IN MAY 1979, Dark Star magazine published an image of Nick Drake playing a gig. Grainy and of unknown provenance, it is, so far, the only known picture of Drake performing live. Such is the rarefied and mysterious world writer Richard Morton Jack has been immersed in since 2020, after the Drake estate engaged him to write an official biography of this most elusive of talents. “I am working closely with his sister [Gabrielle] and the estate,” said Morton Jack in an online post, “but with no element of censorship.”