Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake

Five Leaves Left, Nick Drake's debut, came out on Island in 1969, the work of a Cambridge student who had signed to the label at twenty. Joe Boyd produced it at Sound Techniques in London between May 1968 and April 1969, and engineer John Wood caught Drake singing and playing live alongside the string players, with no overdubs. For "River Man" he sat on a stool in the middle of the room, ringed by musicians, with Harry Robinson's string arrangement closing in around him.

Fairport Convention's Richard Thompson and Pentangle's Danny Thompson lend a hand, and Drake's Cambridge friend Robert Kirby scored strings for several songs. The effect is hushed and autumnal: supple acoustic guitar, a voice barely above a sigh, and songs like "Time Has Told Me" that seem to hang in the air. Even the title is a private joke, lifted from the note printed near the end of a packet of Rizla papers. Few people heard it at the time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.