\n\t\tf you drive 40 minutes south of Birmingham, England, you\u2019ll find the quiet, serene village of Tanworth-in-Arden, where fans flock year-round to visit the grave of Nick Drake<\/a>, who grew up and died here more than 50 years ago. At the time of his death of an overdose at age 26, he\u2019d released just three albums: his 1969 debut, Five Leaves Left, 1971\u2019s Bryter Layter, and the most beloved, 1972\u2019s Pink Moon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIt would be decades before Drake gained a cult audience \u2014 the devoted, feverish kind that scours the internet<\/a> for any video footage of him (there isn\u2019t any<\/a>) and dreams up<\/a> future biopics (there won\u2019t be any). He\u2019s been so mythologized over the years that, for many listeners, he\u2019s more of an ethereal, tragic figure shrouded in mystery than a real person. But a new box set<\/a>, chronicling the creation of Five Leaves Left, offers a glimpse into the real Drake \u2014 the living, breathing musician who was incredibly gifted, utterly charming, and ahead of his time. After nearly a decade in the making, the set is finally out on July 25, via Island\/UMe.<\/p>\n \n\tSpanning four LPs (or four CDs, if that\u2019s your thing), The Making of Five Leaves Left<\/a> contains 30 previously unheard tracks, including demos and studio outtakes. \u201cI knew Nick was making this album (we were sharing a flat in London at the time), but I had no idea how advanced it was until he came into my room one day and said \u2018there you are\u2019 and threw the album on my bed,\u201d says his sister, actress Gabrielle Drake. \u201cI was astounded. I loved this album on the day I first heard it \u2014 and I have loved it ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe idea for the box set dates back to early 2016, when Neil Storey, the former head of publicity for Island Records, received a phone call from Johnny Chandler, who worked in A&R. Storey grew up in Tanworth-in-Arden, and though he never met Drake, their parents knew each other. He began working at Island in 1974, and still does consulting work for Universal. \u201c\u2018The gray hair is real,\u201d he jokes on a Zoom from his home in France.<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tStorey says Chandler had a top-secret request for him. \u201cIt was all very discreet,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI suppose I had a bit of a reputation for not blabbing about things. He said, \u2018Look, I\u2019ve got this idea, can you delve into the archives and see what might exist for Five Leaves Left?\u2019 But the thing is, you cannot tell anybody. You absolutely cannot tell anybody at all. This is the most hush-hush project imaginable.\u2019 Nick is serious currency, for God\u2019s sake, and I understood that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tStorey was doubtful he\u2019d find anything in the archive, since tapes in those days were often either recorded over or destroyed. \u201cThat initial conversation with Johnny was, \u2018There really isn\u2019t going to be anything,\u2019\u201d Storey recalls. \u201cAnd amazingly, there was far more than I thought there was going to be \u2026 How lucky are we?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWe\u2019re lucky for many reasons, beginning with the fact that the estate \u2014 managed by Gabrielle and Cally Callomon \u2014 typically avoids archival releases or box sets. \u201cThey\u2019ve never done stuff like this before,\u201d Storey says. \u201cThere were certain [people] within the record company, I won\u2019t name them, who said,\u00a0 \u2018Oh look, it\u2019s this anniversary, it\u2019s that anniversary. Why don\u2019t we do it around this?\u2019 And Gabrielle, me, and Cally, we were going, \u2018You must be kidding. It doesn\u2019t work like that at all.\u2019 Nick\u2019s music is timeless. So therefore, why peg it to something that\u2019s so fucking bleak and obvious?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhen Chandler and Storey presented the tapes to Callomon, the estate executor didn\u2019t think they warranted a release. \u201cI was fascinated from the archaeological point of view, but not from the commercial point of view at all,\u201d Callomon tells Rolling Stone on a Zoom call from London. Gabrielle agreed: \u201cI have always been of the opinion that any work of art must go through an evolutionary process which includes failure and mistakes, wrong turnings, despair, culling, and occasional elation,\u201d she says. \u201cThe artist wants us to see or hear the result, not the painful process. This would have applied above all to Nick, the perfectionist. So, on his behalf, I have always eschewed the completist approach.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tSo, what changed? The answer is the magic ingredient to any archival release: unearthed tapes. The first is a tape of demos that mark Drake\u2019s first sessions at London\u2019s Sound Technique in March 1968, where he\u2019d record his three albums with producer Joe Boyd and engineer John Wood. At the time, Drake was attending Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and was connected to Boyd through Fairport Convention bassist Ashley Hutchings.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI grew up listening to blues and jazz, [and] all the people who were imitating Dylan were less interesting to me,\u201d Boyd says. \u201cI wasn\u2019t so interested in white middle-class people strumming guitars and singing about their angst. It sounds snobbish and stupid, but that was my take at the time. And what I loved about Nick was that he didn\u2019t sound like anybody else. I was hooked from the beginning, [and] never had a moment\u2019s hesitation about wanting to work with him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe tape, found on a mono reel, belonged to folk singer Beverley Martyn, formerly married to the late musician John Martyn. \u201cHe was chums with John and Bev, and he\u2019d have taken it around to play it to them, I guess,\u201d says Storey, who wrote the box set\u2019s liner notes with Richard Morton Jack (author of an excellent 2023 Drake biography). \u201cMaybe he just got stoned and walked off and didn\u2019t bother collecting it, and it would\u2019ve sat in a drawer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn the demo, you can hear Drake \u2014 who was just 19 at the time \u2014 perform fleshed-out songs like the outtake \u201cMayfair\u201d and an early version of \u201c\u2018Cello Song\u201d (then titled \u201cStrange Face\u201d). \u201cTo hear those demos from the first session, you can get a feeling of what I heard. The skill on the guitar, the cleanliness and the complexity of what he was playing,\u201d Boyd says. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou could call it an audition tape,\u201d Wood adds. \u201cNick walked into the studio the first time, and he was fully formed as an artist then.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSound Technique\u2019s control room overlooked the recording floor, and Boyd often sat there while Wood and Drake worked below. The engineer spent a lot of time with Drake, even sometimes driving the songwriter back to Cambridge on his own way home to Suffolk. \u201cI always had a very easy relationship with Nick, and we\u2019d talk about anything,\u201d Wood says. \u201cHe had a sense of humor. He wasn\u2019t dour at all, but he was quiet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tYou can get a sense of Drake\u2019s personality on the second tape, cut on a Grundig reel-to-reel recorder in the fall of 1968 by fellow Cambridge student Paul de Rivaz, whom Drake met the previous year. \u201cI will never forget his rendition of \u2018House of the Rising Sun,\u2019\u201d de Rivaz tells Rolling Stone. \u201cThe guitar riff at the beginning was absolutely made for him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDrake was working with arranger Robert Kirby, who was also attending Cambridge at the time. It\u2019s fascinating and intimate, as though you\u2019re sitting in the room with these university students. Fans will likely lose their minds here as they hear Drake actually speaking before each track, appearing chatty and joyful, a stark contrast to how the public perceives him. \u201cAs you can tell from some of the comments in the tape, he was jolly about a number of things, and quite jokey,\u201d says de Rivaz. \u201cI\u2019m so glad we can reveal the true Nick,\u201d adds Gabrielle.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBefore the crisp, delightful \u201cMickey\u2019s Tune\u201d \u2014 completely unheard until now \u2014 Drake admits the tape is proving to be \u201cunprofessional,\u201d and jokes that he\u2019s intoxicated, though de Rivaz says he was probably just hungover. (When I mention this moment to Wood, he said, \u201cNick certainly smoked weed, but he never, ever worked when he was anything other than absolutely stone-cold sober.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe direction that Drake gives Kirby on the tape \u2014 possibly some flute here, a string quartet there \u2014 demonstrates that even before his debut was recorded, Drake knew how he wanted his music to sound. (The liner notes reveal he was a fan of the Beach Boys\u2019 1966 classic Pet Sounds.) \u201cAt that very young age, he knew exactly what he wanted, and this recording showed it,\u201d Gabrielle says. This proved to be especially true when musician Richard Hewson first contributed arrangements to the album, and an unsatisfied Drake used Kirby instead. \u201cI think it\u2019s a bit of a sore subject, to be honest,\u201d Storey says of Hewson\u2019s early involvement.<\/p>\n \n\tDe Rivaz ended up keeping the tape, and never forgot about it in the ensuing decades. \u201cI knew it was worth keeping,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought, \u2018Well, a little bit of history, I\u2019ll keep it.\u2019\u201d Though de Rivaz traveled the world for his job with British Petroleum, he kept the tape safe in his London home, refusing to fly abroad with it in fear of magnetic scanners at airports. A lifelong horse rider, he connected with Chandler in April 2017 through his fellow polo player Kenney Jones (drummer for the Faces and the Who). \u201cI was sitting at home,\u201d de Rivaz remembers. \u201cThe phone rang, and somebody said, \u2018Hello, I\u2019m Johnny Chandler from Island Records, and I think you might have an interesting tape.’\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDe Rivaz then met with Callomon and Gabrielle at Abbey Road. \u201cI duly appeared and said, \u2018This is the tape, which you\u2019re not going to play, and this is the CD, which has a copy of what\u2019s on it,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWhen it finished, there was this sort of silence, and poor Gabrielle was physically a bit upset, hearing her brother after so many years.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tAsked about this moment, Gabrielle tells Rolling Stone, \u201cIt was a sudden light thrown onto the Nick of my youth and his \u2014 a Nick too often hidden behind the cloud of his final sad years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tUNLIKE MANY ARCHIVAL RELEASES, The Making of Five Leaves Left is carefully curated, showcasing the development of earthy gems like \u201cDay Is Done\u201d without excess material. You won\u2019t find any content dump here \u2014 no 17-CD edition, no dozens of alternate takes. \u201cNo track has been arbitrarily chosen: each has a purpose and a place in the story, even the rejects, and the reasons are given in the written documentation that accompanies the four albums,\u201d Gabrielle says. \u201cThe fourth one being Five Leaves Left as Nick wanted the world to hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cGabrielle guards Nick\u2019s legacy like a lioness with newborn cubs,\u201d Storey says. \u201cShe will fight people off for, \u2018No, you cannot do this, cannot do that, can\u2019t do the next thing.\u2019 She was absolutely at the forefront of, \u2018If we\u2019re going to do this, then it has to honor Nick\u2019s legacy. So yes, we\u2019ve got another four takes of this. We\u2019ve got another five takes of this. No, we are not using all of that. This has to be the best, the absolute best of what has never been heard before.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCallomon says the estate also thought about including Drake\u2019s 1969 BBC sessions, but they wanted to keep the box set affordable for fans. \u201cThey just wanted the most appallingly huge amount of money, and I wanted to keep the set down in price,\u201d he says. \u201cSo although there\u2019s going to be a lot of people saying, \u2018It\u2019s too expensive,\u2019 it\u2019s the cheapest it could possibly be, and it\u2019s not audiophile vinyl. There\u2019s no Blu-ray. There\u2019s no Dolby Atmos remixes or anything, because that would just put it up into the Bruce Springsteen $300 territory, which is great for Bruce, but not for us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWood wasn\u2019t exactly thrilled to learn The Making of Five Leaves Left was being released. \u201cI have to say, it\u2019s not something that I\u2019m a great fan of,\u201d says the engineer, who also wasn\u2019t pleased when Drake\u2019s final recordings \u2014 like the melancholic, funereal \u201cBlack Eyed Dog<\/a>\u201d \u2014 were released in the late Eighties. \u201cI have to be a bit blunt about this, but the whole idea of issuing outtakes has never been anything that I have to say that I\u2019m very in favor of. My attitude is, if the artist had wanted it to go out, it would\u2019ve gone out at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBoyd had a similar perspective until a month ago, when he learned of the box set\u2019s existence. \u201cWith a great deal of skepticism, my wife and I sat down one evening and listened to all four discs, and I was completely moved by it,\u201d the producer says. \u201cI\u2019m now its biggest supporter.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhen I ask Callomon if he agrees with Storey\u2019s description of Gabrielle as a lioness, he says only partially. \u201cShe\u2019s not so much protective as defensive,\u201d he says. \u201cFor example, we\u2019ve never made a biographical feature film on Nick.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThis is an aspect Drake fans are obsessed with, especially with recent biopics on other revered artists like A Complete Unknown<\/a>, Elvis<\/a>, and Bohemian Rhapsody<\/a>. Even on the day of our interview, Callomon had just received another pitch for a film. \u201cThere is a demand,\u201d he says. \u201c[But] we always say no. Gabrielle and myself, we don\u2019t want Nick to be seen on screen played by an actor. We\u2019ve spent so much time getting people to cultivate their own Nick Drake, and it being a very personal relationship that they have with [him].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tNick Drake-Summer 1969<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlex Henderson*<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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