Left. 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. Which, by the way, is a worthy companion to this boxset. 
  
  
• 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. Joey 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.

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.”

• 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 with Nick, he blew Joe and John away.

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

The weaving together of the varied source material and the meticulous detail contained in the accompanying book, are truly a credit to their creators. And because of its significance, credit is also due to Michael Burdett, for his role in bringing the Paul de Rivas Cambridge tape to the attention of Nick’s estate. 

Burdett will be familiar to anyone who saw his one-man show about another lost Nick Drake recording. The 'Strange Face' show had Burdett travelling the length of the UK talking to random folk and a handful of celebs, while playing them a discarded early recording of Nick playing Cello Song.

At the conclusion of one of these shows, in Cambridge circa 2018, 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