To play or to save? Atticus Blue Interview
Bringing music to your ears isn’t always a walk in the park, literally.
The hustle and bustle of London life is beknown to any of its residents and visitors. The range of culture around every corner and the vast amount of talent is guaranteed to be witnessed throughout the heart of the capital.
However, being a busker isn’t always as easy as one may think, explains Atticus Blue an upcoming musician who takes to the streets of London to make his name known. Choosing his current career has been his main ambition since 15 and after a nightmare university application he packed his bags and moved to London.
Sitting in the basement area of a coffee shop in Leicester Square, Blue explains to me that despite busking it isn’t the only aspect of his career that himself and others like him are working on. “We also try to release music, post content on social media to engage our followers, then there’s the singing, which is busking on the streets and also gigs. Not to mention music producing.” He details the amount of effort that goes into achieving each of their visions.
Having beginning busking in London around a year ago- during the Winter months, it wasn’t easy for Blue to get settled financially to be able to completely fund his music career. “As soon as it started to get really cold everyone started to stay inside and it was kind of mid pandemic, freezing cold outside in front of The Tate on Southbank. The only people I had going past were like jogger mums and business men, that was it and they weren’t interested.”
However, if one positive thing has come from the Covid-19 pandemic for buskers it’s the accessibility of mobile card machines. This has allowed them to earn more money as previously they could only accept cash, which is something that not many people carry around with them. The card machines guarantee that members of the public who enjoy their performance are able to give money if they wish with either their cards or smart phones.
A year later, Blue now performs in Leicester Square where it is trickier to initially find space to perform due to regulations which require a pitch permit to use the area. He explains that it isn’t as easy as it may seem to get a permit and himself and other buskers find themselves “fighting back against it” as there are several issues with those who are in charge of the pitches. It appears to be a never-ending circle of fighting to perform and earn the money to pay rent and afford the pitches. “They don’t give us enough pitches to like busk, that's why there's like 10 of us waiting around today. There are lots of other pitches but they don't allow us to play there. Which is just ridiculous. It means that we can’t work and pay our rent.” Despite earning around £200 a day the job itself sometimes isn’t as rewarding as it may seem and the day to day life of a busker, like Blue, can be demotivating and depressing.
Busking isn’t your typical 9-5 office job, Blue explains, he heads onto the streets of London to perform Friday to Sunday and normally performs twice in a day to allow others to use the pitch space. His day starts early as he must prepare all of his equipment and carry it on public transport as he lives around 45 minutes away from Leicester Square and getting to his allocated slot early is the most important thing to ensure that it hasn’t been taken and to give time to set everything up. Each show attracts different audiences, “The morning is kind of nice. It’s quiet so you don't make as much money because there's not as many people but the crowd that you get often is people who actually like properly listening to you. You don’t really get that with the evening show.”
Blue and other buskers love performing as they want to share music with the public and like to think that they can make a persons’ day. However, a lot of the big issues that they face during busking is the general public who can be disrespectful or rowdy in a harmful way. “It goes kind of two ways. One way is that you have an insane show where you're just surrounded by great people and everyone's watching and it gives you so much adrenaline which is like the most effective thing. The other option is that you get loads of like drunk people around and ruining your show.” An example he gave was when people start “screaming and being generally disrespectful” during the show, to the point that a lot of people left as Blue wasn’t able to fully engage the audience and these particular disruptive individuals make others feel uncomfortable.
You could see the frustration on Blue’s face as he details some of the worst experiences he has had during performances, one of the worst being robbed after his show. A group of men had been watching him perform for a while and put money in his guitar case, however at the end of the show they asked for the money back. Instead of just taking their own money the men had grabbed a handful of notes that were placed in the case and ran off. Blue explained that this isn’t uncommon for buskers, especially in the busier areas of London and the majority of the performers in Leicester Square has had this happen more than once. “When this happens we feel so terrible and by the end of the day you’re just like really sad and depressed. You just go home with the leftover money you have to try and motivate you.”
However, there is always a light at the end of tunnel when people appreciate his work by messaging him or supporting him through social media. Blue expresses his appreciation for all his followers and said that if it wasn’t for them he wouldn’t have had the confidence to release a song of his own. This goes for a lot of the buskers that he’s befriended in his time performing in London.