Jakko Jakszyk Of King Crimson Reminisces On The Band’s Legacy Ahead Of Their Fox Theatre Performance
One of the most influential progressive rock bands of all time will light up Atlanta’s Fox Theatre for the venue’s first reopening of live shows since the pandemic. King Crimson, the eclectic explorers of sound who formed in 1968 with their blend of jazz, classical and psychedelic rock music, has had a rollercoaster career — breaking up and reforming various times with different line-ups. Jakko Jakszyk is the band’s lead vocalist, guitarist and occasional keyboardist and flutist, having joined in 2013. A versatile performer, he’s also been involved in acting and comedy projects over his long and varied career. He joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom to talk about the upcoming July 27 performance at The Fox Theatre, and his last several years’ experience making music and touring with the legendary pioneers of prog.
Interview highlights:
Growing up in the glow of King Crimson:
“When I first heard the band, I would’ve been about 11 years old… Hearing King Crimson, you immediately realized, whilst not understanding what was going on musically, you certainly knew it was coming from a different place. And to my ears, it had this kind of sense of mystery and majesty that nothing else had, and there was something very intriguing about all of it,” Jakszyk said.
“I was fortunate enough to see them at a local venue when I was about thirteen… and it completely blew me away. It was one of the most significant moments of my life, looking back, because it really did change everything,” Jakszyk reflected. “Ending up actually in the band is just about the maddest childhood dream you could possibly imagine.”
Working with founding member Robert Fripp, in his unique musical language:
“[Fripp] is being disingenuous by saying he’s not the leader. I mean, King Crimson can only really be King Crimson if Robert’s part of it. I think it’s, compositionally, there’s certain harmonic information that runs through all the albums. You can play different tracks from different eras and on one level it sounds like a completely different band, but actually, there’s a kind of harmonic and musical glue that runs all the way through it and, obviously, that’s emanating from Robert himself.”
“I guess ‘progressive,’ just as a word, just means trying to progress above and beyond normal structures of composition and songwriting. So it gets pretty involved, but I’m pretty sure no one knows what’s going on. We often don’t know what’s going on,” Jakszyk said. “There are pieces that are like jigsaws, and there are a number of pieces where I’m playing in a different time signature to everybody else… The music has a kind of spread. There are moments like that, which are very, very tightly arranged, and they’re like a jigsaw… But then there are other pieces which are much more open, and allow for interpretation and improvisation.”
On finding new generations of fans in America and elsewhere:
“The internet has many pros and cons, and one of the pros is that it’s stopped a lot of people being tribal about music, I think,” Jakszyk said. “We certainly notice, particularly in Italy and when we went south of America, there’s a lot of young people in the audience… Every time in South America, we were stopped ten or twenty times, and almost certainly the vast majority of those people were under the age of thirty.” He went on, “It’s just viewed as music for the sake of music, rather than it being a fashionable accouterment or something.”
“There’s an element of cynicism about the English, I think. There’s an element of, ‘Go on, impress me.’ Whereas in America, they tend to, they’ve bought the ticket, they’re going to have a good time, you know. I think that’s reflected in the response — it’s always noisy, it’s always vociferous, and it’s great.”
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