He was a member of Level 42, the Lodge, and the Tangent and has collaborated with Tom Robinson, Peter Blegvad, Danny Thompson, Gavin Harrison, Warren Harry, Pandit Dinesh, and Dave Stewart.

At 18 months of age, he was adopted by two European refugees who had settled in England after World War II: Polish Norbert Jakszyk and his French wife, Camille.

[3][4] Jakszyk grew up in Croxley Green, Hertfordshire, and would later describe his childhood as unhappy; his adoptive parents' nationalities led to an unsettled home life.

In 1974, at the age of 16, he was kicked out of the Jakszyk family home by Norbert,[6] and embarked on a struggling career as part-time actor and musician while working at a number of dead-end jobs to survive financially.

His self-confessed "dictatorial tendencies" reduced a bigger line-up to a trio of "two screaming lead guitars and a trumpet" (the latter played by ex-National Youth Jazz Orchestra member Ted Emmett).

[3][7] Boosted by an exuberant and funny live show, 64 Spoons proved popular with audiences but failed to gain an effective record deal or media breakthrough and split up in 1980.

[8] Strengthening his existing links to British art rock, Jakszyk began working with Peter Blegvad and would go on to play on the latter's first three solo albums (beginning with 1983's The Naked Shakespeare).

He continued his collaboration with Dave Stewart, contributing to his duo work with Barbara Gaskin and playing a prominent role on the Stewart-produced Neil's Heavy Concept Album (a 1984 spin-off from the Young Ones comedy series).

In 1987, Jakszyk joined Peter and Kristoffer Blegvad, John Greaves, and Anton Fier in the short-lived New York-based band the Lodge, with whom he recorded one album, The Smell of a Friend.

Returning to the UK, he played with Swing Out Sister and Sam Brown, contributing to and co-arranging the latter's 1988 hit single "Stop", and toured with Italian singer Alice.

[3] He formed the Kings of Oblivion with Gavin Harrison in order to record the album Big Fish Popcorn, which was released on the Bam Caruso label in 1987.

The Kings of Oblivion led into a more serious project when Jakszyk and Harrison teamed up with classical Indian singer/percussionist Pandit Dinesh and Danny Thompson on double bass.

Jakszyk's Holdsworthian guitar style, additional instrumental skills, and broad knowledge of pop music made him a natural choice.

However, record company politics restricted his contributions: despite being pictured on the cover of 1991's Guaranteed, he never performed on a Level 42 studio album and was never a full member of the band.

For similar reasons, material which he wrote and recorded with the band with the intention of release ended up shelved when Level 42 reunited with drummer and songwriter Phil Gould.

In 1995, Jakszyk released a solo album, Mustard Gas and Roses, on Resurgence, featuring a mixture of sharp, intelligent pop songs and progressive/art rock instrumentals.

The album featured further contributions from Karn and Jansen, as well as from Sam Brown, BJ Cole and Jakko's Dizrhythmia colleagues Danny Thompson and Gavin Harrison.

Since 1991, Jakszyk had been sketching out plans for an autobiographical radio piece called The Road to Ballina, a mixed music-and-spoken word project exploring his own family history and his bittersweet search for his birth mother.

In addition to Jakszyk's own account of growing up as an adoptee, the work included extensive contributions from both of his adoptive parents relating to their often harrowing wartime experience in Europe as refugees and conscripts and as people under occupation.

The piece dealt with the nature of fame and celebrity, focussing on "the deification of stars who die young", and used the life of Mario Lanza as its focal point.

Between 1994 and 1999 he contributed to albums by Akiko Kobayashi (Under the Monkey Puzzle Tree), Peter Blegvad (Just Woke Up), Gavin Harrison (Sanity & Gravity), Pip Pyle (7 Year Itch), Saro Cosentino (Ones and Zeros), and Richard Barbieri (Indigo Falls).

Its work came to a halt in 2005 due to lack of funding and difficulties in finding worthwhile arrangements for tours: Wallace's death in 2007 finally put an end to the project.

In January 2010, Jakszyk and Fripp began recording ambient instrumental pieces on a casual basis: this eventually developed into a full song-based project involving Mel Collins.

Gavin Harrison and King Crimson bass player Tony Levin were brought in to complete the recordings, which were released in May 2011 on the Panegyric label as an album called A Scarcity of Miracles credited to Jakszyk Fripp & Collins.

If JFC were named as a ProjeKct, which would be legitimate IMO, then all manner of expectations, categorisations, limitations & dopey commentaries would be launched to deter the ears of innocent audients".

Fripp went on to comment that the origin of the trio was in fact a proposed but abandoned ProjeKct Seven (featuring himself, Jakszyk, Collins, Levin, Harrison and possibly some other players) and described the forthcoming A Scarcity of Miracles as "one of my favouritist [sic] albums, of those where I am a determining element".

His work as a character comedian has included playing the demented but fleet-fingered Italian guitarist Eduardo, a sidekick to comedy music duo Raw Sex (Simon Brint and Rowland Rivron).

In the BBC TV movie In Dreams (starring Lenny Henry and Bill Paterson), Jakszyk makes a cameo appearance as Michael Jackson's recording engineer.

Under the pseudonym of "Grand Master Jellytot", Jakszyk produced the novelty hip-hop single "The Stutter Rap" (performed by "Morris Minor and the Majors", who included future comic star Tony Hawks).

While known as a guitarist and singer, he also performs on a variety of keyboard, string and wind instruments from various cultures (and can write for even more), and his work has drawn on assorted elements of jazz, art rock, classical, Irish, Eastern European, Indian and Chinese music.