Street Performance - Celebrity Anecdotes

Celebrity Anecdotes

• Joshua Bell In a stunt organised by The Washington Post, the classical violinist played as an incognito street busker at the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in Washington, D.C. on 12 January 2007. Of the 1,097 people who passed by, only one recognized him and only a couple more were drawn to his music. For his nearly 45 minute performance, Bell collected $32.17 (not counting $20 from the passerby who recognized him). He did this using a Stradivarius violin valued at around $2,000,000.
• Bon Jovi has been known to take to the streets from time to time. Among the most famous Bon Jovi busks were those at London's Covent Garden and Moscow's Red Square.
• John Butler, a well known Australian artist, has been known to busk and started his career busking.
• Tracy Chapman began her career busking in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Newton Faulkner has been known to busk and video footage of him busking has been made available on YouTube, including a full acoustic cover of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".
• Benjamin Franklin, the American inventor and statesman, was a street performer. He composed songs, poetry and prose about the current events and went out in public and performed them. He would then sell printed copies of them to the public. He was dissuaded from busking by his father who convinced him the stigmas that some people attach to busking were not worth it. It was this experience that helped form his beliefs in free speech, which he wrote about in his journals.
• Shannon Hoon, former singer for Blind Melon, was known to busk all over the U.S.
• Tom Jones On 18 November 2008, the singer went outside London's Royal Festival Hall and busked for charity. He raised £500 for cancer research while doing a twenty minute set.
• Guy Laliberté was a street performer when he founded the Cirque du Soleil theatrical company in 1984.
• Paul McCartney of The Beatles donned a disguise to be filmed busking for Give My Regards To Broad Street in 1984:

"They just made me up and dropped me off. So I was standin' there plunkin' chords, doing this silly version of the song, and no one noticed it was me. No one wants to look a busker (street singer) in the eye, of course, 'cus then they get his life story. So they'd toss coins and I'd be going 'Yesterday, all my troubles – thank you, sir – seemed so far away.' After we did it, I made sure the money was donated to the Seaman's Mission."

• Loreena Mckennitt, developing a passion for Celtic music, learned to play the Celtic harp and began busking at various places, including St. Lawrence Market in Toronto in order to earn money to record her first album.
• Edward McMichael was a celebrated street musician known as Seattle's "Tuba Man", who busked outside of the city's various sports and performing arts venues. In 2008, he was killed by attackers who were attempting to rob him.
• Peter Mulvey, the singer-songwriter, recorded an entire album down in the Boston Subway, where he was a regular busker. In most cases, songs were recorded in one or two takes.
• Kristyna Myles Myles won the BBC Radio 5 Live Busker of the Year competition in 2005 and has gone on to sign a recording contract with Decca. Her debut album is due for release in September 2012.
• Paul Oscher, a famous Blues musician and harp player, has busked as "Brooklyn Slim" on the Venice Boardwalk to try out new material. Oscher, a two time W.C Handy Award winner, was the harp player for Muddy Waters and his band in the latter 60's and early 70's. He currently performs at Blues festivals in the U.S. and internationaly.
• Natalia Paruz who can be seen in movies such as 'Dummy' and heard on many movie soundtracks has been playing the musical saw in the New York City subway since 1994.
• Bruce Springsteen has been known to busk. There is a famous set of videos, recorded on 23 July 1988 in Copenhagen, where he plays a variety of his songs with a busker on the street.
• Steam Powered Giraffe, a San Diego based band/performance group, had their roots busking in Balboa Park.
• Rod Stewart began hanging around folk singer Wizz Jones and busking, at Leicester Square and other London spots in 1962. On several trips over the next 18 months Jones and Stewart took their act to Brighton and then to Paris, sleeping under bridges over the River Seine, and then finally to Barcelona. Finally this resulted in Stewart being rounded up and deported from Spain for vagrancy during 1963.
• Sting has also donned a disguise and gone out busking. He reportedly made £40. "He pulled a hat down over his eyes, but one woman said: 'It's Sting.' The man behind her said: 'You silly cow. It's not him. He's a multi-millionaire.'"
• KT Tunstall, a popular Scottish singer, has been recorded busking in Glasgow.
• Violent Femmes were discovered by James Honeyman-Scott (of The Pretenders) on August 23, 1981, when the band was busking on a street corner in front of the Oriental Theatre, the Milwaukee venue that The Pretenders would be playing later that night. Chrissie Hynde invited them to play a brief acoustic set after the opening act.
• Hayley Westenra at one time busked on the streets of Christchurch, New Zealand.