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The First International MelloFest 2008
INTERVIEW No. 4

JAKKO JAKSZYK
(21st Century Schizoid Band, The Tangent, Level 42)

Nick Awde: Jakko Jakszyk is not only an extraordinary guitar player but also a Mellotronist and he's also one of the few people to have recorded tapes with his own sounds for the machine. He is fortunate too to have played with the original musicians who played in the classic-era King Crimson -together they created the 21st Century Schizoid Band in 2002 and played a great deal of Crimson tracks that have not been played live for a long time - even a number that had never been played live. Mellotronists for the group were horn players Mel Collins and Ian McDonald who played digital keyboards instead. Jakko was in the enviable position of fronting one of music's most unique, magical line-ups. But your own first encounter with the Mellotron was a long time before that, wasn't it?

Jakko Jakszyk: Do you mean hearing it?

NA: No, getting your hands on one.

JJ: I bought one - I was always fascinated by the idea of actually putting my own voices on. And the machine also had the resonance for me as a fan, as a kid loving the kind of eccentricity of it. That was one of the ironies of working with the guys in 21st Century Schizoid Band - a lot of them hated the Mellotron and thought it sounded like shit. Of course as a listener, as a fan, you kind of thought: "What?! But that's part of the very nature of what makes it sound unique and eerie." I obviously had a completely different take on it! "No, don't change it!" When I got my own machine in the early 80s, I was especially fascinated about the sound possibilities because it was all pre-sampler at the time - although things were already changing rapidly. So I went into the studio and recorded my voice chromatically and double-tracked it and then made the tapes up to go in my M400, one of the white ones.

NA: What else did you record?

JJ: Nothing. Just my voices. I've still got them somewhere, probably.

NA: You could give them to the British Museum.

JJ: I can't imagine anybody wanting that! But there's one thing I want to say here, something that Martin Orford had touched on earlier. I was in a similar group as him in the mid 70s just as punk was starting to break. I was in a band with my friend [keyboardist] Lyndon Connah, who's here tonight, called 64 Spoons. I was reminded when Martin was talking about playing this kind of prog influence music in that environment. We did a gig at University College London and we were headlining - we'd slowly built our way up and the support band that night was one of those new-fangled punk groups that I'd read about. We were doing the soundcheck up onstage and I was twiddling about on the guitar and getting my sound. I suddenly became aware of somebody standing in my personal space and I turned round. There was this guy with the big spiky hair and he was right in my face. The drummer in his band was unloading stuff down in the auditorium, and the punk onstage just stared at me and then said - this was a defining moment! - just chewing while talking to his mate but without taking his eyes from me: "Here, Kev, get this bloke!" And his mate asked: "What about him?" He said: "He can play the guitar really well... What a WANKER!" At that moment everything that you'd valued and everything that you'd worked on suddenly became the most worthless musical currency that there was!

NA: Although that didn't stop you, because you went on to play for Level 42. Highly fiddly stuff, wasn't that?

JJ: Yes. The first gig we did with the Schizoids was at the Canterbury Festival in 2002 - with Mel and Ian and [drummer] Mike Giles and Mike's brother [bassist] Peter. We were introduced by Arthur Brown and as he was introducing the individual members of the band, everybody got a cheer. And when it got to my name and he mentioned "Level 42" it got an enormous laugh. Now I'm not sure what that meant exactly but I've got a fair idea!

NA: In terms of the development of music, people jettisoned the original Mellotron which coincided with the start of that attitude towards wanky guitar playing and all the other "fiddly stuff". It's still lingered even up to today. But as we've just heard from the music that Dave Cousins and Robert Kirby were playing, it's sublime music that loses none of its force when done with just an acoustic guitar. But that attitude has lasted for a good 30 years now as a sort of creed of anti-musicianship. Do you think that's changing? It has certainly affected the general quality of songwriting.

JJ: I think there's a shorthand, a kind of journalistic shorthand that has kept that attitude going. I think it belies the reality. Also it's throwing the baby out with the bath water.

NA: There's so much good music that has been ignored as a result of all that post-punk damning of so-called sophisticated music.

JJ: Absolutely. There's an accepted cliche for labelling what prog was in a negative sense. And actually it wasn't that way at all, was it? The music - and not all of it in fact - was just extending ideas, taking things further and using different kinds of chords and harmonies and stuff. But this idea that it's all themes about pixy ladies with bombastic arrangements is wrong.

NA: Martin Orford touched on something when I asked the question why he started a prog group in the middle of punk, and he said: "Quite simply we were born too late." Was that a problem for you being born ten years too late?

JJ: I think he happily described the conundrum!

NA: Not that you had anything to do with the timing of your birth, obviously.

JJ: Well, there was a kind of "oh shit" when you realised the clash of the music that was coming. And yes, I think we dumbed down what we were doing as a result. I certainly was responsible for dumbing down a lot of what we did - the kind of lyrical content that we were pushing was the kind of thing that would embarrass a Carry On! screenwriter really, it was appalling stuff. But I felt that that's what we had to do to try and somehow survive in that environment. And, again just as Martin said, I think we delivered it with a great deal of energy. It was punk-like, mad... I remember hearing, for instance, the first Mahavishnu Orchestra record and although it wasn't necessarily prog, in terms of attitude it blows any punk record out of the woods. So that type of music can be literal and powerful and in your face, yes absolutely.

NA: As an aside, after all we've said about lamenting the demise of the Mellotron, thanks to the digital age and sampling - even GarageBand now has Mellotron loops - we're looking at the bizarre situation where in just one year of today's recorded output there is probably more Mellotron used than was ever used in the classic days - admittedly it's almost all sampled.

JJ: I think there's always that thing of kind of returning to this kind of vintage sounding analogue, quirky things I guess, you know.

NA: In the book you talk about working with Ian McDonald. Ian was in the first line-up of King Crimson and very famously wrote much of the book on how the Mellotron should be used. Although he has pointed out that any of the songs he played on stand up in their own right and can be all played on just acoustic guitar, they were given a special extra something thanks to the Mellotron. So when you all got the 21st Century Schizoid Band, there were discussions about whether Ian should use a real Mellotron or not?

JJ: Well he didn't want to. He didn't even want to use samples of them! I scoured the papers at the time, because there weren't the kind of plug-in versions that there are now, looking for various kind of vintage rack units that sounded at least reasonably like Mellotrons and Ian still wouldn't use them. I got the impression that he utilised the Mellotron at the time only because King Crimson couldn't afford a string section - and he didn't really like the machine's sounds. So he was now thinking: "Well, now I can use a string pad and that sounds much more like strings..." Of course, to somebody like me who grew up with that music, I thought: "Blimey, he's missed the point completely!" But that's the interesting thing about working with some of those guys who created the music in the first place and you the musician are not fully getting what they do in the same way that you the listener got it. I remember hearing Mike Giles talking about the drum sound on the first Crimson record, "In the Court of the Crimson King" and saying how shit it was and that he had never been happy with it - and you think: "Well there are all these drummers that I've worked with who have spent the past 20 years trying to recreate precisely that sound!" Because it becomes this iconic thing to us, you know. But of course that wasn't Mike's motivation.

NA: Do you think we can ever go back to that freedom of expression, that ability to simply go ahead and do it and trust that the result will be worth it?

JJ: I don't know. It's all changed beyond recognition now. I mean, studios are closing, people are making records in their bedrooms. So many of the major studios have closed down now.

NA: And the record companies are all suffering as well.

JJ: Yeah I know. There's a lot of people here whose hearts will bleed at the mere thought of record companies closing down and record execs losing their jobs. I know it's tragic, isn't it - bless them!

NA: Never mind, I'm sure we've all helped to put a bit of cash into the pension pots of the EMI directors and all the others. So thank you very much, Jakko, for that!

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Mellotron progressive rock prog rock British invasion Tony Banks (Genesis), Mike Pinder (Moody Blues), Ian McDonald (King Crimson, Foreigner), Woolly Wolstenholme (Barclay James Harvest), Greg Lake (King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer), John Wetton (King Crimson, UK, Asia), Nick Magnus (Autumn, Steve Hackett Band), Martin Orford (IQ, Jadis), Roine Stolt (Flower Kings, Transatlantic, Tangent), Jakko Jakszyk (Level 42, 21st Century Schizoid Band, Tangent), John Hawken (Renaissance, Strawbs), Doug Rayburn (Pavlov's Dog), Tony Clarke (Moody Blues), David Cross (King Crimson), Dave Cousins (Strawbs), Blue Weaver (Strawbs, Bee Gees), Robert Kirby (Strawbs), Robert Webb (England), Dave Gregory (XTC), Andy McCluskey (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark). Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson) provides a drummer's view of working with four classic Mellotron bands, and there are perspectives from Geoff Unwin, the first Mellotronics demonstrator, John Bradley & Martin Smith of Streetly Electronics, the original makers of the Mellotron, and Planet Mellotron's Andy Thompson Nick Awde