Diary Of A Busker Day 2550 Saturday May 24th 2025 Winchester.
At around 5 o’clock, about an hour in to the set in The Square, I had one one those “what are the chances of that?” moments. I was nearing the end of the last verse of Life On Mars? and doing OK, although I’d messed up a bit earlier on (I’d managed to get out of it OK, I thought). Anyway, at the “Mars” bit, where it’s the long high note “…is there life on MAAAAARRRSSSSS?!” someone just behind me to my left starts singing “MAAAAARRRSSS…” and I’m thinking ‘oh, shut the fuck up, mate!’ then he shouts “enough!” and comes round to the front of me – there’s a middle aged blonde woman with him – while I’m doing the end descending string bit, then starts saying something to me over the very VERY end bit (my interpretation of the quiet bit where the phone rings) so I’m trying to get it over with without fucking it up. At the end he puts in a fiver, shakes my hand in that way where the thumbs sort of intertwine(?!) and says ‘come and see my show.’ I say ‘what’s that?’ and the woman says ‘the Canvas Gallery, down near the statue’ and he says ‘Geoff MacCormack, Bowie photos.’ I say ‘Geoff MacCormack, that name sounds very familiar and he says ‘come see the show’ and I say ‘yeah, OK. Thank you’, meaning the fiver, and they both go off down the path towards the cathedral.
Well, I’d definitely heard the name before. In fact. Not really “heard” but I must have READ it hundreds of times over the last 50 years. It’s the bloke with black curly hair who sang backup for Bowie from 1972-76. He and this woman, who I think is something to do with the gallery, were sitting outside The Vine and they must have been there when I started playing – I think I remember seeing them as I glanced around occasionally during my set.
One funny thing that occurred to me. When he was singing, old Geoff must have thought “fuck me, that note’s higher than I thought. I must be getting old, I can’t sing those high notes like I used to!” In fact, I play the song in G – two semitones above the original!
I did another hour then packed up and headed down to the gallery…there are a load of Bowie photos in the windows and inside – It’s only a small gallery. Just behind the front window there’s a big black and white photo of Bowie from 1976. On the window, it says it big letters DAVID BOWIE BY GEOFF MACORMACK 24 – 31 MAY. I must go before it ends. I bet he was signing stuff today, as it’s the first day.
Anyway, like I said, what are the chances of that? You just never know who you’re going to meet and in what circumstances. I mean, actually playing Like On Mars? in the presence of someone who was on stage with Bowie when he did that song at the height of his fame. And I was saying to myself ‘shut the fuck up’ when he started singing! Bloody hell, he must have been on stage with Bowie on that live footage video to promote Life On Mars? that they showed on Top Of The Pops in July ’73 when it got to number 3. Seeing that video changed my life, really.
In fact, I think I’ve met more interesting music people out here than I did in the Polydor record deal days of the 1980s. Back then, I met Level 42, Julian Cope, Curiosity Killed The Cat (who they?!) Mark Knopfler, and a few other pop people. Interesting, yes, but out here, I’ve met the bloke who played percussion on all the Bond soundtracks except one, Simon Nichol from Fairport Convention at the same time I was recording Fotheringay with Rebsie, a friend of Pattie Boyd who held his phone so she could hear me do While My Guitar Gently Weeps while she was in Morocco, Irene Dunford, a model who Scott Walker proposed to, and now a bloke who sang with David Bowie in the 70’s! AND he gave me a fiver. Simon Nichol gave me a fiver, as well…or was it a tenner?