Of all the King Crimson side-projects – known as ‘projeKcts’ – one of the most surprising appeared in 2011, after Robert Fripp found a new guitar buddy in lifelong fan Jakko Jakszyk, and then invited former colleague Mel Collins to join in. A Scarcity Of Miracles was the only album released under the Jakszyk, Fripp & Collins banner, but all three would go on to participate in the final version of Crimson itself. At the time of the launch, with Fripp having retired from speaking to the press, Jakszyk told Prog about the series of incidents that brought the music into being, and Collins discussed how it felt to reconnect fully with Fripp decades after their acrimonious split.
For the past 14 years, Robert Fripp has been detailing his musical activities via an online diary. One particularly effusive entry landed on December 15, 2010: “JFC is a superb album. I have not heard stereo quite like this since the early 1970s, and much of that was not of this quality.” He continued: “JFC is one of my favouritist albums, of those where I am a determining element. It has the Crimson gene, but is not quite KC. It is a Crimson ProjeKct, although this was not the intention. Given the gene pool, I suppose this counts as evolution.”
The “JFC” was shorthand for Jakszyk, Fripp & Collins, a King Crimson projeKct that grew from a set of informal guitar improvisations between Fripp and composer Jakko Jakszyk in February 2009. These jams eventually streamlined into actual songs, especially after the arrival of veteran sax player, Mel Collins. Factor in a top-rate rhythm section in bassist Tony Levin and Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison and you have A Scarcity Of Miracles, the utterly engrossing album that Fripp was raving about in his blog. It’s a worthy new shoot on the already fabulously tangled family tree of King Crimson.
Everyone in this set-up has Crimson history – some more convoluted than others. There’s Fripp, of course, the central figure in the band’s story and one of the most extraordinary post-war musicians the UK has produced; a right royal hero of all things progressive. Then there’s Collins, hand-plucked by Fripp in 1970 from jazz-rock combo Circus to replace the departed Ian McDonald in King Crimson. Collins stayed for three albums – In The Wake Of Poseidon, Lizard and Islands – before quitting in 1972; though he did return as a session musician on 1974’s Red.
Jakszyk boasts a dizzyingly eclectic CV that includes solo albums, stints with Tom Robinson, Dave Stewart, Peter Blegvad, Level 42 and ex-members of Japan, alongside bands such as 64 Spoons and The Lodge. Above all though, he’s a man steeped in Crimson. A lifelong fan, he helped found the 21st Century Schizoid Band in 2002, performing classic Crimson songs of yesteryear alongside former members Peter and Michael Giles, Ian McDonald and Ian Wallace. And, of course, Mel Collins. By the time of Wallace’s death from cancer in 2007, they had released five albums, most of which were live. Then there’s Tony Levin and Gavin Harrison, both of whom were part of the 2008 version of King Crimson. Confused? You should be.
The defining strand of this new venture might well be the interwoven history of Jakszyk and Fripp. The pair first got to know each other at the outset of the 21st Century Schizoid Band, when Fripp gave his blessing. “At rehearsals I got a phone call out of the blue from Robert,” Jakszyk recalls. “And it was as a result of those discussions that we bonded. He told me that I was the only person, metaphorically and literally, who had sat on that side of the stage and watched Crimson.”
There’s a telling entry in the Fripp diary that dates from May 2007: “Jakko is, most likely, the only man with whom I am able to discuss arisings of the early Crimson kind. At the time, I felt that I couldn’t have been the only sane man in the asylum. Today it seems I must have been at least half-mad to live there.” As an awestruck 13-year-old, Jakszyk had first seen King Crimson from the vantage point of row three at Watford Town Hall in July 1971. Six weeks later, he caught them at Hyde Park.
“I remember vividly lying to my mother, telling her I was going to play football with a mate. But I jumped on a train to go and see King Crimson. My whole life has been so woven in with Crimson that it’s bizarre. You know that my wife is Michael Giles’ daughter? I actually didn’t know that when I first met her, though. It’s weird how it’s all intertwined.”
I’ve always had this thing with King Crimson… things go wrong just as I get into it. It’s the story of my life
Mel Collins
So how did this latest projeKct come about? “I got the initial phone call from Robert, asking if I’d like to go down to the DGM studio to improvise,” says Jakszyk. “I think his request was along the lines of, ‘did I want to go and spray guitar over some soundscapes?’ I mean, of course! He also asked me if I wanted to be his guitar buddy. I asked him what that entailed and he said, ‘Well, you know, I’ll come round and I might have some ideas that I might want to try out for two guitars.’
“So we’d sit down, play a tune and I’d just follow his lead. We did a couple of things that were like the sophisticated Soundscape things of Frippertronics, but there were a couple of others that weren’t like that. He was triggering other sounds on those and I just responded to it. After one of them I told him that I was starting to feel more comfortable, and Robert said: ‘You mean like you’re no longer being auditioned?’
“At one point I subconsciously played a line from Prince Rupert’s Lament off Lizard. Slowly and nervously I raised my head towards him and he had a huge grin on his face.” As Fripp blogged on February 12, 2009: “Jakko left some four hours later, carrying away some 40 minutes of improv on hard drive. Lotsa fun and some good nattering. In the kitchen, Jakko played the Gibson Stereo used on Prince Rupert’s Lament, a piece that Jakko suggests means a lot to him; and it does to me.”
It was all motoring along smoothly, if loosely, to begin with. But what about Mel Collins? He’d left Crimson amid much unrest in the early 70s, and he and Fripp hadn’t played together directly since 1974. Turns out it was Fripp’s idea to call on him: after Jakszyk had embellished those initial guitar sessions, imposed a tempo and begun adding vocals, “the whole thing went into the most unusual places,” he says. “And when I started sending this stuff to Robert he got genuinely excited. As we progressed, he would suggest things. He started removing stuff: ‘There are too many clues. Let’s get rid of that.’ It all came out of improvisation, so it has this kind of organic feel. Then he suggested getting in Mel to play. So we sat there for two days, just listening to Mel playing – which was amazing.”
Collins explains: “I’d made my peace with Robert quite a while back, when we formed the 21st Century Schizoid Band. I hadn’t had anything to do with him for 30 years before then, but he called me up. He was fantastic, actually. He wanted us to know that he wished me and the band luck and that he was with us. He also apologised for any bad or mean things that he might have said to me 30-odd years ago, which was fair enough. That’s the other side of Robert – the big softie. But he doesn’t like people to know that.
Robert is very reluctant to praise musicians in the written word… but he’s always done it about Mel
Jakko Jakszyk
“It had all been a bit strange when we left King Crimson – the three of us [Collins, Ian Wallace and Boz Burrell] had actually left him. At that time in the 70s we’d had enough. I just wanted to get on and play different things, as did the other guys. It was so intense at that time with Robert. And it was suddenly such a relief to not have to be doing it any more. Of course you look back now and think that it was fantastic – King Crimson really helped me musically, and Robert was great. But there were some heavy moments and I felt that I needed to get away from Robert. He was very domineering and had been very heavy with me at times.”
Collins said of the Schizoid Band experience: “Jakko and Michael Giles really put the thing together, and Jakko financed it. But when we got into rehearsals there was Peter Giles, Michael Giles and Ian McDonald on one side, and Jakko and myself on the other. It developed into this little power play before somebody said something and cleared the air. Then we were off working together.
“But it was very strange. For example, I wanted to play baritone on Pictures Of A City, but Mike said: ‘That’s ridiculous – it’s a cabaret thing.’ But I’d actually played baritone on the original record! So stuff like that was going on. And there was a lack of respect for me and Jakko. It was probably insecurity on their part, but it did develop. And it was yet another Crimson disappointment for me, in that it broke up at the end. I’ve always had this thing with King Crimson, and projects around it, where things somehow go wrong just as I get into it. It’s the story of my life.”
According to Jakszyk, the decision to rope in Collins – the man whose lyrical and expressive sax lines, not to mention flute-playing, had provided those early 70s Crimson albums with an incredibly rare thrust – was a no-brainer. “Robert is very reluctant to praise musicians in the written word,” he contends. “He doesn’t do it very often; but he’s always done it about Mel. I know he spoke to Mel at the beginning of the Schizoid thing, which was the first time they’d spoken in decades.
“After the first Schizoid record we all fell out with Mike [Giles], quite badly. So he was replaced with Ian Wallace. When Ian died, I organised his memorial service in London. I found myself on stage singing the title track of the album they were promoting that night I’d first seen them in 1971, accompanied by Mel. And in front of me was Robert. It was after that that Robert invited me and Mel to come up to his house for lunch, where we talked about a lot of things. So we had all connected on that level as well.”
It was all creative… and the end result is amazing. I have to say I’m quite surprised
Mel Collins
A Scarcity Of Miracles is artful, highly atmospheric and oddly moving. Much of its power comes from the architecture of the music itself – daring yet melodically accessible, with Collins’ fluid sax lines giving it all a sleek, yet never over-polished, feel. Unlike his solo work, particularly 2006’s The Bruised Romantic Glee Club, Jakszyk’s lyrics tend to steer clear of anything explicitly autobiographical. Or at least render them more elliptical.
“I laboured over the lyrics of my solo record very carefully,” he says. “There was a lot of personal stuff on there. But with this I didn’t do that. A lot of the vocals were put down very quickly or improvised, and a lot of the lyrics were almost written retrospectively. They’re more impressionistic than I would normally make them, though some of the songs are about things. For instance, The Other Man is about my father. And The Light Of Day is about the morning after I’d got completely trashed the night before and was woken up by the phone ringing. It was the hospital telling me that my mother had died.”
The resulting album and its recording process seem to have proved intensely satisfying to everyone involved. “I really enjoyed the freedom of it,” says Collins. “Robert is the main one, because he started this whole thing, then Jakko did a tremendous job shaping the songs from what they were originally. The great thing was that it was all creative; each person had their own job. We all had an individual part to play. And the end result is amazing. I have to say I’m quite surprised.”
For Jakszyk, meanwhile, the smitten 13-year-old Crimson fan of days past is never too far from the surface. “There are two levels to all this,” he says. “There’s the pragmatic, day-to-day one of being a musician; but then there’s a voice in the back of my head which is like a kid, going, ‘Oh my God!’ Every now and then it hits you. Robert might say something very funny that’s at odds with his public persona. Or like when the album artwork came in and I thought, ‘There’s my ludicrous surname on the same cover as his!’”
