“All smok­ers will recog­nise the mean­ing of the title — it refers to five leaves left near the end of a pack­et of cig­a­rette papers. It sounds poet­ic and so does com­pos­er, singer, and gui­tarist Nick Drake. His debut album for Island is inter­est­ing.” There, in its entire­ty, is Melody Mak­er’s review of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, which came out fifty years ago today. Drake now stands in music his­to­ry as some­thing of a doomed roman­tic hero, an artist who craft­ed a few dozen strik­ing­ly beau­ti­ful, haunt­ing songs and deliv­ered them into a world in which he nev­er felt at home. Unable to make that world appre­ci­ate his work, Drake depart­ed from it at the ear­ly age of 26, and only decades lat­er would Five Leaves Left and the oth­er two albums he record­ed in his life­time find their lis­ten­ers.

Sim­pli­fied though it is, that con­cep­tion adheres to the broad con­tours of Drake’s life. Born in Bur­ma to an Eng­lish civ­il engi­neer and the musi­cal­ly inclined daugh­ter of a high­er-up in the Indi­an Civ­il Ser­vice, he played in school orches­tras and cov­er bands grow­ing up and signed to Island Records while still a stu­dent at Cam­bridge.

By that point, hav­ing expe­ri­enced the music of pre­de­ces­sors like Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son, stints in Moroc­co and the south of France, and the mind-alter­ing sub­stances pop­u­lar in the late 1960s, Drake had fash­ioned him­self into an acoustic gui­tar-play­ing singer-song­writer who must have seemed well suit­ed to the transat­lantic folk-music boom then in effect. He cer­tain­ly man­aged to impress Joe Boyd, the young Amer­i­can record pro­duc­er respon­si­ble for bring­ing acts like Fair­port Con­ven­tion, John Mar­tyn, and the Incred­i­ble String Band into the main­stream.

Boyd did­n’t need to hear much of Drake’s demo tape before he decid­ed to pro­duce a prop­er album, and in the 2014 event above he remem­bers the expe­ri­ence of bring­ing Drake into the stu­dio and record­ing what would become Five Leaves Left. Accom­pa­ny­ing Drake’s voice and gui­tar with a string sec­tion, the album show­cas­es all the qual­i­ties that set him apart from most singer-song­writ­ers then and still do now, from his unusu­al com­po­si­tion­al struc­tures and gui­tar tun­ings to the unapolo­getic Eng­lish­ness of his pro­nun­ci­a­tion and cadence. And unlike so many of the much big­ger records that came out in 1969, it all sounds like it could have been record­ed yes­ter­day — an achieve­ment whose tech­niques engi­neer John Wood has, for the past half-cen­tu­ry, declined to explain. But Drake’s shy­ness and sen­si­tiv­i­ty made him tem­pera­men­tal­ly unsuit­ed to live per­for­mance; he strug­gled to pro­mote him­self, and died of an anti­de­pres­sant over­dose five years and two albums lat­er.

For some time there­after it looked as if Drake’s music might have died with him. But Five Leaves Left and its fol­low-ups remained in Island’s back cat­a­log and by the ear­ly 1980s had built up a cult fol­low­ing, espe­cial­ly among oth­er musi­cians. (The Cure’s Robert Smith has cred­it­ed his band’s name to a line from Drake’s “Time Has Told Me.”) The 1997 pub­li­ca­tion of Patrick Humphries’ Nick Drake: The Biog­ra­phy opened the peri­od of wide-rang­ing dis­cov­ery of Nick Drake, fur­thered by the BBC Radio 2 doc­u­men­tary Fruit Tree: The Nick Drake Sto­ry, the BBC2 tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary Nick Drake: A Stranger Among Us, the Dutch doc­u­men­tary A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, and the many oth­er books about him pub­lished since. (Ten years ago, for Five Leaves Left’s 40th anniver­sary, I myself inter­viewed Humphries and two oth­er authors of books about Drake; you can down­load the pro­gram as an MP3 here.)

In 2004 BBC2 pro­duced a sec­ond radio doc­u­men­tary called Lost Boy: In Search Of Nick Drake, and to nar­rate it brought in a fan by the name of Brad Pitt. “I was intro­duced to Nick Drake’s music about five years ago, and am a huge admir­er of his records,” the actor said at the time, and it may not be a coin­ci­dence that the year 1999 saw the high­est-pro­file use of one of Drake’s songs by far — as the sound­track to a Volk­swa­gen com­mer­cial. Two decades after that big break, and near­ly 45 years after his death, Nick Drake is at the height of his pop­u­lar­i­ty, both in terms of how many lis­ten­ers claim his songs as favorites and how many cur­rent singer-song­writ­ers claim him as an influ­ence. Yet to this day, no oth­er per­former sounds quite like him; in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, none ever will. And no mat­ter how many times one has heard it, Five Leaves Left remains more “inter­est­ing” than ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Paul McCart­ney Breaks Down His Most Famous Songs and Answers Most-Asked Fan Ques­tions in Two New Videos

James Tay­lor Per­forms Live in 1970, Thanks to a Lit­tle Help from His Friends, The Bea­t­les

89 Essen­tial Songs from The Sum­mer of Love: A 50th Anniver­sary Playlist

Joni Mitchell: Singer, Song­writer, Artist, Smok­ing Grand­ma

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

There are many rea­sons to think of The Vel­vet Under­ground for­ev­er in black and white: Nico’s Nordic monot­o­ne; John Cale and Moe Tucker’s mono­chro­mat­ic drones; Lou Reed’s per­pet­u­al invo­ca­tion of rock and roll’s black and white 50s ori­gins. White Light/White Heat and its stark black-and-white cov­er; “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” from their debut; pal­lid, sun-starved faces and a pen­chant for black sun­glass­es; an indeli­ble asso­ci­a­tion with Warhol’s black and white Fac­to­ry scene….

Then there’s lit­er­al­ly the fact that we’ve almost aways seen the band filmed and pho­tographed in black and white, until now. “Yes, you read that right,” announces Dan­ger­ous Minds, “pre­vi­ous­ly unseen col­or film of the Vel­vet Under­ground has been dis­cov­ered!” and boy is it groovy.

Always walk­ing an avant-garde line between pro­to-punk and psy­che­del­ic folk/rock, this footage from 1969 seems to catch the band lean­ing in the lat­ter direc­tion for Dal­las Peace Day, a Viet­nam War Protest held on the grounds of the Win­frey Point build­ing over­look­ing White Rock Lake.

“There were like­ly between 600 and 3,000 peo­ple in atten­dance,” and the per­form­ers that day includ­ed Lou Rawls and groups like Vel­vet Dream, Stone Creek, and Bradley & David. “The VU were in town for a week of shows at a Dal­las club.… These were the first con­certs they ever played in the south. It’s unknown how the group became involved with Dal­las Peace Day.” They were a band in tran­si­tion. Bassist Doug Yule had recent­ly tak­en over for the depart­ed John Cale. They were leav­ing behind their Warhol/Nico/Factory days.

The unearthed film here includes some per­for­mance footage, at the top. The band plays “I’m Wat­ing for the Man,” “Begin­ning to the See the Light,” and “I’m Set Free.” There’s also an inter­view with Ster­ling Mor­ri­son, who talks about the “tone of anar­chy” at New York anti-war ral­lies and the vio­lence in Chica­go the pre­vi­ous year. Above, see some silent B‑roll and below, a lit­tle more footage, with some unre­lat­ed, over­dubbed music. All of this film comes cour­tesy of the G. William Jones Film & Video Col­lec­tion.

The footage “was uncov­ered only by chance and the archive doesn’t know the orig­i­nal motives for record­ing it, or even know how they came to obtain the film.” It’s a side of the band we don’t often see. While hard­core fans may be famil­iar with the post-John Cale—and post-Lou Reed—years, most peo­ple tend to asso­ciate The Vel­vet Under­ground with black leather and white… um… sub­stances… not pais­ley and peace ral­lies.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Hear Lost Acetate Ver­sions of Songs from The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Pho­to by Vic­tor Diaz Lamich, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Ask a few friends to draw up suf­fi­cient­ly long lists of their favorite albums, and chances are that more than one of them will include Elvis Costel­lo. But today we have for you a list of 500 essen­tial albums that includes no Elvis Costel­lo records at all — not least because it was put togeth­er by Elvis Costel­lo. “Here are 500 albums that can only improve your life,” he writes in his intro­duc­tion to the list, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Van­i­ty Fair. “Many will be quite famil­iar, oth­ers less so.” Costel­lo found it impos­si­ble “to choose just one title by Miles Davis, the Bea­t­les, Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Min­gus, etc.,” but he also made room for less well-known musi­cal names such as David Ack­les, per­haps the great­est unher­ald­ed Amer­i­can song­writer of the late 60s.”

Costel­lo adds that “you may have to go out of your way” to locate some of the albums he has cho­sen, but he made this list in 2000, long before the inter­net brought even the most obscure selec­tions with­in a few key­strokes’ reach with stream­ing ser­vices like Spotify–on which a fan has even made the playlist of Costel­lo’s 500 albums below.

And when Costel­lo writes about hav­ing most­ly exclud­ed “the hit records of today,” he means hit records by the likes of “Mar­i­lyn, Puffy, Korn, Eddie Mon­ey — sor­ry, Kid Rock — Limp Bizk­it, Ricky, Brit­ney, Back­street Boys, etc.” But when he declares “500 albums you need,” described only with a high­light­ed track or two (“When in doubt, play Track 4—it is usu­al­ly the one you want”), all remain enrich­ing lis­tens today. The list begins as fol­lows:

• ABBA: Abba Gold (1992), “Know­ing Me, Know­ing You.”
• DAVID ACKLES: The Road to Cairo (1968), “Down Riv­er” Sub­way to the Coun­try (1969), “That’s No Rea­son to Cry.”
• CANNONBALL ADDERLEY: The Best of Can­non­ball Adder­ley (1968), “Mer­cy, Mer­cy, Mer­cy.”
• AMY ALLISON: The Maudlin Years (1996), “The Whiskey Makes You Sweet­er.”
• MOSE ALLISON: The Best of Mose Alli­son (1970), “Your Mind Is on Vaca­tion.”
• ALMAMEGRETTA: Lin­go (1998), “Gramigna.”
• LOUIS ARMSTRONG: The Com­plete Hot Five and Hot Sev­en Record­ings (2000), “Wild Man Blues,” “Tight Like This.”
• FRED ASTAIRE: The Astaire Sto­ry (1952), “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.”

How many music col­lec­tions, let alone lists of essen­tial records, would put all those names togeth­er? And a few hun­dred albums lat­er, the bot­tom of Costel­lo’s alpha­bet­i­cal­ly orga­nized list proves equal­ly diverse and cul­tur­al­ly cred­i­ble:

• RICHARD WAGNER: Tris­tan and Isol­de (con­duc­tor: Wil­helm Furt­wan­gler; 1952); Der Ring des Nibelun­gen (con­duc­tor: George Solti; 1983).
• PORTER WAGONER AND DOLLY PARTON: The Right Com­bi­na­tion: Burn­ing the Mid­night Oil (1972), “Her and the Car and the Mobile Home.”
• TOM WAITS: Sword­fishtrom­bones (1983), “16 Shells from a Thir­ty-Ought-Six,” “In the Neigh­bor­hood” Rain Dogs (1985), “Jock­ey Full of Bour­bon,” “Time” Frank’s Wild Years (1987), “Inno­cent When You Dream,” “Hang on St. Christo­pher” Bone Machine (1992), “A Lit­tle Rain,” “I Don’t Wan­na Grow Up” Mule Vari­a­tions (1999), “Take It with Me,” “Geor­gia Rae,” “Fil­ipino Box-Spring Hog.”
• SCOTT WALKER: Tilt (1995), “Farmer in the City.”
• DIONNE WARWICK: The Win­dows of the World (1968), “Walk Lit­tle Dol­ly.”
• MUDDY WATERS: More Real Folk Blues (1967), “Too Young to Know.”
• DOC WATSON: The Essen­tial Doc Wat­son (1973), “Tom Doo­ley.”
• ANTON WEBERN: Com­plete Works (con­duc­tor: Pierre Boulez; 2000).
• KURT WEILL: O Moon of Alaba­ma (1994), Lotte Lenya, “Wie lange noch?”
• KENNY WHEELER with LEE KONITZ, BILL FRISELL and DAVE HOLLAND: Angel Song (1997).
• THE WHO: My Gen­er­a­tion (1965), “The Kids Are Alright” Meaty, Beaty, Big and Boun­cy (1971), “Sub­sti­tute.”
• HANK WILLIAMS: 40 Great­est Hits (1978), “I’m So Lone­some I Could Cry,” “I’ll Nev­er Get out of This World Alive.”
• LUCINDA WILLIAMS: Car Wheels on a Grav­el Road (1998), “Drunk­en Angel.”
• SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON: The Best of Son­ny Boy Williamson (1986), “Your Funer­al and My Tri­al,” “Help Me.”
• JESSE WINCHESTER: Jesse Win­ches­ter (1970), “Qui­et About It,” “Black Dog,” “Pay­day.”
• WINGS: Band on the Run (1973), “Let Me Roll It.”
• HUGO WOLF: Lieder (soloist: Diet­rich Fis­ch­er-Dieskau; 2000), “Alles Endet, Was Entste­het.”
• BOBBY WOMACK: The Best of Bob­by Wom­ack (1992), “Har­ry Hip­pie.”
• STEVIE WONDER: Talk­ing Book (1972), “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be For­ev­er)” Innervi­sions (1973), “Liv­ing for the City” Ful­fill­ing­ness’ First Finale (1974), “You Haven’t Done Noth­in’.”
• BETTY WRIGHT: The Best of Bet­ty Wright (1992), “Clean Up Woman,” “The Baby Sit­ter,” “The Sec­re­tary.”
• ROBERT WYATT: Mid-Eight­ies (1993), “Te Recuer­do Aman­da.”
• LESTER YOUNG: Ulti­mate Lester Young (1998), “The Man I Love.”
• NEIL YOUNG: Every­body Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), “Down by the Riv­er” After the Gol­drush (1970), “Birds” Time Fades Away (1973), “Don’t Be Denied” On the Beach (1974), “Ambu­lance Blues” Free­dom (1989), “The Ways of Love” Ragged Glo­ry (1990), “Fuckin’ Up.”
• ZAMBALLARANA: Zam­bal­larana (1997), “Ven­tu.”

Zam­bal­larana, for the many who won’t rec­og­nize the name, is a band from the Cor­si­can vil­lage of Pigna whose music, accord­ing to one descrip­tion, com­bines “archa­ic male polypho­ny with ele­ments of jazz, ori­en­tal and latin music as well as the inno­v­a­tive way of play­ing tra­di­tion­al Cor­si­can instru­ments such as the 16-string Cetrea, the drum Colom­bu and the flute Pivana.” That counts as just one of the unex­pect­ed lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences await­ing those who fire up their favorite music-stream­ing ser­vice and work their way through Costel­lo’s list of 500 essen­tial albums. It may also inspire them to deter­mine their own essen­tial albums, an activ­i­ty Costel­lo endors­es as musi­cal­ly salu­tary: “Mak­ing this list made me lis­ten all over again.”

via Far Out Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 10 Best Albums of the 1960s as Select­ed by Hunter S. Thomp­son

Lou Reed Cre­ates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

Elvis Costel­lo Sings “Pen­ny Lane” for Sir Paul McCart­ney

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

Songs by David Bowie, Elvis Costel­lo, Talk­ing Heads & More Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Fred­die Mer­cury, now gone for more than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry, seems to have become a star again in the late 2010s. It has hap­pened in not just the Eng­land where he grew up and first hit it big with his band Queen, but in Amer­i­ca (where Queen took longer to catch on) and indeed most of the rest of the world as well: the release of the Mer­cury biopic Bohemi­an Rhap­sody last year renewed inter­est in him even in South Korea, where I live, and where any­one of the age to have lis­tened to Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” at the time of its release would have need­ed to pirate a copy. All this has nat­u­ral­ly prompt­ed a return to the stu­dio vaults in search of more Mer­cury mate­r­i­al, the lat­est find from that expe­di­tion being “Time Waits for No One.”

Astute fans will rec­og­nize the song as a ver­sion of “Time,” the title song Mer­cury record­ed for the 1986 sci-fi musi­cal by Dave Clark of the Dave Clark Five. Elab­o­rate­ly pro­duced with 96 tracks in total, the ver­sion that came out at the time did well enough, but “Clark had always remem­bered that per­for­mance of Fred­die Mer­cury at Abbey Road Stu­dios from 1986,” says Mer­cury’s web site.

“The orig­i­nal had sold mil­lions, and in his own words ‘worked.’  But the feel­ing he had dur­ing the orig­i­nal rehearsal, expe­ri­enc­ing ‘goose­bumps,’ hadn’t dis­si­pat­ed over the decades, and he want­ed to hear this orig­i­nal record­ing — just Fred­die on vocals and Mike Moran on piano.” And so, three decades lat­er, Clark brought Moran back into the stu­dio to re-record his piano part for Mer­cury’s orig­i­nal vocal track.

Like every big song of the 2010s, the stripped-down “Time Waits for No One” (the orig­i­nal title of “Time”) need­ed an impres­sive video to go with it. Mer­cury, who died in the mid­dle of the first music-video era, would sure­ly appre­ci­ate the way that the inter­net has restored a cer­tain vital­i­ty to the form. Clark, who still pos­sessed the neg­a­tives from the orig­i­nal “Time” video shoot, used the mate­r­i­al he did­n’t the first time around to cre­ate a pre­vi­ous­ly unseen Mer­cury per­for­mance to go with this pre­vi­ous­ly unheard — or at least not prop­er­ly heard — Mer­cury song. Like few rock singers before him, Fred­die Mer­cury under­stood the impor­tance of the star­tling, the elab­o­rate, and the oper­at­ic to his craft. But it takes a rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple pro­duc­tion like the new “Time Waits for No One” and its accom­pa­ny­ing video to reveal just why he has endured in a way so many of his con­tem­po­raries haven’t.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

What Made Fred­die Mer­cury the Great­est Vocal­ist in Rock His­to­ry? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay

A Stun­ning Live Con­cert Film of Queen Per­form­ing in Mon­tre­al, Dig­i­tal­ly Restored to Per­fec­tion (1981)

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Scenes from Bohemi­an Rhap­sody Com­pared to Real Life: A 21-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.