I would have loved to play the streets of Europe back in those days. Sadly, most of the people whom I knew, who did it, are now long gone. A lot of people played the streets for a couple of years so they could travel and play music, learning their trade. Others saw the craft of entertaining people on the street as a real calling and spent most of their working lives at it. Among those whom I met were Don Partridge, Phil Free, Paul MacNeil and Alan Young. Of those, only Alan Young is still alive and living in London. There were lots of musicians who played at the Troubadour Club or Les Cousins in the burgeoning British folk scene of the sixties, who also had experience of busking. They didn't all play on the streets though and indeed not every act, no matter how good the content is, can work on the street. Two people, who certainly knew that scene, were Colin Wilkie, who now lives in South Germany and Rod Warner, who was Don Partridge's biographer. You can find both of them on Facebook.
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