It’s a busker’s life for me Kirsten Mcclure
Playing music on the tube has its lows and occasional highs – from defunct 10p pieces to fivers from Joanna Lumley, says Kirsten Mcclure
Iam not a real busker. I was forced to concede this on a busy N38 bus just outside the Royal Academy on Piccadilly. With my large, white Transport for London (TFL) visitor’s pass stuck to my coat, a performer’s licence round my neck and a steady grip on my guitar and amp trolley, I am often targeted by inebriated busybodies, my headphones my only defence.
But that night, I had no headphones and was too busy composing an urgent text to reply to the man in a top hat with a guitar on his back, loudly asking how much I had earned and where.
I’d been singing for four hours at Green Park tube station, and my takings, minus a cheeky swipe from a passing thief, weren’t great. But the rest of the bus didn’t need to know that.
I smiled and nodded meekly, hoping that would do, but it just infuriated him. Suddenly, he was in my face, telling me, if I was a ‘real busker’, I would show some community spirit and talk to him. He was right; so I raised my eyebrows and shrugged. I was too tired to argue.
Using the wheelchair area as his soapbox, he then engaged the rest of the passengers with his story of legal battles and victories defending his right to busk.
I knew the story because he’d told me the same one a couple of months earlier. Even though I was being publicly humiliated, I was glad he was telling it again; it still amazes me how many people need to be reminded that busking is legal on public land.
As he nimbly leapt off at the next stop, I thought how real buskers don’t need the licences and visitor’s passes like the ones wrapped around my neck. Many buskers still rely on their community for unlicensed pitch-sharing. And, before the introduction of the TFL busking scheme in 2003, this was how it was run on the privately owned London Underground. Busking had thrived on the tube for decades, despite the risk of being arrested or fined by British Transport Police under bylaw 22, section two (iii), which says, no one shall ‘tout for or solicit money, reward, custom or employment of any kind’.
Once busking was regulated, pitches became ‘bookings’. They moved away from the bottom of the escalators to somewhere deemed safer (and less lucrative). Performers were no longer selected by spirit or bravery, but by audition.
I busked in my native Oxford as a youth and had always longed to play into the fantastic acoustics of a tiled tunnel. So, when the shiny, new, vinyl pitch floors and recruitment posters appeared, I sent in my application and got practising.
Since I gained my licence in 2007, most of the tube-buskers I have met are from the original pool of pre-regulation buskers. Like anyone with a licence, they had to pass the auditions. One veteran explained to me that he missed the character of the unregulated buskers because they were the tough ones who didn’t disappear after their first run-in with the law.
I’m not sure what I would have done but, as a parent, I need the predictability the scheme offers. Every week, we log in to make twelve bookings, competing with 250 others for a random place in the queue. Good pitches go quickly; so it’s always a joy to be at the front.
New buskers come onto the scheme every two years; February saw 100 new faces arrive in the tunnels. The drop-off rate is fairly high, but it is generally those who get involved in the busking community who stick it out. That and the ability to take it on the chin when your yield is three 1972 10p pieces, an artificial sweetener and an A5 leaflet promising salvation. Bad pitches are unavoidable. Still, if you get the seasonal and environmental aspects right, you can boost your earnings. Checking the newspapers is essential – news, weather and listings can all inform song choice. I cleaned up busking Landslide when Stevie Nicks played Hyde Park last year. And the night before the Scottish Referendum, I got a handful of banknotes for Robbie Burns’s Ae Fond Kiss; two of them were Royal Bank of Scotland notes.
Celebrity-spotting is a perk of busking. Alison Steadman has dropped something in my case three times over the years. Joanna Lumley stopped to gracefully peel off a fiver into my case at Piccadilly. I’m still kicking myself that I didn’t play This Wheel’s on Fire as she glided away.
It also pays to embrace your own minor celebrity – buskers are like a tiny cuddly version of Big Ben to tourists. Some will tip handsomely for a pose. The appeal of buskers to tourists is one of the reasons TFL regulated the scheme. In that sense, I’m as real a busker as Big Ben is a real clock.
As the cashless society looms, the clock may well be ticking for us. But if and when the end approaches, I know that the real buskers will be the last ones standing.