The Making Of Five Leaves Left, a project nine years in gestation, will be released on July 25 via UMR/Island Records.
This Nick Drake Estate authorised edition comprises over 30 previously unheard outtakes from the sessions which gradually became Five Leaves Left and will be available as 4 CD and 4 LP boxed sets.
This lovingly put together set features studio out-takes and previously unheard songs that tell the story of how Drake’s debut album came to be released on Island Records in July 1969.
The set includes Nick’s first ever session at Sound Techniques – found on a mono listening-reel which Beverley Martyn had squirrelled away over fifty years ago. It also contains the full reel recorded at Caius College by Cambridge acquaintance Paul de Rivaz which had lain in the bottom of a drawer for decades, accompanying him and his family around the world.
The Making Of Five Leaves Left will feature full recording details, charts and the recording history across an illustrated 60 page book. The book, printed on special textured paper-stock which is 100% recyclable and biodegradable, was written by Neil Storey in collaboration with Richard Morton-Jack.
Here’s a breakdown of the set…
DISC ONE
The opening six songs contain Nick’s first ever session at Sound Techniques that were found on the mono listening-reel which Beverley Martyn had squirrelled away in a drawer over fifty years ago. It is safe to assume it’s in exactly the same order as Joe Boyd and John Wood recorded it. Certainly ‘Mayfair’ and ‘Time Has Told Me’, which segue into one another, are the first two tracks they recorded – otherwise why would Joe say what he says right at the very start?
The following six songs open with a radically different take of ‘Strange Face’. Never finished but showing how it could have ended up if Nick had chosen to continue down that particular musical path. While the Richard Hewson session was aborted an element has to play a part, otherwise we’d not be telling the story properly. How best to illustrate this? To demonstrate how one of Nick’s songs developed, we married Richard’s original orchestration of ‘Day Is Done’ which features Nick singing but not playing via his and Danny Thompson’s second stab at it in November before Robert Kirby’s strings accompany Nick’s guitar as sessions for the album were coming to a close almost a year later. This led us to the undated Paul de Rivaz reel – the likely purpose of which was to help Nick and Robert better prepare for a concert planned for February 23, 1968.
Sonically, there is a major difference from recordings made at Sound Techniques and those in a fellow undergraduate’s room captured on rudimentary equipment. To ease that transition we have Nick explaining how he sees ‘My Love Left With The Rain’ evolving, suggesting he’d like ‘to get as expansive a sound as possible’.
DISC TWO
The first seven songs are all from the de Rivaz reel and the following five are the best never before heard takes from the first two days of Nick’s collaboration with Danny Thompson.
DISC THREE
For the next eight songs, we’ve more or less stayed in sequence of recording dates. There is no way of being certain, but since ‘River Man’ had not been previously recorded possibly indicates Nick had only recently completed writing it.
Strictly speaking, the final four titles are out of sequence. ‘Way To Blue’ can be narrowed down to an unspecified date during the winter of 1968. As the recording dates show, ‘Saturday Sun’ was the final track on the album to be recorded yet, it didn’t feel right to conclude the story of The Making Of Five Leaves Left with anything other than the first full take of Harry Robinson’s orchestration of ‘River Man’.
DISC FOUR
The final disc completes the cycle. It is Five Leaves Left just as Joe and John sequenced it, as Nick first heard it in completed form, and the same as he handed his sister in her London flat in mid-June 1969. Gabrielle Drake: “I suspect I got the very first copy. Nick must’ve had that moment of seeing himself on the cover, his music inside, and, it is so typical of Nick because all he said was, ‘Well… there you are.’ As I’ve said many times, he really was a man of few words.”
The re-master dates from 2000 when all of Nick’s albums were re-mastered for CD by John Wood and Simon Heyworth. When John went to Abbey Road in 2013 to re-remaster the tapes for vinyl reissues, he discovered the original analogue masters had, fractionally, deteriorated. Tapes degrade over time, both the oxide layer and the tape base can be affected by age. Therefore, the 24bit files captured from 2000 remain the superior version – Five Leaves Left sounding as good as it can be.
