Barack Obama’s inclusion of Nick Drake’s wistful and timeless “One of These Things First” on his annual summer playlist last year was one of the former president’s genuinely unexpected jams. But it also made sense: More than 50 years since his death, the British sadcore troubadour continues to resonate — the latest example being an upcoming box set marking the first intensive archival dig in one of his albums.
Scheduled for July 25, The Making of Five Leaves Left will bring together, for the first time, early recording sessions and outtakes from the making of Drake’s 1969 debut album. That album was home to future cult classics like “Way to Blue,” “River Man,” “Time Has Told Me,” and “Day Is Done.”
According to Universal Music, which will be releasing the set, Drake’s family had long resisted such a compilation in favor of making fans focus on the three albums Drake released during his life, which also include Bryter Layter and Pink Moon. The estate has released compilations of songs on those records as well as one live album (and famously licensed a song to Volkswagen a quarter century ago that kicked off the Drake revival). But they’ve avoided anything akin to the mammoth making-of sets that Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead have rolled out in recent years around some of their iconic LPs.
The change in the Drake estate came about when the family made a “discovery of remarkable tapes from two new outside sources,” including one at the bottom of a drawer. That in turn led Drake’s sister Gabrielle, who oversees her brother’s estate, to embark on this project, which took nine years to complete.
According to the label, “The choice of tracks was made in order to tell the story as faithfully as possible, and not simply to release all the takes on all of the tapes.” So the four-disc or 4-LP box includes Drake’s first session at London’s Sound Techniques studio as well as a tape of Drake running through his songs in likely prep for a college concert around the time the album was being made.
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On those first portions of the box, we hear early versions of “Time Has Told Me,” “Fruit Tree,” “Day Is Done” and what’s described as a “radically different” take of “Strange Face” and a version of “Day Is Done” on which Drake sang but didn’t play guitar as usual.
Outtakes from the sessions with producer Joe Boyd from late 1968 into the spring of 1969 include alternate versions of “River Man,” “Cello Song,” “Time of No Reply,” “The Thoughts of Mary Jane,” and more. The package, available to preorder now, wraps up with the finished album in its well-known form and also includes a 60-page booklet with recording info and other Drake ephemera.
