Five Leaves Left, recorded in 1969, was the first of three albums by British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 musician Nick Drake

Nick Drake

Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician. Though he is best known for his sombre guitar based songs, Drake was also proficient at piano, clarinet and saxophone...

. Like Bryter Layter

Bryter Layter

Bryter Layter, recorded in 1970, was the second of three albums by British folk musician Nick Drake. Like Five Leaves Left, the album contains no unaccompanied songs: Drake was accompanied by part of the British folk rock group Fairport Convention and John Cale from The Velvet Underground, as well...

 but unlike Pink Moon

Pink Moon

Pink Moon is the third and final album by English musician Nick Drake. It was recorded at midnight in two separate two-hour sessions, over two days in October 1971, featuring only Nick Drake's vocals and guitar, as well as some piano later overdubbed by Drake on the title track.-Album...

, this album contains no completely solo songs. Drake was accompanied by members of the British folk-rock groups Fairport Convention

Fairport Convention

Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are widely regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement...

 and Pentangle

Pentangle (band)

Pentangle are a British folk rock band with some folk jazz influences. The original band were active in the late 1960s and early 1970s and a later version has been active since the early 1980s...

.

Reception and influence

Five Leaves Left was ranked 85th in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 283 on Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

 magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time

The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is the title of a 2003 special issue of American magazine Rolling Stone, and a related book published in 2005.Related news articles:...

.

NME

NME

The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

 (2 October 1993, p. 29) - Ranked #74 in NME's list of the 'Greatest Albums Of All Time.'

Q (November 1999, p. 162) - Included in Q's Best Folk Albums of All Time - "The pinnacle of a melancholy canon of work so distinctive that admirers can only speculate miserably on what might have been."

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

 (12 May 2000, p.24) - "On his ageless debut, everything - Drake's lispy voice and delicate guitar fingerpicking, arranger Robert Kirby's stately strings - feels shrouded in mist....Drake's most glorious miniatures." - Rating: A

Alternative Press (March 2001, p.88) - "With a voice paradoxically feather-light and grave, [one] of the most beautiful and melancholy albums ever recorded."

Mojo

Mojo (magazine)

MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...

  (July 2000, p.99) - "Represents the first flourish of promise....God, how damn confident it all sounds. He knew how good he was."

Rate Your Music

Rate Your Music

Rate Your Music is a metadata database where musical albums, EPs, singles, videos, bootlegs, and movies are rated and reviewed by users. This data is then used to generate recommendations for users and to create rated lists of albums...

, a metadatabase which aggregates the votes and reviews of its users, ranks the album fifth in the folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 genre, seventh for albums released in 1969, and 56th overall. It has scored an average rating of 4.20 out of 5, which was calculated from 5957 ratings.

"Five leaves left" is a reference to the old Rizla

Rizla

RizLa+ , known in English as Rizla is a brand of rolling papers and cigarette tubes or blanks in which tobacco is rolled or stuffed to form handmade cigarettes....

 cigarette papers packet - which used to contain a printed note near the end saying "Only five leaves left".

Track listing

All songs written by Nick Drake

Nick Drake

Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician. Though he is best known for his sombre guitar based songs, Drake was also proficient at piano, clarinet and saxophone...

.
Side one

1. "Time Has Told Me" – 4:27
2. "River Man
   River Man
   "River Man" is the second listed song from Nick Drake's 1969 album Five Leaves Left, remastered and released as a single in 2004. According to Drake's manager, Joe Boyd, Drake thought of the song as the centre piece of the album....
   
   " – 4:21
3. "Three Hours" – 6:16
4. "Way to Blue" – 3:11
5. "Day is Done
   Day is Done
   Day Is Done is the fifth track from the album Five Leaves Left by the British folk musician Nick Drake. The song features Robert Kirby on the string arrangement while Drake contributes Acoustic Guitar and Vocals to the track. The song is written in standard tuning and the capo is placed on the...
   
   " – 2:29

Side two

1. "Cello Song" – 4:49
2. "The Thoughts of Mary Jane" – 3:22
3. "Man in a Shed" – 3:55
4. "Fruit Tree" – 4:50
5. "Saturday Sun" – 4:03

Performers

Nick Drake performs vocals and acoustic guitar

Acoustic guitar

An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

 on all songs, except where indicated otherwise.

• "Time Has Told Me"

  Paul Harris

  Paul Harris (musician)

  Paul Harris is a keyboards player and session musician.Harris appears on several albums of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s by leading artists such as Stephen Stills, B. B. King, Judy Collins, Al Kooper, ABBA, Eric Andersen, Rick Derringer, Nick Drake, John Sebastian, Joe Walsh, Seals & Crofts and Dan...

  
   – piano

  Piano

  The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

  
  

  Richard Thompson – electric guitar

  Electric guitar

  An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

  
  

  Danny Thompson

  Danny Thompson

  Daniel Henry Edward 'Danny' Thompson is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist and businessman...

  
   – double bass

  Double bass

  The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...

  
  

• "River Man"

  Harry Robinson – string

  String instrument

  A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

  
   arrangement

  Arrangement

  The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...

  
  

• "Three Hours"

  Danny Thompson – bass

  Rocky Dzidzornu

  Rocky Dzidzornu

  Rocky Dzidzornu, also known as Rocky Dijon, is an African percussionist. He is known for his playing contributions to the The Rolling Stones, among others. Critic Ned Sublette has written that the addition of his conga drumming on "Sympathy for the Devil" transformed the song from "a dirge, and a...

  
   – conga

  Conga

  The conga, or more properly the tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed Cuban drum with African antecedents. It is thought to be derived from the Makuta drums or similar drums associated with Afro-Cubans of Central African descent. A person who plays conga is called a conguero...

  
  s

• "Way to Blue"

  Robert Kirby

  Robert Kirby

  Robert Kirby was a British born arranger of string sections for rock and folk music. He is best known for his work on the Nick Drake albums, Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter, but has also worked with Elton John, Ralph McTell, Strawbs, Paul Weller and Elvis Costello.-At Cambridge:Patrick...

  
   – string arrangement

• "Day is Done
  Day is Done
  Day Is Done is the fifth track from the album Five Leaves Left by the British folk musician Nick Drake. The song features Robert Kirby on the string arrangement while Drake contributes Acoustic Guitar and Vocals to the track. The song is written in standard tuning and the capo is placed on the...
  
  "

  Robert Kirby – string arrangement

Cello Song"

• Clare Lowther – cello

  Cello

  The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

  
  

  Danny Thompson – bass

  Rocky Dzidzornu – congas

• "The Thoughts of Mary Jane"

  Robert Kirby – arrangement

• "Man in a Shed"

  Paul Harris – piano

  Danny Thompson – bass

• "Fruit Tree"

  Robert Kirby – arrangement

• "Saturday Sun"

  Nick Drake – piano

  Danny Thompson – bass

  Tristan Fry

  Sky (band)

  Sky was a British instrumental group that specialised in fusing a variety of musical styles including light rock, progressive rock, classical and jazz. The group's best known members were classical guitarist John Williams, bass player Herbie Flowers Sky was a British instrumental group that...

  
   – drum

  Drum

  The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...

  
  s & vibraphone

  Vibraphone

  The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....

  
  

Production

• Simon Heyworth – mastering
  Audio mastering
  Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
  
  
• Joe Boyd
  Joe Boyd
  Joe Boyd is an American record producer and former owner of the Witchseason production company. Boyd was instrumental in launching the careers of Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, and The Incredible String Band.-Career:...
  
   – production
  Record producer
  A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
  
  
• John Wood
  John Wood (music producer)
  John Wood is an English sound engineer and producer, best known for his work with Fairport Convention, John Martyn, Cat Stevens, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, Nico and Squeeze.-Career:...
  
   – engineering
  Audio engineering
  An audio engineer, also called audio technician, audio technologist or sound technician, is a specialist in a skilled trade that deals with the use of machinery and equipment for the recording, mixing and reproduction of sounds. The field draws on many artistic and vocational areas, including...
  
  

Release history

> >

Region	Date	Label	Format	Catalogue
United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...		Island Island Records Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...	LP	ILPS 9105
			CD	CID 9195
				IMCD 8

External links

• A radio special about Five Leaves Left with Nick Drake biographers Trevor Dann, Patrick Humphries, and Peter Hogan on The Marketplace of Ideas