Nick Drake in "Ma'ariv"

The weekend culture supplement of the Israeli newspaper "Ma'ariv" has been running for several months a feature in which one of the editors presents a long forgotten record which is considered to be a classic. For example, a few weeks ago, the record chosen was Love's "Forever changes".

This week it was the turn of Nick Drake's "Five leaves left". Whilst it is true that there is no such thing as bad publicity, there were a few "facts" in the article which left me scratching my head. For example, did you know that Fairport Convention provided the accompaniment for the record? Did you know that Elton John was the second (recording) engineer? Did you know that the meaning of the record's title is unknown?

Maybe these "facts" upset my equilibrium so much that I was unable to concentrate on the rest of the article, but I'm fairly sure that there wasn't much of a case made which would make anyone want to listen to this record. Which is a shame.

I sent an email last night to the paper, and it will be interesting to read the response (if there is one).

For the record, although Ashley Hutchings, then bassist of Fairport, "discovered" Nick Drake and brought him to the attention of Joe Boyd, the only Fairporter present on the recording is Richard Thompson, and he played guitar on one track only. To be fair, Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks appear on most of the tracks on Nick's second album, "Bryter Layter".

Elton John worked as a session pianist before he became famous. The only connection with Nick that I can think of was that he was recruited by Joe Boyd to sing on a privately issued record (500 copies) which was intended to publicise songs published by Witchseason Music (Boyd's publishing company) in the hope that other artists would cover them. This record was mythological, until a few years ago when someone laid their hands on a copy and digitised it. Since then, it has been distributed here and there, and someone was kind enough to send me a copy a few years ago (I have to be vague here, as I don't recall who it was).

I spent half an hour looking for the disk, and was unable to find it, until I found an archived and compressed version, along with the Brad Pitt narrated "Poor Boy" audio documentary. After decompressing the songs, I listened and then remembered why I don't have an audio disk: EJ murders the songs! Or at least, he renders them unlistenable to anyone who knows the originals. His versions are blues infected rock, and whilst an unaware audience might find them interesting, to me he removes any subtlety which there might be in the songs (and there is subtlety a plenty!) and emphasises the wrong things.