MICHAEL 'JAKKO' JAKSZYK: The Road To Ballina

Guitarist/composer Michael 'Jakko' Jakszyk has enjoyed an unpredictable musical career, comprising near‑bankruptcy, fame and fortune with Level 42, and some disastrous but entertaining skirmishes with record companies. Here, he talks to Dave Stewart about the making of his unique autobiographical CD The Road to Ballina.

In the mid‑'70s, Jakko Jakszyk (pronounced 'Jack‑check') was guitarist and vocalist with the eccentric UK jazz‑rock combo 64 Spoons, before embarking on a slow‑burning solo career in 1980. Having recorded three excellent albums of original material, Jakko suffered the frustration of seeing all three go unreleased when no hit single was forthcoming. Throughout the '80s, Jakko 'supplemented his income' by taking the odd acting job until things improved towards the end of the decade, when he participated in a number of album projects (including the Zappa‑esque Big Fish Popcorn, Sam Brown's big hit 'Stop' and the critically acclaimed Dizrhythmia), and signed a publishing deal. Production work also began to flow.

Sensing that things were on the up, the Inland Revenue stepped in. With most of his savings lost overnight in the stock market crash, Jakko found himself staring bankruptcy in the face, and only a last minute (and totally unexpected) phone call from Level 42's Mark King saved the day. Since that dramatic turnaround, the turbulence has subsided, and Jakko has been happily dividing his time between composing TV soundtracks, notably for Lenny Henry's Chef series, and working on solo projects. One of these began as an autobiographical BBC radio program about Jakko's troubled family history, and ended up as a self‑produced CD, The Road To Ballina, which combines speech and music. Seated in the mid‑tech chaos of his home studio Silesia Sound, Jakko himself takes up the story with his habitual air of puzzled amusement.

More Orphan Than Not

Jakko: "I grew up in Croxley Green, Hertfordshire, not knowing who my real parents were. My adopted mum was French, and her husband, Norbert Jakszyk, was Polish. They both left their native countries after the war, met each other in England and married, and when they couldn't have their own children, they adopted me. There was a lot of confusion — English was second language for both of them, so although I could understand them both, they often couldn't understand each other — it led to all sorts of daft misunderstandings and rows."

When did you become interested in discovering your real parents' identities?

"Back in 1977, when I was 18. I was talking about it with a friend, and his mother told me she knew an Irish woman who was still in touch with my real mother. After a lot of searching, I found out that my real mother, Peggy Curran, was still alive and living in Arkansas, USA with my sister and three half brothers. One night, I plucked up courage and telephoned her. Her first words were, "Is that really you?" In 1984 I went to America and met her for the first time. Obviously it was an emotional reunion, but when I got there she refused to tell me anything about my real dad, so I still felt confused."

Ireland Meets Poland

How did the radio programme which led to the making of the CD come about?

"It started in 1991. Tom Robinson, who I'd worked with, was very friendly with Simon Elmes, the producer of a BBC radio programme called Tuesday Lives, in which people recounted their extraordinary life stories. I appeared on the show and told them how I'd been adopted as a kid, how I found my real mother and sister in America, and so on. The programme got a really good response from the public — I got a lot of letters — and at the BBC, Simon was very keen to work with me again. We discussed various ideas for another radio show, though nothing happened for a while. In 1995, I went to Ireland for the first time, to Ballina, County Mayo, where my mum was from. It was the most extraordinary revelation — I found out my mum had been quite a famous showband singer. I really felt like I'd found something that had been missing, and I felt very at home there. When I came back, I told Simon what a special trip it had been, and he came up with the idea of doing a programme about it, something which combined speech and music. I agreed to do it, but then immediately forgot all about the idea. Then I got a phone call to say that Radio 3 had officially commissioned it. There was a moment of panic. I felt like saying "You don't understand — I can't actually do this!"

What were you afraid of? If they'd asked you to just come in and play a couple of songs, you'd not have thought twice about it...

"I think it was untested ground. I thought it might be a technical nightmare, and at first, I didn't know how it was going to work. Part of the proposal was that we flew my [adoptive] dad back to Poland and my [real] mum back from the States and interview them both. In the end, Peggy wouldn't come over — she says she can't 'get to grips' with that part of her life — but we interviewed my adoptive mum and dad at Broadcasting House, then Simon came to my home studio and interviewed me. Finally, we flew to Ireland to talk to people who knew Peggy, and to Poland to take my dad back to his home town, Ruda. He's 84 now, and had some horrendous experiences in the Second World War. We found his village, and recorded anything and everything onto DAT, train noises, station announcements... a lot of location sound effects, which I was able to use later to create soundscapes. The visual stimuli in Poland triggered some fantastic memories for my dad, and every day we'd come back to the hotel and talk about his life. We also visited Auschwitz, where we recorded some conversations... that was really very weird, there was a very strong atmosphere about the place."

The Road To Ballina

So the idea was that you would take the interviews and construct music around them?

"Yes. It was Simon's idea, to have this kind of musical odyssey about my life and utilise these interviews in some way. My concept was to make the speech and music integral to each other. I'd heard the Steve Reich piece 'Different Trains', which uses extracts from taped interviews. It's minimalistic, but parts of it are very effective. Another influence was the Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers Of Prevention album, in which he combines scored music with improvised dialogue."

Did you compose any music before the interviews were completed?

"Yeah, I wrote one piece, the opening title track. It's a slightly sad Irish thing which sets the scene. When I was in Ireland, I became very of Irish music, and a big fan of Davy Spillane in particular. Uillean pipes were out of the question — too expensive and unbelievably difficult to play — so I bought a low whistle, which I play in that piece. It's a kind of bass flageolet, fairly easy to play, though there are a few special techniques, like bending notes and a weird kind of fluttering vibrato. Having written the piece and recorded the low whistle, I added a cello part. But then, for the other pieces, I had to select material from the interview DATs, and that was a nightmare. If I did something like this again, I would ask someone from the BBC for a transcription, but as it was, I was dealing with 10 or 12 hours of unlogged material. I had a couple of very frustrating days wrestling with it all, but the breakthrough came when I started working with some things my [adoptive] mum had said. There was a section where she was talking about adopting me, and there was this phrase, 'I wanted a child'. When I sampled it, playing it back, it had a little, lilting rhythm, and an element of melody to it. I thought it it would be nice to have some child‑like, nursery‑rhyme‑like music accompanying it, so I came up with this piano figure. It fitted like magic, and I was off. That was the way in for me."

That technique occurs throughout. There's one part where you say 'the luxury of sentiment', and quite unexpectedly the whole backing track leaps up and plays the phrase with you. It's very clever.

"Well, it gave me a way of dealing with the narrative. My next idea was this atmospheric repeating 5/4 motif which accompanied my mum's second story, about her youth in France. We got to a certain point in the story where it takes a very nasty, dark turn. That demanded an equivalent mood change in the music, so the dialogue was driving the music."

Much as it would in a film. I guess you had to keep dipping into the DAT and taking samples, trying them out with the music, until you eventually settled on certain evocative phrases?

"Yes. Those samples represent the gist of the story. I had to edit out whole chunks to propel the narrative, and the dialogue had to maintain an overall narrative structure, but within that, I was able to take certain sections of speech, repeat them, echo them, strengthen them, answer them or whatever. I also composed some music based on a 3/4 Polish Mazurka rhythm. While we were in Poland, I thought it would be nice to buy some tapes of traditional music, but it was impossible. You'd go into a record shop, and it was all bloody Level 42 albums."

The Supporting Cast

Speaking of Level 42, I notice Mark King is playing bass on The Road To Ballina.

"Yes, you can hear him on the piece of music that bursts in after I say 'He made me my first electric guitar' [on the track titled 'The House Was Always Empty', in which Jakko talks about his childhood]. Gavin Harrison plays drums on that track, and there's some nice cello throughout, plus trumpet and saxes."

Did you record all the musicians in your home studio?

"More or less. We did the drums, cello and trumpet here, but recorded Gary Barnacle [sax, from Level 42] at his fantastically well‑equipped home studio — he has four ADATs, a mixture of the old and XT models. Mark's bass was recorded at his studio on the Isle Of Wight, using a Trace Elliott valve preamp, which I also own. You can just take a DI feed directly out of the back."

Does Mark King use ADATs too?

"No, he uses Tascam DA88s; that was a bit fiddly, I must admit. I took a mix on DAT minus the guide bass part down to Mark's studio, and we bunged that onto two tracks of the DA88. Mark then recorded all his bass in sync with the Tascam, but onto his hard disk recording system. We then mixed the bass down onto one channel of a DAT, with a mono guide mix of the backing track on the other channel. I took the DAT home, dumped both tracks back onto one of the ADATs, and made a digital copy onto a second machine. By adjusting the offset in the latter process, I was able to get everything back into perfect sync. It was worth it. Mark plays great, and really adds something to it. At first, he just followed the changes, but then I asked him to cut loose a bit. I said, 'What we want here is Jack Bruce' — and that got him going. The section that follows has a strong Frank Zappa influence, with unison tuned percussion phrases. Everybody's doubling the lines, even the bass."

What mics did you use on Gavin's drum kit?

"Gavin brought in some of his own: a Beyer M88 for the bass drum — which is apparently Phil Collins' favourite vocal mic because of its pronounced bottom end — plus a pair of Schoeps CMC5s which Gavin uses as overheads. They're very nice mics. I used three of my SM58s for snare and stereo toms. I rarely use more than five tracks for drums — kick, snare, hi‑hat, and stereo toms and cymbals. I'm not into all that '70s bollocks of isolating each drum and trying to make all the sounds really separate. I just go for an overall picture — that's how a kit sounds in real life, so I record it that way. As a rule, unless I'm going for something deliberately wacky, I don't go in for a lot of panning on the kit, or put different reverbs on different drums. If you want that degree of separation, you might as well overdub each drum!"

Your recording area here at Silesia Sound is fairly small — does that cause any problems?

"I don't think so. The first time I recorded Gavin, I got an enormous shock — I brought all the mics up on their channels, balanced them, and it sounded absolutely fantastic. I hadn't done anything! It made me realise what bullshit all that 'getting a good drum sound' business is. If you have a good player, a good kit and the right microphones, there's no need to agonise over it. I found I had to use very little EQ on Gavin's kit."

Did you compress the drums?

"No. I tend to use compression only on vocals and acoustic guitar. I might occasionally use it on a clean electric guitar sound, but with distorted lead guitar the sound is already flattened out. Having said that, I don't have a fixed way of doing things, apart from sticking to certain vocal compressor settings."

This is a nice, quiet residential area. Any complaints about the incessant racket?

"Yes, I frequently have to ask my neighbour to turn The Archers down. But it's amazing how little sound leaks out of this place. I bought the house because it had a double garage I could convert into a studio. The garage was in terrible condition, but a local builder rebuilt it for me, with the help of a few BBC text books on soundproofing! The wooden floor is floating on a rubber layer, and the walls are stuffed with rock wool — it's that kind of heavy insulation which prevents the sound from escaping. The whole thing only cost seven grand, but after that I had no money left for acoustic treatment. I just put a few carpets on the walls — it sounds OK, though! If I had one criticism, it would be that the sound changes a little as you move round the room."

Strings, Notation & Technical

I liked the stereo string pads on your CD. Is that a workstation sound?

"It's actually a combination of a Roland MVS1 Vintage Synth and an old Yamaha TG33, plus some Denny Jaeger violin samples. I find the samples supply a realistic front to the note, but the modules give you a nice sustaining wash. I've also got the Emu Proteus 2 orchestral module, which has some nice pizzicato cello and double bass patches. I use the Proteus for individual string parts, as opposed to pads."

Did you write parts out for the musicians?

"I used Emagic's Notator to print out some lines for Caroline Lavelle, the cellist. The Notator version looked very plausible, but she re‑wrote it in her own hand anyway, as she found it easier to read. Gavin just wrote a few sketchy notes for himself — there was one little tuned percussion quintuplet thing, five against four, that he had to notate. I can't actually write music out myself, but it's never been a problem. I could always hire a copyist if I was writing for a bigger ensemble."

Were the BBC concerned about the technical quality of your recordings?

"In fact, everybody said how good they sounded. Had there been more time, I would like to have worked on the dialogue more and used more live musicians. My original idea was to go back to the BBC with all the interview DATs, load them up into a SADiE digital audio editing system and clean up the dialogue, compress it, level‑match it or whatever, but we just ran out of time. In the end I did all that processing through my desk, recording everything to tape very carefully."

What happened with longer sections of dialogue? Did you run out of sampler memory?

"My sampler only has 8Mb of RAM, so I had to record some pieces of dialogue to tape. In a way, that made it easier, because I didn't have to keep juggling with samples. There also came a point when I wanted to record acoustic instruments, so then everything had to go on to tape. Some kind of hard disk recording system would have made all this a lot easier, but the budget wouldn't stretch to it. I don't even have a hard disk for my sampler, so I had to back everything up on floppy disks. Lots of them..."

Having relatively limited gear can be a good thing, because it forces you to use your imagination...

"That's true, but after all my tax problems, I can't afford a load of expensive gear anyway!"