The first the world at large knew of Nick Drake came with the release of Five Leaves Left in September 1969. Nick’s debut was squeezed in between ILPS 9104, Free’s second album, Free, and ILPS 9106, the Joe Boyd-produced, Dr Strangely Strange album Kip Of The Serenes.
Initial printings of the album sleeve switched around the running order – in those days there were two sides to an album — and Side One closed with ‘Way To Blue’ and ‘Day Is Done’, but the order was transposed on the sleeve. Also on that first run of albums, the lyrics of ‘Three Hours’ are inexplicably printed as ‘Sundown’. A mint-condition, pink-label copy of the album from 1969 would now be worth £30.
Island Records’ inaugural press release which introduced Nick Drake to the world, ran in part:
‘NICK DRAKE is tall and lean. He lives “somewhere in Cambridge”, somewhere close to the University (where he is reading English) because he hates wasting time travelling, does not have a telephone — more for reasons of finance than any anti-social feelings and tends to disappear for three or four days at a time, when he is “writing”, but above all … he makes music!
‘As a child, NICK took classical piano lessons and later progressed to guitar and a love of the blues. But by his early teens was involving himself in writing music and lyrics. He developed a real talent for composing beautiful melodies and writing fine lyrics which coupled with his raw and often plaintive voice caught the attention of Tyger Hutchings of Fairport Convention one evening when they were on the same bill.
‘At his recommendation Fairport’s Manager and Producer Joe Boyd went to see NICK … and so started the chain of events which led to the production of FIVE LEAVES LEFT – ILPS 9105 – a unique album, fresh and original, the first of many LPs … from NICK DRAKE.’
Vivien Holgate’s piece was pretty standard press fodder for the time – trying to whip up a bit of interest in an act that nobody knew about, or wanted to. Not when there was a chance to see Led Zeppelin at Surrey University for 7/6d on the door, or listen to new albums from The Band, Pink Floyd or Bob Dylan. The only ace in the hole was that air of tantalizing mystery.
Nick’s introduction to the media was calculated to make him appear more mysterious and abstract than the shy, but certain twenty-year-old he actually was. The vagueness about his location (’somewhere in Cambridge’) and that eschewal of material possessions (’he does not have a telephone’), the concentration on his purity of intention, valuing music above all else, all helped to flesh out the picture of a singer-songwriter eager for recognition.
Highlighting Nick’s ‘love of the blues’ was a sign of the times. At the time, white-boy blues was all the rage: Cream had split in 1968, but John Mayall was still providing a finishing school for the next wave of Guitar Gods – Mick Taylor had replaced Brian Jones in The Stones; Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac were making headway, while Eric Clapton had gone on to join Stevie Winwood in the much hyped, short-lived supergroup Blind Faith. All offered highly visible platforms for extended workouts on the guitar. It was the era of the Guitar Hero, and blues was the currency.
Of all the blues giants, none towered taller over the landscape of the 1960s than the late Robert Johnson. It may seem disingenuous to suggest a connection between the haunted bluesman of the Mississippi Delta, who sold his soul to the Devil at a midnight crossroads in return for playing the guitar like no one else, and died poisoned by a lover’s jealous husband, and the public-school-educated, well-spoken scion of an upper-middle-class English family. But as time went on, the lives of the two men, superficially so different, appeared to be haunted by the same demons.
Nick Drake’s fondness for the blues is well documented and like many middle-class white kids of his time, he was fascinated by the lives of the poor black bluesmen. That fondness may well have shaped the title of the fourth track on Five Leaves Left — ‘Way To Blue’. After Nick’s death, his friend Robert Kirby said that one of his regrets was that he would never now get to hear Nick play the blues again.
The first time you hear it, there is something enticing about Nick’s voice – frail and wistful, it cannot help but call you in. There is a cobweb fragility, but it is the voice of a friend, a friend you haven’t seen for a long while, and who you’re not sure you’ll be seeing again.
There is an intimacy to Nick’s singing which makes it the perfect voice for headphone communication. Not these modern, flimsy cotton-bud earpieces which make you go Walkman crazy on the Underground, but good, old-fashioned headphones — big, bulky cans which wrap around your ears, insulating you from the world and making you look like a Second World War bomber pilot. While the music coils around your head in the otherwise silent dark.
Paul Wheeler remembers Nick being intrigued by headphones when they first became fashionable: ‘He was fascinated by the idea that he could sit in the car with headphones on … Maybe he foresaw the kind of insular world, a Walkman world …’
Despite his avowed fondness for American blues, what registers first is the innate Englishness of his beautifully enunciated singing voice. From the birth of rock ’n’ roll, British singers have strained for a mid-Atlantic sound in their singing voices, attempting to ape the Bronx authenticity of Dion, the Texas hiccuping of Buddy Holly or the Deep South snarl ’n’ sneer of Elvis. But Nick makes no concession to the prevalent American sound.
Even though The Beatles’ early repertoire was 100 per cent American-influenced, part of their appeal was that they didn’t try to sound like Elvis, or like the Queen. By the time Nick came to record, there was certainly no shame in sounding English, but few singers in rock history have sounded quite as English as Nick – certainly not so politely upper-middle-class English. Later, Ian Dury, Paul Weller and John Lydon would be lauded for their refusal to adopt American vocal mannerisms, but that was largely a result of Punk’s veneration of working-class culture and attitudes.
Nick Drake’s singing voice is more Noël Coward than Robert Plant. The only other singer I have heard who sounds remotely like Nick Drake is Peter Skellern. The Bury-born Skellern was a year older than Nick, and his singing voice contains a hint of the North, rather than Nick’s public-school received pronunciation, but there is the same vocal huskiness and precise Englishness in both men’s singing styles.
With origins knee-deep in American music, it was not until the 1970s that British rock stars felt confident enough to display their own natural voices: Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour and Kevin Ayers came from the same social class as Nick Drake, and kept the voices they were bred with. The Floyd’s Syd Barrett also refused to sacrifice his natural voice when recording. But unashamed posh pronunciation in pop didn’t arrive until the year of Nick’s last album, when Roxy Music made their debut – also on Island — and the rock world marvelled at Bryan Ferry’s mannered tones.
Nick’s labelmate John Martyn considers this unashamed Englishness an important part of Nick’s enduring appeal. Interviewed on Radio 1 a decade after Nick died, Martyn said: ‘The thing that set him apart… is his implicit, innate Britishness. Whilst everyone else on the Island roster … including myself, were having flirtations with American-based sounds — in the same way that Elton John was with his very first record … the whole idea was to try and sound like The Band if you could… He was just very quietly going his own way and producing very … British sounds.’
In the gentle and perfectly modulated vocal stylings of Nick Drake are all the years spent at Marlborough and Cambridge. There are no dropped aitches or final Gs. The sound of Nick Drake singing is almost aristocratic in style. But unique as the voice was, ultimately it was the songs he sang and the way those songs were set that marked him out.
On its release, Five Leaves Left received the sort of quiet, respectful admiration that the bulk of Island releases were accorded — though the words ‘Witchseason’ and ‘Joe Boyd’ undoubtedly lent some extra credence to the debut of this young unknown. Five Leaves Left was released on 1 September 1969, but the appearance of a trade ad and review two months before, suggest that the record was originally slated for a summer release.
Melody Maker of 5 July 1969 featured an advertisement for Fairport Convention’s third album, Unhalfbricking. This was the band’s second LP for Island (‘it may even be better than the first’), and the record company ad also found space to mention the debut releases of Dr Strangely Strange and Nick Drake: ‘All the LPs were produced by Witchseason – that means Joe Boyd and the artistes concerned … There’s nothing unusual about the fact that Nick Drake writes his own songs and plays good guitar — you’ve heard that before about hundreds of new artistes. Listen to the record because of the great playing by Danny Thompson, Paul Harris and Richard Thompson and the amazing string arrangements — then you’ll find out about the singer and his songs.’
The same issue of Melody Maker carried an advertisement for the first Rolling Stones single since the death of Brian Jones, the swaggering ‘Honky Tonk Women’; there was also a full-page ad for ‘Give Peace A Chance’ – a picture of a telephone directory with the tag-line ‘You are the Plastic Ono Band’. The letters page featured one B. Odwyn, claiming that Led Zeppelin ‘must be the most over-rated group in Britain’. The Liverpool Scene were looking for a new drummer: ‘We don’t want anyone who doesn’t play with feeling.’ In the Folk Forum column, Nick Drake was conspicuous by his absence, but The Strawbs were at the White Bear, Hounslow, Ron Geesin was at Cousins and Al Stewart at the Hanging Lamp, Richmond.
Five Leaves Left was reviewed as you would expect, in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker, the two most important weekly pop-music papers. The Melody Maker review, dated 26 July 1969, which ran to fewer than fifty words, makes for interesting reading in these days of ponderous, full-page expositions: ‘All smokers will recognise the meaning of the title – it refers to the five leaves left near the end of a packet of cigarette papers. It sounds poetic and so does composer, singer and guitarist Nick Drake. His debut album for Island is interesting.’
Five Leaves Left was the last review on half a page that week, and was preceded by The Third Ear Band – ‘a demanding mixture of Eastern and European influences’. Other reviews that week included Fairport’s Unhalfbricking (‘Fairport maintain a gentle, tasteful approach and should they ever seem too steeped in sadness, humour bubbles through’); The Paupers’ Ellis Island; Mighty Sparrow & Byron Lee’s Sparrow Meets The Dragon; Nova’s Local Nova; Murray Roman’s Blind Man’s Movie; The Unauthorised Version’s Hey Jude; Burt Bacharach’s Make It Easy On Yourself; and soundtrack albums of The Italian Job and Monte Carlo Or Bust.
The NME review of Five Leaves Left, by one G.C., appeared in the issue dated 4 October 1969: ‘Nick Drake is a new name to me, and probably to you. From an accompanying biography I read that he is at Cambridge reading English, was “discovered” by Fairport Convention when they played on the same bill and spent some time travelling in Europe, a trip which has greatly benefited his songwriting. I’m sorry I can’t be more enthusiastic, because he obviously has a not inconsiderable amount of talent, but there is not nearly enough variety on this debut LP to make it entertaining.
‘His voice reminds me very much of Peter Sarstedt, but his songs lack Sarstedt’s penetration and arresting quality. Exceptions are “Mary Jane”, a fragile little love song, and “Saturday Sun”, a reflective number on which the singer also plays a very attractive piano.’
For folk-related, Witchseason-style acts, the pages of Melody Maker were the natural habitat and crucial platform. The paper’s August round-up of LP releases found Jethro Tull’s second album, Stand Up, voted Pop LP of the Month. Other selected titles were Fairport’s Unhalfbricking, Julie Driscoll & The Brian Auger Trinity’s Street Noise, Yes’s eponymous debut, Dionne Warwick’s Soulful, Clouds’ The Clouds Scrapbook, Tim Buckley’s Happy Sad (‘needs a lot of listening’) and Dr Strangely Strange’s Kip Of The Serenes (‘creeping ennui sets in with numbing effect’). Squeezed between Lonnie Donegan’s Lonnie Rides Again and Betty Everett’s There’ll Come A Time was Five Leaves Left (‘interesting debut album from composer-singer-guitarist Drake’).
The pop landscape of 1969 was dominated by new acts like Led Zeppelin (‘the new Cream’), The Doors – Jim Morrison’s shaving off his beard was worth a mention in the MM – as was one Paul Monday, who bore an eerie resemblance to Gary Glitter, with his new single, ‘Here Comes The Sun’. Besides Nick Drake, the year saw debut albums from Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Blind Faith, King Crimson and Noel Redding’s Fat Mattress. But the old guard were still of interest: ‘Will you be on the Isle of Wight on August 31?’ an MM ad asked. ‘Bob Dylan will!’ Advance sales of 50,000 were announced for the new Beatles album, Abbey Road. ‘Presley Says “I’m Coming To Britain”!’ ran one headline, while The Rolling Stones went the other way, announcing an American tour which would conclude with a free concert somewhere in California.
It was the year of Woodstock. A time for forging a new nation, united by peace and love and rock ’n’ roll, and led from the front by Dylan and The Beatles, Donovan and The Stones — the shamans who had all the answers. Amid the frenzy of tribal gatherings, love-ins and days of stardust, there wasn’t much room for newcomer Nick Drake.
The impact of the prestigious Melody Maker readers’ poll was substantial, alerting the world to the names to watch. The final poll of the sixties was dominated by names which had already mapped out the pop landscape of the decade – Dylan, Beatles and Stones. In the ‘Brightest Hope’ category, Blind Faith, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Led Zeppelin were the new names which attracted readers’ votes. Nick Drake received no mention.
The pre-publicity had not even reached some of those closest to Nick, as his sister Gabrielle admitted: ‘I had begun acting professionally, odd bits of television, and had a flat in Battersea. Nick was working with Joe Boyd, and looking for somewhere to live. He was never very good at integrating people from the different portions of his life. I knew he was recording but I didn’t know how far it had got. By this time, he had become much more introverted. He suddenly came into my room one day, said: “Here you are”, and threw down this record, which was Five Leaves Left. I couldn’t believe it. There it was, a record, with my brother’s picture on the front.’
Simon Crocker knew Nick well at Marlborough and had visited him in Cambridge: ‘For us, someone we knew, making a record. And then I guess he left Cambridge, and I didn’t hear anything at all, he kind of dropped out, and obviously what he was doing was recording his album, because the next thing was I was walking past a record shop one day and suddenly there was this album of Nick Drake. I remember ringing everyone I knew who knew Nick, saying: “He’s got a record out, and it’s on Island!” We were all terribly proud of him. And then played it, and it was so good, so we were doubly chuffed.’
Iain Dunn, who had heard Nick’s songs evolve in various rooms around Cambridge, was surprised at what he heard on Five Leaves Left when it was finally released: ‘I remember being disappointed – I think it was probably part of the culture rather than the quality of the album — but it felt over-produced, which actually now it doesn’t at all … It didn’t feel like the same person who’d been sitting in the room playing songs. Inevitably you thought there were better songs that should have gone in … there was that difference between “it’s official”, and a rather attractive unofficial side of it.’
Iain Cameron also remembers reservations: ‘The inside feeling among the cognoscenti was that the arrangements, the production, are not 100 per cent sympathetic to the spirit of the songs — of the performance as we knew and loved them. There was a feeling that it was slightly overdone, hasn’t quite got the delicacy required, except, I must say, the Richard Thompson … there you have two masters complementing each other, it is a textbook account of how to sensitively accompany a good song and add something to it.’
In the summer of 1969, having learnt that he was to be enshrined on the second track of Five Leaves Left, Jeremy Mason rang Nick, whom he had not seen since Aix, and arranged to meet up in London. The meeting was only a few weeks before Five Leaves Left was released, but Jeremy remembers that Nick was not yet happy with the way it was sounding: ‘He was speculating whether he needed another instrument to make his music “more interesting”. He was talking about learning the sitar, or something more exotic.’
By the time Simon Crocker bumped into him on the street in London, about a month after the album came out, Nick had a whole new set of worries: ‘The only thing I remember him saying was they wanted him to play live. They wanted him to go and do concerts, and he was kind of nervous of doing them on his own.’
Island Records were happy enough with Five Leaves Left, the album coming in at between £3000 and £4000, so even if it didn’t sell, the outlay had been minimal. David Betteridge recognized that there was a real problem getting new acts noticed: ‘Nick was definitely one of those artists where, in retrospect, this was a worthy talent. But there was so much talent about then … so many things happening … that artists weren’t being picked up or weren’t being promoted properly … Nick’s albums were well received inside Island, but there were certainly the questions: “Where’s the single?” and “Is he on the road?” And if you can’t answer those two questions …’
In the absence of a single, and with Nick reluctant to undertake gigs to promote the album on his own, sales levelled off in the low thousands. By the time of its release, Pete Frame had founded Zig Zag magazine, the first English publication to take rock ’n’ roll seriously. Like Rolling Stone had been doing in America since 1967, Frame set out to try and make sense of the burgeoning rock culture: ‘I’m not surprised Nick’s records only sold 5000 — that’s all a New Riders Of The Purple Sage album would have done. But the Underground was very small. A lot of the hippies didn’t have any money, and if they did they’d spend it on dope. I remember seeing a memo from the bloke who set up Dawn – Pye’s “Underground” label — explaining to Louis Benjamin, who ran Pye, what the Underground was: “Hippies are obliged to smoke dope and listen to these kinds of records and Pye are not filling this niche in the market.” ’
Low sales have been cited as a reason for Nick’s growing depression, but they were not uncommonly low for a debut album from an unknown singer-songwriter. The previous year, Ralph McTell’s debut, Eight Frames A Second, sold barely 3000 copies. To try to boost sales of Five Leaves Left, Nick did, reluctantly and sporadically, go out to try his hand at promoting the album, but the gigs were fragmentary and disappointing.
Folk singer Bridget St John, who was just beginning her career, was working the same circuit as Nick and remembers him as a kindred spirit: ‘We write differently, but in some ways from a similar sensibility. The gigs I did with him were mostly at Les Cousins, on Greek Street in Soho, from 1969 onwards. I have a picture of the two of us one summer evening, sitting quietly on the steps outside a pub a little north of Cousins on the opposite side of the street. We never talked a lot but this night was probably a little different – or it wouldn’t have stayed with me. My feeling is that mostly we understood each other without the need to say much. Both shy and best able to say things through songs rather than conversations.’