Forgotten ’70s Folk Genius Quietly Returns With New 42-Track Drop originally appeared on Parade.
Over 50 years following his tragic death, folk icon Nick Drake has shed a little bit of light onto his notoriously private creative process.
Newly unearthed recordings, released on July 25, 2025, allow Drake to speak to modern audiences from beyond the grave. The Making of Five Leaves Left is a collection of 42 tracks made during the period leading up to Drake’s debut album, Five Leaves Left, which was released in the summer of 1969.
The Making of Five Leaves Left includes never-before-heard studio demos and outtakes, but the crown jewel of the long forgotten archive is a work tape that includes Drake talking about how he wanted his songs to be arranged.
“Nick’s voice brought him winging back to me,” recalled his sister, Gabrielle Drake, 81, in an email to The New York Times. “Not so much his singing, for that has accompanied me throughout my life. It was his speaking voice that conjured up my beloved brother so very clearly — self-effacing, yet sure; polite but firm. And I found myself overcome by the admiration and wonder I have always felt at his certainty — belied by his diffidence, but always absolute — of what he wanted his songs to sound like.”
The focal point of the newly released collection is a pair of tapes that are seeing the light of day for the very first time. The first, given to Beverley Martin, an English folk singer by Drake, is a time capsule of his earliest sessions at Sound Techniques studios in London.
The second tape is a rare performance of Drake’s in which he demos a few of his songs in a dorm at the University of Cambridge in 1968. On the tape, Drake can be heard discussing possible arrangements with Robert Kirby, a music scholar, and his fellow student.
Drake only released three full length records before he died in 1974 from an accidental overdose. He had a reputation for being reclusive and private, and glimpses into his process were few and far between, if at all.
“A famously shy performer who played few shows before he was sidelined by mental illness, there are few documents and no known film footage of his music-making. Notwithstanding home recordings circulated on bootlegs and disappointingly scattershot compilations, his three studio LPs — Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1971) and Pink Moon (1972) — have stood as Drake’s immaculate legacy,” wrote Will Hermes for The Times.
Perhaps unintentionally, yet undeniably, Drake left this world an enigma.
“He wasn’t doing promotion. He wasn’t willing to play that game. Not on principle – much more because his personality was so badly suited to the fame game,” said biographer Richard Morton Jack in a 2024 interview with NPR.
Drake flew relatively under the radar during his lifetime, and for two more decades following his death. It wasn’t until Volkswagen featured the now iconic song, “Pink Moon,” in a 1999 television commercial for the since discontinued Cabrio convertible that Drake achieved the status of folk icon.
Forgotten ’70s Folk Genius Quietly Returns With New 42-Track Drop first appeared on Parade on Jul 26, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 26, 2025, where it first appeared.
