SOCIETY
The Weird, the Wacky and the Wonderful
The eccentric and memorable characters I met during my time as a busker
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If you’ve been following my writing for a while, you may know that I was a full-time street musician for many years. If you’re interested in reading more about my busking journey and the philosophical and ethical reasons I chose that path, I’ll leave a link to that story at the end of this article.
Lately, though, I’ve been remembering some of the weird and memorable characters I met along the way. These are characters who have stuck in my head for decades and I often remember them with fondness. Today, I thought I’d share some of those memories and introduce you to some of the characters.
Phil
I met Phil before I started busking. He was an old hippy who had spent time in the 1980s at the Samye Ling Buddhist Monastery in Scotland. Our paths had first crossed briefly at a car boot sale where I was selling some old items to raise money for our animal rights group. Phil stuck in my mind because he was wheeling an old racing bicycle across the uneven ground with a second-hand guitar amp tied awkwardly to the handlebars with string.
A few weeks later, I was doing an animal rights stall in town, and there was Phil, sitting on that same amp playing old rock classics (badly) along to an old cassette player. I wandered over for a brief chat.
We’d never spoken before, and he had no way of knowing I was also a student of Mahayana Buddhism, with its emphasis on the Bodhisattva ideal of delaying entry to Nirvana until all beings are enlightened. Nevertheless, he gestured towards the crowds passing by, then looked at me with a mischievous and conspiratorial glint in his eye and said, “We have to wait for them to wake up.”
Phil taught himself to play the electric guitar, and later the violin, on the streets. It was the original version, I suppose, of ‘building in public’ and must have been one of the best practices for letting go of the ego that I’ve ever come across.
We became good friends after that. He also studied Vedic astrology and would constantly be pouring over star charts and whatnot to work out which were the best days to busk, and where.
He was what we’d nowadays call a ‘prepper’. We were once driving across the moors, and he made a point of stopping at the tiniest, most remote petrol station he could find to fill up a huge canister with fuel. He’d had his car adapted to run off blue, agricultural diesel so that after “The Fall” he could stay mobile by gleaning fuel from remote farmyard silos and tractors.
Later, he stopped the car, and we walked across the bleak rolling moor to look for mushrooms. Suddenly, he threw himself down behind a low scrubby tussock and urgently indicated that I should the same, as he pointed towards a distant helicopter.
“Practice for the future,” he explained, seeing my quizzical expression.
Phil was one of those people who permanently talk a mix of profound wisdom and absolute nonsense, and you were never quite sure which was which. Mid-conversation, he’d suddenly say things like, “Of course, in that life, you were a pirate. That was the time you refused to bow to the king and tipped him off his chair,” as if he were simply recalling something that happened last year.
Without a doubt, one of the most fascinating people I’ve met.
Bad musicians — genius buskers
Phil was a fast learner, but he was never a great player. I have met some phenomenal musicians over the years, though.
I’d often bump into the same buskers on a semi-regular basis on the circuit as I travelled from town to town. One of these is Ed Alleyne-Johnson, whose beautiful electric violin playing can be heard at the beginning of ‘Vagabonds’ on New Model Army’s Thunder and Consolation album. Ed was/is an accomplished violinist and would draw big crowds. His distinctive purple violin has brought joy to countless people.
Here he is playing Guns ’n’ Roses in York:
But the most talented musicians don’t always make the most successful buskers, and the most successful buskers aren’t always the ones you’d expect.
Rhino was a huge, bearded guy with the gruff booming voice of his namesake. In his semi-nomadic lifestyle, he would often end up staying with various people he met on his travels. When he left someone’s house, he would always make a point of leaving some small item of food in the fridge. According to Rhino’s Code of Conduct, this meant he could always return there again.
Rhino played only an ancient, beaten-up old xylophone, so old that the wooden keys were worn, bevelled and not quite in tune. Nevertheless, they somehow harmonised together surprisingly well, and when he played, he could almost make it sound, well… beautiful.
But perhaps the most unlikely and innovative busker I ever met was someone I only ever knew as ‘Bucket Guy’. Bucket Guy would find a place right in the centre of the busiest pedestrian thoroughfare, put down his plastic bucket, stick his head in it and stick his feet in the air.
It was a curious sight and a crowd would quickly start to form.
He’d maintain this headstand, motionless, for several long minutes until he sensed that a crowd had formed around him. I don’t know how he sensed this as he couldn’t see a thing, being as he was upside down with his head in a bucket. But when a big enough crowd had gathered, he would suddenly scissor his legs and spin a full 180-degree turn on the spot, then remain motionless again.
The crowd would go wild, surging forward to push money into his bucket through the narrow gap between his shoulders.
Genius.
Rebel piper
Busking wasn’t always legal in the UK. Even today, in some places, it is still prohibited under local council byelaws. But not so long before I got into busking, it was still not recognised as a fundamental right of artistic expression.
Many old-school buskers still remember the times when you were lucky to get a few minutes of playing before the police would turn up and move you on, or worse. Even in my day, there were still individual police officers who were convinced busking was illegal and would threaten you with arrest if you didn’t move on.
It is largely thanks to the tenacity and campaigning of those old-school buskers that the tradition is now mostly recognised as a protected and respected right. I remember one busker from Tipi Valley, a loose community of tipi-living anarchists in rural Wales, who made it his mission to challenge the police in the courts as often as possible.
This guy would travel far and wide in his campaign. He would turn up in a town centre and play his pipes loudly and continuously for as long as it took for some pissed-off shop manager to call the police. He would then belligerently refuse to stop playing until they arrested him. I think he was always disappointed when they inevitably released him without charge.
Non-buskers
Some of the most memorable people I met along the way were not the buskers but members of the public. Many of these were fleeting, one-off encounters, like the guy who came running through the town centre one night, stark-bollock-naked, while I was drumming. He stopped to dance for a few moments before taking off at a sprint with a crowd of police officers in hot pursuit.
There are so many amazing people I met over those years who have left a lasting impression on me that it would be impossible to mention more than the tiniest fraction of them.
After many years of busking full-time all over England and Wales, I eventually decided it was time to get a regular job again, with a regular wage and holiday pay. I rejoined the corporate world.
One day, a colleague approached me and nervously asked if I used to busk. I had thought he looked familiar but had been unable to place him. A little self-conscious at being recognised, I admitted that, yes, I did used to busk.
He told me that a couple of years previously, he had been in the depths of depression. One night, he was wandering around town aimlessly, feeling like he couldn’t go on. He was planning on killing himself that night. He came across me busking and stopped for a chat.
When he told me this, it clicked into place, and I remembered him from that night. I didn’t know he was contemplating suicide at the time, and I honestly don’t remember what I said to him, but whatever it was, it changed the course of his life.
He told me that after our conversation that night, he felt a renewed sense of hope and purpose in life. That was the moment he decided to live again.
That humbling and heartfelt story taught me a valuable lesson and still serves as a powerful reminder that in every interaction, perhaps when we are least aware of it, we have the potential to make an impact on someone’s life.
We never know how many lives we have changed.
