Diary Of A Busker Day 2560 Thursday June 12th 2025 Winchester.
Before I came out I did a video of me doing California Girls and Wouldn’t It Be Nice – a tribute to Brian Wilson whose death was announced yesterday…and this afternoon I carried on in the same vein at The Buttercross, starting with those two songs, then again halfway through, then at the very end. But before all that, in fact, just as I was about to play, a Jamaican man of around 70 turned up, stopped and asked me what sort of music I play. I told him it was fingerstyle; some Chet Atkins, lots of stuff from the 60’s, some Erik Satie. He then started talking about his time as a roadie for lots of bands, some of whom he roadied for before they were famous – ‘before they had a number one.’ ‘Really? Can I ask who?’ ‘Simply Red, before THEY had a number one, and lots of others…Commodores, Stevie Wonder, Meat Loaf, ABC, Michael Jackson – they had 48 arctic trucks for him. David Bowie’s Glass Spider tour.’ ‘Really, 1987.’ ‘Yeah. The worst one I did was Sade.’ ‘Right, why was that?’ ‘She did one song, on the big stage, you know, then went and sat on a chair at the side of the stage and didn’t do anything else.’ ‘Oh right.’
‘Anyway, after all that I was beaten up and left for dead and I went back to Barbados but I got prostate cancer and had to come back here to get the treatment. Radiotherapy then chemo. Hot flushes – I used to get them all over my body and I had to take all my clothes off. You know, at night, fling all the bed clothes off.’ ‘But you’re alright now?’ ‘Oh yes. PSA level’s down to 0.2.’ ‘Right, well that’s good.’
He’s just moved here so I said he’d no doubt be seeing a lot more of me – maybe that’s why he didn’t hang around to hear me play!
I did two hours and no Brian Wilson chats until the very end, although a bloke donated and gave me the thumbs-up after the second outing of California Girls, which I took as meaning Brian RIP.
At the very end, after the third and final outing of the two Brian songs, a woman came up and handed me a tenner. It was the woman who got me to go to her house and play for her mother a few years ago. ‘She died in January.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ ‘No quite alright. Anyway, I was walking up the road and I didn’t see you but I knew it was you, playing Brian Wilson, and I thought to myself “that’s MY busker, Marvin, doing Brian Wilson. ” I knew it was you! He was…great, eh?’ ‘Yeah, no one could do the stuff he was doing, just out of this world.’ ‘Yes, he was. Well, thank you.’ ‘Thank YOU.’