Who Do You Think You Are?

On his latest solo album, Jakko M Jakszyk has embarked on a very personal journey after a period of self-doubt. Son Of Glen is a companion piece of sorts to his acclaimed memoir, Who's The Boy With The Lovely Hair?, on which he explores themes of identity and familial bonds. He tells Prog about "the proggiest thing" he's ever done and what the future might hold for King Crimson.

- Words: Dave Everley

The cover of Jakko Jakszyk's new album, Son Of Glen, features a photograph of Jakko and his sometime musical partner Louise Patricia Crane sitting at opposite ends of a plush banquette in a Belfast bar named The Spaniard. The bar's walls are covered in religious iconography: crucifixes, icons of Christ, the full religious Monty.

But two subtle adjustments have been made.

On the wall behind Crane, a Belfast native, is a vintage photograph of a pale-skinned, blackhaired woman. On the wall behind Jakszyk is another black and white photograph, this one of a dark-haired man wearing a shirt and tie.

Both look like they were taken in the 50s or early 60s.

Who are these two people gazing down the decades? The woman is Peggy Curran, Jakszyk's biological mother, who gave him up for adoption when he was a baby. The man is Glen Tripp - the Glen referred to in the album title, and someone Jakszyk never met.

"If you look closely at that photo, there's absolutely no doubt that he's my father," says Jakko. "It's this idea of him watching me from a distance." Son Of Glen is the well-travelled Jakszyk's latest solo album and the first since the dissolution of King Crimson, the band he sang and played guitar with during their final incarnation between 2013 and 2021. It comes a few months after his massively entertaining but deeply emotional autobiography, Who's The Boy With The Lovely Hair?, which tells the intertwined stories of his life inside and outside of music, and also his attempts to track down his birth parents while processing his relationship with the couple who brought him up: his distant, Polish, WWII survivor adoptive father Norbert Jakszyk and Norbert's French wife, Camille. It's basically an episode of genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?, but with more Henry Cow.

"The book came first, really," says Jakszyk.