Former King Crimson guitarist/vocalist Jakko Jakszyk’s first solo album in 5 years, Son Of Glen, is a companion piece of kinds to his acclaimed 2024 autobiography Who’s The Boy With The Pretty Hair?, recording the adoptee’s makes an attempt to trace down his start dad and mom.
He started engaged on the report after co-producing his companion and fellow musician Louise Patricia Crane’s 2024 album Netherworld. “After King Crimson resulted in 2021, there was a type of inertia,” he says. “I’d written the ebook, however I’d misplaced confidence musically in some way; like, ‘Who the fuck am I now?’ Louise constructed me again up, saying, ‘No, you are able to do all kinds of stuff.’”
The album’s eight tracks vary from the reflective Someplace Between Then And Now and the Celtic-infused instrumental The Street To Ballina to the epic, 10-minute title monitor.
“It’s undoubtedly the proggiest factor I’ve completed,” he says of the latter. “However I didn’t need to simply write a ‘prog’ album – I let no matter come out of my head come out.”
The title Son Of Glen is a reference to Glen Tripp, his organic father, a former US airman who met his start mom, Peggy Curran, whereas stationed in Eire. Lyrically, the music performs like a dialog between Jakszyk and Tripp.
“It got here from Louise – she identified the parallel of my dad falling in love with this dark-haired Irish singer, after which me doing the identical all these years later, which genuinely hadn’t occurred to me till that time,” he says.
“It’s this concept of, ‘Has he been watching over me from a distance? Has he seen me make all these ridiculous errors? Has he been in some way nudging me?’”
In addition to Crane, the album additionally options appearances from ex-King Crimson drummer Gavin Harrison and Marillion counterpart Ian Mosley, with Jakszyk’s son Django on bass. The monitor How Did I Let You Get So Previous features a posthumous look from Jakszyk’s adoptive Polish-born father, Norbert, with whom the musician had a sophisticated relationship.
His voice was taken from tapes recorded for The Street To Ballina, a documentary he made for Radio 3 in 1996. “We flew my dad again to Poland, and went to those locations we hoped would set off reminiscences.
“We went to his previous city, and we went to Auschwitz. I recorded hours of dialog, stuff he would by no means have stated in England. These are snatches of these conversations on the monitor.”
Even with out a tour on the horizon, Jakszyk stays busy sufficient. He’s ending the audiobook model of Who’s The Boy With The Pretty Hair? and he’s planning an expanded reissue of A Shortage Of Miracles, his 2011 album with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp and Mel Collins.
“It’s not only a remixed model,” he says. “There’s totally different improvised musical bits, and there are tracks the place I’ve added overdubs and actual drums. There’s loads of stuff that wasn’t on the unique album.”
Moreover, he’s revisiting music King Crimson wrote throughout his tenure that was performed in live performance however by no means recorded. “We’re having a gathering about it in a few weeks to debate it additional.
“It options all of the members of the newest line-up of King Crimson, together with Robert. I don’t know what it is going to find yourself being, however I’ve loved doing it immensely.”
