this is five leaves left, by nick drake, its a kinda folksy chilled album from years ago. it has an excellent song valled river man which you might know. it's an album thats always seems to be cheap in the hmv sale, it might be in this weeks, if you havent got it i would recommend it.

 

ITC cult fans might know his sister Gabrielle Drake who was in loads of those shows that are on itv4 at around 7pm on a weeknight.

 

 

this is from wiki:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Five_Leaves_Left.jpg

 

Nicholas Rodney Drake (June 19, 1948 – November 25, 1974) was a British singer/songwriter.

 

Drake is known for his gentle, autumnal songs and his virtuoso right hand finger picking technique. Although he recorded only three albums, critics and fellow musicians held his work in very high esteem. Drake failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime, though, which fed his severe clinical depression. Since his death, Drake’s music has gained a significant cult following.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Nick_Drake.jpg

 

 

Biography

Drake's father worked as an engineer. Although he was born in Rangoon, Burma, Nick and his family moved back to England when he was four, and Drake was brought up in Tanworth-in-Arden, a small village in the English county of Warwickshire. He went to public school at Marlborough College, where he learned to play the flute. As a young adult, Drake enrolled in Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge to study English literature. His older sister, Gabrielle Drake, is an actress.

 

Drake was a fan of British and the emerging American folk music scene, including Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs. While a university student, Drake began performing in local clubs and coffee houses. He was discovered by Ashley Hutchings, the bass guitar player of the folk rock group Fairport Convention. Hutchings introduced Drake to the other members of Fairport Convention, folk singer John Martyn and producer Joe Boyd.

 

Drake's associates convinced Island Records to sign the young singer/songwriter to a three-album contract. At the age of twenty, he released his first album Five Leaves Left (1969), which featured a chamber music quartet on several songs and had a light, breezy sound. Drake's second album Bryter Layter (1970) introduced a more upbeat, jazzier sound, with keyboards and several brass instruments. Both albums were produced by Boyd and featured several members of Fairport Convention.

 

Many accounts of Drake focus on his mythology, but a large part of his enduring popularity is due to his meticulous songwriting, prosody, odd guitar tunings and lyricism.

 

Drake was pathologically shy and resented touring. The few concerts he did play were usually in support of other British folk acts of the time, such as Fairport Convention or John Martyn and were often brief and awkward. Partially because of this, his work received little attention and sold poorly. Whilst in the recording studio, he was so shy that he'd always play into the wall so as to avoid people's gazes.

 

Severely depressed and doubting his abilities as a musician, Drake recorded his final album Pink Moon (1972) in two two-hour sessions, both starting at midnight. The songs of Pink Moon were short (the album consists of eleven of them and lasts only 28 minutes), and emotionally bleak. Drake recorded them unaccompanied, in the presence of only a sound engineer (a piano was later overdubbed, by Drake himself, on the title track). Naked and sincere, it is widely thought to be his best work. After recording the album, Drake dropped off the master tapes at the front desk of Island Records' office building and then swore he was retiring from performing music, planning to train to be a computer programmer and possibly write songs for others to perform. The master tapes lay on a secretary's desk over the weekend and were not noticed until later the next week.

 

However, none of Drake's plans materialized. In the next few months, Drake grew more depressed and maintained relationships only with close friends such as John Martyn, who wrote the title song of his 1973 album Solid Air for and about Drake and French singer Françoise Hardy. Friends from that time have described how much his appearance had changed: his nails grown; his hair and frame long and thin.

 

In 1974, Drake felt well enough to write and record a few new songs. However, on November 25, he died of an overdose of the antidepressant Tryptizol. The coroner concluded that the cause of Drake's death was suicide, although this was disputed by friends and relatives. Antidepressants of that time were quite lethal if ingested in any higher dosage than the one prescribed. His mother recounts that he must have had difficulty sleeping and had got up in the night to have a bowl of cornflakes. It's unclear whether he took more pills to help him sleep or to take his own life.

 

His simple gravestone in the Tanworth churchyard ([1]) bears the line 'And now we rise/And we are everywhere', taken from "From the Morning"â€â€the last song on the last album Nick lived to completeâ€â€a beautiful song on an otherwise stark album and one of his mother's favourites.

 

 

 

 

I'd recommend his best of CD : Way To Blue to anyone.

 

Fav tracks: Northern Sky, River Man, Time Has Told Me, Black Eyed Dog, Time Of No Reply, Pink Moon & Fruit Tree.

 

Personally, I find his music vastly superior to his more successful rival Cat Stevens.

I'd recommend his best of CD : Way To Blue to anyone.

 

 

no point really when you can pick up his whole back catalogue cheap these days! and in nice deluxe boxes

I love his songwriting and he was a superb guitarist - my problem with Drake is his fey, weak vocals which make prolonged listening difficult for me.

 

I've just read Patrick Humphries' biography on Drake (I bought it in Fopp for a bargain £3)... excellent read. His sister, trivia fans, was Gabrielle Drake, famous actress (she was in Crossroads for a while amongst other things).

 

River Man is a fantastic song..... and Bryter Layter my favourite of his albums. Five Leaves Left - I always wondered what the title meant - apparently it's from Rizla packets - the little piece of paper in there that tells you you need a new pack (Drake was addicted to the green stuff).

Edited May 5, 200619 yr by russt68

His sister, trivia fans, was Gabrielle Drake, famous actress (she was in Crossroads for a while amongst other things).

 

 

Already got to the factoid mate :lol:

just seen it - the blog looked way too wordy to get through it all tbh...sowwy.

just seen it - the blog looked way too wordy to get through it all tbh...sowwy.

 

yeah suppose i should have put it in black. i hardly read all of these wikithings just skip to the highlighted blue names :lol: :lol: