Musical memoirs embrace many styles and formats, but it’s probably fair to say there has never been a story quite like that of King Crimson alumnus, Jakko M. Jakszyk.

For starters, that’s not his birth name, a fact he is keen to point out from the very beginning and provides a key to the essence of his story.

The book’s overriding theme is his personal quest to establish his true identity against the backdrop of an extraordinary musical career, crowned by fulfilling a personal dream of becoming a member of his teenage heroes, King Crimson.

That he has been able to carve out a successful career as a musician, vocalist, songwriter, composer, documentary maker, producer and sound engineer, as well as one time actor – and once, almost a promising soccer player – is testament to his extraordinary talent, superhuman determination and unwavering tenacity. To write this story is to try and make some sense of it all.

But what is clear is that his existential journey towards finding himself has been the driver for informing a greater part of his creative life.

There are so many facets to his story, but as his “public” name would otherwise suggest, Jakko, a nickname given to him instead of his birthname Michael, of Irish/America parentage, but was adopted by a Polish/French couple when he was a babe in arms whose surname he took.

Norbert, his adopted father, came to England after World War Two. He had been spared action on the Russian front due to an accident which damaged his hand, but ended up fighting with the Allies for the Polish Free Army in Italy. However, his wartime experiences left indelible internal scars. He met his wife Camille when she came to England and worked for an American family close to where he had settled.

Royal Albert Hall

Jakko’s childhood proved difficult and oppressive. His adoptive father was a strict disciplinarian who never really appreciated what Jakko did, even when given the VIP treatment at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall in London to see him perform many years later.

Discovering bands like Henry Cow, Matching Mole and ultimately King Crimson, drew him towards the flame of music and the creative arts when he was still at school.  “There was a huge hole inside me; I was just desperately trying to fill it up,”  Jakko recalls.

An overheard conversation finally paved the way to him finding his birth mother, an Irish woman, Peggy Curran, a singer in a 50s band, and the reality that his father was in probability a US airman stationed in the UK in the 50s.

As he served his musical apprenticeship in various bands, he finally found his mother, calling her at her then home in Arkansas but from the outset, she would not reveal his father’s identity.

What he did discover then was that she had married again, had three sons, also a daughter Debbie who was Jakko’s full sibling. He and Debbie finally met up in New York in an attempt to put together some more pieces of the very fractured family jigsaw.

His solo career was thwarted several times, promised album releases never materialising. However, when Geffen Records showed an interest in his work, Jakko had a chance to go to LA where he met soon to be lifelong friends, the songwriter, Jon Lind and Larry Williams, sax player with the influential Seawind horn section, that was featuring on two of his latest solo album’s tracks.

Finally, he met his mother and extended family in Little Rock, Arkansas. It proved a difficult and uncomfortable meeting because of her never-ending manipulation of the truth and her continual self-denial.

Michael Jackson

Other Stateside meetings brought him into contact, accidental or otherwise, with David Bowie, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and Gene Simmons.

However, it was his encounter with Michael Jackson at Westlake Audio in LA which left, not surprisingly, something of a lasting bizarre impression. Laying down some of the tracks for Bad with Quincy Jones, Jackson told Jakko he liked his shoes, which led into a surreal conversation about shoe shops in London’s famous shopping area, Oxford Street.

Meanwhile, his family situation got even more complicated when he found he had another full brother, Darren, who was living in Florida but they eventually met in England.

On the musical front, Jakko’s star continued to rise when he joined the ranks of the 21^st Century Schizoid Band comprised four alumni from King Crimson who made albums and toured This led to him making the highly acclaimed Scarcity of Miracles with Robert Fripp and Mel Collins release in 2011.

An invitation to sing Entangled with Amanda Lehman on Steve Hackett’s Genesis Revisited II thrust him even further in the Prog limelight. Then came the call he had been waiting for all his life – from Fripp, asking him if he would accept the challenge of being Crimson’s second guitarist and lead singer. As his friend Nick Beggs would quip: “Well that’s the longest audition in rock history!”

Joining King Crimson would be the pinnacle in Jakko’s remarkable career. However, his personal situations was far from resolution. His adopted parents both died (and provide the most heart-breaking of reasons for the naming of this book). More revelations from the USA emerged, his mother dying, taking even more secrets with her including the possibility of there being a further offspring

And finally, reaching the age of 64, Jakko learned the identity of his father, but having died in violent circumstances at a very young age, there’s no knowing if he was ever aware of Jakko’s existence after he returned to the States and married his childhood sweetheart.

Genesis

What is more, following the storming of the Capitol Building on 6^th January 2021, Facebook posts showed that one of his Arkansas half-brothers is a white supremacist with views that are a total anathema to Jakko and the creative world which he has inhabited most of his life.

This summary only scratches the surface of this remarkable, heart-wrenching and utterly compelling story, which stuns, confounds, delights, astounds, amazes and horrifies in equal measures.

As well as the constant deeply affecting quest for identity, there are plenty of lighter moments too, one of them being a “lost” weekend he spent in Amsterdam with his son Django, which takes father/son bonding to a new “high”!

Who is Jakko Jakszyk? With the constant shifting sands that still underpin his life, he fears he will never ever know.  Even at the end of his story, he remarks: “The answers themselves just manifest more questions. And then there are no answers anymore.”

To buy the book, go to: https://thebandwagonusa.com/collections/kingmaker-publishing